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Rdio for iOS, Mac and Web goes freemium

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Forget Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music. I’ve tried them all, and for my money, Rdio is the best streaming music subscription service out there. It has the best app design and, for my tastes, the best music selection. But you have to pay.

An update, though, is trying to make Rdio much more palatable to free users, as well as help all users find new music faster. It’s making the service free to everyone, emphasizing ad-supported stations for free users (with up to 15 times as many tracks as competing services), and new, smart social services for paid users.

Radiohead’s trippy app delivers unexpected new tunes

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Screen grab from iPhone: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Screen grab from iPhone: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

UK-based rock band Radiohead just updated their Polyfauna app, originally released at the end of this past January, with all new audio and visual content.

The What’s New section of the iTunes description says, simply, “Entirely new.”

If you’re a fan of the ambient tech-inspired music of Radiohead’s seminal Kid A album, you’re going to love these new tracks. Here’s a video (below) to whet your appetite.

How an iPhone app could diagnose jaundice in babies

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One day apps like this could be routinely used in hospitals as a way of eliminating certain diseases.
One day apps like this could be routinely used in hospitals as a way of eliminating certain diseases.

The drive toward mobile health has seen more and more research into the possible medical applications of smartphones. The latest comes from a team of researchers at the University of Washington, who have developed an app capable of diagnosing jaundice in infants simply by taking their picture.

The awesome Mac RPG Legend of Grimrock is finally coming to iPad

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Almost three years ago to the day, I enthused about Legend of Grimrock, a throwback to the first-person dungeon crawlers from the 80s (Dungeon Master, The Bard’s Tale and even the first Phantasy Star game for the Sega Master System) that was coming to iPad “by the end of the year.”

What a joke. While Legend of Grimrock did eventually come to the Mac, it’s iPad version most definitely come out by the end of 2011. But good news! A new update at the official Legend of Grimrock blog says the wait is almost finally over.

How to access your Facebook messages in iOS without installing Messenger

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Do you hate the fact that Facebook is forcing you to install the Facebook Messenger app if you want to send or access messages on your iPhone or iPad?

We do too. But luckily, it turns out that right now, there’s an easy way to get around the restrictions and access your Facebook Messages through the vanilla Facebook app again. But better move on it: Facebook’s not likely to let this loophole stay open for long.

Wikipedia update brings major redesign and offline reading

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There are some pretty great Wikipedia apps out there already (my favorite is Das Referenz, an iPad app which turns Wikipedia pages into what looks like 17th century book entries), but Wikipedia has just made a gambit to be best of the bunch with a major redesign of its own iOS app.

Version 4.0 of Wikipedia Mobile sports a total overhaul of the app’s design, with a complete native rewrite that makes searching for information a faster and more enjoyable experience.

Kindle app adds Wikipedia integration and notes export

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Say whatever you want about the cold reception afforded its Fire Phone, but Amazon’s had a pretty great year when it comes to its core business of selling books: first announcing the creation of its Kindle Unlimited scheme, and now updating its iOS Kindle app with a few nifty features.

Chief among these are Wikipedia integration, letting readers pick selected words from any text they’re reading and link to the relevant Wikipedia page — particularly useful in the case of non-fiction books.

Facebook’s iOS app will soon get rid of Messaging for good

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Are you game?
Are you game?
Photo: Facebook

For at least the last year, rumor has had it that Facebook would soon require anyone who wished to message a friend through its official iPhone app to install a tertiary app, Facebook Messenger, instead.

Up until now, Facebook has held off on that threat. But as the social networking giant tries to spread its services across an entire ecosystem of apps, it looks like the House that Zuckerberg built might finally make good.

Spotify added a neat equalizer to its iOS app

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Equalizers haven’t been a fashionable tech feature since Boomboxes went out of style in the 90’s, but Spotify just released a major update to its iOS app and I can’t stop playing with its fun new equalizer.

Spotify’s 1.1 update includes a number of other new features like a redesigned Artist page on iPad and new Discover feature, but the simple equalizer is perhaps the most useful new addition, allowing users to customize presets with six sliders.

Say goodbye to the OS X Dock. With StatusDuck, you’ll never need it again

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If you’re like me, you hate OS X’s Dock. While a useful UI innovation on Apple’s part, the dock takes up a surprising amount of screen real estate on what, in the end, adds up to a superfluous amount of visual fluff.

You can hide your dock, sure, but isn’t there a better alternative to dock? As it turns out, there is… and thanks to a cheap Mac app, that alternative is the Menu Bar.

Dropbox’s new feature could speed up sync times by 200%

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If you love Dropbox, you'd better upgrade your Mac. Photo: Dropbox
If you love Dropbox, you'd better upgrade your Mac. Photo: Dropbox

When it comes to syncing multiple small files, Dropbox is a great service that can make sure that your photo libraries, documents, and more are synced between multiple computers without fuss.

But one thing Dropbox isn’t great at is syncing bigger files. Oh, it’ll get the job done, but relatively slowly. But a new a update to the service is promising to get large files synced between clients twice as fast.

Latest Mailbox update makes it even easier to auto-swipe junk email to trash

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Purchased last year by Dropbox, Mailbox is already one of the most intuitive apps on the iPhone and iPad for rapidly reaching inbox zero. Employing a series of swipes, Mailbox users can quickly delete, archive, or save emails for later, without ever leaving the inbox screen.

But after an update yesterday evening, Mailbox got even better. A new swipe action has been added to the app, giving users the ability to swipe a message once, and automatically file away all messages that resemble it.

Medium comes to iPad, and the best social reading app gets even better

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Outside of reading Cult of Mac (which you’re already doing!) Medium is one of the best go-to destinations of quality writing on the Internet. A blog publishing platform co-founded by ex-Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Medium is an effortlessly easy-to-use social journalism network that puts content — not ads — first. It’s like WordPress meets Instagram.

Medium already has a wonderful iPhone app, but sadly, universal support was missing at launch. But that’s all changed, and you can now surf Medium on your iPad as well.

Custom build your next deep pan with Domino’s app for iPad

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Remember the olden days when you had to phone up and order a pizza — or worse still, trudge down the road to go and pick one up in person?

Thankfully that dystopian past will be well and truly over come Monday, when Domino’s Pizza launches its new iPad app — which lets you build your own custom pizzas, and then order them for take-out and delivery from the comfort of your own couch.

Making this app particularly nifty is that the 3-D pizza builder uses rendering application OpenGL to give you a realistic photo-effect image of what your final pizza will (or should) look like upon delivery.

Runkeeper’s Breeze Is A Beautifully Designed Step-Tracking App

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As a guy running upwards of seven miles a day to get in shape for his imminent nuptials, Runkeeper is my favorite exercise tracking app, but you have to consciously remember to use it. But Runkeeper now has a new trick up its sleeve: Breeze, an activity tracker that taps into your iPhone 5s’s M7 motion processor to subtly guide you into living a more active life.

Television Tracking App Trak TV Show Gets Universal Support

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Watching so much True Detective — among other shows — that you need an iOS app to track what it is that you’ve already seen?

To help with this very quandary, and generally to help you sift through the television trash pile for the hidden gems, TV-tracking app Trak TV Show has just received a major update — adding universal support for optimizing the app for iPad and iPad mini, in addition to iPhone and iPod touch.

Facebook’s Paper App Adds New Article Sharing Feature [Video]

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One month after being launched, Paper – stories from Facebook has received its first significant update.

The addition allows users to share articles via Facebook Messages, text message, or email, as well as create stories in languages that use multi-stage input, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

There’s also the possibility of turning off sound effects to “enjoy the silence,” alongside a variety of other improvements designed to make Paper more reliable.

Rap Genius Launches iPhone App For Its Lyrical Breakdowns

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Having just crawled out of its smackdown from Google, Rap Genius is back with a new app for iOS that gives you access the site’s breakdowns and explanations on all those pop songs you just don’t understand.

The Genius app lets you swim in the all the annotations for song lyrics, poems, and news articles provided by the Rap Genius community. Once you install the app it scans your iTunes Library to prep all your song lyrics. There’s also a Shazam like function that can find lyrics for any song that’s playing around you.

The app is only available on iPhone with no word on an iPad version or upcoming support for Android, but you can grab it for free on iTunes starting today.

Here are the full release notes: