You can’t get music videos on MTV anymore, but that doesn’t mean the 60-inch TV strapped to your wall can’t get jiggy with Beyonce and Katy Perry’s newest music vids. VEVO announced today that it has added full AirPlay support to its iOS app, allowing users to stream audio and video to an Apple TV.
Steve Cheney is a pretty smart guy, with a serious background in technology and mobile marketing, both as a former TechCrunch author and the current head of business development for iOS and Android chat app, GroupMe.
Cheney’s written a fairly strong analysis of the current Apple/Android war for supremacy and, as he sees it, there’s a clear advantage for Apple in the actual mobile device arena. Cheney calls it “bang per watt,” and he attributes Apple’s dominance here to the vise-like grip the Cupertino company has on the vertical integration of hardware and software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM&feature=player_embedded
Over the last few years we’ve seen Apple’s competition start to really take it to Cupertino in TV ads. Sometimes it seems petty but according to Samsung’s marketing chief, Arno Lenior, the tsunami of ads mocking Apple fans were a huge boon for the company.
In an interview with AdNews, Samsung’s Lenior says that the ads were brilliant because they got Apple fanboys and Samsung fans to bash with one another over which beloved “brand” is better:
Pocket Casts is arguably the finest podcast client on Android, and it’s pretty terrific on iOS, too. But it’s about to get even better. With the upcoming Pocket Casts 4 update, we’ll see a brand new user interface based on iOS 7’s new design, iPad support, cross-platform syncing for subscriptions, playlists, and play states, and lots more.
Evernote–it’s totally awesome, right? Track everything you do in Evernote, and access it on your Mac, the web, your iPhone, your iPad, or any other platform Evernote lives on, all with one login. Need that shopping list you created on your Mac while at the store? Pull it up on your iPhone at Costco. Want to show off that great website you saw while browsing the web at the coffee shop? Clip it to Evernote, and then pull it up on your iPad at home.
When you use Evernote as often and as regularly as many of us do, you’ll find that your own set of organization starts to break down. You’ve got so much stuff in there, across a variety of categories, notebooks, tags, and the like, that it starts to make less sense, perhaps, to your visual mind.
That’s where Bubble Broswer for Evernote comes in. This slick app, available for Mac as well as for iOS, re-visualizes your Evernote data into bubbles, making it easier to see patterns in your own data.
The Skype app for iPad has been updated today to introduce support for HD video calling — but there’s a catch. The feature is only available on the fourth-generation iPad with Retina display, and not any of its predecessors or the iPad mini.
Smartphone technology gives us a whole lot to have at our fingertips in terms of innovation. Things like being able to scan things using the phone’s camera (which Prizmo 2 takes advantage of) and being able to use it as an all-in-one inbox with an app like Drafts demonstrate how more productive our iPhones can help us be.
But this particular Kickstarter success story has me very intrigued.
It’s called Hone, and it uses your iPhone (along with other iOS devices) and allows you to locate valuables that you may have misplaced.
Apple just sent developers an email stating all developer program services are finally back online.
The developer center went down on July 18th, which prevented developers from accessing documentation need to code apps for iOS and OS X, as well as beta builds for Apple’s platforms.
A Turkish security researcher by the name of Ibrahim Balic came forward shortly after the outage and claimed responsibility as the intruder that breached the Dev Center’s database. No personal data was stolen from users, but Apple decided the breach warranted a complete rebuild of the backend.
Apple names a new and noteworthy app each week as its App of the Week. This week, it’s Simplebot’s Rise Alarm Clock, a universal alarm clock that’s getting quite a bit of buzz in the tech sector.
Let’s face it, alarm clocks are a dime nickel a dozen, so it’s ironic to see one hit the top spot on the App Store. The app evokes another big buzz app, Clear: it’s well-designed, looks great, and works with simple swipes and taps; what’s not to love?
Apple’s Passbook feature in iOS hasn’t really taken off as quickly as people thought it would, but that hasn’t prevented Samsung from throwing developers into making its own Passbook clone. We first got our first look at Samsung Wallet back in February at MWC, but the the app is finally ready for primetime and available on Google Play.
The app is only supported on the Galaxy S3, S4, Note 1 and Note 2, and you have to sign-in with one of those silly Samsung accounts, but if you’re already nose deep in S Health, S Beam, Samsung Link and all the other half-baked Samsung apps you’ll feel right at home.
Here are the release notes:
I may not be a designer, but I know what I like. And even with my lack of craftsmanship in design, I do have a sense of realizing when a color is just a bit, well… a little off. But what I don’t know how to do (at least with ease) is how to fix that “offness” when I really need to.
So I don’t fix it at all.
Only when people who have more design sense than I do tell me that the color that I thought was “a little off” is actually very off do I feel bad about my decision to just let it be. That’s when this app—currently on sale through Cult of Mac Deals—probably could have come in handy.
ColorSchemer Studio 2 is touted as “the professional color-matching application for your Mac” and Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $29 for a limited time.
Just like the Disney theme parks, the new Disney Animation iPad app is saddled with a heavy price for admission—but reveals a vast trove of wonder once inside.
For $14, the app makes an immense amount of material available—almost two gigs worth—from Disney’s digitally and traditionally animated titles.
Microsoft gave us a new anti-iPad ad yesterday, but there’s even more where that came from as the company released a new ad today that takes the iPad mini to task against the Acer Iconia W3.
The ad mostly focuses on the differences between iOS and Windows 8 and suggests that the iPad mini doesn’t have great games or productivity apps—which we all know is pretty much the exact opposite of reality.
Eventually the Siri-dubbed ad knocks on the iPad’s $429 price tag next to the $299 Iconia W3, even though Microsoft has conveniently forgotten that the W3 was originally priced at $380 before a series of price drops were introduced to try and get people to buy it.
Here’s the ad:
Social networks have trained us to share all the superfluous details of ourselves, but a new app called Leftover Swap is trying to take things to the next level by allowing users to share leftover scraps of meals with one another.
Hungry, but too cheap to buy a $0.99 hot dog down the street? With LeftoverSwap you can just pull up a map of discarded meals in your area, make a selection, and then go pick it up from your neighbor.
AgileBits has announced today that 1Password 4 will be on sale for just $7.99 for a limited time. That’s 55% off its regular price tag, and the app’s cheapest price tag to date. But what’s the reason for the sale? Well, on September 1, Dropbox syncing will stop in 1Password 3 for iOS, and AgileBits wants you to upgrade to the latest version to keep this functionality.
Android’s share of the worldwide smartphone market increased yet again during the second quarter of 2013, while the iPhone suffered a slight dip, according to the latest figures from IDC. But Research Manager Ramon Llamas is confident that Apple’s smartphone will recapture more users later this year when the Cupertino company launches the iPhone 5S.
YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have today unveiled MixBit, the new video sharing service that they’ve been teasing us with for several months. It hopes to rival Instagram and Vine with a focus on mixing and editing video. Users can record 16-second clips at a time, and then stitch up to 256 of them together to create an hourlong video.
When we first took a look at Anchor back in June after it had just launched, the social platform for coworkers was a decidedly walled-off environment; just like Hotel California, you could check out any time you like—but you could never leave. At least, your ideas couldn’t.
But that’s changed today, as the app sees its first big update and adds integration with Evernote, and the ability to email outside of the platform.
For those whose income is based on billable time or on a per-project basis, some kind of time/project tracker app is a basic necessity. OfficeTime combines meat-and-potatoes time and project management with greatly customizable billing and reporting features, and is one of the few apps in this category available on all Apple devices—iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Mobile app, Twine, is trying to do something new in the dating app space. Unlike other dating or random chatting apps like ChatRoulette, Tinder, or OK Cupid, Twine connects you with new people around you and lets you chat and flirt with them without revealing your identity until you decide to.
That’s kind of a big deal, especially for those who find themselves overwhelmed with overly assertive individuals on many online and app-based dating services. Twine also tries to keep things gender balanced, saying that it only allows in equal numbers of each gender (it only recognizes two), so that’s why some folks may be put on a waiting list when they join.
Instagram just pushed out a big update for its iOS and Android apps which gives users the ability to import video from their smartphone libraries into Instagram.
Now you can film video at any time and then splice it together later into a 15-second video to import into Instagram. The update also brings video support to Android 4.0 devices and has a new trim and crop feature so your vids can be molded into perfect squares.
iOS users also pick up a new Automatic Straightening feature that set your photos level with the tap of a button. The new Instagram 4.1 update is available now in the App Store and Google Play.
Source: Instagram
When I opened the mailing box to find three pairs of EarSkinz, I wasn’t super impressed. Especially as this model, the ES2, so closely matched the shape of the EarPods it’s designed for use with, I figured it was just another throwaway product.
My apologies for even writing the above, but imagine my surprise when EarSkinz turned out to be an essential accessory for my set of EarPods. I’m even thinking about buying a pair of ES1s for my older Apple earbuds.
The EarSkinz marketing material claims that the little ES2 silicone earbud coverings will improve the comfort, fit, and sound of a pair of EarPods. I found that they indeed improved the comfort and fit, but I’m not so sure about improving the sound, though of course your mileage may vary.
Infuse is my favorite third-party media player for the iPhone and iPad. And until VLC for iOS returned to the App Store, there was really no competition. FireCore, the maker of Infuse, isn’t letting other apps get the last word. In today’s big update, Infuse has received a number of great features, including support for AirPlay and file transfers over Wi-Fi.
Adobe may know how to make terrific software, but it also knows how to milk its users for every penny it can get. The latest example of that comes with a new Adobe Reader 11 update for iOS that adds some nifty PDF conversion features—which you’ll have to pay yearly to enjoy.
Here’s a problem: Let’s say you’re a diabolical dictator bent on world domination. You’ve decided to bypass the corporate mass media (which can’t be trusted) and inform the little people of your plans via podcast. You create one—only you don’t have a method of broadcasting the podcast, since you insist on personally playing your message directly onto the iDevices of your soon-to-be thralls.
The answer, of course, is the world-domination tool TuneMob. As long as you can gather everyone in the world into the same room. And by everyone, I mean a maximum of seven people. Who all need to be running TuneMob. And have fairly newish iDevices.
