Apps

The deal-grabbing frenzy known as Black Friday is just a few days away and shoppers looking to nab the best deals on Apple products and accessories can get ahead of the game with a number of apps that help organize ads and track the best deals.

None involve a text message, so don't even ask.

A new mobile application called HeartThis wants to make shopping across multiple retailers more convenient for smartphone users. The app, which is making its official debut later today on stage at StartX’s Demo Day, puts over 330 stores in one place, allowing you to buy from places like Dillard’s, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, J Crew, Target, and many more, as well as see if there…

Web and mobile gifting service Sesame, which lets you browse and order themed gift sets online or from your iPhone, has now rolled out to iPad. The updated application lets you get a better feel for the gifts you’re ordering, by including “unboxing” videos that show how the gifts were packaged and what they look like in real life. In addition, “hot spots” now…

WalmartLabs, the retailer’s Silicon Valley-based R&D and innovation center, is today announcing its 13th acquisition – and its first from New York’s “Silicon Alley” – with the acquisition of fashion app Stylr. The app, which helps consumers find clothes they love in nearby stores, will be shut down. It will be pulled from the iTunes App Store by the end…

A new shopping and sale finder app called ShopDrop, also the Audience Choice winner from our recent TechCrunch NYC pitch-off, is now live on the iTunes App Store. Today the service helps users, mainly New Yorkers, find nearby sales, both at larger retailers and smaller boutiques, but the company plans to expand its coverage to more major cities in the future. At launch, ShopDrop’s online…

Swipe right if you like. Swipe left if you don’t. Stylect, a shoe shopping app for iOS, has a Tinder-esque UI, underpinned by its own recommendation engine, to help women find and purchase the perfect pair of shoes. If you have déjà vu, you are not alone.

Microsoft today announced it has finally added IMAP support to Outlook.com for all users worldwide. The company has also implemented OAuth, an open standard for authorization used for interacting with protected data, which should open the door for developers looking to build on Outlook.com....

Almost nine months after Pickie launched for iPad, the personalized shopping app has been given a bit of a makeover, with an all-new design and full e-commerce capabilities....

S Regretting that you never had time to pursue your rockstar ambitions? What about childhood fantasies of being a race car driver? Interior designer? Well, whatever your secret dreams may be (well, assuming they're one of the above), this week's slew of Android apps want to make them become a reality—a virtual one, but a reality nonetheless. Sort of....

It may have been a (thankfully) short week, but the app gears were turning just as hard as ever. So relive the glory days of the long weekend of yore, and kick back with a bundle of apps that aim to make your life just a little bit easier. Or at the very least, a little more fun....

You may remember an app that launched in September last year called IKEA Now, serving up an augmented reality experience that lets you ‘try’ furniture from the Swedish furniture behemoth, before you buy....

This year, holiday shopping can be as easy as scrolling through an app and clicking "Gift It." The best part: You won't have to worry about shipping. Sesame is a...

Bazaart is an iPad app that lets Pinterest users create colorful and clickable editorials out of their pins. If you've ever dreamed of being a fashion blogger or magazine...

Want to get more creative with Pinterest? Now you can, thanks to Bazaart. The startup has released a free iPad application that lets you collage your…

It turns out you can be rewarded for watching television, going shopping or buying music from the iTunes store. In fact, you can collect points with the punch of a button...

Shopping on the iPad is becoming one of the best ways do shop. You’re sitting on your couch, comfy as a bug in a rug, swiping through dresses, and t-shirts, and shoes! Oh my! But there’s one issue: you have to switch between all the different brand apps to enjoy yourself. Sure, you can hit up the Saks 5th Ave app and view multiple brands at once, but those brands aren’t offered the ability to reach out to you directly with their sales, content, and promotions. But that’s why Buyou, the crowd favorite h...

When done well, iPad-enabled shopping experiences have been paying off for e-commerce sites. Take for example, Fab.com, which is forecasting the iPad to account for a quarter of its revenue in two years’ time. But unfortunately, not all online retailers have yet to capitalize on this trend. By year-end 2011, none of the top retailers’ sites offered an iPad-optimized version, and many didn’t offer a native iPad app, either. Enter Shopmox. Launching today, this iPad app aims to bring the mall to the iPad ...

The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale. Note & Share (iTunes) Previously $3.99, now 99¢. Note & Share for iOS lets you share text, including links, to any combination of services like Evernote, Twitter, email or SMS. It can also save and sync your notes as text files in Dropbox, and it's big in Japan. Get it for 99¢. (via Apps-aholic) iOS iOS

An Australian startup that incentivises and monetizes errands has launched its iPhone app having raised $1.5 million, just two months after launching. Airtasker, which operates like Craigslist-for-chores, can be used…

Shopping discovery service Zoomingo, which helps you find nearby sales using your mobile phone, is out with a new iPhone app that introduces a gamification element to its platform. Local shoppers are now being encouraged to share the unreported sales they spot in the wild as well as rate those spotted by others. By playing the new “Hot or Not” game within the app to rate deals, shoppers earn points while also training the service’s branded “ZoomSense” recommendation engine to present more deals matching...

Remember when a mysterious new category appeared in the App Store on the eve of the this past week’s iPad announcement? The discovery led most of the Apple blogosphere to believe that some sort of interactive catalog experience would be making its way to the new iPad’s gorgeous Retina display. How exciting! As it turns out, the Catalogs section of the App Store has launched, and it’s not really that amazing at all. In fact, it’s pretty awful.

On the eve of Apple's expected unveiling of the third-generation iPad, the company has introduced a new Catalogs category to the App Store, hinting at a possible announcement related to interactive catalogs on the iPad as part of Wednesday's big event.

The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale. WeatherPro (Amazon Appstore) Previously $2.99, now 99¢. WeatherPro for Android gives you seven-day weather forecasts and reports for more than 2 million worldwide locations. Features include global satellite and radar with animation, temperatures in Fahrenheit and Celsius, live wallpaper, and more. Get it for 99¢. (via LogicBuy) iOS Windows Mac iOS Android Windows

There are over 500,000 applications for the iPhone and iPad, 300,000+ on Android and thousands more on other platforms. The average user has 65 apps installed on their phone (source: Flurry). Many of us have more. Entire businesses have been built to solve the problem of “app discovery” – that is, a way to supplement the limited app search mechanisms built into the vendors’ own application stores. This is primarily to benefit mobile app developers, who can’t get their apps found. The end results of thes...