Apps

We put the set-top boxes up against each other on game selection, remotes, and more.

SRemember as a kid, when you'd go to weddings or plays or concerts or whatever, the adult sitting next to you would give you a piece of candy to keep you quiet? Apps are smartphone candy. Pass a few to your phone so it doesn't start blabbing in the middle of the vows.AndroidVizilifeSNewly updated today, Vizilife is a planning app that organizes and collates all the different types of data on your phone. Say you've got a calendar event, an audio file, a picture and contact info that you want linked...

Twitter has updated its Vine video service today so that users can embed both their own six-second shorts and those created by other users anywhere on the Internet. The feature has been rolled out today both as an update to the iOS app and the Vine.co website....

Social media sites like Facebook have become a central part of the lives of many families, letting them keep tabs on each other’s lives through pictures. But they’re not for everyone. My mom and dad, who live in the U.S., have no interest in joining Facebook. They are okay with email, and my dad will even video Skype if his wife, my stepmom (a computer scientist, as it happens), sorts it out for him. But you know what? They still really love it most of all when I send them a real letter with photos of m...

Roger, the walkie-talkie style voice messaging app created by a team of ex-Spotify engineers, has landed on Android.

Glow, the latest startup from PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and Mike Huang, is expanding its reach within the healthcare space. With its updated app, the company hopes to give women the knowledge to help plan their future, no matter whether they want to have a family now or wait a few years while they focus on their careers. That means its app is geared towards those who are not interested in becoming pregnant, considering it, or want to be pregnant....

Over the last decade, the rise of mobile technology and the maturation of the Web as distribution and consumption channels has had a devastating effect on the music industry, among others. Yet, on the bright side, more recently these technologies have produced a litany of new ways to discover great music, empowering both fans and musicians in the process. While it seems that each day brings a new…

Don’t stop the music. It seems obvious, but MOG is the first of the big on-demand music streaming services to get this right on a tablet. Today MOG officially releases its iPad app, and it includes MOG Radio which when enabled will continue to play songs after your currently queued tracks finish. No more hours of accidental silence. It’s also retina-ready to crisply display artwork, bios, editor’s picks, and reviews. Compared to Rdio’s iPad app and Spotify for iPhone (no iPad app available), MOG has the...

Watch the NCAA Tournament on iOS, Android, Windows, Roku, Fire TV, and even in split-screen on the new Apple TV.

The market for news reading on your smartphone is getting crowded. There are excellent, immersive, highly customizable apps like Flipboard and Feedly, more curated options like Yahoo News Digest, Circa, and Slashdot founder CmdrTaco’s Trove — and that’s not even mentioning the full-on firehose of news that is Twitter. Investor, entrepreneur, and blogger Jason Calacanis believes that no one has yet solved the basic problem: an app that truly brings the news into a mobile-first format. But he says his...

In a quintessentially European move, fanatix, the iOS-based second screen app and wider ‘mobile-first’ social network for sports fans, has released a Portuguese-language version in partnership with Sportinveste Multimédia — a joint venture between Sportinveste and Portugal Telecom which owns the digital media rights to the Liga Portuguesa soccer league. The deal also comes hot on the heels of…

Music streaming service MOG is today announcing partnerships with mobile, audio and video equipment manufacturer JVC as well as with Aha by HARMAN, an interactive platform that brings web content to the automobile. The companies will begin using MOG’s APIs to integrate the music service into their platforms and products. The first result of the new partnerships is MOG’s launch on Subaru vehicles.

Miitomo is now available to everyone. Today Nintendo released its first smartphone app — a quirky social network built in collaboration with Japanese mobile studio DeNA — globally, after it made its debut in Japan earlier in March. The app was downloaded more than one million times in its first three days of availability, causing Nintendo's stock to jump more than eight percent in Japan....

Social networking giant Facebook is set to give users a new way to explore and discover content both on and off the service with its upcoming Paper app, while Carrot Fit aims to help users lose weight with what the company calls a 'sadistic' approach.

Vine, the video-sharing app recently released by Twitter, now requires users to confirm that they are 17 or over. The move comes after Vine ran into a storm of controversy over adult content just after launch, with hardcore pornography showing up in the "editor's picks" section. Photo-sharing service 500px was also removed from the App Store over adult content fears before returning with a 17+ rating, and Tumblr followed suit by updating its iOS app to require a mature confirmation....

Newly launched Zoomingo is a shopping discovery app that aims to help you find nearby sales using either your Android or iPhone. With a focus on clothes, shoes, jewelry, handbags, beauty and home products, the app appeals to the everyday bargain shopper, not the daily deal seeker or the gadget guru looking to compare prices on HDTVs, for example. Sales data for major retailers is available all across the U.S., including from stores like Nordstrom, Macy’s, JC Penney, Williams Sonoma, Target, Kohl’s, Dill...

Maps, and more maps.

Following the launch of Demonstration back in November, UK rapper Tinie Tempah is now taking his talents to the App Store to offer a new way to experience the album....

We have sort of an adorable theme going with this round of the best iPad apps of the week. It starts with a craft app, continues with an animated petting zoo, but it ends with a crazy fish hunting game. Say it while you have the chance: awwwww.

Skype has always sort of served as one of the poster children for why iOS just had to allow applications to run in the background. I mean, come on: being able to avoid gobbling up my precious minutes without having to keep the application open all the time just so I don’t miss calls? Yes. Yes please. Its been a few weeks since iOS launched to the multitasking masses — and today, the dream of always-on Skype becomes a reality. Skype just pushed an update to their application which adds support for iOS 4′...

Speedify combines available cellular and Wi-Fi connections, seamlessly providing faster, more reliable internet speeds from any iOS app.

Earlier this week, Amazon brought its "Flow" image recognition technology to the retailer's main iOS app. The feature, which has long been available as a standalone utility, lets iPhone users add products to their Amazon shopping list simply by capturing them with the device's built-in camera. Flow appears beneath the regular search bar, just below the "Scan It" option that lets you look up products by barcode. Once you enable it, the iPhone's camera immediately turns on and Flow quickly gets to work....

If touchscreen QWERTY drives you nuts and you prefer writing notes by hand, you don't always have to carry around that little Moleskine. Instead, a popular app makes it easier to take notes on your iOS device with the convenience of your own hand. While it's similar to other note apps out there, Use Your Handwriting GOLD lets you take advantage of your iPhone or iPad screen's real estate as you write with your fingers.

CityMaps, the social mapping company fresh off its $2.5 million Series A, is rolling out a big update today which not only brings the service to a fourth city (Boston), but also introduces a recommendations feature it calls “Featured Maps.” This option allows users to quickly see recommended places to eat, drink, shop and play as a new layer on the map. The update is live now in the iTunes App Store, and while I don’t have CityMaps available in my hometown just yet (it’s currently in New York, San Franc...

Philips' Hue app has always been a little rough around the edges, but today that changes as Philips releases an update that both overhauls how it looks and adds in much-needed features to make the system far more useful....