Apps

Google is ready to take over your living room. The company has announced version 2 of its Chromecast product, along with a new Chromecast Audio, which turns any speaker with an AUX out into an Internet-connected device. I got to spend some time with these little devices and they are powerhouses.

Whether we like it or not, more and more of the world's objects are coming online. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC standards are all being used make everything from your car to your smoke alarm digitally connected. The problem is, how do we control and understand what all these objects can do? A group of researchers from MIT think they have the answer: an augmented reality app that lets you see and draw connections between real-life objects. You just point your phone's camera at, say, your lamp or your radio,...

Individual users who have an earlier version of the app will be able to subscribe to the new version at a rate that’s less than the rate of the previously announced price.

The feature will be built into Android with a Play Services update and work on iOS through the Google app.

You’re not going to exactly want to replace your tape measure, but as far as iPhone hacks go, this is about as cool as it gets: Acoustic Ruler allows you to measure distance up to 82 feet using a blast of pure sound.

So it's almost the new year, and you want to start being more organized and productive, right? Well we've put together a list of great iPhone apps to help you manage your...

It’s not even a story any more that Apple loves to reject Apps from the App Store. Today’s entry in the Big Book of App Rejections is µMonitor, an App that monitors µTorrent that you have running on your PC. Apple rejected it because “his category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights.”

Today, Friday, April 22nd is officially Earth Day in the United States. For some, Earth Day passes by just like Columbus Day (October 12th) or Video Games Day (July 8th),…

In a very special late night edition of your weekly iPhone apptacular: Apps that make things that are already good—FM radio, video games, shopping, spouses, the city you live in—a little bit better. Priceless Picks: Don't let the advertising-crap-app appearance of Priceless Picks turn you off—this free download, branded all over with Mastercard, is great. It combines loads of data collected from a number of sources, including user submissions and Amazon's Mechanical Turk army, to give wide-ranging...

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. DoggCatcher (Google Play) Previously $4.99, now $1.99. DoggCatcher is our favorite podcast app for Android, letting you browse for podcasts within the app or add your own audio and video feeds, and saving your place if leave a cast. Today's sale benefits the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Get it for $1.99. (via AppBrain) iOS iOS

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. Bills Reminder (Amazon Appstore) Previously $3.99, now Free. Bills Reminder for Android does what it says with a simple interface for tracking your bills and notifications when the due dates draw near. Get it for Free. (via LogicBuy) iOS iOS

There's plenty of awesomeness in this edition of the best iPhone apps. Whether it's a way to convince your kids to do their chores, or a beautiful way to check the weather, you'll have plenty of new titles to add to your iPhone. Chameleon Clock: Careful. If you don't look closely enough you might miss it—a clock that uses its camera to blend in with its surroundings. While there are tons of timekeeper apps around, this one does it in a very unique way, displaying its background as its face. $0.99 iFit...

Since the beginning of time — or what feels like it — we’ve been chained to our homes and desks by landlines. Ten years ago, landli…

Halloween is a magical time for kids, and for parents as well. You get to re-live your childhood trick-or-treating along with your children. But parents should still take...

Apple on Wednesday issued updates for nearly all of its iOS software to add support and new features taking advantage of the newly released iOS 6 operating system, as well as the forthcoming iPhone 5.

Do you have a smartphone? Then chances are you've been a creeper. Now don't get all defensive, just yet.

The batteries in your mobile devices are miracles of chemical engineering, holding huge amounts of energy that can keep your devices running for hours. How do they work, and how can you get the most out of them?...

Jonathan Wegener is CEO and Founder of Timehop, an app that plugs into services like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to show you what you were doing one year ago today. Prior to founding Timehop, Wegener hacked together 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, an app that surfaced old, nostalgic Foursquare checkins. Wegener took a few minutes to talk to The Verge about the first app he ever coded, a future filled with personal assistants doing our chores, and why it took so long to find a place to reminisce online. You...

MyPermissions, a startup that helps users to monitor and manage which connected apps have access to their personal information on social networks and Web-based services, has given its mobile apps and Chrome plugin a pretty radical redesign today and introduced real-time alerts for iOS and Android....

people are about to ascend on Black Rock City, Nevada to join in the Burning Man festival experiment. There’s going to be art galore, crazy events, weird costumes for days, and the brutal Black Rock Desert meting out its hellish punishments on each and every Burner. Making the trip to BRC is easy, but surviving is entirely different, so we’ve found eight great apps that will help you get out of the desert alive:

When a new device comes out, it’s only natural to compare it to its immediate predecessor: Does this thing do something new the last thing couldn’t do? It’s a measuring stick, a way to put the new device into context. And when we’re talking iPhones, it’s a perfectly standard practice....

It's hard to believe a device like the the Nest Learning Thermostat wasn't invented earlier; it blends existing hardware technology with customized software to solve a number simple of problems many people deal with on a daily basis, and does so elegantly.

SHave you ever wondered if people are spying on you? Not to be paranoid or anything, but we all leave our phones unattended sometimes. It's not hard for a friend—or foe—to take a quick look at your text messages. But don't fret.Catchr ($2) does one thing, and it does it pretty well. Once you install the app and quit all of the apps you have running, Catchr will record all of the most basic activity on your phone, namely which apps are opened and closed. (It doesn't work on the Mail app due to App Store...

Family photo sharers now have more room to upload photos for free after Adobe increased the storage limit for its Revel service, while popular universal calculator app has received a major update that includes a new calculator core.