Apps

Three major iOS apps saw updates today, with Google continuing to tighten service integration in its iOS offerings, the BBC's iPlayer getting AirPlay integration, and Twitter seeing a few interface changes.

Whether you're an Android or an iPhone user, odds are you have a gripe or two about your phone's battery life. It's the number one complaint among cell phone users, and unfortunately, there haven't been many breakthroughs in cell battery tech. As apps continue to get more sophisticated, they're also sucking more of the life out of your phone's battery. Almost all smartphone users download apps, which explains why we're all familiar with the agony of being down to 10% battery by 5 p.m.

The Google Hangouts iOS app received a major update on Friday, with the latest iteration bringing free in-app voice calling within the U.S. and Canada, as well as incoming and outgoing calls with a user's Google Voice number.

In 2008, almost every one of my friends had a BlackBerry, and swore by BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), the company’s lightning-fast messaging app. It wouldn’t be a stretch, in fact, to say that most of my friends bought a BlackBerry just to be able to use BBM. In combination with the world’s fastest hardware keyboard, BBM offered a new degree of speed and utility. Never before could we chat on mobile as quickly as we could IM on desktops....

App.net CEO Dalton Caldwell once promised a better Twitter — "a real time social feed without the ads" that wouldn’t crush the dreams of its developer community. A little over a year later, App.net has accumulated 200,000 users and a vibrant community of developers building great apps, but it’s unclear how many are actively using App.net for its original purpose. Caldwell claims he never intended to build a Twitter clone after all — that was just part of the marketing. He built a platform for social...

Pinterest fans will be pleased to hear that the firm’s iPad app has finally been given the iOS 7 treatment, revamping the design with a sparse, clean grid layout similar to its iPhone incarnation....

Tinder is great if you care about looks, not personality. But if you want a simple dating app that matches you based on interests, education, and profession, there's Hinge. Today it launches in San Francisco. In a city of quirky and sometimes socially awkward people, Hinge's focus on brains and background over beauty could help people find a Jedi in the streets, not just a Sith in the sheets.

When Facebook launched Paper for the iPhone last week, I was skeptical. The company’s social network is a huge, lumbering machine with a vast array of moving parts; to create such a simple redesign, surely Facebook had to compromise and leave out some of its core features?...

Wickr, one of the wave of messaging apps built on the idea of private, encrypted and self-destructing data, has vowed never to make money off its users -- with its app remaining free, and user data never getting sold on or accessed by others. But it is starting the process of making money regardless.

When fitness tracking app Moves was purchased by Facebook in late April, both companies tried to allay worries of privacy-minded users by saying there would be no data "commingling." It appears the statement was only partially true.

Microsoft released Skype for iPhone version 5.0, which brings performance improvements as well as a Windows Phone-style theme.

Facebook is continuing its onslaught of new app rollouts, but this time you likely won’t be able to use what they launch; Mentions is a brand new iPhone app out today that is only available to verified parties using the social network, including “actors, athletes, musicians and other influencers,” with the end goal of getting them involved in discussions and message threads…

On mobile, everything wants to be a messaging app – even Pinterest, it seems. But in Meetup’s case, the addition of a new Messages feature makes sense. Most people are familiar with Meetup as being the long-time online home for local community groups who organize outings and other activities like outdoor hikes or biking trips, cooking classes, playdates for the kids, and much more.

Better late than never? LinkedIn this morning announced it has at last rolled out the first-ever iOS app for SlideShare, the presentation and content-sharing platform it acquired back in 2012. The new app was built using Swift and is optimized to work on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, offering a modern, clean layout to browse and search through the presentations hosted on SlideShare’s…

Cotap, the enterprise messaging app founded by ex-Yammer execs that bills itself as a ‘WhatsApp for the workplace’, has launched a new feature to expand the circle of people who use the app: it now lets others send messages to those users via a URL on Cotap.me, without having to download the app itself.It comes on the heels of a desktop app launch for the product in October that…

Developer Tapbots on Monday pushed out an update to its popular iOS Twitter client Tweetbot for iOS, bringing playback support for videos and GIFs hosted by the ubiquitous microblogging network.

You could start the next Harlem Shake-style crowdsourced video phenomenon with Facebook’s new app Riff, out today worldwide in 15 languages on iOS and Android.Shoot a video of up to 20 seconds in Riff, give it a title that instructs others what they should add to it like “Make A Funny Face” or “Birthday Wishes For Johnny” or “Adventures Of Mr. Banana”.

Tired of making money for Facebook and Twitter? Tsu shares its revenue with users.

Foursquare's check-in app Swarm has brought back the leaderboard — but it's making a key change to it. Swarm now rewards its users with virtual coins for being active, and those coins are what rank you on the leader board against your friends. "For now, [coins] just help you beat your friends and conquer your leaderboard, but stay tuned for more fun to come," Foursquare writes in a blog post....

The next time you go to post a photo on Tumblr, you may find a bunch of GIFs ready and waiting to be posted instead. Tumblr is updating its iOS app today with a new feature that lets it turn photo bursts and videos into GIFs. It works really well, automatically detecting GIFable moments in your camera roll and presenting them right alongside your other images, nearly ready to post. If you have a long video or burst, Tumblr will ask you to trim the GIF down to about three seconds. You can also choose to...

Most social media platforms deter users from creating multiple profiles to prevent shenanigans like harassment and fraud. Galaxia, however, wants people to create a new profile (which it calls a “persona”) for each facet of their identity. Created by photo-sharing network Mobli, the new iOS app (an Android version is in the works) acknowledges that people present different faces to…

Jonathan Zarra knew something about Pokémon Go that most people didn’t. As a beta tester this summer, the 28-year-old freelance developer had early access to the smash hit mobile game — and as a result, he could see that it offered users no way to chat with one another inside the app. And so Zarra built GoChat, an independent app that lets Pokémon Go users leave notes for each other at in-game locations....

Who needs an overflowing binder when there's an app for that?

Kicking off this week’s roundup of must-have iOS applications is the brand new TweetDeck app for iPhone, which its creator claims has been completely re-imagined and rebuilt from the ground up to be fast, flexible, and powerful. Fring is the popular video chat and VoIP application for iPhone and iPod touch. It deserves some recognition this week thanks to its recent update that makes it the first application for iOS to offer group video calling with support for up to four people. Fahrenheit – or Celsius...

The weekend is finally here, and you're ready for a great time with your friends. We've assembled a list of free mobile apps to help you plan your perfect night out on the...