Year: 2016

You can now mark recommended videos as ‘Not Interested’ in YouTube for iOS

Google today issued a small update to its YouTube client on the App Store, adding a feature that enables better suggestions while fixing three annoying bugs.

Bumped to version 11.32, the iPhone and iPad application now makes it easy to improve personalized suggestions by marking recommended videos under the Up Next section as “Not Interested,” which helps train the algorithm to better tailor recommendations to your personal tastes.

Spotify looking to lower its revenue share with music labels

Spotify is out of contract with all three major music companies, and according to Music Business Worldwide, the renegotiations aren't going well. Citing sources familiar with the talks, the outlet says the sticking point is revenue share.

With Spotify preparing for an IPO, the labels see this as a great opportunity to get the streaming company to raise its revenue split from around 55% to 58%, which is what Apple Music pays. Spotify, however, wants to lower the amount.

Pinterest just bought Instapaper

In a newsworthy move that in all likelihood makes lots of sense, the photo sharing service Pinterest has acquired Pinterest, the popular app and web service for saving webpages to read later.

According to the announcement, Pinterest will continue to develop and maintain the mobile Instapaper app, available at no charge on the App Store.

Facebook testing autoplaying videos with sound

What could be worse than those pesky autoplaying videos on Facebook? Autoplaying videos that begin playing audio automatically as you scroll past them in your News Feed, but of course! And that's precisely what Facebook is currently experimenting with, according to Mashable.

At the moment, the company is currently testing two methods of getting users to watch video with sound: one involving autoplaying videos with sound and the other with an Unmute button on the lower right corner of such videos.

This just made my day: Oceanhorn 2 is in development—and it looks awesome!

Inspired by Nintendo's wildly popular Legend of Zelda console game series, Oceanhorn by Cornfox & Bros is one of the best-looking, most satisfying RPG-based action adventure games “for the rest of us” that I've had a blast playing on my iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.

Ever since completing the game, I've been rooting for Oceanhorn's developers to make a sequel and now, GameMob points us to the official confirmation that it's indeed being worked on as we speak.

Titled Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm, the game's mechanics are based on a third-person camera angle versus the original game's isometric view. The storyline revolves around a new hero—a grown-up boy who is training to become a Knight of Arcadia.

Apple taps Primax Electronics for some of dual-lens camera modules for iPhone 7 Plus line

Citing a report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, Asian trade publication DigiTimes reported this morning that Taiwanese supplier Primax Electronics will manufacture some of the dual-lens camera modules for Apple's upcoming iPhone 7 Plus flagship smartphone model.

The supplier recently increased its camera module capacity by ten percent, boosting output to twelve million CMOS units per month, of which seventy percent are thirteen-megapixel models that the iPhone 7 Plus might use.

PDF Expert 2 for Mac is here: new editing features, password protection & more

Ukrainian developer of fine iOS and Mac software, Readdle, today announced it's launching a major update to its PDF Expert for Mac productivity application, bringing out a plethora of improved editing capabilities and new features like password protection for your PDF documents, the ability to link any image or text to a different page or a website, localizations for ten languages and other perks. The update will go live on the Mac App Store today at no charge for those who already own PDF Expert.

Galaxy Note 7 vs. iPhone 6s real-life speed test proves specs aren’t everything

In spite of running Qualcomm’s latest 64-bit Snapdragon 820 processor with four CPU cores, Adreno 530 graphics and 4GB of RAM, Samsung's latest Galaxy Note 7 phablet delivers embarrassing real-world performance when pitted against almost-a-year-older iPhone 6s and its in-house designed A9 chip with two CPU cores and just 2GB of RAM.

As seen in this side-by-side video comparison from YouTuber PhoneBuff, the iPhone 6s easily beats the latest Note when it comes to loading apps and games, thanks to the combination of efficient iOS software and Apple's custom-designed hardware.

Let’s Talk iOS 149: Awesomely scary

Some discussions about music streaming services and their big exclusives. Twitter reportedly building an app to stream NFL games, but why? Did you know your next Uber ride might be a self-driving car? More talks about iPhone 7 rumors and a 10.5" iPad Pro.

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