Apps

Mailbox gains smarter snoozes, handy UI tweaks

Dropbox-owned Mailbox soon became my go-to email client on iOS because it vastly reduced the overhead of dealing with email messages on iDevices by taking delegating most background stuff to the cloud. What the iPhone or iPod touch in turn becomes is a thin, responsive client.

And that has allowed for some interesting possibilities, such as rearranging the individual messages in your inbox or snoozing them as if they were reminders.

Although developers mostly concentrated on creating an effective user interface to support these unique features, the Mailbox app has a few annoyances that today's maintenance update, its second update post Dropbox acquisition, strives to address.

For example, no longer are you limited to snoozing messages until Later Today, This Evening, Tomorrow, This Weekend, Next Week, In a Month, Someday or a specific date: the app now adds more granular choices allowing for snooze adjustments based on time of day and week...

YouTube app enables iOS live streaming, My Subscriptions, TV queuing and more

I'm loving Google's native YouTube iOS app a lot although it's lacking in some key areas.

Specifically, I've come to appreciate its sleek user interface, especially on the iPad, along with social sharing, the ability to browse my individual subscriptions, AirPlay playback and other capabilities.

Today, the Internet giant pushed another update and it's kind of a big deal.

For the first time, the software is able to access Live Streams and that's huge because I can now watch those live events and news conferences on my iPhone or iPad as they happen. But that's not all. Read on for more...

Customizable iPhone-controlled bionic hand arrives

Here's CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting on the latest on prosthetic technology: a pair of bionic hands controlled from an iPhone app. 34-year-old Jason Koger in 2008 had a brush with death when he got jolted with 7,200 volts of electricity.

Doctors had to amputate his both hands and he's been trying out a variety of prosthetic hands ever since. Four years later, UK-based prosthetic developer Touch Bionics comes up with the i-Limb Ultra Revolution, an iPhone controlled bionic hand.

It offers "unparalleled dexterity and control, enabling wearers to more easily perform activities of daily living and thus increase their quality of life." The video is right after the break...

Appolicious creates education software discovery tool for kids

In light of Apple's recent ban on discovery apps, a new portal hopes to do an end-run around the whole controversy. Appolicious launched Monday appoLearning, a web site where educational experts recommend iOS apps for K-12. Although it touts use of educational experts to make recommendations on dozens of educational app categories, appoLearning offers a spot for paid endorsements. Still, the founder of Appolicious claims his app recommendation service will be a boon for Apple...

New Twitter Music app launching this weekend

Twitter Thursday announced on, well, Twitter that it snapped up We Are Hunted, a music startup which tracks what songs people share the most across social networks.

But that's so yesterday. Just 24 hours later, Twitter on Friday announced its music service is crawling out of obscurity, having changed from "invite only" to "coming soon." Not much is known about the service as of yet except for a tidbit here and there.

According to some well-informed people, the micro-blogging service will be launching an app for iOS devices as well, timed to the start of the Coachella music festival this weekend. Matter of fact, if you're Ryan Seacrest, a filmstar, an influencer or some such celebrity, you could start using Twitter Music today...

Apple asks devs to localize apps, launches Chinese Support forum

Apple appears to want its apps to lose the 'outsider' label. In an email communication to its registered developers sent earlier this week, the App Store owner encouraged programmers to localize their applications because it's "never been more important." Also, in the latest round of moves aimed at Chinese consumers, the iPhone maker updated its online support forums to handle the native language...

French government takes issue with Apple’s AppGratis removal

The AppGratis app curation software is no longer available on the App Store but the controversy is far from being over. After AppGratis CEO Simon Dawalt lambasted Apple on a company blog for kicking his app out of the App Store, a move he called "an absolutely crazy situation to deal with," a French minister today slagged the iPhone maker over the ouster. Fleur Pellerin, France’s junior minister for digital economy, publicly described Apple’s decision to pull AppGratis as “extremely brutal and unilateral.”

She urged European regulators to “think about legislation” because Apple is not “behaving ethically" in its dealings with small startups like AppGratis...

Bump update breaks iTunes sharing at Apple’s (music biz’s?) request

If you use Bump, a cross-platform app for sharing photos, contacts, music and more between different devices, you may want to pass on today's update as it's removed the handy ability to share songs from your iTunes library.

"We're sorry, but we are no longer permitted access to iTunes audio files on the device," release notes accompanying the download read. In removing access to iTunes audio files in the file sharing section, Bump didn't just appease to Apple, it's also a little less useful now...

Major Real Racing 3 update is out: cloud saves, new Chevy cars, 100+ events

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwJzQ8Z6ghY

As promised, super publisher Electronic Arts and developer Firemonkeys just rolled out a major update to the awesome free-to-play Real Racing 3, bringing out over a hundred new events and two Chevy vehicles. The one feature I've been waiting for is an improved game saving capability: in Real Racing 3 version 1.1, your progress is now saved and synced across all your devices via the cloud.

This finally lets me to kill a few minutes on my iPhone while standing in the line at a bank and then continue playing right where I left off on my iPad. More tidbits and some nice screenies right below the fold...

Documents by Readdle goes universal, now available on iPhone

The App Store carries some handy programs for folks who need to edit Microsoft Office documents on their iPhone and iPad. If Google's acquisition of the popular app Quickoffice came as a shock and you were looking to jump ship, Readdle has you covered with today's update to their free Documents software. The application, which is now universal, has at last been updated with support for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Although Documents won't let you edit Microsoft Office documents, you can now view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on any iOS device you happen to own.

Plus, Documents comes with lots more features to help you manage a bunch of file types, it syncs with popular cloud storage services, comes with a beautiful media player and lets you even annotate PDFs...

Mr. Runner 2: The Masks confirmed for April 24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnfyM6xs7sg

Mr. Runner, in case you aren't aware of it, is Zing Games' endless runner with an interesting side-scrolling twist and nice retro-like graphics. People downloaded it over five million times so it has some respectable following out there. Two and a half years later, Zing is set to release a sequel, titled Mr. Runner 2: The Masks.

Exploiting the side-scrolling mechanics further, Mr. Runner 2 adds a bunch of colorful backgrounds that should shine on Retina screens (art direction indeed looks stunning), 32 level across four dream-like worlds worlds with different themes and challenges, plus the new cartoony characters.

I'll be on the lookout for this one when it hits the App Store on April 24, that's for sure. By the way, there's more to this trailer than meets the eye. Read on for the full disclosure...

LookAway Player brings Galaxy S4-like Smart Pause eye-tracking to iPhone

Samsung has been promoting its eye-tracking technology, which debuted on the Galaxy S3, for some time now. As an S3 owner, I must say I wasn't impressed with the handset's ability to automatically shut down the display when looking away: it's taxing on the battery and not very reliable. With the Galaxy S4, which is scheduled to go on sale by end of April, Samsung is doubling down on eye-tracking with a few related new features like Smart Scroll and Smart Pause.

And now, a new iPhone app has been released which brings the Smart Pause-like functionality to the iPhone...