App Updates

Temple Run 2 updated with playable Santa character and other holiday goodies

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Imangi Studio's popular endless runner, Temple Run 2, used to be my favorite time-killer for months following its January 2013 release. The free game saw a cool twenty million iOS downloads in the first four days of availability, growing to a whopping fifty million downloads in under four weeks.

I've since stopped playing the game and only occasionally fire it up to challenge myself with beating my best scores.

If you've been yearning for a substantial Temple Run 2 content update as much as I have, today is the day as a new version of the game surfaced on the App Store featuring a playable Santa character, various holiday-themed artifacts, new collectible masks, a cool new water slide feature that lets you swim through raging rapids and lots more.

The full breakdown is right after the break...

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Valve gives its Steam iOS app iOS 7 makeover, offline chat and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 11, 2013

Valve has refreshed its Steam Mobile client for the iPhone and iPad with a new user interface design which fits the overall iOS 7 aesthetics much better compared to the previous version.

Additionally, this version of Steam Mobile has added a few new features and enhancements such as the offline chat mode, improved push notifications and icon badging, a brand new streamlined interface for responding to friend invites and a couple other tidbits.

The application allows Steam fans to stay in touch with the Steam community wherever they go. In addition to the Steam chat, the app relays the latest gaming news from the Steam network as well as notable game sales and includes the ability to browse community groups and user profiles...

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Twitter 6.0 is out with new design, DM photo-sharing and more

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Twitter has updated its official iOS client today, bringing the app to version 6.0. The update is a fairly significant one, bringing about a new look and feel for the app, as well as photo-sharing for direct messages, improved search and more.

The new look pushes the UI of the Twitter app further into iOS 7 territory. There's more white spacing—the menu bar at the bottom is now all white— and texts and graphics seem flatter. And Twitter has added various other enhancements...

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Facebook Messenger update adds one-touch Timeline access and more

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Last month, Facebook released version 3.0 of its popular Messenger app. The update was significant because it featured an all-new UI design for the app, bringing its aesthetics more in line with those introduced by Apple in iOS 7.

Today, the client received another update, bringing it to version 3.1. This time Facebook added a few new convenience features that will allow you to access a person's Timeline or call them (toll-free) by simply tapping on their picture...

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Google Drive for iOS finally gains file-sorting and find and replace features

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 10, 2013

The search monster Google today updated its free Drive for iPhone and iPad app with the much-needed ability to sort your cloud files according to several built-in criteria. The highly requested feature finally makes it easy to access your files by last edited, last modified, title and last opened by you. Additionally, you can also find and replace in documents.

I switched from the native Microsoft Office apps to Google Docs years ago and never looked back. Google's suite of cloud productivity apps has won me over with its ability to access, edit and share my stuff on any network-enabled computer, right in a web browser, without having to install anything...

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Google Play Books gains OCR-based search

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

The Google Play Books app has received a nice update this morning which lets you search through the contents of scanned pages.

If you've used the Google Books service before, you know that the Internet giant supports a variety of book formats, including those with free-flowing text, scanned pages or even a combination of both.

Unlike the regular text which can be copied and pasted, scanned pages are regular images. Therefore, to make searching of scanned pages possible some sort of an optical character recognition (OCR) feature needs to run either on the device itself or on the server.

That's exactly what this Google Play Books update does for you...

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Flint adds in-app invoicing, Passbook coupons, card scanning and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 10, 2013

Flint is a nice little mobile payment service that lets anyone easily accept and process credit cards on the go.

The service provides an interesting alternative to the likes of PayPal (which revamped its iOS app and just launched a digital gift cards shop) and Square (which just redesigned its credit card dongle).

Flint is cross-platform and fees start at just 1.95 percent.

Today, the company has refreshed its free iPhone application with notable new capabilities, like the ability to scan and redeem coupons using your iPhone's built-in iSight camera. Flint Mobile version 2.0 also lets you create invoices within the app and supports loyalty coupons in the form of Passbook passes...

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VLC 2.1.2 is out with experimental decoding of HEVC and WebM/VP9

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 10, 2013

VLC, the free cross-platform desktop media player, has been through some turmoil as VideoLan, which manages the project, has undergone reorganization as the multinational development team now spans twenty nations.

The open source media player made its App Store debut back in October 2010 as one of the first iPhone apps that could render media file formats unsupported by iTunes and iOS. Unfortunately, the app got pulled in January 2011 over licensing issues.

The problems came down to the GNU General Public License (GLP) requirements as developer Rémi Denis-Courmont, lead contributor to the VLC project, filed a licensing claim based on the code he had contributed to the project.

Following a two-year hiatus, VLC made its way back into the App Store earlier this summer (you can download it for free). And today, VideoLan has pushed an update to VLC for Mac and Windows desktops, bringing a lot of fixes and a cool experimental decoding of media files in HEVC and WebM/VP9 file formats...

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Viber announces new ‘Viber Out’ feature for making low-cost outgoing calls

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Popular VoIP and messaging service Viber announced today the release of version 4.1 of its mobile app for Android and iPhone. The update includes the full global launch of Viber Out, a new feature that allows users to make low-cost calls to any mobile or landline phone number.

The service uses credit that can be purchased through in-app purchases, or via credit card, and the minutes can be used on Android, iOS or your desktop. It's actually a lot like how Skype works, except it looks like Viber's rates are much lower and it won't charge connection fees...

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You can now wake up to your fav Pandora station

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 9, 2013

Pandora, the popular streaming-music service and one of the rare few Internet radio apps that saw a surge in listening following September's iTunes Radio debut, has been updated this morning with a pretty useful alarm clock feature which lets you start your day to your favorite music with your own choice of Pandora stations. Pandora 5.1 for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad includes refreshed iOS 7 design and other improvements "to make your listening experience even better".

Jump past the fold to learn more about the alarm clock feature...

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Argus picks up support for Fitbit imports, Bluetooth heart rate monitor for activities and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 9, 2013

Azumio's Argus fitness software was the first App Store app to gain low-power motion tracking via support for the dedicated M7 motion coprocessor inside the iPhone 5s.

Today, the developer has refreshed the app with a bunch of fixes and a couple new features, including the new Close Friends social capability, the ability to import Fitbit data, support for Bluetooth heart rate monitor for activities and other goodies.

The updated item is now live in the App Store and free for everyone who've previously purchased the program...

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