App Updates

Celebrating first anniversary, Pocket adds Send to Friend social feature

Pocket, a read-later service, in celebration of its first anniversary today pushed a new build of its iOS and Android containing a new social feature aptly named Send to Friend, in addition to push notifications and other nice-to-haves.

Formerly know as Read It Later, Pocket was App Store’s Best of 2012 app and iPad App of the Week. Send to Friend is interesting as it saves content other people share with you right in your inbox.

You can then re-visit those articles later, but also read comments along with any highlighted quotes they chose to share with you...

Facebook 6.0 arrives with Chat Heads, new iPad UI, revamped News Feed, stickers

As promised, the new Facebook version 6.0 update has just dropped on the App Store, bringing out a number of new features such as Chat Heads borrowed from Facebook Home for Android, a redesigned user interface on the iPad focused on the new News Feed which was announced in March, stickers in chat windows and more.

Get downloading and read the following one-line disclaimer from Facebook before you jump straight to the comments:

"Chat Heads and stickers will be available to everyone over the next few weeks".

There, it's a staggered roll-out, you've been warned...

Time Warner to enable live TV streaming in its iOS app tomorrow

Time Warner Cable, a major U.S. cable telecommunications company, confirmed to Bloomberg that it will be adding out-of-home live television streaming to the iPhone, iPad and iPod devices via its free TWC TV software, which will gain new features via an update tomorrow. In addition to on-demand television shows and movies available from 26 networks, the refreshed TWC TV app will also make ten live television networks available for out-of-home viewing on iOS devices. Go past the fold for the full breakdown...

Chat Heads coming to iOS later today via Facebook 6.0 app update

Chat Heads, the core feature of the new Facebook Home for Android, is coming to iPhone and iPad via an update to Facebook's iOS client, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer and mobile head Cory Ondrejka announced at AllThingsD's D: Dive into Mobile conference today.

Other new features have also been mentioned, including a new layout on iPad which takes into account March changes to Facebook's News Feed.

As for Facebook Home, that application will see its first update on select Android smartphones from HTC and Samsung in "the second week of May". Go past the fold for a nice Facebook 6.0 for iOS hands-on video...

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...

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...

Major Foursquare update focuses on search and Explore recommendations

Celebrating its fourth anniversary, the location-based social networking service Foursquare today pushed a major new version of its mobile app, bringing out new features that tap over 3.5 billion check-ins users have made on the service thus far. "With the new Foursquare 6.0, we’re crunching all our data to show the best of what’s nearby, anywhere in the world, the second you open up the app," the team wrote in a blog post Wednesday. Here's what's new...

HBO Go, now with AirPlay multitasking and Games of Thrones interactive enhancements

HBO's free iOS streaming software is a nice companion app provided you're already subscribed to the service.

And if you believe the continuing ramblings, the Time Warner-owned premium cable network is considering offering additional subscription options in the not-so-distant future, potentially allowing cable-cutters to subscribe to HBO for online-only access.

In the meantime, HBO has updated its Go app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with two new useful features. The first will appeal to the fans of HBO's Game of Thrones series as they can now enjoy enhancements related to the show's interactive experience. The other improvement includes AirPlay multitasking capability. What's that, you ask?

Google Drive update adds landscape editing on iPhone

Google continues to refine its Drive cloud storage client on Apple's iOS platform. Just last month, the Internet giant has rolled out support for pinch-to-zoom on slides, QuickOffice integration and, multiple media uploads, to name a few. And previously, the software has added such handy capabilities as native and collaborative editing of both documents and spreadsheets on iOS devices. Monday morning, Google pushed another maintenance update that adds landscape support for document editing on the iPhone and iPod touch, in addition to minor bug fixes and faster performance...