Amazon's free Kindle for iOS app has received a refresh this morning. Bumped to version 4.7, it lets students access Kindle eTextbooks from their iPhone and filter their notes by chapter for easy studying, thanks to an enhanced Notebook feature.
Book Browser, another new feature created with iPhone owners in mind, lets you tap on a book cover to reveal additional information like the book description and customer reviews.
Flipboard, a social-network aggregation news app delivered in a magazine-like format, today launched a web app that runs in any standards-compliant desktop web browser like Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.
Available at flipboard.com, it lets you sign in with your Flipboard account and browse your Cover Stories, catch up on anything you're interested in and collect and share articles with friends, all inside your favorite desktop browser and without installing anything.
The Video Electronics Standards Association, or VESA, announced yesterday an update to the Embedded DisplayPort standard used in notebooks, desktop computers and other devices.
An improvement over the current DisplayPort 1.2a, the Embedded DisplayPort Standard 1.4a paves the way for notebooks, tablets, smartphones and all-in-ones with screen resolutions of up to 8K, or a whopping 7,680-by-4,320 pixels.
First gadgets using the new standard, based on Intel's upcoming SkyLake chipsets, are expected to hit the market by 2016.
Apple announced this morning it'll be providing a live-stream audio of CEO Tim Cook's segment at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference.
The live webcast will be available later today over here, beginning at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET. The company did not reveal the topics of Cook's conference talk nor the form of the interview.
But don't you worry, you can count on iDownloadBlog to keep you in the loop regarding newsworthy tidbits Cook will be hopefully dropping during his segment.
Today is the Safer Internet Day. In joining the Internet to celebrate the occasion, the search giant Google today announced an initiative that invites you to run a 30-second check on your Google Account in exchange for an additional two gigabytes of extra Google Drive storage.
As a quick reminder, Google Drive offers fifteen gigabytes of free storage to share across Google Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos, or thirty gigs per account if you use Google Apps at work or school.
So, if you spare two minutes of your precious time and complete a simple security checkup on your Google Account by next Tuesday, February 17, Google will treat you to an additional 2 GB of Drive storage by the month's end for a total of 17 GB of storage allowance.
In a note to clients obtained Monday by AppleInsider, revered analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is predicting that the next iPhone will have a much improved and more reliable Touch ID fingerprint sensor that will “offer a better and safer Apple Pay user experience by reducing reading errors."
An analyst with KGI Securities, Kuo is plugged deeply into Apple's supply chain and has proven reliable.
Following the success of Anki Drive, a slot car racing game which made its debut on stage at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in the summer of 2013, Tuesday the company announced the Anki Overdrive ahead of the next week's New York Toy Fair show. Anki Overdrive is an improved version of Drive with brand new cars, customizable tracks and more.
Infuse, a versatile media player for the iPhone and iPad by jailbreak developer FireCore (the brains behind the aTV Flash Black software), has been infused this morning with more than a dozen new features, improvements and enhancements.
Among other items, Infuse 3.2 can stream/download video from direct web URLs and has beta support for Google Cast, the search giant's version of AirPlay.
The freemium app is available at no cost in the App Store, with advanced features locked behind a Pro upgrade via the In-App Purchase mechanism.
Sky is definitely not the limit for Apple's mobile payment service as JetBlue Airways announced on Tuesday that it will very soon start accepting Apple Pay for in-flight purchases of premium offerings, such as EatUp snack boxes and à la carte food options from the EatUp Café, premium beverages, onboard amenities and Even More Space seating.
The airline will start accepting Apple Pay on select JetBlue transcontinental flights from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco in mid-February. Apple Pay will roll out to additional flights beginning in March, with all JetBlue flights accepting Apple Pay by June.
Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of Google Maps, arguably the best consumer mapping application in the world.
Maps first started as a C++ program designed by two Danish brothers Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen at the Sydney-based company Where 2 Technologies.
After pitching their idea for a web-based version to Google management, the search giant in its never-ending pursuit of new revenue sources snapped up the young startup in October 2004.
Under Google's stewardship and the oversight of current Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who in 2005 became Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, the project quickly transformed from a relatively unimpressive desktop program into a full-blown web service.
Since its inception, Google Maps has been praised by critics and haters alike for its accuracy, coverage and the rapid pace of development resulting in new feature additions on a regular basis. It's been imitated by both Yahoo and Microsoft, and later by Apple, but none of these technology giants has come close to touching Google Maps.
Apple plans to release iOS 8.4 in the coming months, and it could include Apple's new music streaming service, 9to5mac wrote in a report on Monday.
While iOS 8.3 hasn't even hit the public scene, iOS 8.4 is currently in development at Apple, and is codenamed Copper after a popular ski resort in Colorado.
Shazam, a media identification service, on Monday released an update to its iOS application in the App Store.
The enhancements include deeper integration with Spotify and Rdio with the ability to listen to full tracks and rate them with the player, more reliable saving of your Shazams to a dedicated playlist in Spotify or Rdio, consolidated charts and other goodies.
Both the free Shazam 8.3 app for the iPhone and iPad and the $7 Shazam Encore have received these new features in their respective updates.