It's been a long week of blurry Super Bowl photo talk and 4-inch iPhone rumors, but the wonderful weekend is here at last. And for those of you who find yourself looking for something to do on a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon, we've put together a great list of new apps and games to check out.
Google on Friday announced that the Picasa desktop app and its corresponding online photo-sharing service, called Picasa Web Albums, are soon going to be officially dead. This didn't come as a shock: since the launch of Google Photos, Picasa's fate was pretty much sealed.
As of March 15, 2016, Google will no longer be supporting the desktop Picasa application for Mac and Windows. After the cut-off date, existing Picasa installations will still work.
However, Google has said it will cease development of the app so there will be no future updates nor will the Picasa app continue to be available for download after March 15.
One of the biggest challenges Facebook users face in their daily usage of the service involves keeping apps, games and websites that connect to Facebook as a sign-in mechanism from posting random updates, unwanted stores, ad links and other garbage on their Timeline.
For most people, this constitutes spamming because not only do these posts appear on your own Timeline, but also in your friends' News Feed and ticker.
Unfortunately, too few people are aware that they can easily squelch this spammy behavior with just a few clicks. In this tutorial, we're going to show you the tools Facebook put at your disposal which were designed to stop apps from posting updates on your behalf.
Apple on Thursday updated its weekly App of the Week promotion with a game called The Mesh. This means that for the next 7 days, you'll be able to pick up the popular puzzler for free for both iPhone and iPad—a solid savings of $2.
In The Mesh, players are tasked with combining numbered tiles to match target values and clear the board without running out of space. The game features beautifully-designed graphics and animations, and an incredible soundtrack.
David Smith’s excellent Sleep++ app is my killer app when it comes to sleep analysis, a glaring omission from the Apple Watch. It's become second nature for me to open Sleep++ as I tuck myself in bed for the evening.
This native watchOS 2 app collects data from watch sensors to measure sleep quality and duration, which can then be reviewed in greater detail in a companion iPhone app and synced with your Health database.
The updated Sleep++ 2.0, now available as a free download in the App Store, takes sleep analysis to the next level with major improvements to its sleep analysis engine and new features such as better Health integration, an improved Night Detail view, night trimming and timezone support.
Vevo today began shipping a refreshed Apple TV app. Redesigned from top to bottom, it provides access to more than 150,000 music videos in high-definition and exclusive original programming. The revamped software upgrades the experience for users over the old app in many respects.
According to CEO Erik Huggers, Vevo wants to become the MTV for the digital age. “We continue to invest in what we believe is the premium platform for music videos and related original content,” he said in a media release.
The pressure mounts on Twitter to re-ignite growth, which has virtually come to a halt as average users increasingly find the service too confusing and difficult to use. Today, the micro-blogging service unveiled yet another refinement designed to adjust how the timeline surfaces interesting content.
Similar to the “While you were away” timeline feature which released a year ago, Twitter will now put recommended, not the newest, tweets at the top of your timeline so that you never miss important updates from people you follow.
A vulnerability discovered in an outdated version of the Sparkle updater framework that many third-party OS X apps depend on for serving the user with regular updates has been getting a lot of attention recently.
As we reported on Tuesday, the security problem affects a number of third-party Mac apps downloaded from the internet, and not apps downloaded from the Mac App Store. The vulnerability roots from the lack of an encrypted connection and gives a malicious hacker the ability to perform a man-in-the-middle attack.
But what OS X apps are affected? This is the information you need to know as soon as possible to keep your Mac safe from potential malware threats.
A new vulnerability has been discovered to affect a wide variety of third-party apps for OS X that have been downloaded from the internet and use an outdated version of the Sparkle updater framework.
The new vulnerability puts a number of users of affected third-party apps at risk of being hijacked when those apps attempt to use the outdated framework to alert users of new app updates.
After upgrading your Mac to OS X Yosemite or later, the new Photos app gets installed automatically.
On first launch, Photos will auto-upgrade your default iPhoto library to its new library format. People with multiple iPhoto libraries must manually convert them to the new format by holding the Option (⌥) key when clicking the Photos icon in the Dock.
Upon completing migration, you'll have two sets of photo libraries on your machine: the original iPhoto libraries and their Photos counterpart.
In order to free up a significant amount of storage space on your Mac, you can safely delete any iPhoto library that has been migrated to the new Photos app.
Folks in the market for a new Apple TV app that helps surface great content may want to check out TechTube TV. The app, which was released late last week, was designed to highlight videos that it believes folks will find interesting.
The video selections are geared towards techies, and feature everything from TED talks to device reviews. There is also a mix of science and 'how things work' videos—"the goal is entertaining, informative or intellectually stimulating."
In a surprise launch this morning, publisher Square Enix unleashed Final Fantasy IX upon the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. This classic role-playing game, which originally released for Sony's PlayStation console back in 2000, is now available in the App Store with a special 20 percent launch sale for $16.99.
Designed to let players relive the adventures of Zidane and his crew in the palm of their hands, Final Fantasy IX brings Game Center achievements, autosave, crisp graphics with high-def movies and character models, seven game boosters like high-speed and no-encounter modes and other perks.