Apps

Ditty: a third-party Facebook Messenger app that sings your chats

It has only been a couple of days since Facebook announced that third-party app integration would be added to the social chat app. There are already dozens of GIF makers, custom avatar creators, and special sticker add-ons to bombard your friends and family with hilarity.

Ditty is a third-party Facebook Messenger app that turns what you write into music. Pick a song, type out your message, and watch it transform into a musical. The next time you want to cheer someone up, do it with a song set to your own, personalized lyrics.

Vine upgrades video quality to 720p

Vine, a service for sharing short 15-second looping clips, announced on Friday that it is finally upgrading video quality from a rather paltry 480p resolution to a more acceptable 720p.

“We’ve been working on technical upgrades that support Vines in higher quality,” the Twitter-owned company said. The 720p format offers a resolution of 1,280-by-720 pixels whereas the 480p standard tops out at 640-by-480 pixels.

Meerkat 1.1 gains better search, in-app streaming alerts and other enhancements

Meerkat, an app which kicked off the live broadcasting craze by letting you stream live video from your iPhone to all of your Twitter followers at once, has released its first major update since its App Store debut a little more than two weeks ago.

The app is now more stable and user friendly and comes with nearly a dozen improvements related to searching, following other people, getting notified about their activity, discovering new streams and more.

Strategy and timing meet in action puzzler ULTRAFLOW

ULTRAFLOW draws heavily from both the puzzle and action genres. Each level is essentially a two stage process. First, you have to figure out how to solve the puzzle. Then, you have to actually be able to do it. This creates a surprising amount of challenge in ULTRAFLOW, proving that it’s more than just a fun word to type.

Tangent named Apple’s new Free App of the Week

Tangent, an innovative iOS app by Pixite which lets you add geometric shapes, patterns, textures, frame overlays and other effects to your photos, has been named Apple's new Free App of the Week in the ongoing App Store promotion which runs weekly.

Highlighted in the New & Noteworthy section in more than a hundred countries, Tangent was previously Editor's Choice in the App Store and was on the App Store Best of 2013 charts.

Regularly a $1.99 value, Tangent is now available at no cost until next Thursday. With this app you'll be well equipped to do some crazy edits to your photos so I'd grab Tangent immediately if I were you.

Twitter, Evernote, WeChat, Dark Sky, SPG and more being updated with Apple Watch support

We're indeed starting to see the first wave of updates to popular iPhone applications that bring out support for the Apple Watch. First was Target with an iPhone app update which brings the shopping list and more to your wrist.

And now Evernote, the popular note-taking and personal organization tool, along with WeChat, Dark Sky, Sky Guide and other apps, has added several interesting Apple Watch features to its iPhone and iPad app in the App Store.

Periscope shows the future of news with stream of NYC explosion aftermath

I'm watching a building burn down with firefighters rushing to save people inside- as it's happening.

The Periscope app launched by Twitter this morning is already showing its stripes. People have often turned to Twitter (and the Internet) for news in the past - this is nothing new - but Periscope has already shown in its few hours of availability how it could reshape breaking news on the Internet.

Target updates iPhone app with Apple Watch support for shopping from your wrist

Target may files as the first company to update its iOS app with official support for the Apple Watch, which goes on pre-order on April 10 before hitting store shelves two weeks later.

Now rolling out in the App Store, Target 7.3.1 for the iPhone will let you build a shopping list on your Apple Watch and includes a Glance to see when your store is open.

“When you're in the store, it tells you where to find all of the items you need,” as per release notes.

Twitter releases live-streaming app Periscope

Ever since Twitter shut down Meerkat, the popular live-streaming app that cleverly uses Twitter existing account and social graph infrastructure, it became clear that the micro-blogging startup was about to launch a similar service of its own.

Indeed, on Thursday the company announced immediate availability of Periscope, a live-streaming video service it acquired back in January.

The free iPhone app, like Meerkat, allows users to start live-streams from their device in an instant.

Four Letters review: a surprisingly challenging word game

How many four letter words can you think of? No, this isn’t some crass joke. It’s the concept of Prodigy Design’s new word game, Four Letters. Four Letters assigns players the deceptively simple task of rearranging four random characters into a word. It may seem easy at first, but coming up with all 2,465 possible combinations may present a bit of a challenge.

GoPix lets you create short slideshows to share with friends

If you like sharing pictures with friends and family on social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram, you are probably itching for a new medium to show them off. Instead of static pics or multi-panel collages, you could really wow them with a slideshow.

GoPix is a slideshow creator that turns your pictures into memories by combining image transitions and music into one simple action. We’ve got an app review of GoPix for you today.