Apps

You can now privately share tweets in DMs

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 28, 2018

After previewing future platform enhancements and features during its Analyst’s Day event, the popular social service Twitter on Thursday began rolling out one of the mentioned new features: the ability to private share a tweet through Twitter's direct messaging function.

Think about sharing tweets privately with any of your followers in terms of discussing public content in private conversations, the micro-blogging platform suggested.

To do this from Twitter's main iPhone client, long-press the tweet in your timeline and choose the new “Share via Direct Message” option. The person you share a tweet with will get a push notification, said the company.

Moreover, the tweet will display directly in the conversation.

You can now adjust focus and lighting of photos in Facebook Messenger

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 20, 2014

Facebook on Thursday issued a small update to its Messenger app for the iPhone and iPad, bringing out additional features to touch up the photos you take within the software using the built-in camera feature.

Now available in the App Store at no cost, Facebook Messenger 16.0 fixed an issue with sending messages while introducing a pair of new controls to adjust the focus and lighting of photos you take in the app.

Carousel by Dropbox gains native iPad UI, sharing to Instagram and WhatsApp and web app

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 29, 2018

Released in April of 2014, Carousel is a great app to enjoy all your photos stored in Dropbox, but I've always resented that it didn't have a native interface on the iPad. The Dropbox-owned software has received a refresh Thursday, at last adding the native interface on Apple's tablets.

In addition, Carousel now lets you share images from your Dropbox to Facebook-owner Instagram mobile photography service and WhatsApp mobile messaging platform. And as a nice bonus, the team has thrown in a compelling Carousel web app.

Carousel is available free in the App Store.

Download Things for iPhone and iPad, Apple’s latest Free App of the Week

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 12, 2018

Things for the iPhone and iPad, the popular task management application by Cultured Code, is now available at no cost in the App Store until next Thursday, courtesy of Apple's ongoing Free App of the Week promotion.

You're looking at a cool combined savings of $30 on both the iPhone and iPad edition of Things which normally sell for $9.99 and $19.99, respectively.

Things for Mac has received a nice discount to celebrate the promotion and can be now downloaded for $34.99 in the Mac App Store, 30 percent off its full price of $49.99.

Download Things for iPhone and iPad at no cost until next Thursday, November 28.

Storyframes greetings card app comes right on time for the holidays

Lory Gil ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

I’ve been a fan of the Felt Cards app for iPad for years now. I use it to send thank you cards, birthday cards, and the occasional Halloween greeting to my more obsessed friends. The thing that makes the Felt Cards app so special is that you write your own words in your own handwriting inside the blank card, and then staff prints it and mails the physical copy by hand.

This week, the company launched a holiday-based picture card app on the iPhone called Felt Storyframes. Now, you can send personalized well wishes to all your friends and family, complete with pictures, decorative overlays, and your own handwritten notes.

Space Age: A Cosmic Adventure: an homage to traditional adventure games of 20 years ago

Lory Gil ∙ November 20, 2014

In the 1990s, point-and-click adventure games were really hitting their stride on desktop computers. It may have been the only time when there was a chance that PC gaming had the potential to overtake console gaming in popularity. Now mobile gaming is filling that spot.

Space Age: A Cosmic Adventure is a science fiction set quest in the 1970s about a group of space travelers that land on an alien planet. Your job is to help this story unfold by completing missions. We’ve got an in-depth game review of Space Age for your reading pleasure today.

New ‘Sync Solver’ app sends Fitbit data to Apple’s Health app

Cody Lee ∙ November 19, 2014

In October, Fitbit announced that it had no plans of integrating its activity trackers or software with Apple's Health app. This means that if you have a Fitbit Flex or other device, the data it gathers will not be shared with Health, crippling its attempt to be your fitness data dashboard.

But a new app launched this week in the App Store that aims to change this. It's called Sync Solver, and it allows Fitbit wearers to track all of the important data collected by their wearables within the Health app, without ever having to use the standalone, dedicated Fitbit application.

Pocket updated with support for 1Password extension, Dynamic Type and more

Cody Lee ∙ November 19, 2014

Popular read-it-later service Pocket pushed out a notable update for its iOS client today, bringing the app to version 5.6.2. The update includes a number of improvements, including support for Dynamic Type and the 1Password extension.

The addition of Dynamic Type support means that text in Pocket will now reflect whatever you have set as your system font size preference. And of course 1Password extension support means users can now login to Pocket with Touch ID.

Google buys iOS app prototyping startup RelativeWave, makes Mac app free

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

Google has acquired RelativeWave, the team responsible for the popular iOS app prototyping software Form. Form is available for Mac and iOS, and allows designers and developers to create rich interactive app prototypes and run them on their iPhone or iPad.

In a note on its website today, RelativeWave announced that they would be joining Google to continue their work on the software, saying they "want to get Form in the hands of as many people as possible, and this is [their] first step in accomplishing that goal."

How to access Google’s Inbox service on Safari

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 19, 2014

A month ago, Google launched a new iPhone app called Inbox, a different take on email which uses Sparrow-like gestures to help you achieve Inbox Zero nirvana and surface the most relevant items that tend to get lost in an avalanche of unwanted emails users get bombarded with.

Available on iOS, Android and Chrome, Inbox leaves fans of Apple's Safari browser in the dark. It's fortunate that there's a quick workaround to that, let me show you how.

Inbox is available free in the App Store.

WhatsApp starts encrypting instant messages on Android, iOS and other platforms coming soon

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

WhatsApp, the most popular instant-messaging platform with more than 600 million users which Facebook snapped up for $16 billions earlier this year, has started to protect data with end-to-end encryption, The Wall Street Journal reports.

For the time being, text messages exchanged between Android users of WhatsApp are being encrypted by default.

It shouldn't be too long until the company adds encryption to the iOS app and other mobile platforms. Encryption protects users' communications from governments and hackers alike by making the data unreadable as it travels between servers.

64-bit version of Google Chrome for Mac launches

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 19, 2014

After releasing 64-bit Chrome for Windows and a beta version of Chrome for Mac with 64-bit support back in August, Google today announced that the app is out of beta and available to everyone.

Public release of the 64-bit Chrome for Mac edition marks the end of the road for 32-bit NPAPI (Netscape Plug-in APIs) plugins as the Internet company now requires developers to provide their extensions with 64-bit support.

Most users shouldn’t be affected, however, because the vast majority of plugins and extensions are readily available in both 32-bit and 64-bit form. Chrome 39.0.2171.65 (Google, we need to talk about version numbers!) also includes more than three dozen under the hood changes for stability and performance and comes with a set of new APIs allowing extension developers to take advantage of new features.