Apps

Card Dungeon takes the “digital” out of digital board games

I am a card-carrying (pun intended) member of the board gaming community. I love a good, old-fashioned hours-long tabletop adventure with three to five of my closest friends. That’s why, any time I see a board game app, I jump at the chance to check it out and pass my experience onto you.

Card Dungeon is a basic dungeon crawl tabletop style board game that reverts back to the two-dimensional token look while still making a roguelike adventure that is fun for fans of the genre. We’ve got a full game review of Card Dungeon for you today.

Reckless Racing 3 now available in the App Store

Great news Reckless Racing fans, the third iteration of Pixelbite's popular top-down racer is now available on iOS. You can pick up the new game, which is universal, so it'll work with both your iPhone and iPad, for $4.99 from the App Store.

The original Reckless Racing debuted in 2010, as a delightful birds-eye-view rally racing game with beautiful graphics. Reckless Racing 3 continues that tradition with dirtier tracks, better visuals, and its largest selection of cars and trucks ever.

You can now protect your OneDrive with Touch ID

Windows and Office maker Microsoft on Wednesday pushed a small but important update to OneDrive, its cloud storage client for the iPhone and iPad. The refreshed application enables users to lock content in the app using Touch ID-based fingerprint verification on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

The new OneDrive 4.5.1, a free 12.7-megabyte download from the App Store, also takes full advantage of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus,  lets you sort files and folders and includes bug fixes and stability improvements.

Updated for iPhone 6: Pocket, PDF Expert 5, Calendars 5, Scanner Pro and Printer Pro

Readdle's stable of iOS productivity apps — PDF Expert 5, Calendars 5, Printer Pro and Scanner Pro — along with Pocket's read-it-later iOS app — have received their respective updates Wednesday enabling native support for the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus display sizes.

PDF Expert's support for the new iPhone screen sizes arrives ten days after its developer, Ukraine-based Readdle, issued an update turning on iCloud Drive storage support and Touch ID fingerprint-based authentication.

In addition to an optimized layout for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus, Pocket 5.6.1 includes performance improvements and a fix for the Instant Sync push feature on iOS 8 devices. More than twelve million people use Pocket to easily save articles, videos and other piece of content for consumption later.

The app also has an awesome iOS 8 Extension so you can send content to Pocket in any iPhone and iPad application which uses Apple's multi-purpose Share sheet, including Safari.

This silly keyboard lets you type using funky fonts

100 Fonts Keyboard for iOS 8 is not a new app but I just came across it earlier today while browsing the App Store. While it certainly isn't groundbreaking, I found it to be different from the other keyboards we had seen so far so I thought I'd share it with you. Before we even get started, let's clear things up. Unlike the name suggests, this app doesn't offer 100 different fonts as I counted only about 30 of them. Still, that is quite the selection.

Google rolls out News & Weather iOS app

Google began the rollout of its latest iOS app, News & Weather, Tuesday afternoon in the App Store. The newest in Google's collection of 43 apps on iOS, News & Weather displays news headlines on a variety of topics and features a detailed weather forecast view for cities of your choice.

News & Weather, which is rolling out in multiple countries, packs quite a large amount of customization in the way of personalized content, and users' settings appear to sync with their Google account. Until now, this app was only available to owners of Android devices.

Google Chrome gains iPhone 6 support, ability to download and open files in Google Drive

The Internet giant Google on Tuesday issued a small update to its Chrome for iOS browser, adding better support for the “Retina HD” iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus screens.

The free download also enables another interesting feature — the ability to download and open files directly in the Google Drive application, if installed on your device. Finally, this release includes customary bug fixes and stability improvements.

Google Chrome is available free in the App Store.

Square refreshes Cash for iPhone with Bluetooth money transfer ability

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's mobile payments startup, Square, on Tuesday issued a nice update to its free Cash for iPhone software which now allows you to transfer money via short-range Bluetooth networking using a new “Nearby Payments” feature.

This is in addition to the ability to send money via text message, email or mobile phone numbers (for free), a feature the startup added to the Cash app in late-August 2014. This release of Cash also features the ability to quickly approve or decline money requests with actionable push notifications and contains other improvements and bug fixes.

Square Cash is a free download from the App Store.

Alternative iOS web browser iCab optimizes for iPhone 6 and iOS 8, 1Password extension and more

iCab Mobile by German developer Alexander Clauss used to be my favorite browser alternative for the iPhone and iPad. Yesterday, Clauss pushed a substantial update bringing out support for Apple's iOS 8 software and the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus “Retina HD” display sizes, along with several improvements such as Bing and Waibo search suggestions, new Bluetooth keyboard features, the ability to use 1Password or Dashlane as external password manager and more.

This update is free for existing users of iCab Mobile.

Amazon updates Instant Video for iOS 8 and iPhone 6, improves playback experience

The online retail giant Amazon on Tuesday refreshed its Instant Video iOS client for the iPhone and iPad with iOS 8 compatibility and native support for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus display sizes.

Aside from these compatibility fixes, the release adds a pair of enhancements aimed at improving your video-watching experience.

The latest version 2.9 is available free of charge in the App Store, arriving a month following version 2.8 which brought us a brand new search history feature and quick resume capability.

Former Microsoftie releases Talko for iPhone, a new take on unified messaging software

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's former Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect, has released a brand new iPhone application which promises to “give people their voices back,“ as journalist Steven Levy put it in a hands-on post on Medium.

Named Talko, it combines phone calling, text messaging, virtual conferencing and photo sharing into a single app that lets you talk to people, exchange messages, organize conversations with #tags and audio bookmarks, share photos in an Instagram-y fashion and more.

The app is available free in the App Store.

Cycloramic for iPhone 6 utilizes power adapter to capture 360-degree hands-free video

First introduced in 2012, Cycloramic has received much acclaim for its ability to capture 360-degree hands-free video using custom vibration patterns in the iPhone 5/5s. The app was even featured on the popular TV show Shark Tank, where it garnered a $500K investment from billionaire Mark Cuban.

But when Apple introduced the iPhone 6, with its slimmer profile and rounded edges, a lot of folks wondered what was going to happen to Cycloramic. After all, without the squared base, how was it going to keep the handset standing upright while spinning? The answer: use its power adapter as a base.