Apps

Facebook unveils: Anonymous Login, ad network, mobile Like and much more

Facebook is holding its f8 developer conference in San Francisco today, with the CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg having taken the stage to share a whole bunch of interesting feature and platform announcements meant to empower programmers to build more engaging apps and help take the platform to the next level.

The social networking behemoth has recently entered fitness-tracking space by acquiring the popular Moves app and now claims 1.3 billion monthly active users.

Although the figure eclipses Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter monthly actives combined - Instagram crossed 200 million monthly users and WhatsApp has half a billion monthly actives - Facebook remains laser-focused on reducing friction when it comes to sharing data between apps, liking stuff on mobile, jumping between mobile apps and the web, serving more relevant advertising in way more places than before and more...

Google launches new Docs and Sheets apps for iOS

Google has launched a pair of new productivity apps for iOS this morning: Google Docs and Google Sheets. For those unfamiliar with the two apps, they're front-end clients for the company's web-based word processor and spreadsheet editor.

The move follows the release of Microsoft Office for iPad last month, and Apple's move to make its iWork apps free late last year. Can Google's business software suite compete in this space? Keep reading for an overview and more screenshots...

Adobe updates Photoshop Express with new design, Instagram sharing and more

Adobe updated their popular Photoshop Express app last night, bringing the iOS photo editor to version 3.3. The update features a number of improvements, including an all-new design for iOS 7, pet-eye (also known as green-eye) correction, and more.

The new release also brings about new sharing options—users can now show off their retouched photos to friends via either SMS or Instagram—as well as auto-save. Forget to save a photo before exiting the app? Don't worry, it'll be there when you return...

Chrome for iOS updated with new feature tour, omnibox improvements

Google rolled out an update for its mobile Chrome browser today, bringing the app to version 34.0.1847.18 (c'mon Google). The update includes a new 'feature tour,' which offers new users an overview of the browser, and other minor enhancements.

Among those enhancements is a tweak to Chrome's omnibox. Autocomplete in the omnibox now supports right-to-left languages, which should appease some international users. There's also the standard cluster of security, stability, and bug fixes...

Gameloft offers new details on ‘Modern Combat 5: Blackout’

It's been nearly a year since we first saw a preview of Gameloft's Modern Combat 5, and the game has yet to see a release date. In fact, we've heard almost nothing about the title in the past 11 months, leading some folks to believe that the project had either been shelved or canceled.

But today, Gameloft reassured MC fans that the game is still very much alive and coming along nicely. The studio confirmed that the title will be 'Modern Combat 5: Blackout,' and offered up some new details regarding the title including some info about the storyline and gameplay...

Suited Up review: target your jump to hit your mark

One of the most popular types of games in the App Store is the physics-based aim-to-shoot kind. We can attribute the success of the genre to Angry Birds. It may not have been the first, but it was certainly the most popular. If you are a fan of physics-based games, but are getting tired of the same old slingshot style mechanics, there is a new bird in town.

Suited Up uses the idea of aiming to shoot, but players must select the point at which the jumper will arc. Instead of dragging to aim, just tap the screen to mark your target and see where you land…

Office for iPad updated: AirPrint, SmartGuides in PowerPoint, AutoFit in Excel

A glaring omission from the initial release of the free Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Apple's iPad, printing has now been added to these apps via Microsoft’s first major update to the Office for iPad suite. The software update has arrived on Tuesday, a little more than a month into the suite's iPad launch last month.

Besides printing support across all Office for iPad apps, SmartGuides are now available in PowerPoint making it easy to align the elements of your presentation.

Moreover, Excel users will be happy to learn that a new AutoFit feature has been added to both Excel for iPad and its desktop counterpart. This feature allows you to adjust the width and height of multiple rows and columns at once...

Yahoo Mail gets news/search, plus snapshots of weather, sports scores, stocks and News Digest

If you're a fan of Yahoo's gorgeously designed iOS apps and spend a lot of time using their Mail service on your iPhone and iPad, you're going to love the newly released Yahoo Mail 3.0, available free in the App Store.

And why's that, you ask? Because the refreshed software now makes it easy to keep tabs on your news and search the web while sorting through your email, without ever leaving the app.

But that's not all, this release of Yahoo Mail includes other goodies, too, listed right after the break...

Fleksy Keyboard for iOS refreshed with revamped UI, six new themes and more

As you know, Apple has not yet opened up the iPhone's virtual keyboard to developers so you can't just go into the App Store and replace the stock iOS keyboard with a custom one, like on Android.

But where some see failures, others like Fleksy see opportunities. For those unfamiliar with Fleksy, it's the first alternate keyboard with gestures available to third-party developers across the entire iOS ecosystem.

Also available on Android, Fleksy Keyboard has seen over a million cumulative downloads across platforms, with about half of the downloads coming from iOS.

Following a 2.0 release on Android earlier this year, today Fleksy Keyboard has been bumped to version 3.1, featuring a completely revamped user interface, six new UI themes and more...

Clear to-do app gains Reminders and sound packs

Keeping true to its promise, the popular Clear to-do app for iOS and OS X by Realmac Software has received a nice little update today, bringing out a pair of new features you're going to love.

The first is the anticipated Reminders capability which lets you set up alerts that go off across all your Mac and iOS devices, similar to Apple's stock Reminders app in iOS and OS X.

And to go with Reminders, the team has added another much-requested feature: custom sound packs. Both the iOS and OS X edition have been updated with these features and are now live in the App Store, available free to existing users...

Facebook open sources animation engine behind Paper for iOS

Facebook has open sourced the Pop animation engine that drives its Paper app, now available in a listing on GitHub.

The Pop engine supports basic static animations, and also has spring and decay dynamic animations for building realistic, physics-based interactions. The Paper app has been praised for its design, and now developers will be able to access the same engine that drives it for their own iOS and OS X apps. 

Camera Fx8 and FiLMiC Pro go free for a limited time

If you're like me, you've downloaded dozens of camera and image-editing apps to your iPhone to satisfy your inner iPhone photography nerd - and you're still yearning for more. Unfortunatelly, your newly found obsession with photography software may end up costing your hard earned dollars for most of these apps definitely don't come cheap.

If you're on the lookout for a not-to-be-missed software deals, this should be a no-brainer.

Camera Fx8 by Apalon Limited has gone temporarily free. This piece of software lets you apply fun effects, shapes and borders to your images in post-processing or in real-time. It's gone free today for the next 24 hours so give it a download before it goes back up to its regular price of $2.99.

Also notably, FiLMiC Pro, one of the best video camera apps and a $4.99 value, has gone free for a limited time in the App Store...