Not to be outdone by Amazon's new Cloud Player app and Apple's roll-out of iTunes in the Cloud in a dozen European markets, Spotify, the popular Swedish music streaming startup, has revamped its iPhone and iPad client with a brand new interface and a handful of fixes, most notably squashing the annoying bug (no, not that one) which displayed the wrong track on the Lock screen...
In addition to refreshing its Cloud Player software with a brand new iPad interface and other features, online retailer Amazon last night pushed an update to its Kindle client for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
Hopefully you haven't had a chance to hit the Update button yet, because Kindle version 3.6.1 for iOS has a nasty bug which will delete your entire book library on your device. Of course, all your purchases are still safely available in the Amazon cloud.
The company has acknowledged as much in the app's release notes on iTunes. "There is a known issue with this update," the note reads. "If you are an existing Kindle for iOS user, we recommend you do not install the update at this time". There, you have been warned. The company issued a statement confirming that it's come up with a fix and a new version is underway.
UPDATE: Kindle version 3.6.2 has just gone live on the App Store, fixing the account deregistering glitch...
If you keep your music in the Amazon cloud, you were able to stream it to your iPhone and iPod touch through Amazon's free Cloud Player app. Today, the online retailer has pushed a major update which finally runs natively on iPads. It has an updated look on both the iPhone and iPad and new settings to manage caches and more. Cloud Player originally debuted on the iPhone eight months ago and the new version arrives just as Spotify has revamped its iOS client and Apple rolled out iTunes in the Cloud support in a dozen European markets...
Facebook-owned Instagram, despite negative publicity surrounding the controversial terms of service brouhaha, continues to grow its installed base. Today, the company announced a major milestone: Instagram now has over a hundred million active users across mobile platforms. That's ten million more active monthly users since it announced the 90 million milestone on January 17. By comparison, Twitter over a six-year time span hit 200 million active users, as of end of 2012.
Commenting on the development, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom shared an anecdote in a blog post about how he realized Instagram was going to be different when fans at the Giants Stadium starting posting their Instagrams after another co-founder "with a few quick commands at his terminal" filled the service with images of the game...
Facebook on Sunday announced a new promotion that will allow users of Messenger for iOS and Android to exchange instant messages for free or at heavily discounted data rates in select international markets. Partnering with more than eighteen operators in fourteen international markets, the social networking giant said Facebook for Every Phone, basically a bare-bone service for feature phones that is now optimized for chat, is also included in this promotion.
The move arrives just after the company flipped the switch on the in-app VoIP calling feature in its mobile client for iOS and Android devices. Facebook first rolled out VoIP calling in Canada earlier this year, and some parts of the US, via the Messenger app...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUqZYcAnUlw
Walter Duncan is a classroom teacher with fourteen year experience who dared to think different when it comes to grading papers. Looking beyond the tedious manual process, he came up with an app which scans grade papers using the iPhone's camera and then immediately turns pictures into numbers and logs that data with any major electronic grade system such as PowerSchool, for example.
This saves a hell of a lot time compared to manually entering the results and if the video above is an indication, the software does scan as quickly as he can move the papers. This game-changing app for educators isn't ready for prime time yet as they're looking for testers over at Power2Teach...
Is it game over for Nintendo, Sony and other handheld entertainment companies? That's the question as a report released Thursday shows consumers spent more on games downloaded from app stores than those designed for dedicated handhelds. Indeed, during the fourth quarter of 2012, more than 20 billion games were downloaded to smartphones and tablets. Perhaps anticipating today's finding, Sony announced Wednesday its new PlayStation 4 will support used games...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScjJiGYawuM
German developer Native Instruments has long been regarded as the maker of some of the finest music and DJing software on the market and today they released Traktor DJ, a pro music mixing $19.99 iPad app that complements the desktop Traktor Pro software with bi-directional content synchronization and a host of other feature.
Unlike virtually all the other DJ apps that tap virtual turntables, Traktor DJ sports touchable waveforms and has two virtual decks, each with dedicated three-band equalizer and filter sections, including eight Traktor effects.
The app relies heavily on multitouch gestures: you can grab audio waveforms with two fingers to set a loop, perform scratches, mark cue points for live re-editing, and scrub, browse or navigate through tracks. Go past the break for additional tidbits and a hands-on video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVfXuuLrnOI
A new iPhone app called Albumatic hopes to succeed where the likes of Color and Highlight have failed, to make sharing between groups of people easy and fun. It has a clean minimalistic interface that lets you easily start an album and add photos for others to see. Whenever you add a new photo, all the folks you've shared an album with get notified.
Folks nearby can join the album and add photos of their own and those that are farther away are only allowed to view the album, but not interact with the photos (likes, comments, etc.) We've seen this location-based photo sharing focus before and it didn't work out well (hint: Color), but Albumatic nonetheless bets party-goers will use it to share embarrassing cocktail snaps between themselves, Galaxy S III style...
After a long time, I recently fell in love with Yahoo's Flickr service, all over again. I mean, not everyone is on Facebook. More importantly, Instagram leaves a lot to be desired in terms of screen resolution so Flickr, which stores original-res photos, is becoming increasingly relevant to my iPhoneography workflow. The freshly updated software now supports @username tagging (with tags linked to users' photo stream) and can notify you via push alerts when someone tags you in their comment.
And if you happen to find the volume shutter feature of the stock iOS Camera app useful, you're going to love this update as it lets you snap a photo using your iPhone's volume up button. The program also includes a few other improvements, mentioned right below...
Making it big in mobile apps is getting tougher. That's the finding from a company which researched how many new developers reach the top level at either Apple's iOS App Store or Android's Google Play. In fact, just two percent of first-time App Store developers enter the top 250 list of publishers while only slightly more - three percent - reach that level at Google Play.
As a result, three times as many "newcomers" to the app game publish for Google Play than the iOS App Store. According to analytics firm Distimo on average six Android apps are published for every two Apple titles. And the news doesn't get much better for newbie app developers hoping to cash-in at either app store...
Netflix has a pretty decent app on the iOS platform that really becomes indispensable if you're among the growing number of people subscribed to its service that streams Hollywood movies and television shows to your home.
Today, the company has issued a new version 3.0 build of the iOS app, tweaking the user interface while adding a few improvements. For starters, the zoom icon is back so you can control your experience when in full screen.
And if you're on an iPad, you can also touch the player UI screen to see the title of the currently watched show...