New Apps & Games

Angry Birds Friends landing on iOS and Android this Thursday

Finnish mobile games developer Rovio announced earlier in the month plans to bring its social Facebook game, Angry Birds Friends, to iOS and Android devices. Today, developers confirmed on Twitter that Angry Birds Friends will be hitting iOS and Android devices this coming Thursday, May 2, a year following its launch on Facebook in May 2012. The Facebook version now sees 60+ million monthly installs and has over 1.2 million daily users...

LEGO Batman: DC Super Heroes arrives to iOS

LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes landed on the Mac last year and now an iOS version is here for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Produced by TT Games under license from the Lego Group and published by Warner Bros. Entertainment, LEGO Batman: DC Super Heroes (I hate capitalized brand names so I'll just write 'Lego' henceforth) has Batman and Robin characters joining forces with other Dark Comics heroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and others.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to stop the notorious villains Lex Luthor and The Joker from destroying Gotham City. The game scored nice reviews due to its 3D platforming mechanics and light puzzle solving. I've include the launch trailer and more in way of detail after the fold...

Suit up, Iron Man 3 lands on iOS

Iron Man 3, the movie, is premiering today in select few market outside the United States. Even though the flick won't hit silver screens in the US until May 3, French games developer Gameloft today released the official game of the third movie on iPhone, iPad and Android devices. As previously mentioned, Iron Man 3 is a free-to-play download, increasingly the norm these days.

Hopefully, it won't constantly ask for cash as Gameloft's recently released Dungeon Hunter 4 does. You can download the Iron Man 3 universal binary for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices from the App Store. A build for Android devices is available from Google's Play Store.

I've included a few screenshots and the launch trailer right after the break...

LinkedIn launches standalone Contacts app

Having acquired the popular news reader Pulse, LinkedIn, the social network for people in professional occupations, recently revamped its iPhone and Android application with a focus on updates, content-rich streams and new navigation options. Today, the team announced a standalone Contacts app, now available free on the App Store.

"A smarter way to stay in touch with your most important relationships," the new Contacts service is also available on LinkedIn.com, bringing all your contacts from your Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other address books. Additionally, the application integrates with your email accounts and calendars...

Draw Something 2 now available

Having landed on the Canada and Sweden App Store earlier this month, a highly-anticipated sequel to the popular Draw Something game is now available for download on the US App Store.

The original game pitted two players against each other in a word guessing challenge where each player gets assigned three random words and would draw a picture to convey the guessword.

The sequel contains more than 5,000 new words, all-new 9-letter words, the new free draw mode, a gallery of your favorite drawings, additional drawing tools like pixel pen, crayon, marker, stamps and much more...

FocusTwist: boost your iPhone photography with refocusable photos

There is no such thing as too many photography apps. Being an avid iPhone photography fan, I've found that every single photography app I downloaded from the App Store - and boy did I download ton of these - serves a slightly different purpose, letting me go the extra mile adding something unique to my photos.

Enter FocusTwist, a new iPhone application from Arqball which gives you ability to capture your snaps now and focus later. The software achieves refocusable photography by taking several images rapidly, each at a different focus setting.

The clever software then combines those snaps into a single image that can be posted online for your friends to interactively refocus later...

Google releases Fiber TV iPad app

Google's Fiber, a broadband network infrastructure using fiber-optic communication, has gone live in Kansas City which became the first U.S. community where the Internet giant deployed this promising technology.

Just a quick recap: the most obvious benefit of Google Fiber is the hundred times faster data rates, in both downlink and uplink, compared to the traditional broadband services.

Following last month's release of the Fiber TV app for Android devices, the search monster today issued a build for Apple's iPad tablet. Should you happen to live in select areas of Kansas City, go download the  Fiber TV iPad app and start browsing, buying and watching television shows and movies that are airing live, right on your iPad...

Fruit Ninja developer releases new iPhone game, Fish Out of Water

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2MXTIBhETI

Halfbrick Studios, as any avid gamer could tell you, is the brains behind the popular mobile franchises like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. Not content with resting on its laurels, the Queensland, Australia-headquartered developer has released its brand new iOS game, Fish Out of Water, which wants to become your new favorite time-killer. The premise in Fish Out of Water couldn't be simpler.

Billed as "an adventure across the sun, sand and surf," the game, as the name suggests, plays a bit like Tiny Wings in that you're controlling a fish which wants to get airborne and soar above the ocean for as long as possible...

Delicious Library iOS app is coming soon

I've been a long time fan of Delicious Monster's excellent cataloging software, Delicious Library. The handy Mac application allows me to catalogue my physical media and gadgets while the handy barcode scanning feature makes adding new content a breeze. Its wooden bookshelf design also may have inspired Apple's iBooks app.

But in today's increasingly mobile world, Delicious Library has lost some of its allure because we now carry iPhones in our pockets and developers never saw fit to create an iOS version of Delicious Library. That's about to change as Delicious Monster has now confirmed plans to release a companion iOS app focused on scanning barcodes, letting you easily add content to your Delicious library wherever you go...

Google launches new ‘Places for Business’ app for managing business listings

Good news for all of you local business owners out there today. Google has just released a new application called 'Google Places for Business' that should make managing business listings through its different services much easier.

The app allows business owners to update their business information (hours, address, contact info, description, etc.), as well as post pictures to their Google+ page and track web traffic for their listings right from their iPhone...

Yahoo’s new Weather iOS app looks terrific

I'm a huge sucker for awesome weather apps, so much that I'm afraid to even think about how much money I've put into these kinds of apps for my iThings.

Yahoo, as you know, supplies Apple with weather data for its stock iOS Weather app (in addition to Stocks and Siri data as well) and it was reported earlier this morning that the company will be launching a dedicated weather forecast software on the App Store.

You could imagine a weather buff like myself would be hanging on the edge of my seat in anticipation of Yahoo! Weather. Now that it's just hit the App Store, I can honestly say that this is the best-designed iOS app from Yahoo yet.

The elegant typography combined with the big, beautiful full-screen images (crowd-sourced via Flickr), the crisp weather pictograms and just the right amount of information make this my new favorite weather forecast app. Jump past the fold for a bunch of screenshots, you know you want to..

Twitter #music app launches on iPhone, get downloading

The popular micro-blogging turned media platform, Twitter, announced Wednesday that its new Music app is now available for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, free of charge. Twitter's music service on the web, which has been available in limited beta to a few celebrities, will open for everyone later today. Billed as "a new way to discover music and emerging artists", the native iOS app, which is conveniently named Twitter #music, basically wants to become your default social music discovery tool.

Currently, the software pulls songs from iTunes, Spotify and Rdio, but more sources are likely to be added in the future. Anyone can listen to iTunes previews in the app, but Rdio and Spotify subscribers can log in using their credentials to enjoy full tracks that are available in those respective catalogs...