Facebook’s equivalent of Twitter’s verified users are verified public figures that include actors, musicians, and journalists. The most notable perk of being one is the ability to livestream video to your fans from a special Facebook Mentions app. Available to iOS users since July 2014, the app is now available for Android devices on the Play Store.
Skype today announced that it’s bringing free group video calling— a feature it’s long had available on the desktop—to mobile devices including Android users.
Yes, it really has been a decade since Skype changed the way people connect with their loved ones. 6 years ago, we innovated again with one-to-one video calling on mobile phones. Today, we are excited to announce the next evolution – group video calling on Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows 10 Mobile.
The feature will officially launch in the coming weeks, but you can pre-register through Skype’s website here starting today.
And keep an eye out for updates to the Skype for Android app. In the latest update to the app, Skype also introduced to the ability to “Send video messages to groups directly from group chats.”
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Launched last November for iOS, The Room Three is now available on Android in the Play Store. The hit mystery game has users solving and unlocking puzzles in order to progress through a vast game world…
Google Fit’s last update in November added a new digital watchface and a challenge mode that trains users on how to do a number of exercises on their Android Wear device. Another Wear heavy update (version 1.56) this week, adds an activity screen that allows users to track their exercise’s progress from their watch.
While Sony’s CES press conference was light on major news, it did announce a 4K video store for their line up of smart televisions. At last year’s CES, Sony chose Android TV as the OS for its smart TVs. As such, the ULTRA video store will be an Android app.
LastPass has updated its Android app and browser extensions to version 4.0 to add an emergency access feature and shared passwords, as well as a significantly revamped user-interface.
Emergency Access (shown below) is designed to ensure that you aren’t permanently locked out of your account if you ever forget your master password.
Emergency Access lets users designate trusted family, friends or colleagues to have access to their password vault in the case of an emergency. For added security, a user can require a waiting period between when an Emergency Access contact can request access to the vault and when access is granted. During the waiting period, users can decline an Emergency Access request to their vault.
The new Sharing Center is designed to provide a safe method of allowing multiple people access to the same account, such as when two or more family members want access to utility accounts …
Virtual reality is cool, but augmented reality is more practical in day-to-day usage. Microsoft’s HoloLens and Magic Leap are currently the most well-known examples of AR. There are productivity use cases for it, but there are also many fun gaming applications. One developer made an app that turns an Android Wear watch when viewed through a camera into a game.
Hangouts is widely criticized in the Android community for being slow and buggy. According to a rumor last week, SMS support is being stripped out of Hangouts in order to make the app a better chatting service. Perhaps on a related note, The Wall Street Journal is today reporting that Google has grander ambitions for the chat field and plans to infuse their artificial intelligence technology into it.
After Rap Genius rebranded to just plain ‘Genius’, their mission expanded beyond one genre of music to annotating every piece of text in the world. However, they still maintain a vast and up-to-date collection of music lyrics. An update to their Android app recently added the ability to know what song is playing on your phone and display the accompanying lyrics.
We said when we tested the beta of Cortana for Android that it wasn’t that useful when you had to open the app and touch the microphone to voice a query. Microsoft later fixed that in time for the public launch, but an update this week took us right back to square one as the company removed the ‘Hey Cortana’ feature in the U.S. market.
Engadget reports that the feature apparently conflicted with ‘Ok Google’ in a way that could render the phone unable for many tasks – including making phone calls.
The ESPN app on Android is notorious for sluggish performance and feeling like a web wrapper. Good news: an update today vastly improves performance and gives it a Material Design refresh. Version 4.7.1 also brings support for Marshmallow’s permission model for users on 6.0 devices.
With the latest version of Google Play services rolled out, the Android Developers blog is detailing what new features this update brings. Version 8.4 introduces an easier way for users to share their favorite apps, a more accurate way to determine location, and new APIs for fitness data.
In the past, we’ve seen developers get Game Boy Advance games working on Android Wear watches. It’s not entirely practical for a number of reasons, but it’s still kind of fun and cool. There is now a Space Defender-esque game for Wear that was released as an Android Experiments app.
Kamcord, the popular platform for gameplay recording in mobile apps, is today launching support for live streaming directly from Android.
Apple has updated the Apple Music Android app with a bug fix and a couple of new features.
This update fixes an issue that prevented listening to Beats 1 without an Apple Music membership. It also includes support for the upcoming beta of Apple Music on Sonos, and for playlist folders created in iTunes.
It also includes stability and performance improvements.
Apple first offered the app to Android users last month, and offers a three-month free trial, after which an individual subscription costs $10/month while a family of up to five can share a $15/month subscription.
Check out our setup and first impressions video for a taster.
Facebook today announced it’s rolling out a new feature for its Messenger chat app that will let users book a car through Uber. The feature, it said, expands on other “integrations” it’s added recently outside of the app’s core chat functionality, like the ability to send money or use the app for customer support.
Instant Articles are Facebook’s attempts to speed up webpages on mobile in order to keep users reading and sharing within the social network. The serviced fully launched to all iOS users in October and has been in public testing since then on Android. Today, Instant Articles are rolling out to all Android users, as the rest of industry continues work on an open sourced alternative .
In September, to coincide with the beginning of the school year, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides added the ability to use a template to start a document. Previously restricted to the web, an update rolling out starting today adds the same ability to Android and iOS apps.
Now on Tap has been criticized for its lack of usefulness since its launch in October. Today, it’s receiving its first major update that adds new languages and now recognizes more types of information. The screenshot feature previous seen in the beta channel is also now rolling out again.
Inbox, Google’s smart assistant-heavy email client, is getting updated with new features for sharing travel plans and an easier way to attach photos to emails.
Google’s Maps app for iPhone and iPad got a small but useful update on the App Store today. The latest version of the Google Maps iOS app now includes a couple of handy features.
First up, and undoubtedly the most useful for drivers is the up-to-date gas prices in the US and Canada. The feature was included in the Android version of Google’s app a couple of months ago and lets users check nearby gas stations to see which has the most affordable prices. You can find prices simply be searching for ‘gas’ or ‘gas stations’ in the search field and Google Maps will automatically bring up the nearest options and list pricing for those locations.
Business hours have been included in the app for some time, but today’s update also lets you check when is best to avoid/visit particular businesses. Like its online search and maps tools, the updated iPhone app brings the ability check popular visiting hours for local stores and outlets. Now you can see what you always knew about any business or retail location: It starts getting busy after lunch.
Google Maps version 4.13.0 is available to download from the App Store for free and requires users to be running iOS 7.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
An updated version of Play Music for Android redesigns the music controls in the notification drawer. When expanded, the notification now features thumps up/down buttons. This is almost certainly an effort by Google to get a more accurate picture of user’s music taste.
In addition to improving cut/copy/paste, the redesigned text selection pop-up in Android 6.0 Marshmallow allows developers to take advantage of the new contextual selection feature. The Wikipedia app has been updated so that when text is selected there is now an option to ‘Search Wikipedia’.