If you’re one of those people concerned that you may end up in a ditch with a broken leg while running or cycling, Strava has a new peace-of-mind feature for you. Known as Beacon, it effectively offers Find Friends type functionality to allow family or friends to track your location as you exercise.
Astropad is a clever app that lets you use your iPad as a drawing surface for Mac software like Photoshop. Today Astropad 2.0 is available as a free update for current customers and includes new improvements, better software compatibility, and a new look.
Pocket Casts is a cross-platform podcast player with apps on iOS, Android, the web, and even Windows Phone, and today Shifty Jelly released a major update to the iPhone and iPad version. Pocket Casts 6 is out today and includes loads of changes including a refreshed user interface, a dark theme, multitasking features on iPad including Picture-in-Picture and Split View, and much more.
Google’s official iOS app has supported AMP articles in search results since late May, and today Google is highlighting support for AMP articles in its Chrome browser for iPhone and iPad. Accelerated Mobile Pages appear in search results and load nearly instantly as these articles are optimized for faster load times.
Professional photo editing likely comes to mind first when you think of Lightroom, but Adobe has managed to bring Photoshop Lightroom to the living room with a neat new Apple TV app sans any editing features.
Rounding out the major launch countries, Pokémon GO has hit Japan — the home nation of Nintendo and Pokémon. Due to the major cultural significance of the company and intellectual property behind Pokémon, developers are expecting Pokémon GO to be a big hit in the region.
The launch in Japan also has knock-on effects for the player base in the rest of the world as it shows how the game plans to add advertising to the game for additional monetization. In Japan, 3000 McDonald’s outlets have been turned into sponsored Pokémon gyms where players can go and take over the area after battling.
Version 52 of Google Chrome is now rolling out to all users via Google’s stable channel with the usual bug fixes and security patches. For Mac, the update notably adds Material Design to the browser’s top bar and other UI elements. Other changes include removing the ability to use the backspace key as a return shortcut.
Earlier this year Snapchat spent around $100 million to acquire Bitstrips, and today the social network announced its app will now integrate with Bitmoji. Bitmoji is Bitstrips’ iOS app for creating personalized emoji characters. The newly introduced integration between Snapchat and Bitmoji means users can now use Bitmoji emoji characters directly in chats within Snapchat.
Following an update to the Mac app with similar features, the Pixelmator team has released version 2.3 for iPhone and iPad. Download Pixelmator in the iOS App Store ($4.99).
This update brings the latest selection tools from the Mac app to iOS devices. This includes the intelligent Quick Selection tool and automatic Magnetic Selection tool, where users roughly trace around an object and the app fits a precise line, using edge detection algorithms.
Following launches in the United Kingdom and Germany, Pokemon GO is making good on its promise to rollout to more European countries. The game is now officially available in Italy, Spain and Portugal. Download it for free in the App Store. The game continues to top App Store charts worldwide.
Reaction to Pokemon GO has been mixed. It has no doubt become a gaming sensation but the augmented-reality geocaching nature of the game has caused some frictions in the wider world. Via Reuters, there is a theory spreading on Chinese social media that the game is a plot to reveal the location of hidden Chinese military bases …
Pokémon Go is now officially available in the UK! Download it for free in the UK App Store here. The official rollout in the United Kingdom follows Pokémon Go’s expansion to Germany yesterday and brings even more people into the scope of the smash hit title, which is now the most successful mobile game of all time.
Facebook Messenger has had 3D Touch support for Quick Actions from the app icon since December, and today the app has updated to expand 3D Touch features inside the app. Using the latest flagship iPhones (iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus currently), Facebook users can Peek and Pop inside Messenger to quickly preview and access information using the pressure-sensitive display feature.
A new photo filter app, Prisma, is taking the App Store by storm this week (if you can ignore the Pokémon GO fervor) with good reason. At first glance, Prisma seems like any other photo filter app: choose a filter, pick an image, share to social media. What sets Prisma apart is the diversity and quality of the filters themselves.
There are some incredibly rich and unique options on here, that go beyond the usual shadowy color shifts popularized by Instagram. Prisma features a diverse set of filters that correspond to known paintings and art styles, including Mondrian Cubism, Mosaic, Heisenberg, The Scream and many more.
Pokemon GO is now available to users in Germany, the official Pokémon GO Twitter account announced today. A report earlier in the week indicated Pokémon GO would launch in the UK and other parts of Europe in a matter of days: it appears Germany is the first lucky country to be able to officially play the hit mobile game. Find the game in the App Store.
Pokemon Go has become a smash hit (available for free on the App Store), rallying hundreds of millions of players in just a few short days. Widespread media coverage of the game (and its consequences) has made the Nintendo freemium title somewhat of a phenomenon, continuing to top App Store charts.
This success — likely propelled by pent-up demand for a ‘real’ Pokemon game available on iOS — comes despite the game only launching three regions; the United States, New Zealand Australia. A new report from the Wall Street Journal indicates fans from other countries will not have to wait long for an official launch of Pokemon Go in the UK, Europe and more.
Snapchat’s latest update introduces a brand new feature called Memories which lets you save Snaps and Stories in your own personal collection. Memories lets you capture and save pictures and videos in Snapchat instead of the Camera Roll in Apple’s Photos app by default.
Yahoo today launched a new iOS app called ‘Radar’ that it says will act as a smart travel guide, offering up recommendations on points of interest and pulling in trip itineraries, reservations and other travel information from Yahoo Mail.
Whether you’re planning a trip or want to try something different in your hometown, this iPhone app brings you the best results, gleaned from across the web, and combines Yahoo’s expertise in search, communications and content to help you explore the next U.S. city of choice. Just sign in with your Yahoo Mail email address and Radar will use the upcoming flight, hotel and rental car confirmation receipts in your inbox to help you get organized for your trip. Radar also provides snackable recommendations, from must-see sights to the best restaurants in town.
The app will also feature user reviews for restaurants and travel tips from places like TripAdvisor and elsewhere around the web, and it offers other assistant-type features like check-in reminders and notifications for flights and more.
You have to sign-in with a Yahoo Mail address since Yahoo is getting many of the recommendations and notifications from scanning your emails, but the company notes you can link your Gmail, Outlook, AOL, or Hotmail address to Yahoo Mail, a feature that was recently added.
“See your trip itineraries, including flights, hotels and rental car reservations, automatically populated from the confirmations in your Yahoo Mail account… Receive notifications of flight delays, gate changes, flight cancellations and check-in reminders — Radar goes the extra mile to make your journey as seamless as possible”
For now the free Radar app is available to download and use in the US on iPhone.
Sonos has released a big update to its Controller app for iPhone and iPad that improves the experience on iOS in several ways. Because Sonos speakers stream music from services including Apple Music directly over the Internet and your iPhone or iPad is only used to tell it what to play, the lock screen has lacked playback controls; today’s update works around that on iOS 8 and later. Sonos Controller 6.3 for iOS adds lock screen controls that you can access from iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch for the first time. The new version includes some other new features for Apple’s latest hardware as well:
Twitter for iOS today will see the ability to upload and share much longer videos than before while still holding on to the short clip approach. The social network is announcing that video uploads to Twitter will extend in total duration from just 30 seconds to a full 140 seconds, or 2 minutes 20 seconds. Twitter users may recognize the ‘140’ number as the character limit generally (but not always) assigned to tweets — which is based on the 160 character limit of SMS minus usernames — so Twitter is really embracing the number here.
Speaking of numbers, Instagram is sharing today that its photo and video sharing service has hit a new growth milestone at 500 million monthly active users (with 60% active daily) plus some other interesting stats about its app.
A webpage discovered by a tech consultant and confirmed as official by TechCrunch indicates that Tumblr is planning its own Periscope-style live video platform later today.
Today Adobe is shipping updates to its Creative Cloud desktop apps for CC subscribers including new features in Photoshop plus enhancements to After Effects CC, Adobe Experience Design (XD) Preview, and more. One of these new upgrades is the debut of an impressive feature we first saw previewed last month…
Popular Bluetooth speaker company Ultimate Ears announced today that it is adding Siri and Google Now integration to its lineup of speakers. With this feature, users can access their music directly from the speaker, making it even easier to change songs, artists, and more.
Just days after Apple announced major enhancements to iMessage, Facebook today revealed a significant update to its Messenger app. In a blog post, the company announced major changes coming to how users are able to start a conversation.
Apple briefly mentioned some accessibility enhancements during its press event this week — watchOS 3 is adding wheelchair specific optimizations to Apple Watch — but iOS 10, macOS Sierra, tvOS 10 and watchOS 3 also have many other improvements to assist users with motor, vision, hearing, and learning impairments. Here’s the rundown…