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Feature Request: Apple Music needs collaborative streaming radio stations & playlists

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As much as I think the Apple Music user interface is still a total jumbled mess, I do think there are also a few features that Apple should add as it simultaneously cleans up what’s already there. A big one for me is the potential for private, collaborative playlists and streaming radio stations.

What Apple Music currently has, as far as users sharing music goes, is the ability to share a playlist, station, album or song from within the app via email, third-party apps or copying the link to share elsewhere. But once sent to someone, the person only receives a link to open the shared selection in Apple Music. It works, but it’s not exactly taking full advantage of the potential for user collaboration and a truly interactive experience that ties together the various social aspects of the service.

The new sharing features could be twofold. First, the ability to have collaborative playlists that one or more other people could contribute to. That’s a feature that some competitive services, notably Spotify, already have, but I’d like to see Apple take it a step further with the ability to create not just collaborative playlists, but private, custom radio stations that stream in real-time…


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Skype iPhone & iPad app gets improved sharing with iOS extension

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Skype for iPhone and iPad gets an update today to version 6.8 and with it comes new features for sharing content in the app. With the update, you’ll be able to quickly share links to websites and photos from your camera roll:

Skype 6.8 for iPhone and iPad makes sharing content with friends on Skype really easy. Simply tap on a share button to send links from apps and websites or photos from your camera roll directly to a Skype contact – just select the friend you want to share with and send! Perfect for sharing photos from your office party or present ideas with family members without the hassle of sending the content in an email.

The new app adds support for Skype in the system-wide iOS share sheet, meaning you’ll be able to easily share content from the web, in apps, and elsewhere directly to contacts in Skype. The company’s demo video below gives you the rundown on enabling the feature if you’re unfamiliar:

[youtube=https://youtu.be/6yVW1FHAN244]

The updated Skype app for iPhone and iPad is available on the App Store.

Feature Request: Logic Pro for iPad (Pro)

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Feature Request is a new regular 9to5Mac series where authors offer their opinion on how to improve popular hardware or software products.

With the introduction of iPad Pro, now is the time for Apple to finally bring Logic Pro to its tablet. Apple has long had Garageband available for iOS devices, offering what is essentially a feature for feature companion for the desktop Mac app, albeit with a user interface tweaked for the smaller touch display. But it’s not much help to pros that have their workflow in Apple’s professional audio editing suite for Mac, Logic Pro.


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Google Drive for iOS gets improved sharing experience w/ notifications & more

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Google Drive updates arriving today include new features for the service’s iOS app including sharing notifications and what Google promises will be a ‘consistent sharing experience across platforms.”

As part of its Drive mobile app updates today, both users of the iOS and Android apps can now enable notifications for when files are shared with them. Not only is it a notification, but it also acts as a quick link to jump right into the file or folder. And in addition, Google notes that “If a file/folder owner has notifications turned on and someone requests access to their content, the owner will be notified of the request instantly on their mobile device so they can quickly grant access.”

Another feature in the update for the Google Drive iOS app is what Google describes as a new consistent sharing experience, which essentially means the iOS app sharing experience is now on par with the Drive app on other platforms. You’ll notice the addition of an option to add a custom message when sharing:

We’re implementing a more consistent sharing experience in Drive (and the Docs editor apps too!) across platforms, including the ability for people using the Drive iOS app to add custom messages to recipients directly from the app when sharing a file.

The updated Google Drive app for iPhone and iPad is available now.

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Microsoft Office iOS apps add Outlook integration, improved sharing, protected documents, & more

Microsoft is rolling out an update to some its Office iOS apps today that includes a handful of new features for the Word, PowerPoint, and Excel iPhone and iPad apps.

Among the new features, all three apps get support for viewing protected documents and Outlook integration. For Outlook, users now have the ability to “send a document as an attachment in Outlook. Or directly edit a document attached to or linked from an Outlook email message.”

In addition, all three apps get support for bi-directional and script languages, including Thai, Hebrew, and Arabic.

The updated apps will also now let users invite others to edit a document and configure permissions for those collaborators.

The updated Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) are available on the App Store now.

Adobe Slate lets you publish magazine-like stories from your iPad without design expertise

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Adobe Slate

Adobe is out today with its latest app for content creators on the iPad. The new Adobe Slate app is available for free and joins the similar Voice app Adobe launched last May. Where Adobe Voice focused on using the iPad and later the iPhone for story telling with the spokenword backed by visual elements, the new Adobe Slate app pairs text with fluid and customizable attractive layouts that look great whether you’re a designer or not.
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Twitter sharing disappears in latest iOS beta, may indicate upcoming app-based extension

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Update: An April 6, 2015 update to the app has re-enabled native sharing on iOS 8.3. It’s possible that this indicates Twitter changed something a little too early on its end, or a new 8.3 beta will introduce a change that pulls up a different extension when the app is installed.

A small change to the latest beta version of iOS may indicate a big change coming to the official Twitter application. In the pre-release version of the software that was provided to testers and developers last week, it seems the option to share content to Twitter has been removed entirely (update: if you have the latest version of the official Twitter app installed).

Not only is the Twitter icon now missing from the share sheet in first-party apps like Photos and Safari, but from all third-party apps that use the native sharing option introduced in iOS 8. The change could just be a glitch, but it more likely suggests that Apple may be removing its in-house Twitter sheet in favor of something new…


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Google+ iOS app adds higher resolution experience for iPhone 6/6 Plus Retina screens, more

google-plus-iOS8-extensionGoogle today updated its Google+ app for iPhone and iPad adding support for the higher resolution screens on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

In addition to the Retina imagery for the new iPhones, the app gains a few new features for both iPhone and iPad users in addition to the usual performance improvements and bug fixes.

Other features in version 4.8.0 include the ability to “vote on polls from people and brands” and an option to share to Google+ through an iOS 8 extension (pictured right).

The updated Google+ app for iPhone and iPad is available on the App Store now.

A full changelog is below:

What’s New in Version 4.8.0

What’s New
• Retina HD resolution on iPhone 6 and 6+
• Vote on polls from people and brands
• Easily share to Google+ from your device
• Performance improvements and bug fixes

Betaworks launches ‘#Homescreen’ to make app sharing and discovery easier

Homescreen Betaworks App

If you have ever caught yourself peering at someone else’s iPhone home screen, be it the person sitting next to you on the subway or in a college lecture hall, look no further. New York-based startup studio and venture capital firm Betaworks on Monday released a new app called #Homescreen for sharing your iPhone home screen and discovering apps. 
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Smule’s popular Sing! Karaoke app updated with collaborative video features

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Smule, which makes a variety of music-related iPhone apps like Guitar!, Magic Piano, and AutoRap, has a new version of its popular Sing! Karaoke app out today with a major feature for the app: video. The new version of Sing! Karaoke, which features “a huge catalog of top hits” with instrumental tracks and lyric guides for singing along to, does three things with the newly added video feature.
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New app Audibly lets you share your music wirelessly to nearby iOS devices

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_rLITnBzvk]

A brand new app created by three 2013 WWDC student scholarship winners— Nick Frey, Chris Galzerano, and Veeral Patel—launched on the App Store earlier this month. The app is called Audibly, and it allows users to stream music from one device to any others nearby. The music plays in sync across all devices, allowing everyone to listen in on the same playlist.

The app is fairly straightfoward. You simply pick a playlist to share, pair with a few nearby iOS devices, and hit play. The connection is made over Wi-Fi when there’s a network available, or through a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection if the devices aren’t connected to the same Wi-Fi network.


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UpTo calendar app relaunches with a renewed, balanced focus on what matters

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXELeBT8L2o]

When UpTo originally launched, it focused on being what it described as “half-social, half-calendar.” Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well as the social side and the calendar side fought for dominance, resulting in an app that felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to be when it grew up.

Today the company behind UpTo is re-launching the app with a new design and a new focus: rather than trying to turn calendars into a social network, the app is now focused entirely on being the best calendar app it can be. That being said, the new version of the app is not entirely devoid of social features.

Keep reading to find out how the developers finally figured out how to balance these two sides to the software.


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Twitter announces photo tagging, multiple photo uploads per tweet rolling out to iPhone users

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Twitter has announced a few new features for its iPhone app today. Users with the latest update to the Twitter for iPhone app will soon see the ability to select up to four photos at a time to upload when composing a tweet. These photos will be displayed as a collage on the tweet’s detail screen.

Along with the multi-photo support, users are also now able to tag other people in their photos. A new “who’s in these photos?” button allows you to add the username of other people in the picture. Photo tags won’t take up any characters in the body of the tweet, so the full character count will be available for composing a message.


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Tweetbot for iPhone adds support for viewing photos in direct messages

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Tweetbot for iPhone was updated today to add support for viewing photos send via the service’s direct messaging feature. Tweetbot is one of the first third-party apps for iOS to support the photo feature, which was introduced in the official Twitter client earlier this month.

Unfortunately Twitter does not allow third-party clients to send photos in direct messages, so you’ll still have to use the official Twitter app to send them. The update also includes miscellaneous bug fixes.

You can grab Tweetbot for iPhone for $4.99 on the iPhone App Store.

What’s New in Version 3.2.1

– Added support for viewing images in Direct Messages. Sending images in Direct Messages is not yet supported by the Twitter public API.
– Various bug fixes

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Google Maps for iOS adds ability to share locations to Google+

Google updated its Google Maps app today for iPhone and iPad with one new feature on top of the usual bug fixes. With version 2.2.0, users can now share their locations directly to Google+ from within the Google Maps iOS app. Tapping the the share button will now provide a “Google +” option and users can also select specific circles to share with before posting. Previously users could only mail, message, or copy a location to the clipboard.

What’s New in Version 2.2.0

● Share your favorite places with friends via Google+
● Bug fixes

How-to: Setup and use Dropbox to manage and share photos, files

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Before Dropbox became popular, there was iDisk, which was Apple’s cloud storage system. iDisk allowed you to store documents, pictures, QuickTime files, and PDFs in one cloud-based “drive.” This was accessible on all of your Apple products as well as at me.com on a PC. It was practically like having your most important files in Finder on your computer – but everywhere.

Then iCloud came out. iCloud dropped support of iDisk, which meant there was no longer a way to access all of your files in a Finder-like cloud system. This paved the way for third party apps like Dropbox to become even more popular.

Dropbox is free. Dropbox works on any platform: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage space for free and they offer incentives to increase your allocated amount of free storage space.

There are two different ways to set up Dropbox:


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Dropbox for iOS updated with improved sharing options

Dropbox has updated their iPhone and iPad app to verion 2.3. The new version features enhanced sharing options, a swipe-to-show options panel for carrying out common actions, as well as the usual performance enhancements and general bug fixes.

What’s New in Version 2.3

• Easily share a link to a folder
• Swipe on any file to quickly share, move, delete, or favorite
• Select and share multiple photos with your family, friends, and other humans
• Bug fixes and other magical performance improvements to keep you happy

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Facebook iOS app updated with emotions for status updates, better control over sharing

Facebook updated its iPhone and iPad app today with a couple new features. Users can now attach a number of different emoticons to status updates organized into several categories based on emotion, content, and location. For example, the “Feeling” category will allow users to attach an emoticon next to a message like “Im feeling happy,” while the “Watching” and “Listening to” sections let users link to Facebook profiles associated with content they want to share.

You can also now start a conversation with photos you’ve received in messages and Facebook says the updated app includes the ability to “Easily change who can see something you’ve shared.”

What’s New in Version 6.2

• Add icons to status updates to show what you’re feeling, reading, watching and more (English only)
• Easily change who can see something you’ve shared
• Start a new conversation with photos you receive in messages
• Bug fixes

Wishlist: 10 things Apple should, but likely won’t, announce at WWDC 2013

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We’ve got a pretty good idea of what Apple intends to give us at WWDC. Even the things we’re not so sure about seem on the radar.

But what does Apple need to do long term to tighten up the ecosystem and bring some excitement back into its hardware, software and services? I’ve got a few things…


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Facebook makes sharing in iOS apps even easier with new native Share Dialog for developers

Facebook-Native-Share-Dialog-iOSAt its event last month Facebook showed us a native Share Dialog as part of its Facebook SDK 3.5 for iOS update, and today Facebook announced on its blog that the feature is now available to developers.

Now officially out of beta, the native Share Dialog will allow developers to implement easier sharing features into their apps using a single line of code. Facebook said it provides “a lightweight and consistent way to enable sharing from your apps,” allowing users to share data from apps without first having to login into Facebook. The result is the elimination of 1 – 3 extra steps required for login when sharing via the feed dialog and an experience similar to using a Facebook Like button.

The Share Dialog further improves upon the iOS 6 share sheet by adding support for publishing Open Graph actions to make it easier for people to tell their stories on mobile. In addition, people can now tag friends and share where they are enabling them to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, while helping even more people connect with your app.

The new native Share Dialog and more is available to developers now through Facebook SDK for iOS 3.5.

Preview of Analog Camera for iPhone by Realmac Software

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Analog Camera for iPhone by Realmac Software

Analog Camera for iPhone by <a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=jZ6GP8Fu9UU&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=3909&RD_PARM1=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fnl%2Fartist%2Frealmac-software%2Fid310591643%3Fl%3Den" target="_blank">Realmac Software</a>

From the wonderful folks who brought you Clear for iPhone and Mac, Realmac Software announced today it will bring a few of its stunning filters from Analog for Mac to the iPhone with Analog Camera.

Analog Camera for iPhone resembles the simplistic, gesture based UI of Clear for iPhone, featuring soft square or rectangle buttons that pop up upon contact and prompt fun, clever sounds.

Check out my observations of the app and a teaser video below:
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1Password for iOS updated to version 4.2 with new features and fixes

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1Password 4, the popular login manager for iPhone and iPad has been updated to version 4.2 today. The new version sports a bunch of new features and bug fixes, including the ability to search for items in your vault by their URL, improved sharing of vault items, and more. This update also features the fill animation that appeared in the desktop browser extension recently.

The update is available for free on the App Store for existing users. New users can get the fantastic password manager (see our review) for $17.99. The entire change log can be found below.


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Twitterrific 5 iOS app gets Readability, Droplr support, improved notifications, more

Twitterrific-5-iOS-appThe Twitterrific 5 for Twitter iOS app has been updated today to version 5.2.2 with a number of new features and enhancements. Among them, the popular iOS Twitter client gets support for the Readability bookmarking service, Droplr as a new image service, and a few welcomed performance enhancements such as Indicators in timeline tabs that “are updated as tweets are read” and updating read/unread notifications for tweet timestamps as you scroll.

A full list of what’s new in version 5.2.2 of Twitterrifc for Twitter is below:

What’s New in Version 5.2.2

NEW FEATURES

• Added new bookmarking service: Readability
• Added new image service: Droplr

IMPROVEMENTS

• The read/unread state of tweet timestamps are updated as you scroll
• Indicators in timeline tabs are updated as tweets are read
• Added VoiceOver feedback after performing profile actions (follow, unfollow, etc)
• Third party logins are now cleared out when a service is disabled
• Additional larger font size setting on iPad

BUG FIXES

• Compose attachment buttons are now disabled during @name autocomplete
• Fixed a bug that could cause replies to be counted more than once
• Improved reliability when clearing push notification badges
• VoiceOver no longer repeatedly announces new tweet count
• When composing replies, VoiceOver reads text first instead of original tweet

NOTES

• Yfrog links now open in the in-app browser instead of the photo viewer

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Flipboard updated with new profile pages, ‘Friends’ category, SMS sharing, improved Google Reader navigation, more

A big update today for the Flipboard app for iPhone and iPad brings new profile pages that will allow content creators to get info on their “readership and curation activity,” a new Friends category in the Content Guide, improved sharing options including SMS, and the ability to save to your camera roll by tapping on an image.

The updated app, version 2.0.2, also includes “Improved navigation for Google Reader RSS folder,” making it easier for those making the switch from Google Reader to find their content.

What’s New in Version 2.0.2

-Get a window onto your readership and curation activity with new profile pages.
-Discover magazines by friends quickly in new Friends category in the Content Guide.
-Select a social network and access options more easily in the improved share menu.
-Share magazines and stories with friends and family via SMS text messaging.
-Save images directly to your device. Tap item’s share icon, then “Save to Camera Roll.”
-Improved navigation for Google Reader RSS folders