The News Feed is one of the most important parts of Facebook, so this is pretty big news. The social network has announced that it’s giving its users more ways to tweak what shows up in the News Feed.

This comes by way of a revamped News Feed Preferences menu, which launches on iOS today and will become available for Android and the Web “over the coming weeks”. Read more »

Apple has sent an email to registered developers letting them know of some upcoming changes to pricing in certain territories. In four countries, prices in the App Store will increase within the next 36 hours.

These are Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey. In South Korea, the move is made because of a 10% value-added tax (VAT) which is now included in app prices. For developers based outside of South Korea, Apple will collect and pay that tax. Developers who are in South Korea will need to take care of this themselves. Read more »

Ubisoft has announced a new game for the mobile platform, Rayman Adventures. The game has the same side-scrolling platforming action that we have come to expect and love but new for mobile is complete freedom to move around instead of the auto move mechanism of the previous two games, Rayman Jungle Run and Fiesta Run.

If you read our reviews of the two games, you’d know we absolutely loved them. With Adventures, Ubisoft is bringing more of the console side of the gameplay to mobile. How well this works out on a touchscreen remains to be seen, as the simplified gameplay and controls of the previous two games is exactly what made them so good on mobile devices. Read more »

These are some of the best and apps that came out this week.

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YouTube is working hard retain its dominance in the online multimedia realm. And while a lot of that has to do with engaging audiences and encouraging creativity and content-creators, maintaining a technical edge is equally important. Innovations on the PC front are now way past high-definition content, with resolutions of 4K and beyond already available, as well as frame rates up to 60fps.

Dealing with mobile devices, however, presents a whole new set of challenges for YouTube, along with new possibilities to explore, like offline playback for example. Still, it is only a matter of time before our increasingly-powerful mobile tech gets access to proper high-definition content as well. Today, YouTube has made another step in this direction. The company’s Android and iOS apps now have 60fps content at 720p and 1080p resolutions. Read more »

Just a few months after it was announced, the peer-to-peer payments feature of Facebook’s Messenger app is now available to everyone in the United States.

The news was announced by David Marcus, who leads the company’s messaging business. “Add your Debit Card and pay anyone on Messenger in a few taps. Money goes straight from your checking account to the recipient’s checking account. Easy and safe,” he said. Read more »

The Google Hangouts iOS app has received an update, bumping it to version 4.0. The update brings a new design that the company claims makes it faster to start new conversations, and add stickers, emoji, and photos.

The updated app features a new Dialer UI for better phone calling experience, as well as a new quick compose button that allows you to quickly find contacts with whom you chat most frequently. Read more »

Last year there was a big rise in the number of rail crossing accidents in the US, and the authorities are working with Google to try and do something about it. Namely, you will soon find all of the railroad crossings in the US inside Google Maps.

We’re talking about around 215,000 crossings in total, of which 130,000 are public and 85,000 are private. Not only will you be able to see each railroad crossing placed on the map inside Google’s app, but you’ll also be notified when one’s approaching if you’re in navigation mode. Read more »

Facebook is currently testing a new iOS photo uploader which will allow users to put Snapchat-like filters, text, and stickers on their pictures, according to a TechCrunch report.

Facebook emulating Snapchat’s features shouldn’t really come as a surprise given that the world’s largest social network in 2013 tried to acquire the latter for $3 billion but the offer was turned down. Facebook’s Slingshot app is also widely perceived to be a Snapchat clone. Read more »

These are some of the best apps and games that came out this week. Read more »

Facebook has launched a new feature that allows you to easily find and share Web links on the social network. Dubbed Add a Link, the feature is currently only available for iPhone users, but will eventually launch on Android and the company’s Messenger app as well.

“Now, whenever you want to share a specific web link in your posts, just tap the new link icon, type in a few keywords to search for a link from our index of posts, and share it,” the company said. So effectively, the feature makes sure that users won’t have to leave the Facebook app when searching for Web links. Read more »

WhatsApp and similar mobile-first (or mobile-only) messaging apps have pioneered the concept of using your phone number to log in years ago. But so far Facebook’s Messenger has required people to have a Facebook account in order to use it. Not anymore.

Starting today, you can sign up for Facebook Messenger even if you don’t have a Facebook account. After you install the Messenger app, when you run it for the first time, you’ll see the screen above. You can choose “Not on Facebook?” to be able to sign up using your phone number. Read more »

A few weeks ago, at WWDC 2015, the new iOS 9 was officially unveiled along with the promise for a free update on eligible devices this fall. There is no doubt that Apple wants to push the new version of its popular mobile OS as cleanly as possible and on a broad a scale as possible. Mass adoption will ensure better uniformity on the market and create a more-favorable environment for development and innovation.

If you have been an iPhone user for some time now, you surely remember the major update problems associated with iOS 8. Its 6GB free space requirement left a lot of Apple users struggling to cram everything in on their phones. This, along with some serious initial bugs, led to a slow rate of adoption, a setback that Apple doesn’t want to repeat with iOS 9. Consequently the tech giant has taken measures. An iOS 9 beta adopter managed to spot a rather intriguing prompt, revealing that if your device has insufficient storage to install the update, Apple can automatically delete some of your apps, with the promise of reinstalling them immediately afterwards. Read more »

Instagram 7.0 for iOS and Android has been made official today, and it should become available in both the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store within the next few hours. The newest version of the popular photo sharing app comes with some pretty big changes, though unfortunately one of them is US-only for now.

The Explore page inside the app has been completely revamped. It now shows trends as they emerge, making it easy for you to follow current events and conversations through Instagram. You will see trending tags as well as trending places. Read more »

Clearly meant as a response of sorts to the launch of Apple Music, Google has today announced it’s adding a free tier to its Play Music streaming service. Previously, this was accessible only through a subscription.

From this point on, however, it also has a free, ad-supported radio version. Unfortunately it’s only going to be available in the US for the foreseeable future (Google has yet to announce when it will go international). Read more »