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Apple acquires Locationary and HopStop in a bid to improve its mapping app

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Apple made its mapping app official with the launch of its iOS 6 OS and ever since then, the company’s in-house maps for its iDevices has been criticized and questioned time and time again for its accuracy.

It looks like Apple is seriously working to improve its mapping system as the Cupertino giant has bought a small Canadian company called Locationary. Read more »

Google Play Books and All Access Music expand to 13 new countries

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Google is finally taking the conquest of Europe more serious and has expanded the availability of its Play Books and All Access Music services to 13 new countries.

The latest ones to get access to to the Books and Music part of the Google Play Store are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Sweden. Read more »

2 year later VLC media player returns to iOS

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After being pulled off the App Store due to licensing issues, the capable VLC media player has been completely rewritten and is back on Apple’s mobile platform.

The open-source app is now bi-licensed under Mozilla’s Public License v2 and the GNU Public License v2, which VideoLAN believes won’t have any distribution issues under Apple’s rather stringent licensing regulations. Read more »

BlackBerry Q5 stops by at HQ, we give it the camera treatment

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BlackBerry Q5 is company’s second QWERTY smartphone to run the latest generation of its new BlackBerry 10 platforms. It is supposed to bring the complete BlackBerry experience at a more affordable price point compared to the premium BlackBerry Q10.

The BlackBerry Q5 comes with a 3.1-inch 720x720px IPS LCD display and is powered by the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset with a dual-core 1.2GHz Krait processor, Adreno 225 graphics and 2GB of RAM. Read more »

Google Chrome for iOS update brings interoperability with other Google apps

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Google has released an update for the Chrome browser on iOS, which introduces interoperability with other Google apps installed on your device. Now, you can choose to open links in YouTube, Maps, Google+ and Drive applications. So, for example, you click on a location, you can now open it in the Maps app instead of within the browser.

Other changes include improvements to voice search, fullscreen mode on iPad, access to browser history (which was shockingly absent until now) and a new data saving mode, which compresses pages to reduce bandwidth usage and page load times. Read more »

Tumblr for iOS gets a major security update, users advised to change their passwords

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Tumblr for iOS was recently updated with few new features and the app now gets a “very important” security update. The latest fix addresses an issue that allowed passwords to be compromised in certain circumstances.

It has been reported that Tumblr was notified of a security vulnerability introduced in its iOS app with the recent update. However, the micro-blogging site has reacted quickly and has released an update that repairs the issue and has been notifying its affected users. Read more »

BlackBerry Messenger coming to Android and iOS in September

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BlackBerry’s CEO Thorsten Heins announced that the popular BlackBerry Messenger will be available on Android and iOS back at the BlackBerry live 2013 conference. We then had a tweet from the BlackBerry Worldwide tweeter account stating that the app will be available on June 27.

Unfortunately, the account didn’t turn out to be an official BlackkBerry affair and the BlackBerry Messenger for the Android and iOS did not make its appearance on the suggested date. However, the much-awaited BBM for the two of the most popular smartphone platforms will be available “this summer”, according to the BlackBerry India managing director. Read more »

WhatsApp to start charging $0.99 per year now

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WhatsApp, the hugely popular cross-platform instant messaging app that lets you message other users for free over the internet, is starting to charge an annual fee for its service.

It will now cost $0.99 per year for you to be able to message your friends on WhatsApp. Read more »

Google Maps update for iOS brings iPad support

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Ever since the Google Maps application got separated from iOS and started life as a standalone app on the App Store, it has only been available on the iPhone with iPad users having to rely on Apple Maps for navigation. The latest update, however, fixes that and Google Maps is now available on the iPad as well.

The iPad version makes good use of that big beautiful canvas and hides all the controls and just keeps the search bar in the top left corner. The UI is similar to the one on the new web version and the Android app. Additional options are hidden in a drawer on the left, accessed by tapping a button on the top left. Read more »

Carbon for Twitter gets a major update

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It has been a tough start for Carbon. The app started life as a promising Twitter client for Android that a lot of people were waiting for but due to issues with the developers unable to publish it to the Play Store as a paid app from their region, it had to be released for free.

The development then seemingly stopped and for a long time now Carbon has been an abandonware. Although a great little app, The presence of deal-breaking bugs and lack of updates meant you couldn’t really use it even if you wanted to. Thankfully, all that changes with today’s update. Read more »

First native torrent client for Windows Phone 8 now available, beta only

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A native torrent client for Windows Phone 8 in its beta stage has shown up on the Windows Phone Central forum. The application is available for all the enthusiasts who would like to try and test the features of the upcoming app.

The beta version of the native torrent client comes with full features and media playback. Read more »

Nokia Cinemagraph updated, lets you create 720p animated GIFs now

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Nokia has updated its Cinemagraph camera lens app, which lets you create animated GIF right from your WP8 smartphone. The latest version of the Nokia Cinemagraph comes with support for higher-resolution 1280 x 720 pixel GIFs, which is a notable improvement over the 800 x 448 pixel animated images the app produced before .

The update also brings a crossfading transitions and a color pop feature that makes it easier to restore original colors of your images. Read more »

Nokia announces an Imaging SDK for developers, now available for download

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At today’s unveiling event of the Nokia Lumia 1020 in New York, Nokia has also announced the immediate availability of a new Imaging Software Development Kit (SDK). The new SDK would give developers a “powerful code library of exciting image manipulation tools, which will make creating the next generation of imaging apps for Windows Phone 8 devices quicker and easier. ”

The intriguing bit is that the SDK can be used for developing camera/image manipulation apps not just or Lumia phones, but for any Windows Phone 8 device. Read more »

Flipboard, Vine and Path app coming to Windows Phone 8

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During the launch event of the Lumia 1020 smartphone, Nokia has revealed that some major third-party applications will soon be joining the Windows Phone Store.

Among the most prominent names to be joining the Microsoft ecosystem are Flipboard, Vine and Path. They have all made quite a stir on the other platforms they are available so their arrival to WP8 is certainly great news for the Modern UI loving geeks. Read more »

If This Then That service launches on iOS, lets you automate your iDevice

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If you haven’t heard of the If This Then That service, now is as good time to familiarize yourself. The concept is pretty simple – if a condition is met (forecast says it’s going to rain tomorrow) then do a task (send me an SMS with the text “get an umbrella”).

Thankfully, the power of IFTTT isn’t limited to just the web app anymore, as its creators have launched an iOS app available on the Apple App Store free of charge. Read more »