Author Archive: henry

This Thursday past Microsoft launched its latest app, the Mimicker Alarm that tries to assist you in getting out of bed every morning by pissing you off. This is a last-ditch effort to those that have tried everything else to wake themselves up using conventional alarm clocks and getting themselves out of bed and still turned the morning (non)wake-up routine into a miserable failure.

This cool little alarm app will have the groggy morning you yammering tongue twisters without any expletives in order for it to turn off the alarm each morning. This app is the software giant’s way to provide users with a peek into its growing machine learning APIs called Project Oxford, which focuses on teaching computers about speech, emotion, and vision.

This unique alarm clock can assist the company in accomplishing all the above goals by turning your impossible wake-up routine of snoozing, snoozing, snoozing, and finally turning off your alarm clock into a fun game that just won’t stop unless you comply or kill your mobile phone totally dead. It accomplishes both the near impossible tasks (teaching machines about emotion, speech, and vision as well as waking the dead up in the morning) by turning it into a fun game that offers difficult risers three game options to select from when setting their alarms.

The three alarm game options include Colour Capture, Tongue Twister, and Express Yourself. Colour Capture will in all probability be quite annoying, since it requires the sleepyhead to capture a picture of a colour matching that prescribed by the app.

Express Yourself requires the sleepyhead to take a selfie of your facial expression that has to match whichever emotion it instructs you to mimic, and once you succeed in making a selfie of your surprise, smile, et cetera face you are free to share it on the social media site of your choice.

The app first saw the light of morning in Garage, the software giant’s experimental lab. It follows Google’s Material Design guidelines for the greater part and presents a polished and sleek GUI to round off its intention to potentially irritate assistively.

Global crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, recently finally got around to fielding an Android app for its website, this belated offering arrives three years since its iOS-based cousin. The company provided no clarity as to the reason for the massive delay, but Android platformed crowdfunding investors must certainly be quite pleased to finally be able to interact and explore the site from their mobile devices.

This first release of their app is currently still quite basic when compared to its iPhone peer, offering potential funders not much functionality other than a search function and the ability to track projects they have already backed. Android-based creators at this stage would still choose to abstain from utilising this app since there is not much on offer for them, at the moment it offers no function to add new content or the ability to update their project pages.

According to a post by Kickstarter’s team in Brooklyn wearing they introduced their app, the team revealed that this is only version 1.0. The further requested that their Android based fans must stay tuned to expect additional features, such as tools allowing its innovative creators to more fully manage their personal projects.

The company further explained that the just released version is only an initial take on a platform that they wish to utilise to create fantastic experience of discovery to all backers and potential backers. The final goal is to make it for easier to go diving into its thousands of creative live projects loaded from all four corners of Kickstarter’s universe.

Currently Project searches offers option of search refinement via categories, which makes it for easier to find the type of campaigns that interest backers the most. The application’s activity feed allows backers a tracking option that deliver the latest updates from project creators that they have supported, and in addition highlights campaigns to recently backed partners.

The Kickstarter team described their feed as a moment-by-moment play of all the latest news but should potentially be on any backer’s radar on any day at any given moment.

The record-setting card game Exploding Kittens quickly became the most backed new game in the history of the crowd funded Kickstarter, and now just one day since its launch in the iStore it made a name for itself once again as the top paid application in Apple’s App Store. This latest achievement racked up another important milestone in the game’s already impressive trophy room that already contains markers for collecting the single greatest number of backers in any campaign.

At the moment mobile gamers are virtually falling over themselves to download the game to their mobile devices, a simple matter of all in app purchases being available for free during the next couple of days may be partly responsible for the early rush, the app is available at a cost of $1.99. As an added incentive, mobile versions feature an NSFW decks that are not available in the standard game and in app purchases already makes a party-pack expansion deck available together with a ton of sexy avatars.
It delivers a purely local multiplayer experience that allows 2 to 5 gamers to connect across their mobile devices via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It excludes any on-device single player mode, and no multiplayer online offering. Exploding Kittens is the brainchild and creation of Matthew Inman founder of The Oatmeal, along with Shane Small and Elan Lee and is a gamified version of Russian roulette.

Exploding Kittens dares players to, initially quite eager that quickly changes to apprehensively, draw cards from its delightfully comical deck of cards, while attempting to avoid the game-busting, life ending Exploding Kitten card. Since if you drew that card will have guts splattered all over the insides of your phone since it causes your character to explode which forces you out of the game. Unless, you are at the time in possession of one of the Defuse cards that allows you to return your life ending Exploding Kitten card to the Master card deck.

Developers made a plea urging players to remain patient if at first they find the app a little buggy; they would appreciate any feedback on system bugs, and attend to whatever reports they receive. In addition, Android users can rejoice, since the makers have reported that their route is an app in the pipeline for this platform!

Wise online shoppers know that every day, week, and month is a sale period when you shop online; however, due to the massive number of online there are worth your attention and shopping time, we active online shoppers need a little assistance to create an adrenaline filled online space to make some sense out of the sale madness. The space must also provide you with the best possible bang for your buck, since budgets are stretched every day due to fluctuating economies currencies. The apps in the discussion below hopes to make some sense of your online sale madness and provide you with the best value for money your personal budget can stretch to.

SalesGossip accrues beauty and fashion promotions both online as well as on high streets, which allows shoppers from across the complete spectrum defined their personal items at the best possible deal prices on the fly, offering them the ability to identify exactly which stores carry the category and product they may be looking for. It even provides directions to land-based tours and periodically checks in for specific exclusive in-store promotional events. When browsing it offers a slight function that allows the shopper to let app know their personal likes and dislikes, which works a little like Tinder’s app, but focused on fashion. Let the app know what your preferences are, for items you like swipe the left and to the right for a dislike or even upwards for items you do not care either way about. This assists the app in preselecting only the type of items and stores of your preference in all your future shopping expeditions.

getHunt allows its users to plan their shopping expeditions even before they dare leaving their abode to prevent them from being distracted by other not so lucrative offers that may see them wandering around aimlessly instead of getting their daily budget spent while acquiring the maximum number of items for your money. It allows shoppers to first search and select the items they want via an online browser, where after finding the required items they can drag-and-drop these items into a toolbar by using getHunt’s web extension. Afterwards they will sync their item list via getHunt’s mobile app that will there after plan the shortest/quickest route between their shopping destinations based on where their current location may be.

Regular travellers tend to have their trusty standard travelling companions well sorted on their mobile devices, ready to assist them with whatever they might require on their journey in a moment’s notice. This same set of regular travellers have over the years tried and tested numerous apps that looked promising, but in the end failed them until they sorted the wheat from the chaff and arrived at their favourite set of apps that met their personal preferences. The irregular or ad hoc travellers have not had the benefit of being exposed to travelling environment over a sufficient period of time to have tried and tested and arrived at the best group of apps as the travelling companions. This group will find great benefit in the apps discussed below; however, even the first group of travellers may just find their new favourite in the discussion below.

Triposo delivers to you their World Travel Guide app that logically leaves you with a completely explained and guided world in your own pocket. The app quickly proves itself to be indispensable, it offers a framework into which users will download various city and country guides to replace a variety of individual apps that serve in one or two cities but not in others. The base app is just 22 MB in size, users will then really familiar splash screen where after they will be prompted to download their city or even a complete country guide of choice to get them started. Users on a multiple country journey will be able to browse through all of the available individual guides. There are able to plan their trip via pins that can be used to pin to specific locations, each location or destination features a brief description, some images, a handy navigator, and a travelogue with all their account information.

Phrasebook Pro will become utterly indispensable when entering into countries where users have a grasp of the local language dialects. The app requires zero registration and presents an extremely clean, crisp use interface that offer users the capacity to the require for download and then save in order to use off line. It currently offers 17 languages including Swedish, Chinese, Arabic, Greek, as well as Indonesian to name a few. As mentioned above, one of its greatest features that proves incredibly helpful when travelling in countries that have pro or little cell phone signal coverage is its off-line feature. To further bolster its capacity, the phrases are spoken in high quality in each country’s native mother tongue in the correct dialect and pronunciation along with an excellent variety of topics.

As the others of its kind, Facebook has been through deep waters, the mill, and a number of other farm implements signifying its various stages of either being maligned or viciously celebrated by both the media as well as its supporters over the years. Despite the trials and tribulations it has not slowed one iota in its march to retain and consolidate its place of dominance at the top of the social media tree, and now it has once again received a major update that needs to be discussed.

As any long time smart device user will testify each and every app have over the years added tons of weight that arrive in small increments with each and every update as they slog forward toward their respective goals and Facebook has not escaped this long time weight gain. Part of the weight gain in this latest version is the addition of experimental support over Tor’s encrypted network. Tor, over the years became the world’s anonymity network of choice by providing its secure onion routing method of transferring encrypted data over open internetworks. In 2014 Facebook created an officially supported personal Tor onion address which the update now offers expanded Android support, by allowing Facebook access through Tor with an Orbot proxy app that is freely downloadable from Google’s Play Store.

Additionally Facebook saw fit to give its app notification tab on Android devices an extensive overhaul, it now features capacity to display a number of customisable information topics that include milestones reached by friends, the latest sports results, as well as an upcoming event calendar. Additionally users that enable their Location History function within the Facebook app will have access to information on events and news that occur in their local community, as well as weather updates, and upcoming movie show-times to name but a few.

On the morning of 19 January IM giant and texting stalwart to multiple millions of users, WhatsApp, announced via a mass push notification from the company to all their Android app supporters that each user’s personal account were migrated to a lifetime free service subscription. The company made the move while looking to replace some of its lost income necessitated by the move by allowing various businesses to utilise its service in order to communicate directly with their users.

Apps form the cornerstone of any mobile platform; however, Apple has with its iOS distinguished itself, since it is this protected ecosystem more than any other factor that sets it apart from all of its rivals to the highest quality product, with its apps typically rated as best in class.

The task of finding the best apps amongst this dizzying variety of high quality products actually makes it even more difficult to distinguish a truly great app from amongst a horde of good quality apps that failed to distinguish themselves. The apps discussed below is an attempt at alleviating the situation.

Interact is a newfound solution to the native Contacts app found on Apple mobile devices, Interact delivers numerous features not offered on the native iOS software. For example, the native app does not allow users to delete or create complete groups while Interact does so with aplomb. In addition to its capability to manage multiple contacts simultaneously, its users can create and send grouped emails or messages from within any of the native iOS apps and still enjoy the benefit of its capacity to attach files, images, video clips, and more. Interact even offers a cool Scratchpad use while updating and creating contacts by copying text found in web pages, email signatures, and other applications. As an added boon to iPhone 6S owners it offers universal control with full 3-D touch support, so it’s a snap at $4.99 from the iStore.

With currencies fluctuating due to a lot of codswallop normally served up by politicians it is nice to know that the creators of Nanu think of our gaming budgets by providing an app that delivers truly free calling. Nanu are determined to make good on their promise of free calls everywhere to everyone with their latest update released on version 2.1 of their app it even includes users stuck with an old 2G network. The new version delivers a brand-new GUI, an add contact feature, as well as improved call quality and the delivers its services to 48 different nations, with 20 of those nations supporting free calling between mobile phones. As one would expect Nanu says there are no restrictions on any calls made between two of its app users, this should inspire its users to spread the good word as fast as possible.

Daily life has already settled down into its routines for 2016 and a multitude of apps released in the run-up to the festive season as well as numerous newly introduced apps this January is making the Google Play Store’s virtual walls bulge. Amongst this bewildering array of new apps it is easy to lose track of the ones worth gracing the insides of your precious new smart device, which is a real shame. Shame lies in the fact that numerous of these unsung hero apps might imbue your phone with a new improved life and extend its tremendously usability, but only if graced with the correct applications. The apps in review and discussion below might just accomplish such a task.

Habitica’s makers introduced the app at the absolute perfect time, since so many of us are still rubbing the rough edges off and massaging our New Year’s resolutions into a more workable shape. If you made resolutions that intend keeping and work towards as definite goals will find great assistance with this app that is a quite defined ability to keep you working toward your goal keeping you on track. The app is a quite unique approach at mixing working toward your goals with the fun of playing an RPG or role-playing game, its uniqueness lies in the fact that unlike other RPG’s it allows the player-user to set their own targets. This allows any player-user to improve themselves in the real world, in real time, by improving the user’s Habitica character. This provides a fantastic new manner in which to challenge yourself and stay motivated because you’re always confronted by a visual representation of your personal progress.

Chromer may just represent one of the most fantastic new apps to ever have graced the shelves of Google’s Play Store. The best way to describe it would be to call it a full-blown web browser specifically for apps that allows users to utilise custom Chrome tabs with no need for the app developers to actually implement any of these features themselves. It is a modern day miracle, that few understand, but which works pretty flawlessly. Once the app’s initial configuration is properly done, to open web pages directly from within other applications occurs quick with little drama. This does away with the frustratingly slow process of repetitive selection of a single app that you wish to utilise to open any hyperlinks directly from within other apps. The app is free and completely secure.

This year Apple start off with a major revelation by announcing one of the most important and surprising stories for this coming week. Cupertino in a surprise move unveiled shining new OS versions for both its iOS as well as tvOS, both being still in beta stage. Cupertino showed versions iOS 9.3 and tvOS 9.2, both of which now include features that unbelievably were not already part of the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV packages respectively.

IOS 9.3 beta incorporates Night Shift that now finally utilises the device’s geolocation and clock features to establish sunrise and sunset in the user’s locality. The inclusion of Night Shift in its repertoire might be one of the most important iOS UX improvements in a number of years. If the device determines that it is nighttime the screen automatically removes blue light from its spectrum, according to studies blue light increases difficulties in falling asleep.

In what will be good news to students and educators alike, iPad in its new beta version now delivers multi-user support via its Classroom app, allowing teachers to take advantage of the new app by launching all student apps simultaneously. Classroom facilitators can then guide what their students are viewing on their iPad via content directly under the facilitator’s control. It even allows educators to project any student’s efforts from their tablet onto an Apple equipped television screen.

In addition another new inclusion into iOS 9.3 beta is its Touch ID that is now directly supported in its Notes native app, this allows for improved customisation in its News app, the native Health and numerous other apps have also been seen to with a variety of improvements.

In further great news tvOS 9.2 beta finally saw the restoration of a major omission generated in its third and fourth generations of Apple TV; it once again now offers support for Bluetooth keyboards. In addition, the new tvOS allows for a new Podcast native app, a new folder support function, and a number of other minor upgrades.

In what could possibly be one of the best breakthroughs to users of non-native apps is the new iOS 9.3 beta’s ability to hide its native apps. Apple announced its intention to release the two new OSs early this spring.

While a vast multitude of new games are launched not just on a monthly but even on a daily basis, and few reached the level of popularity, notoriety, fame, or even hysteria with which the two games discussed below have been followed by gaming fans across the globe. The one game delivers the second in the series of one of the most popular categories of game-play, while the other may finally find its official way into the English-speaking hemisphere of the globe, either way both carry great news for their respective fans.

SNK Playmore’s brand-new soon to be released mobile game sequel ”Metal Slug Attack” to its exceptionally popular Metal Slug Defence will start raiding mobile device screens in the latter part of this year. One of the developer’s major achievements was when it brought its classical Metal Slug videogame series to mobile devices with a major scoop being its inclusion of the original port versions one through three as well as X, and as an added bonus it spin-off called Metal Slug Defence featuring a tower defence style of play. The yet to be released Metal Slug Attack is considered as an official sequel to the tower defence strategy game, with the addition of a number of new game modes that supports both single as well as multiplayer action. The new title incorporates card-based warring where players will summon their characters during fights to capture the enemy bases.

The remake of Final Fantasy’s Adventure saga could receive new English language support will making its transfer to mobile devices from its Game Boy origins. The Adventures of Mana title is a 3-D supportive, mobile compatible remake of its 1991 Final Fantasy Adventure that only ever appeared on Game Boy devices. Moreover on the official Twitter account for the game the developers release an official announcement of an overseas version adapted to mobile play. The Tweet included a link to the new revised game’s English site, whether listed Android As Well as iPhones as the compatible device OS platforms. Two things were omitted from this announcement, the one being the release date and the other the price both of which were not yet revealed.