Articles about Mobile App

The Pixelmator Team, renowned for its Mac image-editing tool of the same name, has released Pixelmator for iPad 1.0, a similarly powerful image manipulation tool.

The app, which costs $4.99 and requires iOS 8.0 or later, has already garnered rave reviews and offers a wide range of tools covering creating, editing, fixing and enhancing images.

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One-hundred and four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8.x in the last seven days.

Microsoft may have cleaned up the store recently but there is still work to be done. If you check the newest apps in the Music & Video category for example you will notice eight paid YouTube applications of which all have been created by the same author and don't seem to be different at all.

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Microsoft app launches are usually predictable. Most are offerings which aim to get us hooked on the software giant's most-prominent products, like Office, OneDrive, Outlook.com and Xbox. But, every once in a while, Microsoft does something out of the ordinary, like it wants to tell the world that, much like startups, it too is capable of intriguing and exciting things.

After launching a lovely keyboard for Android Wear, Microsoft just released a whole bunch of apps for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, made by an in-house team of "hackers, makers, artists, tinkerers, musicians, inventors" called Microsoft Garage. The most interesting offerings are Torque, which my colleague Brian Fagioli just covered, and two lockscreen apps, for Android and Windows Phone.

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Firebase, a company helping developers to produce apps and services that store and sync data in realtime, is the latest Google acquisition. With a user base of 110,000 developers three-year-old Firebase announced that it is joining Google and plans to continue the work it already does, but pointing out it will be possible to "do much more, much faster" with Google's resources and backing.

With Firebase's focus on the cloud and mobile, it is little surprise that Google's own announcement about the acquisition came on the Google Cloud Platform Blog. The two companies appear to be a good match, with Firebase's aim to "continue to be platform agnostic and provide clients for iOS, Android, the web, and more" being very much in keeping with Google's own ethos.

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Whatever your mobile platform of choice, there are some apps which are all but impossible to avoid. Some -- like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube -- have reasonably dull histories; we all know the corporations behind their creation. But there are plenty of other big names with less well known histories. A new infographic from IrishApps.org reveals the stories behind some famous titles, and reveal the fortunes they have generated.

For example, did you know that Flappy Bird was originally going to be called Flap Flap, and was put together in just two days? Or that the founder of Summly was just 17 years old when he sold his app to Yahoo? How about the fact that the Ukrainian developer of WhatsApp is estimated to be worth $7 billion?

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One-hundred and three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8.x in the last seven days.

Big news this week was Microsoft's announcement that Halo: Spartan Strike will be released on December 12, 2014 for Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x.

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In times of natural disaster and chaos, people are increasingly turning to social media for news and updates. But while Facebook is a handy way to keep up to date with the latest news about Ebola, earthquakes, and other problems, it's also a valuable means of checking up on loved ones to make sure they're OK. Now the social network has a new tool that makes it easier than ever to let your friends and family know that you’re safe if you happen to be in or near a problem area.

It’s a simple idea. Facebook uses your statuses and check in details to determine where you are. If you happen to be in a disaster area, a message will pop up in your account or mobile app asking if you're OK. You can then indicate that all is well and your friends and family will be able to see that there is no cause for concern.

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If you’d like to share personal photos, but only briefly, then a service like SnapShot can help. Images are visible for only a set period of time before they disappear forever. (In theory, anyway.)

Yovo for iOS is based around the same idea. Take an image, add a caption or blur, set an expiry time and select your recipients. But it also includes "D-fence", a clever technology which prevents users taking clear screenshots.

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One-hundred and two in a series.  Two weeks to go and we have reached the two-year milestone.

Last week was rather slow in terms of new apps and games that found their way into store and this week continues the trend. The popular VLC Media Player app for Windows 8 was updated this week introducing support for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The developers resolved several crash issues on top of that which should improve the stability of the app significantly. Then again, still no sign of a Windows RT version.

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As enterprises move more and more of their mission-critical workloads to mobile applications, the need greatly increases for a solution that collects mobile application behavioral analytics and continuously manages the performance of mobile applications in real time.

Beyond the application’s performance, information about real-users’ behavior and interactions with an application can be tremendously valuable. Each user’s click deploys millions of lines of code, and with real-user monitoring capabilities, those clicks and code can be used to trace a plethora of information about that user.

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Today, Nokia officially brings HERE to Samsung Galaxy smartphones, expanding the reach of its powerful mapping software outside of Windows Phones and handsets that bear the Nokia branding. For the time being, the app is exclusively available in the South Korean maker's app store for Galaxy devices, but, later, it will make its way to other Android smartphones as well.

The HERE app may currently be labeled as a beta, but it does not skimp on features. It arrives with pretty much all the major features that Windows Phone users are enjoying from the HERE suite, which says a lot about Nokia's plans post-Lumia. Let's take a look.

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Everyone understands how important apps can be for engaging and empowering customers, employees and partners, but less well known is the difficulty of delivering apps that meet the promises and expectations of the companies that design them.

Many enterprises are struggling to build apps on time, on budget, or with the intended business impact. Our latest research shows the extent to which global businesses are failing to meet their expectations when deploying apps. A quarter failed to meet their timeline, a fifth overran on their budget, and a similar proportion delivered fewer apps than planned. In total, almost half (45 percent) of all businesses failed in some way to meet the criteria for success in the following areas: app quality and performance, business impact, number of apps delivered, project cost and time of development.

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One-Hundred and first in a series.  Welcome to this week's selection of the best apps and games that were published to Microsoft's Windows Store.

Big news this week was the release of the Windows 10 Technical Preview. It introduces two changes from an apps point of view that are noteworthy. Apps can be run in windows now and the Start menu displays live tiles.

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As any Facebook user knows, 'liking' content online has become almost second nature. Facebook has Likes, Google+ has +1s, and various other variations exist. But it is Facebook's Like button that reigns supreme -- regardless of the privacy concerns it may raise. Today Facebook is expanding its Like feature so that mobile app developers can take advantage of it. Not just content with giving web users the chance to indicate their approval of a particular Facebook post or online article, it is now possible to 'like' any piece of content within a supported app on iOS and Android.

It's a feature that is likely to be picked up very quickly by game developers, so you can expect to see notifications in the near future letting you know that your Facebook friends like level 118 of Candy Crush Saga. The feature was previewed earlier this year, but is now being made available to any developer who wants to use it. Facebook says:

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Having unveiled Windows 10 yesterday, Microsoft today welcomed a new addition to the fold in the form of Sway. This is the latest member of the Office family and it's being billed as a way to "reimagine how your ideas come to life". What does this actually mean? In many ways, Sway is an extension of OneNote. It's a web-based way to collect content, store images and text, add videos, and generally piece together everything you might need for a presentation, project, or idea. Sway is currently a preview product and, in keeping with Microsoft's "mobile-first, cloud-first world" there's a strong focus on cross-platform compatibility and cross-device syncing.

Sway is an interesting blend of existing Microsoft products, but it also brings in some new ideas. It's integrated with OneDrive, and has the note-taking features of OneNote. The various templates that can be used to present the data that is collected gives it something of a feel of PowerPoint, but it could also be used for very simple planning and project management like a cut-down, accessible version of Microsoft Project. It's all web-based and Microsoft is touting it as a "new way for you to create a beautiful, interactive, web-based expression of your ideas".

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