Mobile Apps

I haven't been thrilled with app discovery on the App Store for years, and while Apple has been tweaking things to make it better, it's pretty easy to enter the iOS App Store, look around, and come to the conclusion that only an infinitesimal fraction of 1.5 million apps must be worthy of showing of...

I enjoy music as much as anyone, though I'm no real audiophile and I have not an enormous passion for one format over another. I admire the romance of vinyl but find it unwieldy and cumbersome when digital recordings work just fine for me. The Floating Record turntable is beautiful, though, and I'm ...

To cap off Monday's wide-ranging keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced a three-pronged music initiative. "Music is such an important part of our lives and our culture," Cook said, showing off Apple's famous "one more thing" slide. Apple ex...

By the time you read this, I'll have finished swearing in the privacy of my office, and likely will have entered the acceptance stage of grief. Already, realization is dawning that I was right to withhold hope that Apple would reveal a new Apple TV at its WorldWide Developers Conference on Monday. I...

BitTorrent's Bleep, a secure peer-to-peer messaging service, last month reached the end of its third trimester in alpha testing, and an official version became available for iOS, Android, OS X and PC. The official release is the first to reach iOS. Bleep's Whisper feature enables ephemeral messaging...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Google's Android Permissions Get Granular

Google appears to be heeding warnings of security experts who say Android users need better control over what apps do with information from their phones. At I/O, its worldwide shindig for developers held last week, the company announced that the next version of its mobile operating system, Android M...

CROWDFUNDING SPOTLIGHT

Doppler Labs Kickstarts 'Bionic Ear'

Doppler Labs, known for making state-of-the-art ear plugs, on Tuesday launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Here Active Listening system, which takes noise-canceling technology to a new level. Unlike typical noise-canceling headphones, Here's Bluetooth earbuds allow a listener to customize ambient...

SoundHound on Tuesday launched a private beta of Hound -- a personal assistant similar to Siri, Google Now and Cortana -- and began fielding requests for invites. SoundHound built its music ID service on voice and pattern recognition technologies. In developing Hound, SoundHound has retrofitted that...

During its annual developers conference held last week, Google I/O, the company revealed its latest effort to drive development of Cardboard VR apps and spur the growth of VR content across YouTube. Google has released blueprints for VR headsets made of cardboard and encouraged third parties to brin...

Microsoft advanced its "if you can't beat'em, join'em" mobile strategy with Tuesday's announcement of Phone Companion, an app built into Windows 10 that's designed to synchronize information across multiple platforms, including Android and iOS. "In a multi-device world where you move between your ph...

Apple reportedly is preparing to launch an app called "Home" to act as an interface for setting up and managing smart devices that plug into its HomeKit framework. The Home app is expected to manage thermostats, smoke alarms, garage door openers, door locks, and other automated home tech. Apple alre...

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