Apps
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Silent Echo lets you chat with Alexa over Slack
Want to chat with Alexa via Slack? A new bot called Silent Echo now makes that possible. The idea is that there are times when you want to interact with Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa, but you don’t want to do it by voice. For example, if things are too noisy in the room for Alexa to properly hear you, or, alternately, if you need things to be very quiet. The service… Read More
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Alexa is coming to the Amazon app on Android, starting this week
This spring, Amazon introduced Alexa to a wider audience by making the virtual assistant a feature that could be accessed within the retailer’s main shopping app. However, that integration – which allows you to ask Alexa about news, weather, basic facts, or use the assistant’s add-on “skills,” among other things – was available only for iPhone users. Read More
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Google brings its GIF-making Motion Stills app to Android
Google last year introduced an app called Motion Stills that aimed to help iOS users do more with their Live Photos – including being able to crop out blurry frames, stabilize images, and even turn Apple’s Live Photos format into more sharable GIFs. Today, Google says it’s bringing Motion Stills to Android, along with a few changes. Obviously, Android users aren’t in… Read More
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With new tappable gestures, Tinder’s photos become more like Stories
Tinder today is rolling out a new navigational experience for users of its mobile application that’s designed to make it easier to move between profile photos and profile text. In the updated app, photos now take up more screen real estate – that is, they extend to the edge of your phone’s screen. The way you move between photos and profiles has changed too, as you now tap… Read More
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Stash raises $40 million Series C to make investing more approachable
Micro-investing app Stash has raised an additional $40 million in Series C funding, the company announced this morning, following rapid growth in terms of sign-ups from new users – 86 percent of whom are first-time investors. The startup’s app is designed to help ease people into investing by allowing anyone to start with as little as $5, then build a portfolio you contribute more… Read More
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Outlook’s mobile makeover includes a much smarter search, powered by Microsoft Graph
Microsoft today unveiled a redesigned version of its popular Outlook mobile app for iOS and Android, which most notably includes a more intelligent search feature, powered by Microsoft Graph, along with other changes to navigation and conversations. Microsoft Graph, the company’s technology used to make productivity applications smarter, is being used to turn Outlook’s search… Read More
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Kids app maker Toca Boca debuts its first consumer product collection at Target
Toca Boca, a hugely popular kids’ app maker, has grown to over 170 million downloads across its line of 38 apps, which 13 million children use every month. Now, the company is transitioning its brand beyond the digital space to become a maker of real-world products, as well. In an exclusive deal with Target, announced today, Toca Boca will launch its own collection of… Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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Facetune maker’s newest app, Enlight Photofox, is a powerful image editor
Lightricks, the maker of the popular selfie-correcting app Facetune, is debuting a new photo-editing app today called Enlight Photofox. This is the second time that Lightricks has launched the next generation of an existing app as an entirely new, standalone application — a strategy that’s still somewhat rare on today’s App Store, outside of sequels to games. Read More
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The new Taster VR app brings VR content from the BBC to your smartphone
The BBC today released a new mobile application that will allow it to experiment with transforming BBC content into VR experiences. The app, called BBC Taster VR, comes from the broadcaster’s testing ground for new ideas, Taster, and uses technology from EEVO to publish videos in a VR format. Initially, Taster VR only offers a couple of projects, one of which is 360 video from the… Read More
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Google’s new experiment, Triangle, lets you block individual apps from using mobile data
Google recently began testing a new tool for helping people better manage the mobile data used by their smartphones. The new Android app, called Triangle, is currently being tested in the Philippines, and lets you do things like view your data balance, see which apps are accounting for the most data usage and even block individual applications from using your mobile data. Read More
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Twitch’s mobile app is adding live streaming, dark mode and more
Amazon-owned game-streaming site Twitch today announced a series of changes coming soon to its mobile application, the most notable of which is the ability for broadcasters to stream directly to their channel from the app itself. That doesn’t mean you can live stream gameplay as of yet, though. Read More
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Tinder’s new subscription, Tinder Gold, lets you see who already likes you
Tinder this morning announced it will begin testing a new service called Tinder Gold in select markets, aimed at increasing the number of paying users for its popular dating app. With Tinder Gold, which will be an upgrade available to both existing Tinder Plus subscribers as well as free users, users will have a direct way to see all those who have already swiped right on their profile, through… Read More
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Dating apps are embracing video
Dating apps are, in their own way, a form of social networking – especially as they expand into new areas like friend-finding or professional networking. So it only makes sense that they would adopt video as well, given the growing popularity of the format on social apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, as well as the industry’s larger embrace of “Stories” as a… Read More
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App economy to grow to $6.3 trillion in 2021, user base to nearly double to 6.3 billion
The global app economy will be worth $6.3 trillion by 2021, up from $1.3 trillion last year, according to a new report this morning from app analytics firm App Annie. During that same time frame, the user base will almost double from 3.4 billion people using apps to 6.3 billion, while the time spent in apps will grow to 3.5 trillion hours in 2021, up from 1.6 trillion in 2016. These… Read More
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Uptime, YouTube’s experimental app for watching videos with friends, opens to all
YouTube’s experimental app Uptime, which lets you watch videos with friends while reacting and commenting, has now opened up to all users. The app was first launched in March of this year, from Google’s internal incubator, Area 120, as a means of testing a more interactive and social way to watch YouTube. However, it initially required an invite to use it. That requirement was… Read More
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Microsoft Pix can now turn your iPhone photos into art, thanks to artificial intelligence
Microsoft is rolling out an update to its AI-powered photo editing app, Microsoft Pix, that aims to give Prisma and others like it some new competition. While the app was originally designed to enhance your iPhone photos by tweaking things like color, exposure and other variables, the newly updated Microsoft Pix will now let you have a little more fun with your photos, too – this time… Read More
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Twitter tweaks its design again in an attempt to woo newcomers
In an effort to better cater to newcomers, Twitter once again is redesigning its app across mobile, desktop and the web. The revamp isn’t a radical departure from its prior look-and-feel or user experience – unlike when it introduced its own stories-like feature called Moments, for example, or when began reordering the tweets in your timeline. Instead, the update involves a series… Read More
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The chat fiction apps that teens go crazy for
Have you ever heard of chat fiction apps? If not, then you’re probably not a teenager. These digital book alternatives, which are presented as text messages, have been dominating the app charts for the past few months. The format may seem a little strange for people who are used to paperback books, but at least young people are reading. These are the popular ones. Hooked Hooked is the… Read More
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