Apps

Google released a big update for its Google+ apps for iOS and Android today, bringing a wealth of new features around photos, location sharing, and the product's overall readability.

The photo features come from Google's acquisition of Snapseed, the company said. According to a blog post, they include basic edits like rotating and cropping photos; Instagram-like filters for the iPhone app; controls to adjust saturation, contrast, and brightness, and easy comparison to your original photo by tapping on the photo.

Google encouraged users who wanted even more control over their photos to download the Snapseed app.

Evernote Premium, the paid service from the productivity app maker, is coming to all of Deutsche Telekom's customers in Germany.

Evernote announced the deal today, saying that all of Deutsche Telekom's nearly 60 million customers will receive a one-year Evernote Premium subscription. Evernote has signed similar deals with a host of other international carriers, including NTT Docomo in Japan and Orange in France. The company ostensibly wants to be a value-add for service providers, helping it to work its way into more devices.

Starting today and running through September 25, 2014, Deutsche Telekom customers can simply download the … Read more

Evernote released a new version for Android today, bringing new photo and search features and a refreshed design to the popular note-taking app. Many of the features already exist in the iOS app, which was updated in November, but at least one is new to the company's mobile products.

The update, which also includes useful new home screen widgets, went live in the Google Play store this morning. It comes on the heels of Google's release of the Keep note-taking service last week, a product that duplicates some Evernote features and that will integrate with Google Drive.

But … Read more

In-app purchasing will finally make its way to the Barnes & Noble Nook tablet.

Nook Media, the recently formed subsidiary of Barnes and Noble, announced the news today, saying that it's partnered with mobile-payment provider Fortumo to bring in-app payments to its line of Nook tablets. Fortumo will provide the tools to developers to integrate in-app purchases. The company's platform also includes real-time data on revenue and analytics.

For the customer, the experience of in-app payments should be similar to what they've found elsewhere. The platform will allow for one-click buying; simply clicking the "Pay" … Read more

Last September, CNET's Matt Elliott told you about SnipSnap, a rather ingenious iOS app that turns printed coupons into mobile ones.

It's been a long wait, but SnipSnap has finally made its way to Android. And if you shop for anything, anywhere, ever, that should come as very good news.

SnipSnap is like a digital coupon wallet: instead of schlepping a pile of paper coupons to the store with you (or, if you're like me, forgetting to), you simply take snapshots of the ones you want, then present the app at checkout. When possible, SnipSnap cleverly converts … Read more

Dropbox's Mailbox app for iOS has just picked up its 1 millionth user.

The free app hit the iTunes store on February 7, where iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users can download it. But access to the actual service has been doled out on a first-come, first-served basis via a reservation system.

As of yesterday, 1 million of those reservations have been filled, according to a blog from the Mailbox team. But there are still a fair number of people in line.

Filling out a reservation today, I learned that around 445,500 users are ahead of me. The … Read more

Photo enthusiasts already pleased with the iPhone's generally superior camera can be forgiven for getting excited about the possibility of shooting photos in the higher-end raw file format.

Cypress Innovations on Wednesday released a new app called Digital Negative that might raise that very hope by offering a way to take photos that are stored in Adobe Systems' DNG format for raw photos. Alas, although the app does store uncompressed image data, it doesn't actually store the raw data taken straight from the sensor.

The Digital Negative app collects the uncompressed red, green, and blue color information for … Read more

When it comes to finding games for Android, everyone knows that Google Play, with all its offerings, can feel downright overwhelming. With that in mind, I'm here to help you navigate through some of the clutter.

Here are some of my current favorite games for the Android platform, displayed in alphabetical order. Of course, with so many new titles being released almost on a daily basis, there's a good chance I missed some of your favorites. So, feel free to give your thoughts and even some of your recommendations in the comments, and I'll do my best … Read more

It's official. Apple will longer accept new apps or app updates that access UDIDs. The company has set a May 1 deadline for this new policy.

"Starting May 1, the App Store will no longer accept new apps or app updates that access UDIDs," Apple wrote on its developer Web site today. "Please update your apps and servers to associate users with the Vendor or Advertising identifiers introduced in iOS 6."

UDIDs are the unique string of numbers that individually identifies each iOS device. Typically, they have been used by developers as a way to … Read more