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If you're tired of the standard social media experience, try Reddit. While it's not considered one of the major social media platforms, its users will tell you, in a long-form essay, that Reddit is an excellent tool to discuss everything from news and entertainment to conspiracy theories and DIY home projects.
YouTube Music rolls out shareable user profiles (Update: Easier access)
You can't follow other people yet, though
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Compared to Spotify, YouTube Music's social options feel rather lackluster, but Google is working on changing that. While you can't follow other people just yet or get a special Duo Mix for you and your special someone, you can now at least share your profile complete with your public playlists with others via links.
Telegram 5.15 lands with improved profile UI, faster media viewer, and People Nearby 2.0 (APK Download)
The Valentine's Day update also adds a slew of animated heart emoji
Telegram may not be the most popular instant messenger, but it has managed to amass a loyal group of hardcore fans over the years who prefer its capabilities over those of any competitor. Its regular, feature-packed updates probably are another reason to like the app. As such, Telegram has published version 5.15 of its product. It comes with redesigned profile pages, Instagram Stories-like media browsing, and People Nearby 2.0. To help you celebrate Valentine's Day, the release also includes a collection of animated love-themed emoji.
In what might turn out to be the most wide-reaching news of the week, Netflix has just announced that you can disable autoplaying previews. No longer will we all be forced to listen to the first few interrupted seconds of a preview before deciding there's nothing available that we actually want to watch. Hallelujah.
Welcome a fresh update of Google Maps to the world. Version 9.78 began rolling out to the beta channel last night, and with it come a few visual tweaks and a cool new feature for custom lists that shows the places you've visited. Turning to the teardown, it looks like Google will be giving contributors a little more visibility and control over their public profiles. Drivers in São Paulo, Brazil will also be getting a useful tool for navigating through or around the rodízio.
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Keeping young kids entertained is a full-time job and sometimes the only solution is to give them something to watch. If you have more than one kid, especially at different ages, that gets much harder to do because video content changes quite a bit as they grow up. The latest update to YouTube Kids is making this a little more manageable with a brand new system for kid profiles. Once set up, all kids have to do is switch to their own profile and they'll immediately get recommendations appropriate to their age.
Since the launch of Android 5.0 last month, the sheer number of app updates has been magnificent – and downright overwhelming. Believe it or not, most of the new versions haven't done much more than add Lollipop support and splash a fresh coat of Materialized paint on the UIs. Seriously, we've been checking. This isn't entirely a bad thing, as it's giving me time to work on some other projects... You'll see soon enough <wink>. But, we've finally got something to talk about with the latest release of Google Play services 6.5. Strictly speaking, a few of tidbits to follow were actually first seen in different minor releases of 6.1, but we're putting it all together here. It's time for a teardown!
Along with a handful of new tablets, Amazon has officially announced Fire OS 4 (codenamed Sangria), which it says adds hundreds of new features to the "content-forward" operating system.
Say what you will about certain social networks, LinkedIn is the one basically all of us can agree isn't any fun to use. That's not its purpose. We go there either to get a job or to tell everyone about the job we just got. It's easy for people with stable employment to end up with profiles as current as their Myspace pages.
It was a little over a month ago that Google introduced Google+ Sign-In. The basic idea being the same as it is with Facebook and Twitter: use one account to access all your sites. So, what makes this different from those other networks? Well, allegedly this will result in less social spam and a better integrated experience. Oh, and also, now that Mountain View has signed deals with Janrain and Gigya, the big red button should be just about everywhere on the internet.
[Update: It's Live!] New Google+ App Brings Better Posts, Community Management, Location Sharing On Your Profile And More
New Google+ App Brings Better Posts, Community Management, Location Sharing On Your Profile And More
Today, Google announced a new update to the Google+ app that will be rolling out later today that brings a host of new features. For starters, the posts have been redesigned to look a little cleaner, provide more content up front, and are easier to interact with. For example, you can now swipe between photos in an album, and tapping content should take you directly to where you want to go. The current Google+ app has a problem with requiring the user to jump through several hoops to get to the meat of a post, so hopefully this makes things easier.
Llama Updated With Jelly Bean Support, Holo Inspired UI, Event Sharing, And More [Updated]
Llama Updated With Jelly Bean Support
Update 2: Llama has been returned to the Play Store this morning as promised, listed as version 1.2012.12.29.1412. As for the pesky silent mode/vibrate bug? This version's changelog indicates that it is "hopefully fixed."
Well, folks, we don't want to say we told you so. But if you'll take a look at any app in the web version of the Google Play Store, you'll see that almost all of the reviews have had the name entry changed to "A Google User." Try to add a review, and you'll find that you're required to do so from your Google+ account.
Finance radio! Are you excited yet? Good. Bloomberg has released an app for the company's 24 hour network of audio shows discussing economics, business, and investment. Through Bloomberg Radio+ you can either choose to listen to whatever's on the air right now, or pull from a list of on-demand shows. You can even download the episodes for offline listening.
Twitter continues its march towards being taken seriously as a social network with today's update to its mobile app that brings some interesting new profile additions. For starters, header images. With Facebook and Google+ beginning the trend, it seems a social network can't have just a profile picture anymore. Everyone who's anyone has a profile picture, and a hero image.
WhoIsIt is a new twist on an old classic: setting custom ringtones for certain contacts (or groups of contacts). The twist is that you can assign custom ringtones and vibrations for Gmail, SMS, and MMS, on a per-contact basis. Not too shabby, especially for a free app. Other features include: