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The Kwikset Kevo Bluetooth-enabled door lock is the kind of tech that reminds us that we're living in the future. With one of these installed in your home, you can get inside just by tapping a finger against the lock. Before you panic, this only works if your phone is in range and on the right side of door (i.e. the outside).
Brits have been able to stream BBC audio content to the iPlayer Radio app for a couple of years now, as long as they're using a phone. Now the company has decided to spit out an alternative made just for tablets, and it's included a few new features to boot.
LG G2 owners on the Un-carrier's network with a tendency to fly often are in for a treat. T-Mobile is now rolling out an over-the-air update that will add Gogo inflight texting support to the device. Users will not only be able to stay in touch with folks on the ground, they won't have to pay anything extra for the privilege.
DIRECTV Android App Gets 13 More Live Streaming Channels Including MSNBC, Showtime Showcase, And QVC
DIRECTV has added the ability for its customers to stream thirteen additional channels to their Android devices. The Play Store page doesn't contain an extensive list of which ones are new, but it does mention MSNBC, Ovation, QVC, and Showtime Showcase. All of these are available inside the home, with only QVC accessible outside of the home as well.
Minecraft is what you make it. Mojang has excelled at creating an open world game that captures the hearts of children and grown-ups everywhere, but it has done so without a memorable plot lingering in people's minds. What if it weren't just the game's unique visuals that stuck with people? What if there were something more? Enter Minecraft Story Mode, a collaboration between Mojang and developer Telltale Games that's set to arrive in 2015.
The latest Minuum update is a good one for people who speak multiple languages. This third-party keyboard's developers have added in experimental simultaneous multilingual support. Now you can type away at the single row of characters at the bottom of the screen and receive recommendations from two or more languages at once.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, perhaps surprisingly, began its life on a Nintendo platform: the original DS. Over half a year later, a version made its way over to the PlayStation Portable, and an iOS version appeared only a couple of months after that. Since then, nearly five years have passed, and Rockstar is finally sharing the game with the millions of Android users roaming the globe. The title can now be found in the Play Store.
There's this company that has created these nifty little Bluetooth-powered tags that you can attach to things to help you find them later on. Say you lose you keys all the time, want to be sure you don't misplace your laptop, or can't risk losing your backpack on a college campus—just slap one of these tags up there and you should be good to go. That's the idea behind Tile, whose little Tiles now work with Android.
Version 1.2 of the IFTTT Android app has appeared on Google Play, and its developers have touched up the visuals a bit. We're not talking a big redesign here, but sometimes that's a good thing. Here the UI for tweaking recipes has changed ever so slightly. You can see the difference below.
Fleksy 5.0 is now up on Google Play, and it comes with more than just its usual promise to speed up how quickly you type. The team has added extensions to the third-party keyboard, which allow it to do things ranging from adding a number row to inserting GIFs and launching apps. It's great functionality, and if you've yet to give Fleksy a chance or you've been taking an extended break, now would be a good time to give it another go.
Coming in four years after the previous skirmish, Brothers in Arms 3 has stormed into the Play Store with a battalion of fresh troops, air support, and vastly updated graphics (erm, there goes the metaphor). That last point is the real draw here. Gameloft teased Brother in Arm 3's eye-melting visuals over the summer, and the final product hasn't fallen too far off the mark. The studio has taken its time with this game, and it shows.
Over the summer, Google bought Songza, a music streaming company that provides playlists suited for certain moods and times of day. The Big G has left the service running, but that didn't stop it from integrating the functionality with Play Music several months later. This brought recommended playlists to the "Listen Now" area of the Android app and website for listeners in the US and Canada. Now the functionality has expanded to the UK.
A number of our readers have witnessed a change after opening up the Facebook app. The social network is apparently testing out an updated version of the user interface that sports a flatter look and more colorful, circular icons. We wouldn't call it a big Material redesign, but it does show signs of trying to better fit in.
This week, HTC is offering its accessories for 50% off. The list contains cases for various HTC phones, a battery pack, chargers, and RE camera attachments. The Nexus 9 keyboard case is also included, meaning you can get the $129.99 product for a more reasonable (but still pretty pricey) $64.99.
Google has pushed out a number of tweaks to its suite of mobile office apps: Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Even Drive, the place where edited documents are stored, hasn't gone untouched. Some of these features are nice to see, so let's dive in.
Do you remember the end of 2012? Android still ran Jelly Bean (no make that Jelly Bean, or was it Jelly Bean?). A 5.5-inch screen was as big as phone's got, and the mere promise of the Pebble had people virtually throwing money at their screens. Then in December, Instagram introduced a couple of new filters into its mobile app.
Big tech companies are hesitant to admit when a competing platform offers something that they don't. But the folks at Pebble are more than ready to take advantage of the functionality introduced by Android Wear. The team has pushed out a beta that lets the Pebble not only interact with notifications, but respond to them in a manner akin to an Android Wear watch.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy released in the early 2000s remains a testament to the way films can make worlds come alive right before your eyes. J.R.R. Tolkien described the landscapes and people of Middle-earth with more than enough detail (seriously—we got it, dude) to paint their images in your mind, but there's still something spectacular about seeing battles fought out on-screen. And at roughly three hours long, you feel like you went on a journey too by the time each one is over.
Business owners already keep up with Yelp, as reviews can make or break sales. But at the end of the day, the mobile app remains a consumer-facing piece of software, encouraging users to check out which establishments are hot and leave their own feedback.
Jules Vernes' novel Around the World in Eighty Days is an old book, and like most old books, it reads like one. You can pick it up and work through its pages if you're committed, but inkle, the creator of the Sorcery series, has made a modern-day adaptation that is much easier on the eyes. In this choose-your-own-adventure adaptation, you try to make the right decisions to successfully circumnavigate the globe as quickly as possible (but preferably in 80 days).