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A new version of Google Maps landed late last night and brought with it an assortment of visual tweaks. You'll find an all new and improved look for your saved lists, plus some interesting tweaks to other small spots around the interface. There is also a pretty clear hint that we'll be able to send requests for other people to turn on location sharing so they don't have to take the initiative to share with us. There are a couple of smaller teardown topics as well.
Photo editor app Prisma has been a surprising hit on Android ever since people got wind of the limited beta test and grabbed the leaked APK, then lamented the shut down of the servers when the developers decided the beta test was over, and up until its official release a day or two ago. Even now, the servers often continue to be overloaded with plenty of requests to apply filters on top of images from everyone wanting to give this artsy app a try. Actually, part of the reason Prisma is so good is that its filters aren't simple layers and adjustments, instead there's lots of processing going on to get the result, which is why the app relies on its servers and why it has been overloaded.
Google's general intent with Google Play Games is simple. Google wants to provide a solid backend with common game features to developers who want to make more compelling games. Once developers integrate these features, Google's user base offers a cohesive score/competition experience.
After its update to 5.0 on iOS about a week ago, Pocket has been upgraded for Android as well. I'm a long-time user of Pocket, and while my use case is probably different from the typical user's (there are probably only about 10 items in my list at any given time), it's clear to me that Pocket is always trying to find new ways to make simple save-and-read functionality better and more convenient. To that end, Pocket's new update offers users a new "Highlights" selection, which will pull and organize the best stories from your list, placing them in categories like "quick reads," or sorting by source, trending status, or subject matter (like "#photography"). Pocket says that the highlights feature can learn and adapt to your habits in the app, making for better selections.
If you've spent any time gaming on Android, you probably remember OpenFeint. Nearly every major game integrated it in some way, usually allowing players to log in with a single username, collect achievements, and post scores to a global leaderboard. It was handy for what it did, but if you didn't care about competing, it felt a lot like obnoxious spamware. Unsurprisingly, it closed down in December of last year. Today, however, it's being sort of reborn as OpenKit, a project headed by one of the co-founders of the original service. Only this time, the idea is much cooler.
I was browsing the Android commit tree, as I like to do at 3:20am sometimes, and I just saw a new commit by Tor Norbye with the following description that made my heart skip a beat: "Add autoformatting of XML." This little update may not mean much to the regular folks, but to Android developers, like myself, this has been a long requested feature.
Remember the $0.01 Samsung Vibrant deal Amazon put up last week in response to T-Mobile's $99.99 sale? After running for a few days, the promotion ran out (the Vibrant is now $69.99), only to be replaced by another one, this time for AT&T customers.
Earlier today, T-Mobile ran a "huge" promotion, lowering the price of the Samsung Vibrant to $99.99 in an exclusive online deal. Since Amazon.com, Wirefly.com, and others have had the $99.99 price tag for ages now, we didn't give T-Mobile's deal much coverage (well, any coverage really). Many other sites did, however.
What a day for EVO 4G ROMs! Hot on the heels of the release of Fresh ROM for EVO, another former HTC Hero ROM developer damageless, notorious for his DamageControl Hero ROM, announced his version for the EVO.
EVO 4G users, listen up! Flipz, the creator of one of the best custom ROMs for CDMA HTC Hero - Fresh ROM, has dropped his first version of a custom ROM for the EVO 4G a few hours ago.