Instagram now lets you share stories you're mentioned in.

"Starting today, when someone mentions you in their story, you'll be able to share that photo or video into your own story." Instagram is bringing this new feature to its app today on Android and iOS. They announced this in a blog post yesterday. Users that get mentioned will receive a notification in their Direct messages thread and will see an option to add that content to their own story. In addition, the user will be able to "rotate and position it and add creative tools like text or stickers on to it as well." Followers who see the story will also see the original poster's username and get the possibility to follow them. Instagram says this feature only works for public accounts.

This seems to be a server-side update. However, make sure you grab the latest version of the app in Google Play Store.

Twitter introduces "bookmarks", a "read It Later" of sorts.

Twitter announced in a blog post yesterday the introduction of a new feature dubbed "Bookmarks", which will let users save Tweets for later. Say, you came across a Tweet about an interesting article and can't read it right away, simply bookmark it to get back to it later. "Bookmarks" is a sort of 'Read it later' feature, similar to how Pocket app works.

The steps to bookmark a Tweet is made easy with the new share icon under the Tweet. Select "Add Tweet to Bookmarks" and it will appear under the profile icon menu. Twitter says the "bookmarks" are private and can be removed at any time.  The new share icon also lets users share via direct message or to other social platforms, email and messages.

'Bookmarks" are now rolling out globally to any Android, iOS devices as well as Twitter Lite and Twitter mobile website. I have not received the update yet. If you're like me, check Twitter in the Play Store as the update may show up anytime from now.

Google Photos AI-powered archiving is rolling out now.

Google just made archiving photos a tad easier with a feature update rolling out now for Android, iOS and the web version of Google Photos. We take pictures of memorable moments and also of receipts, notes and other file types. However, we don't necessarily want to see them all mix up together. The new Archive feature will help handle all that and put some order in Google Photos.

The manual archiving is still there should users want to remove some pitures out of the main display. The new feature will use machine learning to find those photos you most likely would want to archive. Of course, users will still be able to review the suggestions and remove any photos they don't want archived. Archived photos can still be found under Archive in the app or on the web or when searching for them.

The feature is already available for Android in Google Play Store. Give it a try and keep your Google Photos main display neat.

Source: Google Photos

Apple Music for Android gets new design and provides lyrics for you to sing along as you listen.

Having to Pay Apple to stream music on my Android device is kind of a bummer to me and I have Google to blame for not opening up their Music service to my region. The funny thing is that I've never used Apple Music app on the iPad I once owned, but with Google still denying me access, I had no choice but to subscribe to Apple's service to listen to music and I like it. Should Google finally open up their music service in the region, I'm just going to ignore it. That aside, lets look at the update Apple published to the store today.

This is a major update which raises the version number to 2.0 and the most striking change is the app design which is similar to Apple's Music app for iOS. Apple just does not give a damn to Google Material design. Anyway the latter is not a requirement to get apps published in Google Play Store, but are guidelines for developers, should they choose to use the material design. 

In addition to the design change, Apple Music will now also show the lyrics for the songs we listen to and which be be helpful as we sing along.

The Hamburger menu has also been revisited. It now shows less categories. In fact, the entire app looks less cluttered, making navigating titles fast and easier.

Here's the complete change log:

An all-new design brings greater clarity and simplicity to Apple Music:

Now Playing. Read lyrics for songs as you listen.

Library. Navigate your music easily and see the Downloaded Music you can play offline.

For You. Get recommendations for playlists, albums, and more—based on music you love.

Browse. Listen to new music first, plus playlists for any mood or activity.

Radio. Tune in to Beats 1 shows or listen to stations for any genre.

Download or update Apple Music in Google Play Store and get an individual membership for $4.99.

Google Sheets now supports rotated text, accounting number formats, thicknesses and double borders.

Not all can afford Microsoft Office or Office 365. Google, thankfully, offers a free option that works on the web, a Android phone and Apple's iPhone. While Google productivity apps do not match Microsoft's offer yet and is even far from it, it is still an alternative to consider with Google constantly adding new features to its productivity app. Today Google has updated Google sheets app with new features based on users feedback. 

Users will be able to rotate text in Google Sheets cells to fit long header names into thin columns. This feature only works on the web, meaning you cannot rotate text on an Android device. The rotated text will show on any Android device though.

Google also made it easy to add currency symbols within the same monetary cells amounts. Again, this feature is available only on the web version of Google Sheets. Additionally, users will get to choose several border styles, including thicknesses and double borders. This feature is available in Toolbar > Borders > Borders Style.  

Google also added the following features:

• Support for using a mouse with the Sheets Android app
• Ability to view and select existing custom colors in the Sheets Android app
• Ability to drag and drop rows and columns in the Sheets Android and iOS apps
• Formatting suggestions in Explore in the Sheets iOS app

Google Sheets is available free for download on Google Play Store.

Slowly but surely, Google is catching up with Microsoft offerings.

Source: Google

Google releases its video calling app Duo to the world.

Announced and demoed during its developer conference, Google finally made its Duo video calling app available to the public yesterday. The app is being gradually released and thus is not immediately available for all to download - It is still not available in Mauritius yet.

Google is presenting Duo as the simplest to use video calling app. The app is launched on Android and iOS: "Video calling is the next best thing to being with someone in person, but too often it can be a frustrating or complicated experience." Duo aims to make 1-to-1 video calling as natural as regular calls with all what is needed is a phone number.

Duo will use both data and/or Wi-Fi to handle calls without dropping calls. Should the network be choppy, Duo will adjust to that too by reducing video resolution. Google wants to make sure users enjoy the best video calling experience. Google also introduces a feature called Knock Knock "which lets you see live video of your caller before you answer, giving you a sense of what they're up to and why they want to chat. Knock Knock makes video calling more spontaneous and welcoming, helping you connect with the person before you even pick up."

If you're concerned about security and privacy, Google has you covered. Duo supports end-to-end encryption.

Google Duo is available for download in the Play Store. However, if it still shows as coming soon, hit that register button to get notified when it becomes available.

Source: Google

Apple Music for Android update fixes a playback issue and albums appearing in unexpected order.

Apple Music is still in beta on Android and you might want to give it a try as Apple is still offering a free three months trial before you decide to pay for a subscription plan and enjoy all the music you like among the 30 million songs in the catalog.

Apple offers three memberships subscription you can choose from:

Individual Membership
For $9.99 per month > For less than the price of most albums, you get access to the full Apple Music library, expert recommendations, our take on the best music and on-demand radio stations.

Family Membership
For $14.99 per month > The whole world of music for the whole family. Up to six people can enjoy unlimited access to Apple Music on their devices.
Student Membership
For $4.99 per month > Get the complete Apple Music experience with personalized recommendations, the best new music, and more at a price designed for students.

As stated above, the Apple Music app is still beta and Apple is regularly offering updates ta make the experience as enjoyable as on iOS, the OS that powers their iPhones ad iPads. The update they published today does not introduce anything new but fixes a few things like a playback issue where songs skip over the first two seconds of music. There is also a fix "where albums added to a playlist appear in an unexpected order."

Grab the update for Apple Music Beta in Google Play store.

Source: Apple

Amazon Kindle for Android updated with new navigation experience called Page Flip.

Amazon is offering a new navigation experience to its Kindle app for Android and iOS, including its Kindle family of e-readers. Called Page Flip, the update is already available in Google Play for download. However, I'm am not seeing any of the new features in the app though.

Here's what's new with Page Flip. Besides the obvious flip gesture we're accustomed to thanks to FlipBoard, the updated Amazon Kindle makes it easier to "save your place" and pin your pages.
Say you want to reference a page, a chart or a picture on another page, Page Flip will pin your page to the side of the screen when you swipe away. Tap the pinned page again to get back to where you stopped reading. 

Page Flip also includes a bird's eye view feature that makes looking for a picture or passage easier and quicker to find.

Check out the video below to see Page Flip in action before heading to Google Play store to get the update.

Pocket Casts updated with new features & Shifty Jelly engages in reality distortion field...

Pocket Casts, my favorite podcast app on Android - and Windows Phone - was updated today. The last one was posted in April in which the team laid the groundwork for a "tastier future" and that may well be the beginning of a series of updates to bring the app to another level considering the wit they put in the change log:

Build 324! Our most exciting build yet. Chamfered edges. Thinner. Lighter. Less Ports. Improved Camera. Comes in one new colour (yeah you spell it with a 'u' America). Now hand over your money, plz. K thx bye. [Engages Reality Distortion Field].

Unfortunately, their plan to get your money did not work out as planned:

What...that didn't work? Odd it works for Apple all the time! Honestly though we fixed a truck load of things in this build, and we hope you like that it's now the best build of Pocket Casts ever, marketing be damned :)

Pocket Casts is an excellent podcast app with some nice features like the ability to sync your podcasts among your devices, whether they run Android, Windows and iOS; Add to that support for playback sync. You start listening or watching a podcast on one device and pick up where you stopped on another device. Pocket Cast is sold at $3.99 in the Google Play Store and is money well spent. Too bad they don't offer a trial.

Google Slides gets Q&A feature and turns your mouse as a laser pointer.

Google is adding an excellent feature to Google Slides that will let presenters accept questions from their audience right on their computers, Android mobile devices and iOS devices. In order to start a Q&A session on an Android device, follow the steps in the help section. The link also provides step-by-step instructions for the PC and iOS device as well.

Check out the video below to see how the feature works:


As a bonus, Google is also turning your mouse into a laser pointer that can be used in slides on the web. Choose the laser pointer option from the toolbar, and a red dot will appear on the screen and move along with your mouse so your audience knows where to look.

The update is gradually rolling out in Google Play store.

Source: Google

Google adds 54 new country-based holiday to the Calendar app.

I started an app project over year ago on Windows Phone, which was a local holiday app which is still available today in the Windows Store. The idea came because I was frustrated that builtin calendars on my phones did not have country's holidays listed or in the case this feature was there, Mauritius was not in the list of supported countries. So I made the app to save holidays to my Outlook.com calendar which then replicated to all my devices whether they be Windows Phone, Android and iOS. Today, Google is going the same way by adding 54 new country-based holiday to the Google Calendar app, bringing the total of holiday calendars to 143, including Mauritius. This new feature is already available for download in Google Play store.

Follow the steps to add or change National holidays:

1. Open the Google Calendar app
2. In the top left, touch the Menu icon > Settings > Holidays.
3. Touch the name of the current country.
4. Touch a new country to add it, or touch the currently selected country to remove it.

Source: Google

Flipboard to lure new users via sharing to Facebook Messenger.

Flipboard just made it easier to share articles to Facebook Messenger on Android and iOS. According to them, "readers love sharing articles to Facebook Messenger" and it was possible to do that before this update, but Flipboard decided to enhance the experience between Flipboard itself and Facebook Messenger.

The current version of the popular flipping news reader does let you share articles to Facebook Messenger, but your friend only receives a link. This update improves on that by bringing some visuals to it and lure non Flipboard users to download and use the app. 

Once you share an article and your friend opens it in Messenger, they will be taken straight to the article in Flipboard. If Flipboard is not installed, they will be prompted to download it and then share the article. A great way to attract new customers. Flipboard also says that "opening an article from Messenger also unlocks a small new share icon in Flipboard to make it easier to continue the conversation with your friend and quickly share stories back."

Now you can proceed to Google Play Store to update Flipboard on your device and help them get more users by sharing your articles.

Google introduces Smart Reply in Inbox by Gmail.

There are times where I find myself with a new email on my phone that requires an immediate answer, not necessarily a long reply, but a short one and these situation very often arises when I'm moving around in a crowded environment and makes typing very difficult. Enter Smart Reply in Inbox by Gmail.

In an update that will be made available later this week, users of Inbox by Gmail will be able to easily reply to messages on the go. Smart Reply will suggest three short responses based on the email you get. "And for those emails that require a bit more thought, it gives you a jump start so you can respond right away." How does it know which responses to propose? 

Here's what the blog post says about the background work that makes Smart Reply possible: "There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes to make Smart Reply work. Inbox uses machine learning to recognize emails that need responses and to generate the natural language responses on the fly. If you're interested in how Smart Reply works, including how researchers got machine learning to work on a data set that they never saw, you can read more about it on the Google Research Blog." 

Again, Smart Reply will be rolling out later this week to Android and iOS in English only for the time being.The blog post does not say anything about availability in other languages. If you haven't tried Inbox by Gmail yet, check it out in Google Play Store.

Source: Gmail blog

TuneIn Radio gets playback & buffering improvements, updated widgets.

TuneIn Radio brings the world's largest collection of radio stations to your Android device, that's over 100,000 stations for your listening pleasure with categories including songs, podcasts, shows and more. The app is also cross-platform, therefore available on Windows Phone, iOS and Windows. TuneIn also has a social touch in that you can share what you're listening with your followers and vice-versa. The Android version of the app is also Android Wear friendly and works with Chromecast too.

TuneIn Radio has an update available in Play store with the following improvements and fixes:

• playback & buffering improvements.
• updated homescreen widgets.
• chromecast improvements and bug fixes.
• several bluetooth bug fixes.
  

TripAdvisor for Android gets offline support for maps and reviews.

In the digital age, reading travelers' reviews before scheduling your vacation is made possible by such apps like TripAdvisor. This helps not only potential customers choose the best travel and hotel experience, but also let hotels or any hospitality business to easily reach out to the billions of people on the get set to go on vacation. TripAdvisor can also make these businesses freak out when someone's vacation goes awry. This is understandable when you consider that the app has more than 50 millions downloads on the Play store alone. TripAdvisor is a multi-platform app, so you can find it on Apple's iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone. The app has been updated today.

Travelers will be happy with this update that brings offline support. They will be able to download maps before they leave home, thus save on data charges and not having to wait until they get home to share their vacation experience with the world. There's more though. The update also allows users to download reviews for free; Handy while you travel. Make sure you update the TripAdvisor app before you leave home as this update also lets you make restaurants tables reservations worldwide.

Check out the change log:

• Offline support
• Download maps, reviews, and your saves for over 300 cities worldwide and take them with you while you travel. All for free!
• Redesigned flights experience with a clean and intuitive presentation, leg by leg shopping and improved filtering.
• Now you can find and reserve tables at thousands of restaurants worldwide.

Source: Google Play Store

LokLok - You're going to love this Android app.

The Play store is home to millions of apps, but there are some apps which are so cute you just want to share with the Android community. It would be useless to keep it to yourself anyway since we live in a connected world. LokLok is one of these apps. LokLok just let you connect with your friends via your lock screen. Imagine you want to remind your friend to bring a bottle of red wine to a party you're both attending. There are a couple of scenarii that applies in this situation.

You can send a sms or email to your friend or create a reminder in your calendar and add your friend. Basically there are quite a few solutions that are available to you on your Android device. The usual stuff. How about changing that.

LokLok has been design to offer you an new way to leave a note, a drawing and photos on your friends lock screen. All that is requires is that you both install LokLok which is currently in beta and therefore is free for tablets and phones. It is for the time being an Android exclusive. After you've both installed the app, you start by drawing something on your lock screen. You double tap the screen to do that. Once done, whatever you've drawn or written will appear your fiends lock screen like magic. Chances are that your friend checks his phone several times a day. So once he unlocks his Android device, he/she will see your reminder. How about that?

Check out the two videos below to see how it works and how to connect your lock screens.





After watching these videos, head over to Google Play store to download LokLok. Enjoy!
 

Skype WiFi finally lets you sign in with your Microsoft account.

Before this update, Skype WiFi did not support signing in with a Microsoft account. Unlike Skype itself which got this feature almost immediately after the company got acquired by Microsoft. I found this annoying since I switched to using my Microsoft account with Skype and after some time of use, I forgot what my Skype account ID and password was. So I couldn't get into Skype WiFi last year during a trip to Europe. You can imagine the frustration. All this will change now that Skype has added support for Microsoft accounts to Skype WiFi.

What is Skype WiFi? It's a free software that works with Android and iOS that lets you connect to Skype WiFi enabled hotspot around the world and use your Skype credit to call your loved ones. Skype has over 1 million hotspot.

Reduce your data roaming costs when you’re abroad: 
• Use Skype WiFi to connect to WiFi hotspots at hotels, airports, train stations, bars and restaurants – available at over 1 million hotspots worldwide. 
• Just one tap to connect – then browse the internet, check email, use Skype, check Facebook, update Twitter, upload photos, download music or ebooks. 
• Only pay for the time you’re connected - there are no limits on the amount of data you can upload or download.

Download Skype WiFi free in Google Play Store.

FIFA launches its official [World Cup] app for Android.

With the 2014 world cup behind the door, it comes as no surprise to see the world football regulator release its own app for fans worldwide to keep tabs on the event on their phones and tablets. But since the major event is still months away, it does have another purpose and deserves a place on your favorite device now as it provides you with news, stats, live score for the world's top leagues, an all-in-one app for soccer fans around the world. But there's more.

The app will give you access to the FIFA final draw live on December 6 which will determine the fate and path of your national team in the World Cup 2014. The app will also provides access to videos from FIFA TV studios and archives but does not mention live streaming of games.

The FIFA app is free and can be downloaded on Google Play Store. An iOS version is also available.