If you love 20-year-old Japanese role playing games, we’ve got you covered. If your idea of fun involves the boys of summer, we have help on that front, too.
Finally, a video-oriented app from one of America’s favorite faux newsmen. The Colbert Report is a free offering for iPhone and iPad; it doesn’t offer entire episodes, but it does give users lengthy clips from them, including both Stephen Colbert’s standalone segments and excerpts from his end-of-show interviews.
One of our favorite music apps to debut in the last year was Blue Note by Groovebug, a subscription-based service that offered access to much of that famous jazz label’s catalog. Concert Vault for iPad is also built on the Groovebug platform, giving users paid access to live performances from artists in a range of genres, going back decades. Subscriptions cost $4 a month, or $40 a year.
Not gonna lie: At $16 a download, Square Enix is depending heavily on some combination of nostalgia and addiction to power sales of Final Fantasy V on the 20th anniversary of its original Japanese release. No need to worry about the uncanny valley here: This is old-school RPG action, with graphics to match.
Maybe it was the leather stitching that took skeuomorphism a step too far; maybe it was that only one of our friends ever signed up for the service, but it’s been awhile since we used Apple’s free Find My Friends app. Here’s the opportunity for a second chance: This week’s update lets you tweak location-based notifications, allowing you to specify just how big a location you want to use.
One of the best newsreading apps for iPad and iPhone just got better: The free Flipboard app was already awesome for taking your social media feeds and turning them into magazine-style layouts for leisurely reading; now you can save your favorite links to new digital magazines of your own creation, either for private reading or to be shared with the world. The art of digital information curation may be about to take another step forward.
An app we saw demonstrated in February at Macworld/iWorld has finally come to market. The free Glide iPhone app combines video and texting functions: A Glide user can “broadcast” a short video to a select friend or group of friends—if the recipient is online, that video will launch on their iPhone within seconds. And if not, it’ll wait in the cloud, to be played later when the user checks messages. Responses can be offered in nearly real time, but the chat isn’t live.
Baseball season officially leads off this weekend. Major League Baseball offers apps that let you enjoy games remotely, either with the video or audio feeds— MLB.com At Bat for iPhone and iPad, pictured—or at the ballpark with MLB At The Ballpark for iPhone. The video and audio features each come as part of subscription-based packages.
Yes, your iPhone can keep keep you safer. The $2 Panik app literally sounds an alarm if you’re attacked, blaring out an alert if the user shakes it to activate while being stalked by a bad guy. This week’s update include new social networking features: It sends an alert to automatically broadcast on Facebook if you’ve activated the alarm.
This $3 app for iPhone and iPad is one of the better Twitter clients out there. This week’s update offers push notifications, shows user banners on profile pages, and allows discussions to be emailed or shared via Storify.
History Channel’s new app features that network’s programming … Washington Post for iPad (pictured) features a facsimile of that day’s print edition. … the Sunrise calendar app now offers LinkedIn integration … and Google+ features new photo-editing and sharing features.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.