This week’s roundup includes a new game featuring Sonic and friends, myriad updates to the Kindle book-reading app, fun with puzzles and physics in Feed Me Oil 2, and much more.
The free Days app for iPhone lets users keep an “automatic daily diary” composed of photos from your phone’s camera roll; photos taken within 10 seconds of each other can be converted into GIFs within the app. The latest update drops the need to have an account to use the app while making it easier to find other Days users to follow—just search for them by name and hashtag.
This free iPhone app guides users through the creation of professional-looking videos; the latest update includes a new video trimmer that can time cuts to accompanying music; it automatically balances and mixes the audio; and there’s also improved preview and a revamped user interface. And when you’re finished editing, the video posts automatically to YouTube.
Feed Me Oil 2 is a $3 title for iPhone and iPad, a puzzle game featuring physics that let the player interact with wind, water, and ice. (Check out this video for a better sense of the—ahem—fluid game play.) High scores can be shared via Facebook, but beware parents: There are in-app purchases that make the game easier to play—and more expensive.
How to describe Jelly? Perhaps as a cross between Pinterest and Quora—users can shoot and post photos they then use to ask other Jelly users questions involving the items depicted. Questions can be forwarded outside the app so non-Jelly users can also offer their expertise; the app works in conjunction with other social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, to expand its reach.
A whole host of updates arrived this week on Amazon’s book-reading app: Students can now create flashcards about items in their textbooks to study and prepare for tests on important concepts; they can also take advantage of improved in-book search. Other readers will find they have filters to better organize their notes; page footers indicating how much time is left in a book; and see refinements to collections.
The hedgehog is back! In this $5 game from Sega, Sonic and 10 “legendary racers” speed across land, sea, and air, each in a unique and “transformable” vehicle. Users can take on friends in four-player races, engaging both online and locally. The game is ever-changing, too, with daily and weekly challenges to keep a user’s competitive juices flowing.
Version 2.0 of this free health app offers an increased number of workout plans, more how-to videos, and a “totally redesigned workout logger” designed to offer the best possible record of your exercise.
Need a quick overview of the news? The Yahoo News Digest for iPhone offers a summary of the day’s top stories—twice a day—with each summary accompanied by a picture, graphic, quotes, and other elements, like Wikipedia excerpts, designed to give users a quick-but-thorough understanding of the latest stories.
Spotify (pictured) now offers free streaming on phones and tablets … YouTube makes it easier to access captions and subtitles … and NYTimes for iPad now lets users choose between scrolling and paginated views of articles.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.