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6 Essential Apps You Need to Try in 2015
Batmobile iPhone 6 case is themed after the Tim Burton movies
The Pirate Bay is once again back from the dead
Google Now Opens Support for Third-Party Apps

6 Essential Apps You Need to Try in 2015

Posted: 02 Feb 2015 10:00 AM PST

With so many apps available, it can be hard to choose what to download. We’ve put together a handy list to make it easier to find new apps to play with.

The iOS App Store and the Google Play marketplace both have over 1 million apps available and according to statistics from 2013, there are over 20,000 apps released every single month. This means that the app release rate is rapidly increasing; faster than any of us can keep up with.

While this generally a good thing as we all appreciate having more apps to chisel away our free time it also poses significant problems. How do we keep track of all of these wondrous timesinks? How do we find out which ones are rubbish and which ones are worth our time?

Without help, both of those are impossible which is why we’ve put together this list of six essentials apps that you need to try in 2015. (All of them are available on iOS and Android).

1. Crossy Road

Why did the rubber chicken cross the road? She wanted to stretch her legs! We’re all familiar with those chicken/road jokes, they’re the epitome of cheesy humour. We pull them out at parties thinking we’ll be the next Jimmy Fallon.

Developers Hipster Whale have gone one step further though, having turned the joke into an app. In Crossy Road, your goal is to cross as many roads, paths and rivers as you can without being squashed by a vehicle, drowned in the river or being gobbled up by the eagle that swoops down if you take too long to cross.

There’s an entire range of kooky characters including Ol’ Man Ben who cackles as he moves, a hipster whale that takes photos as it flops across the road and, of course, a chicken. The game is free to play and it becomes addictive as you try and beat your high score and unlock all of the characters by collecting coins for a lucky dip.

2. Hola

Hola is a must download app for anybody who surfs the web. One familiar thing to those who use the Internet regularly is region locking. Region locking is when you visit a site only to find that certain content is either unavailable in your territory or you find yourself redirected to the local version of the site. Typically, you find this problem when you’re trying to watch videos on YouTube (where certain videos are blocked because of copyright) or Netflix (where the shows and movies offered in the US might be different to your local offerings).

Hola helps you to get around that though as they have a mobile version of their widely popular browser plug-in. Just fire up the Hola app on mobile and you can choose a server in a specific location and fire up another app or use the browser and access the region locked content. Oh, and Hola is free too!

3. Threes!

Apple called Threes! the best iOS game of 2014 which is incredibly high (and much deserved) praise. In Threes! you have to slide numbered tiles to make multiples of three. 1s slide into 2s, 3s match up with 3s and so on and so forth until the 4×4 is filled with tiles and you can’t move anywhere else.

Threes! is deceptively simple to play but getting a high score (the higher the numbers on the board, the higher your score) will take patient and tactical thinking. The beautiful design and soothing music means that it’s an absolute delight to learn. Threes! costs just under $2.

4. B612

B612 is the selfie master’s dream. Instagram has incredibly basic editing capabilities, with just a small selection of filters offered, but that’s where B612 comes in.

There are over 50 different filters available, each making your face look as lovely as possible and they’re incredibly varied too which means that your selfie will look good in any lighting. B612 also makes life easier by featuring various sizing options (you can also stitch multiple selfies into one) and a one touch shot so you no longer have to angle your hands weirdly to reach the camera button – in B612 you can just tap anywhere on the screen. And, once you’re done you can export your masterpieces to another social media site, including Twitter, Gmail and, of course, Instagram.

B612 is available for free.

5. Duolingo

If you are learning a language (or would like to) then you absolutely have to download Duolingo. Completely free, Duolingo will teach you a language for free with games, tests and personally tailored challenges to help you progress through your studies and to make sure that you aren’t learning and then forgetting your new vocabulary.

The only downside to Duolingo is that right now only European languages are available. However, if you want to learn French, Spanish, German or Portuguese (there are several other languages on offer, listed here) you must download this.

6. last.fm

Just like apps, finding new music can be a bore or it can be frustrating as you cycle through playlist upon playlist looking for the perfect tunes to compliment your Finnish death metal interests. last.fm takes out all of the guesswork as it keeps track of which artists you listen to and compiles recommendations and radio stations based on your tastes.

It also helps you find out which artists are your favourites as it notes down plays. Handy for ‘I’m a better fan than you!’ arguments too.

last.fm is available for free.

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Batmobile iPhone 6 case is themed after the Tim Burton movies

Posted: 02 Feb 2015 08:48 AM PST

Everything about the iPhone 6 screams “go big or go home”, especially for the Plus version, so the cases have no choice but to follow suit. See what happens once you decide to give your iPhone the Bruce Wayne treatment right below these lines.

What you see in these pictures is the greatest iPhone 6 case in the universe, themed after the Batmobile from the classic Tim Burton movies – it is meant only for those users who have given up on carrying their iPhones in their pockets and would rather protect what they love with the caped crusader’s theme.

Because this is a near perfect replica, it doesn’t come cheap. A batmobile case will set you back some $50 USD, but once you see the amount of detail, the built-in LEDs, and the projector that displays Batman’s logo on any surface, you will understand where your money is going. We’re assuming that the phone will get rather unwieldy with such a massive case, but that’s entirely the point: be as over the top as Batman himself.

See a few more takes and angles of this amazing case in the video below. And, if you like dubstep, you’re in for a treat.

Via Toy-People

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The Pirate Bay is once again back from the dead

Posted: 02 Feb 2015 05:00 AM PST

The Pirate Bay just refuses to stay dead, and even after getting raided by the police they’re back to business – as usual.

Because websites based around torrents are incredibly hard to kill, The Pirate Bay is now back in action after getting raided and shut down by the police some seven weeks ago. The popular website is now back up in its usual domain, with an intact database and torrent list as if nothing had ever happened. The site had gone down after their servers were raided at a data center in Nacka station near Stockholm, Sweden.

While this had been their hardest blow to date, they jumped back up as if it was nothing, ready to contend with the likes of Demonoid for the title of the “comeback kid”. And, while the community did their part to keep the torrents alive and create their own mirrors and replacement databases, now users can just go back to the real thing, operated by the original team even. It would seem that piracy or not, the website is once again here to stay.

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Google Now Opens Support for Third-Party Apps

Posted: 01 Feb 2015 12:50 PM PST

Airbnb, Lyft and other 38 apps are getting their own cards in Google Now, so that Android users have all the info they need, exactly when they need it. This is particularly useful for owners of Android Wear smartwatches.

Third-party apps as Google Now cards are really not a surprise, as the Mountain View company has been planning to add this feature for quite some time now. What is a surprise, however, is the impact this new update has the Android Wear platform, where the Google Now cards represent an essential element of the UI. Think of it this way: the latest Google Now update makes Android Wear smartwatches even smarter, and that’s not something you get to see everyday. After all, the wearables already have all the hardware they need for performing well for years to come (after all, you’re planning to play FPS games on your smartwatch, are you?) so it’s now the duty of app developers to make these devices better.

The 40 3rd-party apps that are getting support for Google Now (which you can see in the above and below pictures), have been cherry-picked, to ensure that Android Wear users (as well as the ones of the smartphone variety) are getting a lot of added value. Everything seems to be covered, from fitness tracking and language learning to online shopping, traveling and even flight searching.

Until now, Google Now has been keeping things fairly tidy, with its minimalistic design and relatively small number of cards. In this context, some fear that the app could get a little bit too crowded, but chances are that people use only a few of these 40 apps at a given time. Besides, even if you’re using all of them, you can choose which cards should be displayed. One thing I’m certain of is that this is only the beginning, and more 3rd-party apps will get their own cards.

Cortana will soon join the Personal Assistant fight, and by the looks of it, Siri will end up on the third place. S-Voice and other PA apps made by smartphone manufacturers in an attempt to put an original touch on their own devices didn’t have a chance to begin with, so the real battle is between the three giants. Considering how often Google Now is getting useful updates, it will be impossible for the other two to dethrone it.

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