Google will be porting over their brand new music subscription service to the iOS world in a few weeks. With a flat price of $9.99, you get all you can eat music for downloading and streaming. As Microsoft’s Xbox Music service is not available on neither iOS nor Android, the only main competitor in this space is Spotify. Does Google have enough clout to sway the Spotify base as well as capture new comers? We’ll see in a few weeks!

You rely on your smartphone for many things. One area that is lacking is integration with your TV watching. At best, the smartphone was used as a simple remote control to change channels. New apps make use of your phone as a search tool and scheduler. Finally, the phone and TV might really work together.

DirecTV Taps Into Your Phone

This summer, DirecTV will release into beta its latest app, DirecTV Voice. They have been working with Nuance, creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking, to create a voice controlled app to search DirecTV channels for your favorite shows. Their goal is to finally get rid of scrolling through the program grid displayed on the TV screen to find programs.

By using voice recognition, they are trying to also get away from pushing buttons or sliding through nested menus. Nuance is the county’s premier voice recognition specialists so they plan this release to have a high rate of success with this voice-driven application. Think of it as Siri with infinite knowledge of TV shows and movies.

Continue reading »

There is no doubt that iOS is in desperate need of upgrading. It has been around too long in it’s current state. Android and more specifically Windows Phone have a much more intuitive and modern look. Apple even borrowed some of Androids notification goodness in iOS 5. Now it seems that Apple may borrow some of Microsoft’s Metro UI flava for it’s own in the upcoming release of iOS 7. 9to5Mac is stating that multiple sources are claiming the new interface and general design will be “very, very flat”. While other sources are stating that the new design "loses all signs of gloss, shine and skeumorphism"

Jony Ive, who is now in charge of the iOS design team is said to favor the Metro minimalistic style and bring elements of that UI into Apple’s new UI that should be previewed at the WWDC 2013. Macrumors has a pretty cool mockup of the new UI and I can already tell you I am not a fan. What makes the “flat” style work on Windows Phones is that it is now tunable to your own desire by being able to make the truly live tiles bigger or smaller and move them around at will.

If these formerly called icons could be more like Android widgets and have the scalability of Windows Phone I think it would be more of a hit. It is also being stated that the "new panels [that] swipe from the left and right side of an iOS device’s display."

So it could very well possibly be that iOS 7 falls flat in a good way, but Apple better have something more up it’s sleeve than the mocked up image or it could find it’s not so shiny new UI falling flat in a bad way.

The popular Android personal assistant has not come to the iPad and iPhone but I don’t look for it to replace Siri anytime soon. Even though I have a love hate relationship with Siri there is a deeper integration that with Google Search which is where Google Now is buried. First thing is to fire up your iOS device and head to iTunes and either download or update Google Search. Once downloaded and you fire it up, the Google Search screen is pretty boring. At the bottom of the screen there are some notifications that you can lift up (swipe) and will display multiple cards. The cards will appear based off your location results and selections for example with sports and teams. When you are done with a card you can swipe it the heck out of there. Which is kind of neat. I’m still working with Google Now for iPad but so far I am pretty underwhelmed and the Android experience with Google Now is much better.

Apple has jut released iOS version 6.1.3 that you. An now download that contains various bug fixes and a maps update for Japan and other Asian locations. Turn by turn directions and 3D landmarks. There are also some security holes plugged up so if you are one if the many who have taken advantage if the evasi0n jailbreak then you better hold off for a while until it is verified to work. There was rumors that this version of iOS deals with the vulnerability that was exploited to allow the jailbreak. If you are an owner of a jail broken iPhone 5 with iOS 6 better hold off a while.

A friend posted on Facebook this morning that she & her husband had been awoken at 3:30am by their dog barking. After yelling for her to shut it, they went back to sleep.

When morning came, they had to apologize to the dog: the friend’s purse, sitting by the door, had been stolen. (Luckily, the barking seems to have been enough – the Macbook Pro 4 feet away was untouched).

Enter Find My iPhone to save the day! With the police right there, they pinged the phone and realized it was only a few short blocks away. They got near, set the audible alarm and presto! The police found the purse, iPhone and all, under a doghouse, waiting to be picked up by the thief.

So is Find My iPhone worth it? She might say “Yes” now. And I hope that the dog is getting a nice, juicy steak tonight!

Me, I’m moving my purse’s resting area away from the door immediately.

With phones like the Lumia 920 and the iPhone 5, leaving your camera at home in favor of the one on your device is a lot more easy these days. There are a few of us looking to take that to a different level, enter the tripod. We’ve done some podcasting using the Lumia 920’s video capabilities, although impressive, the issue was clear, we had nothing to hold the thing.

This tripod titled JackPod is a bit different than what you might have seen in the past. It uses the phone’s headphone jack to mount the device. The tripod itself looks very well made, but that idea of having excessive weight on the phone’s headphone jack seems like a suspect one to me. Check out the video below.

More info available at the kickstarter page.

If you are looking for a visually stunning game with lots of action to play on your iPhone or iPad, then check out Infinity Blade which is free right now at the App Store. This Epic Game has you pitted against the God King and all his Titans. There are lots of weapons, armor, helmets, shields and magic rings that you need to master to become stronger and beat the higher ranking Titans and the God King himself unless he beats you and you start a new bloodline all over again. This game has been updated several times with lots of new levels and Titans to contend with. It is a great precursor for Infinity Blade II which is even better than the first. At the low cost of free this is a no brainer, go grab yourself a copy and even challenge your friends in the Arena!

Get it by Clicking Here

Not too long ago were treated by Adobe when they made their still powerful CS2 available for free to everyone. I actually still use CS2 because of the ability to use layers and it simply still does everything I need it to do. The problem was that I use my laptop less and less now that I have an iPad and exchange for my emails. As a sales and marketing professional, the majority of my time is spent on the phone and answering emails. But occasionally I still need to do some editing for articles and advertising of course, working here at Mobility Digest. Back in December, Adobe released Photoshop Touch for the iPad which included layers and some other handy options. Today however Adobe has released Photoshop Touch for smartphones with layers. iPhone and Android fans can now take advantage of this software for $4.99 which is half of the amount Adobe asks for the iPad or tablet version at $9.99.

Here is some of the things you can do with Adobe Photoshop Touch for smartphone users:

+Enhance images using popular Photoshop features such as layers, selection tools, filters, tonal and color adjustments
+Apply effects and add graphical text for endless creative possibilities
+Edit images as large as 12 megapixels with layers
+Combine images together quickly using the Scribble Selection feature, and easily refine your selection with the Refine Edge tool
+Automatically sync images to Adobe Creative Cloud™ with free 2GB of storage

Adobe Photoshop Touch for phone is immediately available in the Apple App Store and Google Play for US$4.99. For iOS devices, the app requires iOS 5, iPhone 4S and iPod touch 5thgeneration; Android phones must run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later.

If you found it hard to share content from your news feed on Facebook you are in luck because there is a new update today that is going to help us fat fingered guys! Instead of having all the buttons on the left hand side, they now stretch across the entire bottom. This is what it looks like now:

And this is what it looked like before:

It looks really nice on the iPhone as well. So get updated and head into the weekend sharing more social media on Facebook. While you are at it, show us some love and follow us on Facebook

http://www.Facebook.com/MobilityDigest

Or on Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/MobilityDigest