Stitcher Radio is rolling out a new feature on its iOS app today that makes it much easier to use the streaming service while driving in a vehicle — which is exactly where radio belongs.

Unlike the majority of streaming audio services, Stitcher focuses entirely on radio shows and podcasts. The company said about 60 percent of listeners are already using the app in their cars, which is why it decided to add a “Car Mode.” Essentially what you’re getting is a new interface that makes the audio player controls easier to see, with larger buttons and very little clutter. Because when you’re driving, you don’t want to be screwing around with a hitting the wrong buttons on a touchscreen.

You can flip on Car Mode by hitting the Stitcher logo at the top of the screen, and you can operate in both landscape or portrait orientations. The new app update also includes a revised front page view with top headlines, access to an archive of favorite shows, a sleep timer, and various improvements that make playback quicker.

The updated Stitcher Radio app is available for free via iTunes App Store.

You’d think Twitter cofounder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey would be a whiz at social media. But his posts to Twitter’s young video-sharing service Vine are a mix of weirdly creepy and just-plain-boring clips.

Vine launched in January and carries an official description in the iOS app store as “the best way to see and share life in motion.” The app appears to have had a profound effect on Dorsey.

Back in late April, Dorsey admitted that he has a hard time simply taking pictures anymore and thinks Vine’s 6-second videos have changed how he sees art. He said: “I think it’s an entirely new art form, and I think it’s amazing — every picture I look at right now, I want it to move; I’m waiting for it to move. Where’s the sound?”

But Dorsey doesn’t appear to know what’s worth capturing in motion, and sometimes he’s being downright creepy.

I’ll be the first admit that I’m not that great at Vine. We all can’t be majestic Vine artists. But I don’t post Vines often, and I certainly don’t spam my Twitter followers with Vine videos because I’m bored.

For example, just today Dorsey has posted three relatively dull Vines from the same plane window:

A cursory look through Dorsey’s other Vine videos isn’t much better. Often he takes Vines where a picture would have been sufficient. Instead of a snapshot of a moment, we’re subjected to 6 seconds of some ho-hum event.

Here’s Dorsey standing in a line:

Here’s Dorsey showing off the “energy” of the Square NY office:

Here’s Dorsey looking at a street in Manhattan:

Here’s Dorsey looking at some “street art”:

Here’s Dorsey in a cab:

And then there are these creepy Vines, where Dorsey looks into the camera and captures other people behind him:

Occasionally, Dorsey does use Vine in a way that goes with the spirit of the service.

It’d be nice to see Dorsey post more Vines like these. We’re wishing you luck, Jack.

Top screenshot via Jack Dorsey/Vine

Ever felt like your favorite music app just doesn’t get you? With its latest iPhone app, Songza wants to get to know you better than ever and help find the perfect music for your mood or activity.

Songza is best known for curating playlists with more intelligence than that of Pandora or other radio services. For example, the app knows what day and time it is and pairs that with info with your current activity (working, relaxing, exercising, etc.)

On top of improving performance, the new iPhone app takes this intelligent playlist a bit further by letting you tell the app what you are specifically doing rather than it giving you pre-set options. In the App Store, Songza says:

Doing something special? From the Concierge screen on iPhone or iPod Touch, shake your device and tell Songza exactly what you’re up to; Songza will then find the right music to make it better. For example, you could enter ‘Entertaining’ and Songza will find you music to soundtrack the perfect party.

While the company has a decent web app, its mobile apps are the arguably the best way to interact and experience the service. The iPhone app has been downloaded more than 6 million times to date and has a 4.5 out of 5 rating in the App Store. It also has apps for Android and Kindle Fire.

Songza is based in New York City and was founded in 2007. The company recently raised $3.82 million in new funding, according to an SEC filing. (The company had “no comment.”)

Check out a few more photos from the new iPhone and iPad apps below.

Photos via Songza

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After attracting 5 million downloads on Android, Drippler — an app that helps you get the most out of your smartphone with tips and app recommendations — has launched on the iPhone.

Drippler’s premise is that it wants to help you learn how to use your smartphone and how to do cool things with it. It gives you one update a day (it calls updates “Drips”), and these updates are usually things like news stories, how-to articles, and apps or accessory recommendations.

The Drippler Android app was launched back in May 2012. Drippler’s Android app has a 4.7 out of 5 rating from nearly 30,000 reviews, so clearly it has struck a chord with Android phone owners. Now it hopes to do the same with iPhone users.

Matan Talmi, Drippler’s co-founder and CEO, told VentureBeat that the app has been so successful as a “guide for new phones” that some smartphone sales representatives at Best Buy and Verizon stores have started telling people to download Drippler as their first app.

Talmi admitted that the app is currently is not making any money, but he sees the potential for monetization down the road with paid app recommendations.

“We’d like to have a sponsored model eventually,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of interest from brands, OEMs, and carriers for placement.”

Photos via Drippler

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs will be leaving his position in a matter of months, but he’s still willing to show up at events and give his take on his company and the competition.

Kovacs spoke today at the D: Dive into Mobile event in New York City and talked on a number of topics, including the upcoming Firefox OS, the potential for Firefox on iOS, and why he is leaving the company.

One of the most interesting things he spoke about today was why Firefox has not been released on iOS while Google has offered its Chrome browser on iOS for some time. He confirmed earlier reports that Apple was blocking its submission due to Mozilla wanting to use a different web engine.

“iOS has a policy, generally speaking, where you have to use their web engine,” Kovacs said. “Our web engine is different. … I would love to see far more energy behind iOS. We refuse to make the policy switch.”

On the topic of Firefox OS, the upcoming operating system from Mozilla, Kovacs said the first phones running it would be released in five countries this June. The first five countries will be Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain. But the U.S. will not see any action until 2014.

“This is a version one product,” Kovacs said. “Short term, it will be a brand appeal. But the innovation will explode later.”

A Mozilla spokesperson reached out to us a few hours after Kovacs spoke, saying that Kovacs “mispoke” about the release timing and provided this carefully worded statement:

“As Mozilla announced on February 24th, the initial countries where Firefox OS devices will be available to consumers are Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. Exact launch timing is decided by and dependent on our partners.”

On stage, Kovacs confirmed that Sprint will be a U.S. launch partner for a Firefox OS phone.

When asked why he is leaving the company later this year, Kovacs said he had done what he came to do in terms of helping Mozilla grow and move into mobile.

“I learned in college that you don’t want to stay at a party too long,” Kovacs said. “I was hired to be an agent of change. We’ve grown, we’ve made inroads in mobile. … It’s time for me to move on to other things.”

The reason Kovacs announced the decision much earlier than a normal depature is because it jibes with Mozilla’s dedication to openness.

“We’ve been having this discussion for a long time,” Kovacs said. “It felt disingenuous to keep this private.”

Gary Kovas photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Rumors have been swirling for ages that Microsoft would finally release its flagship Office apps for iOS and Android in the near future. But a new report indicates these apps won’t actually arrive until fall 2014.

Microsoft has been pushing hard on the mobile front for the past year with the launch of Windows 8, the Surface tablet, and new versions of Office that are better for touch. It also just launched a new version of its SkyDrive app for iOS, showing that it doesn’t mind bringing some of its services to the millions of iPhone and iPad users out there.

A version of Office for smartphones already exists with its Windows Phone OS. So where is Office for iOS and Android? ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports that a leaked roadmap shows their release date in fall 2014, quite a long ways from now. Here’s what the leaked timeline indicates:

Gemini Wave 1.0 (October 2013): Windows Blue app updates

Gemini Wave 1.5 (April 2014): Office for Mac; Office RT refresh; Perceptive Pixel support; Windows Phone support refresh

Gemini Wave 2.0 (October 2014): Outlook RT; Office for iOS/Android

Microsoft didn’t deny the new rumored timeline but simply gave us this bland statement: “We don’t have any information to share about the next set of updates to Office,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Avi Greengart, research director for consumer devices at Current Analysis, told me back in February that he thought the iOS and Android versions for Office were on the way.

“If Microsoft doesn’t put Office on those platforms, it risks losing that franchise,” Greengart said.

Microsoft also reportedly has new versions of Office in development that will take full advantage of Windows 8 and touch screens. The timeline shows these apps coming out in October 2013. This makes sense because Microsoft already offers full Windows 8 apps for Lync and OneNote, and high-profile apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint should be coming down the pipeline eventually.

Tortoise photo via Shutterstock

Social video startup Streamweaver released a major update to its free  iOS app today that makes it even easier for people to record a single video using the combined angles from each iOS device’s camera.

Streamweaver makes video recording a collaborative process that’s similar in scope to a broadcast news team. But instead of using 2-4 cameramen shooting a different angle, Streamweaver uses people with iPhones to sync up when recording 60 seconds of a specific event at the same time — thus eliminating the laborious and time-intensive process of video editing. Once the recording is finished, each iPhone user’s camera angle can be customized into various split-screen views within seconds. The service should prove pretty useful for capturing sporting events, concerts, and other performances.

The startup initially launched a beta version of the app back in September 2012, which was entirely devoted to the multi-camera recording functionality via iOS devices. The recent update, however, really builds out Streamweaver as a fully functional social network. Both the app and the newly launched desktop website allow you to access a feed of popular videos created by other users, a timeline of all your previously created videos, user profiles and the ability to edit videos from the desktop. But one of the bigger changes is a new location-based, simplified method of connecting with other users to record a multi-angle video. Basically, you’ll be able to connect whenever friends or family are within proximity to you rather than having to accept them.

“After listening to our base of users and looking at the process, we just decided that having Streamweaver sync automatically when you’re around other people just made more sense,” Streamweaver COO Jay Hake told VentureBeat. “It reduces the barrier to entry when you want to record a split-screen video.”

The presence of a full-fledged social network is a smart move for Streamweaver, which has plenty of competition from more popular social video apps like Viddy, Tout, and Klip. However, none of those services can offer the multi-angle/camera split-screen video functionality, which gives it an advantage. (The only social video service that offers a comparable split-screen experience is Vyclone.)

Hake said that the startup isn’t in a rush to add heavy integration with major social networks, specifically Facebook’s Open Graph. Yet, the updated app does include the ability to sync your Streamweaver account with YouTube, thus allowing your videos to gain traction virtually anywhere. Previously, the sharing functionality sent out a link to a webpage where the video was hosted.

Founded in 2012, the Nashville, Tenn.-based startup currently has seven full-time employees. Streamweaver has previously raised $1.3 million in funding to date from former Facebook chief security officer Chris Kelly, Byron Smith, INCITE Co-investment Fund, Tennessee Community Ventures, and Mountain Group Capital.

Check out a few more screenshots of the new app below.

There are horrible, terrible ways to advertise a new iPhone app. And then there is this new YouTube ad by Domino’s, which has become a viral sensation because it’s so amazingly bad.

Domino’s Japan President Scott Oellkers tries his best to read a script about how exciting the company’s new iPhone app is, and it falls flat. It doesn’t make much sense that Oellkers is the one introducting the app, considering it heavily features Hatsune Miku, a popular anime character who helps sell music software.

What’s sad is that Domino’s Japanese app does do some interesting things. On top of ordering pizza from it, you’re able to take pictures with Hatsune Miku and even watch an augmented reality performance by Hatsune Miku on your phone.

One thing to keep in mind: Perhaps the ad is more palatable to the Japanese market than it is with Americans. If you can’t understand what Oellkers is saying, the ad may not be as terrible.

The ad has attracted more than 230,000 views since its debut on Wednesday.

Combining peanut butter and chocolate is as powerful a match as digital comic books and the iPad  — especially when those comics are made by Marvel.

For years, early adopters of Marvel Comics’ “unlimited” digital comic book service on the web have been clamoring for the company to add support for the iPad, and today those fanboys are finally getting their wish.

The unlimited comics service first launched in 2007 with a modest 2,500 comic books that readers could access online via a Flash application. Currently, the service has over 13,000 comics available via a HTML5 web app (as well as the new iOS app) and costs consumers $10 per month, or $60 per year. But if you’re hoping to get any of the newer content that’s been published recently, you’re out of luck, as Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited (now officially called Marvel Unlimited) is primarily made up of classic stories from the company’s early days as well as a bunch of stuff that’s just worth checking out. And if you’re worried about burning through thousands of digital books, rest assured that Marvel does add new content on a regular basis.

After playing around with it for a bit on my iPad, I can definitely tell that there’s a big difference in quality when compared with Marvel’s official comic store app that’s powered by ComiXology. The Marvel Unlimited app is very bare bones and resembles much of what you’d expect to find on the web app.

There is no “guided view” feature (which zooms in one panel at a time), and because everything is streaming, pages are sometimes slower to load than what you’re probably used to on the official Marvel Store app, and sometimes I had to reselect on some books after getting an error message. Initially, pages were popping up fine, but I’m assuming everyone else is also trying to pull the same content on, which is keeping me in perpetual loading.

And while I do think Comixology’s comic image pages are higher quality, it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. I probably wouldn’t have even thought about it if I was casually reading. But honestly, this isn’t meant to be a premium product and its a bit unfair to compare it to more sophisticated applications for mobile devices.

Right now, Marvel is offering a selection of free comics through the app to give you an idea of what it can do. Those that already have a paid subscription do get access to additional features, like the ability to download comics to your device for offline viewing (which also fixes the slight delay when turning pages.) One big set back to this is that you’re restricted to saving six issues to your device at a time. I’d imagine this will increase as Marvel developers get their barrings and realize how people are using the service on a touch screen.

The new Marvel Unlimited iOS app should be available in Apple’s App Store for free across all Apple devices now. For a closer look check out some screenshots embedded below.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Here’s an obvious tip for big brands: Don’t let your iPhone app sit in the App Store for years without updates. Chipotle apparently didn’t get that memo, but today it finally updated its iPhone app to support the iPhone’s “Retina display” and iOS 6.

As first spotted by Chipotle enthusiast/Gizmodo reporter Sam Biddle, the app hadn’t been updated since 2009. Because of this, it has been nearly unusable for years, even though it is useful for people who want to order food before going to a store or who want to find nearby Chipotle locations.

The updated app includes the following features:

NEW: option to select brown rice
NEW: support for Spanish and French language
NEW: mobile ordering for Canada, UK, and Paris locations
NEW: pay with Gift Card option and Gift Card balance lookup
NEW: added links to Nutritional & Allergen Info under Food description
NEW: dynamic menu displaying specific items available by location
NEW: improved navigation

While it took forever and a half to update the app, there are still some things it doesn’t have. Chipotle fans complained that the app still does not have the ability to order from the kids menu and does not include the option to order quesadillas.

We asked Chipotle why the update took four years and if a kids menu and quesadilla update would happen sooner than 2017.

Chipotle Communications Director Chris Arnold would not tell us why the app update took so long, but he did say the company expects to add a kids menu option “in the coming months.”

Check out pictures of the new app below.

Chipotle food shot via Bobby Parsa/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Restaurant waitlisting app NoshList has brought its service to iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android devices so more eateries will be able to seat diners in smarter fashion no matter what devices they own.

NoshList helps restaurants get rid of paper-and-pen customer waitlisting and instead go digital. Diners instead can be notified via text messaging that their table is ready. The service launched a premium version with more features like unlimited two-way texting and table number assignment in November. The premium service costs $49 per month per restaurant.

Previously, NoshList required restaurants to use an iPad to run the service. But Firespotter Labs CEO Craig Walker told VentureBeat it wasn’t enough. With so many different types of smart devices out there, restaurant owners might prefer to use an iPhone or Android device they already own to take customer names and numbers.

“We want to do everything we can to help restaurants with multiple devices, not just iPads,” Walker said.

NoshList has helped more than 8 million diners find tables since its launch a year ago. It is now in use at 2,250 restaurants in the United States. In November, 4.5 million diners and 1,600 restaurants had used the app. Some of its high-profile customers include the Red Robin and Buffalo Wild Wings chains, and Walker says he’s testing the app “with all the big guys.”

NoshList’s parent, Firespotter Labs, has raised $18 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures. The company has also developed other notable apps, including UberConference, Nosh, and Jotly. Firespotter Labs is based in San Francisco.

Photo via Firespotter Labs

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

At long last, Adobe has launched Photoshop Touch for the iPhone and Android phones in a bid to make its flagship photo-editing software available across the most popular smart devices in the world.

“This will bring the power of Photoshop to millions of people worldwide,” Photoshop product manager Stephen Nielson told VentureBeat. “My phone is the device I always have with me so I can be creative no matter where I am.”

Adobe has offered Photoshop Touch for iPad and Android tablets since October 2011, showing its willingness to make its powerful software available outside traditional PCs. That application has been quite popular — it made Apple’s Top Apps of 2012 list, and the latest version of it on the iPad has an average rating for four stars.

But smartphones are much more ubiquitous than tablets, and if Adobe truly wants to be part of the mobile conversation, it needs to have a presence on the iPhone and popular Android phones. Adobe previously only offered an extremely minimal app called Photoshop Express for iPhone and Android phones, but it did not encompass all the features a regular Photoshop user might want.

Photoshop Touch for iPhone and Android does at least offer some satisfaction for those that thought Express wasn’t up to snuff. It lets you do a lot of what you do in Photoshop Touch on the iPad and Photoshop on the desktop. It’s simple to start new projects, and popular tools like layers, levels, cropping, clone stamp, adjustments, and filters are all right there in the app and relatively easy to access and control with your fingers.

One especially cool feature is the ability to shoot a picture from your camera and have that automatically placed as a layer in your project. So if I was in the middle of a project on my phone and happened to be sitting in a park, I could see a live camera feed behind my layers, take the right shot, and then I can have a snazzy tree-and-grass background.

The app is also designed to be part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, so you can start a project on the iPhone or Android and then work on it from a different device like the iPad or your desktop computer. Creative Cloud offers users 2GB of free storage so you can have one folder available everywhere for photo projects.

Maybe most importantly, it’s easy to share your photo projects from the iPhone version of Photoshop Touch on Facebook and Twitter through the built-in iOS integration. To share a project on Instagram — one of the most popular photo-sharing apps out there — you’d need to save your photo to the iPhone’s camera roll and then select it from there inside Instagram. Thankfully that’s not too hard.

“I myself use Instagram all the time, but sometimes I’ll use Photoshop Touch to touch up a photo,” Nelson said. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

Nelson said that Adobe not only wants to make this a fulfilling experience for the Photoshop faithful but also use this as a point to introduce some new users to Photoshop.

“On the tablet version, we’ve seen a lot of creative professionals and photographers using it, but there are also a lot of aspirational Photoshop users too,” Nelson said.

Adobe has made this a powerful application that needs a lot of processing power. So the app only runs on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and Android phones running version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later. This clearly limits the number of people who will be able to use it (think of all the iPhone 4 users out there), but Nelson said the experience has to be good to live up to the standards of Photoshop.

Photoshop Touch will cost $5 on both iPhone and Android. Here’s a full list of features from the iOS app (the list is almost the same on Android):

• Use popular Photoshop features, such as layers, selection tools, adjustments, and filters.
• Improve your photos using classic Photoshop features to bring out the best in your photography. Apply precise tone and color adjustments to your entire composition, a particular layer, or a select area.
• Create something other-worldly using painting effects, filter brushes, and more.
• Make your images pop with graphical text. Apply strokes, add drop shadows and fades, and more.
• Take advantage of your device’s camera to fill an area on a layer with the Camera Fill feature.
• Quickly combine images together. Select part of an image to extract just by scribbling with the Scribble Selection tool. With the Refine Edge feature, use your fingertip to easily capture hard-to-select image elements, like hair.
• Start a project on your iPhone or iPod Touch and finish it on your iPad or back in Photoshop at your desk using a free membership to Adobe Creative Cloud. Your projects are automatically synced between your devices.
• Free membership to Creative Cloud provides 2GB of cloud storage.
• Work on high-resolution images while maintaining the highest image quality. Images up to 12 megapixels are supported.

Photo via Adobe

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Enterprise cloud powerhouse Salesforce has added new tools to its Service Cloud that help address customer service problems while people are in mobile apps, making it possible to reach customers that are increasingly glued to phones and tablets instead of PCs.

“We’re doubling down on mobile and this is no exception,” Alex Bard told VentureBeat. “This is an Apple-like experience for collaboration and solving your issue.”

Salesforce and its CEO Marc Benioff have been betting on mobile apps and experiences for a long while. The outspoken Benioff even suggested back in October that Windows 8 would be “the end of Windows,” because mobile devices had become the go-to devices for workers and consumers. And in this case, Salesforce is betting further on mobile by making Service Cloud way more usable with smartphones and tablets.

So let’s say you spot a suspicious bank charge on your account while you are inside your bank app on the iPhone. Salesforce’s update makes it so that the bank can easily add some HTML5 code to the app and you can talk to customer service rep via chat with one click.

“We provide the best platform that can be integrated into your company’s apps,” Bard said. “These can be integrated easily into an app or a mobile web page.”

Chatting with customer service via your app isn’t the only new feature to Service Cloud. The update today also include three other big updates:

• Co-browsing for sales associates: Co-browsing tech lets you and a customer associate browse on the same screen. Service agents can collaborate with customers about how to use an app by working directly with them. Input from either person registers on the screen.
• Mobile Service Communities (forums): Salesforce’s Communities are essentially forums that allow an app’s users to communicate with each other and let the company moderate those communities. If you have an answer about how something works in an app or a game, you can simply go to the community and ask.
• Service Cloud Touch for mobile devices: The company’s Service Cloud Touch app, which helps engage with your customers and leads, has been optimized to support the iPhone, iPad, Amazon Kindle, and Android devices. Ideally, this will make service agents more mobile.

The feature on here that sticks out the most here is co-browsing. Bard told VentureBeat that this is the first real use of the co-browsing tech it wanted when it bought GoInstant for $70 million in July 2012. It’s particularly cool because you’ll be able to simultaneously move the screen with an associate to show them the problem. Then the customer rep can address the problem faster.

“This creates a much better experience for answering questions and doing things inside a mobile app,” Bard said.

Salesforce says co-browsing will be generally available in the second half of 2013, while the other three features are now available today.

Service Cloud has more than 34,000 customers including GE, Chipotle, Comcast, Activision, KLM, Yamaha, and TED. It claims that its clients see a 37 percent decrease on average in first call resolution time and a 36 percent decrease in support costs.

Photos via Salesforce

Facebook’s mobile app for iOS has been updated with several new features today, including placing free calls over data.

Facebook’s less-popular Messenger app for iOS previously got free voice calling, but now it looks like it wants all of its members to call their friends through the main FB app as well. As long as you have an active Wi-Fi or data connection, you’ll be able to place a call through Facebook with the ease of an app like Skype or Vonage. Calls only work in the U.S. and Canada so far.

On top of free calling, the application has also improved buttons to like, comment, and share posts.

Woman using call me gesture via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Updated at 3:25 p.m. PT after service was restored.

Hot iPhone app Mailbox suffered a major outage today, but the app is now back online for most users.

Orchestra CEO Gentry Underwood said the exact issue that crashed the application hasn’t quite been determined, but it is figuring it out and will stop new users from getting in for now.

“We hit some limits that we need to spend more time understanding, so we’re going go keep the reservation system paused until we know more,” Underwood told VentureBeat.

Prior to the outage we spoke to Underwood, who said his 15-person team was doing everything they could to address the problem.

“We’re busting our asses to get it back up,” Orchestra CEO Gentry Underwood told us while the outage was occurring earlier today. “The system is down for everyone right now. All of our team is working on it.”

Mailbox attracted a lot of attention when it debuted last week to astounding demand. The attention mostly came from the promise that Mailbox could help an average Gmail user manage their email better than any other iPhone app. It offers stripped-down email messages to make them easier to read, a “snooze button” to push back a message’s placement, and smart push notifications.

When we first wrote about it last week, more than 380,000 people were waiting to use Mailbox. Now the queue sits at about 800,000 people. “Throttling new users as they are added to the system has been incredibly powerful at keeping it from falling over,” Underwood said.

When the app launched, some folks who were placed in the long queue accused the makers of doing the slow rollout to generate buzz. But Underwood said the purpose of the line was to create a controlled flow of users and make a crash less likely. Turns out even with the line, the system was still vulnerable.

“Even with rate limiting in place, we can’t foresee every problem,” Underwood said. “The team has been working 24-hour shifts since launch.”

Mailbox’s Twitter account responded furiously to user complaints and questions, trying to keep disgruntled users at ease.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Crowdfunding darling Kickstarter has finally launched an iOS application that accesses many of the site’s core features, including tracking projects you’ve started or funded, commenting on projects, and finding new things to fund.

The launch of the mobile app helps Kickstarter fans and creaters tools to connect with the platform no matter where they go. It’s a wonder Kickstarter didn’t have the app available before now, considering how much buzz it has received in the past year.

New York-based Kickstarter has helped many high-profile projects come to life through the power of crowdfunding, including the Pebble smartwatch, the Ouya game console, and a number of huge indie games.

Kickstarter raised $10 million in funding in 2011 from Union Square Ventures, Zach Klein, Caterina Fake, Chris Sacca, Jack Dorsey, and others.

The app is now available in the Apple App Store. Check out screens of the new app below:

Tablets and smartphone are often heralded as more efficient forms of technology,unless your kids are using them to watch R-rated movies or anything containing naked bodies unbeknownst to you.

Well, Hulu has come up with a solution of sorts in the latest update to their Hulu Plus iOS app, which features a new “Kids Lock” mode. Much like it sounds, the new mode will prevent children from searching through the seedier side of Hulu Plus. They can still watch hours of annoying episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants or the new awesomely revamped Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. [Note: this is also useful if you have ultra-serious, hipster roommates who hate cartoons, but constantly steal your tablet to watch The New Girl while fawning over Zoe Deschanel.]

To enable the Kids Mode, all you have to do is click a lock button along the top navigation bar of the screen. To get out of the child-friendly mode, all you have to do is click the button again and enter your account password.

The new Kids Lock feature should go live the next time you update the iOS app on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Although, to watch anything on the app, you still need to have an $8 per month Hulu Plus subscription.

Via Engadget

Twitter-owned video sharing application Vine has raised its age rating from 12+ to 17+ following controversy surrounding pornographic clips shared widely on the service.

Vine is one of the hottest new video-sharing applications, and its quick rise in just a few weeks led to the ouster of rival app Viddy’s CEO. But Vine has had a problem with users submitting easily searchable clips of porn, which was highlighted when someone at Vine accidentally placed a hardcore porn clip to the top of every user’s feed. Twitter responded to that incident by making Vine porn harder to find.

But it looks like that wasn’t enough to please Twitter (and perhaps Apple, who has blocked certain iOS apps for making risqué images and videos available). Now Vine has been bumped up to a 17+ age rating, likely to make sure parents will know questionable content can be found on the service. When you download or update the app, it now warns that the app contains “age-restricted material” and says you need to be 17 or over to download it.

On top of bumping up the age rating, the latest Vine update adds sharing to Twitter or Facebook after you post to Vine. The update also lets users report or block an abusive profile and fixes bugs.

Check out some recent Vine videos below to get a feel for the uses of the service besides porn:

Time for a little Puppy Bowl action. vine.co/v/b106vu7w5jV

— Sean Ludwig (@seanludwig) February 4, 2013

Get off my pier. vine.co/v/bnB7WUW3XUv

— Buster Heine (@BST3R) February 4, 2013

Top image via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
Thumbnail image of sexy couple via lenetstan/Shutterstock

Twitter-owned video-sharing app Vine is taking steps to curb access to porn after it attracted a lot of unwanted criticism this morning for placing a hardcore porn video at the top of every user’s feed.

After a few hours with the video up and collecting a great deal of negative feedback, Vine removed the offending clip, and a Twitter spokesperson apologized for the “human error.”

“A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realizing this mistake, we removed the video immediately,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat earlier today. “We apologize to our users for the error.”

But now the service is doing more than just being more careful about its Editors Pick’s. Vine now blocks many searches for tags that might lead to pornographic videos, such as #porn, #boobs, #sex, and #booty. Searching for those terms brings nothing up inside the popular app.

While tags such as #nsfw and #pornvine are still searchable, it at least looks like Vine is beginning to take steps to make sure Apple doesn’t remove Vine from the App Store, like it did with 500px for pornographic images. Apple did, however, remove Vine from its list of Editor’s Picks today.

Vine was launched last week by Twitter and has attracted a lot of fans among the tech-enthusiast crowd. We’ll see if that enthusiasm holds up after this controversy.

Check out how some common Vine searches look now below:

Woman with eyes covered via MarcusVDT/Shutterstock

Facebook has updated its popular iOS application with the ability to record and share videos and voice messages, a big improvement to the already well-featured app.

The Facebook mobile experience is one of the most important aspects of Facebook these days because more than half of the social network’s 1 billion users are accessing the app through phones and tablets each month. And so, it must continue to make the native app experience better. Video recording is especially important, as Facebook can now encourage users to record and share directly on its platform, rather than via apps like Vine.

On top of the voice and video recording, Facebook has also improved the Nearby tab, which gives you information about restaurants and local businesses nearby.

The updated app promises the following additions:

• Send voice messages when you have more to say
  
• Record and share videos right from the app
• Share and connect with your favorite places using the improved Nearby tab

Take a look at the new version of the app in the photos below:

Mark Zuckerberg photo via VentureBeat

Updated at 7:38 a.m. Pacific with comment from Twitter.

Users of the popular video-sharing app Vine got a surprise this morning when a short clip of hardcore pornography appeared as an “editor’s pick” and placed at the top of every user’s feed.

Twitter launched Vine last week, and the new video app has attracted a lot of fans among the tech-enthusiast crowd. But since the service easily allows porn clips to be shared and found, some are wondering if Apple will take down the service; Apple has a history of removing apps that give access to adult material. Vine’s video slip-up today certainly won’t help matters.

As you can see in the picture above, a video titled “Dildoplay” with the tags #nsfw, #porn, and #nsfwvine was selected as an editor’s pick. Vine selects editor’s pick videos and places them in users’ activity streams presumably to show off the most creative uses of the service.

The video was up for a few hours, but it has since been removed from users’ feeds. Twitter blamed “human error” for the posting of adult content.

“A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat via email. “We apologize to our users for the error.”

While the video did not play unless you tapped it, users were not happy about the prominent placement of porn in their feeds today.

Some choice comments from Vine users:

Taylor Winklemeyer: “I clicked on the video bc I thought the warning was a joke. I’m furious I had to see something like this.”

Brendan Wilhide: “First video I see after installing the app. How is this an editor’s pick?”

Curt Voice Allen: “This is garbage man! This should not be the first thing I see when I open this app. UNSUBSCRIBE ME PLEASE!!!”

Alessandro Melandri: “You must be crazy! Editor’s pick?!? Deleting the app now.”

Google launched an update for digital magazine iOS app Google Currents today, which features a new user interface, lots of navigation changes, and a greater emphasis on real-time news.

It’s also really freaking pretty.

Historically, Google hasn’t really followed a specific template when designing applications for each of its many services on iOS. For instance, the iPhone version of YouTube, Google+, and Maps didn’t have much in common aside from being able to use the same account to log in. But that seems to have changed with the latest version of many Google iOS apps, which feature a unified set of design elements (fonts, colors, search bars, and so on) — with Google Currents being the latest example.

The update brings the digital magazine app’s navigation in line with what we’ve seen on the latest versions of iOS apps for Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps. Currents’ has a search bar that sits at the top of the interface, and a button in the top right corner reveals a YouTube-like sidebar. Opening the sidebar reveals a new breaking news section feed from Google News, an option to add new sources, and several news categories. Clicking a category reveals a sublist of publications.

You also don’t have to use the sidebar, as you can scroll between simplistic categories pages and news sources by swiping left to right. Navigating articles for each source is done by scrolling vertically. You even have the option of including a breaking news feed in each category. Also, to switch between sources within each category, you can click a “Short List” located in the top navigation bar. This seemed like over kill to me at first, but after using the app for a while, I do think it’ll get used often because it speeds up your capability to zip through a ton of news sources.

Overall, Google Currents’ design is crispy, pretty, and consistent with the company’s other iOS apps. If you want to follow a high volume of news sources in a short amount of time, the latest version of Currents is worth getting reacquainted with.

Check out some screenshots in the gallery below, or download the latest version of Google Currents for free in the App Store.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The much-hyped Pebble smartwatch started shipping yesterday, but the smartphone apps that help the watch really tick hadn’t been approved yet.

Thankfully, the apps for iPhone and Android are now available — just in time to help those who get the watch first. While the first of 89,000 Pebble orders are out the gate, it will likely take several more weeks to fulfill all of the orders.

Pebble got a lot of notice as one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever, with more than $10 million raised. Pebble integrates with your smartphone, and uses an E-Ink display to show information like call data, calendar entries, and social media updates. The apps for Android and iPhone help you install custom watch faces and more.

The Pebble app for the iPhone and Android provides a dashboard for your Pebble smartwatch and does the following things:

• Notifies you when software updates for Pebble ready to install
  
• Installs and remove custom watchfaces onto your Pebble
• Sends ping test messages to your Pebble
• Helps you troubleshoot issues

Check out a demo we did with Pebble in the video below.

Photos via Apple App Store

Mobile video recording service Streamweaver closed a $1.3 million round of funding today, the startup confirmed to VentureBeat.

Streamweaver is a free iOS app that lets multiple iPhone owners record a live video at the same time, which is then converted into a single, 60-second video with a split-screened view of each person’s camera angle. I previously described the service as an easy way to harness the functionality of a broadcast video news crew, but without the expensive equipment or time-intensive video editing.

Streamweaver’s focus on split-screen recording sets it apart from the many other mobile video recording apps on the market, most of which focus on creating a Twitter or Instagram for video (Viddy, Klip, Tout, etc.). Streamweaver’s only real competition in the split-screened video market is iOS app Vyclone.

“A lot of the innovation that’s happening in social video is focused on post-record, but we’ve always been intrigued by the social aspects and allowing people to create content together,” Streamweaver COO Jay Hake told VentureBeat, adding that the new capital will allow the team to continue doing just that.

Hake said Streamweaver will use the new funding for additional development and marketing. The startup is currently focused on producing a more feature-rich version of its iPhone app but does consider an Android version something that will eventually happen.

The new round includes a major investment by former Facebook Chief Security Officer Chris Kelly, who will join Streamweaver’s board of directors. Others that participated in the funding round include Byron Smith and INCITE Co-investment Fund, as well as previous investors Tennessee Community Ventures and Mountain Group Capital.

Founded in 2012, the Nashville, Tenn.-based startup currently has 8 full-time employees and is planning to release a new version of its iPhone app in the near future.

h/t to TechCrunch

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

When I think of innovation, one of the last places I think of is the United States Postal Service. So color me surprised when USPS debuted a new app this week at the Consumer Electronics Show that works well and could increase a company’s interest in sending mail again.

USPS has had a lot of trouble over the past decade, with email eating away at snail mail usage and UPS and FedEx taking customers from USPS’s package delivery services. But with this new app, the organization might be showing at least some signs of life.

The app, developed with Aurasma, scans a piece of mail and uses augmented reality to make the paper an interactive ad. Ideally, companies that want to engage with potential customers could do so with a new kind of advertising — one that merges digital and physical ads.

“We worked on this to show companies that hard copy mail can be a part of their editorial content,” Chris Karpenko, head of USPS outreach, told me on the CES show floor. “It’s all about the customer experience. And there is a measurable ROI on click-throughs.”

Karpenko said the app will likely be released “before the end of 2013.”

Check out video of the app below.

Top photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

People have downloaded over 40 billion apps from Apple’s iOS App Store (not counting re-downloaded apps), the technology giant announced today.

The App Store, which launched about four years ago, currently features more than 775,000 apps for various device platforms (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) across 23 categories. And while the 40 billion download milestone is impressive, what’s more impressive is that about 20 billion of those downloads happened in 2012, according to Apple. Also, about 2 billion downloads occurred in December alone, which makes sense because of the holiday shopping season rush.

The news comes a week after independent research firms reported that both Christmas Day and Christmas week saw record-breaking numbers of iOS device activations. So, it’s no wonder that December proved to be a big month for Apple’s App Store.

Apple also revealed that it has over 500 million active iTunes accounts, meaning that the company has roughly 500 million credit cards on file that are eligible to make purchases on the App Store. Also, developers have made $7 billion in revenue (not counting Apple’s 30 percent cut) since the App Store launched in 2008.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

While it’s rare, sometimes developers are able to sneak features into their apps that don’t exactly comply with Apple’s policy.

At least this is true for FlashArmyKnife, an iOS app that allows you to circumvent carrier restrictions by enabling free tethering functionality. The app itself its basically a “Swiss Army Knife” that provides various utilities, like an advanced calculator, a satellite map, a currency converter, a battery power monitor, and more. The tethering function isn’t explicitly featured, so its understandable why Apple would miss it.

To access tethering, you’ll need to pull up the calculator function and type in the following equation, 1642, M+, C, 1452, M+, C, 1943, M+, reports iDownloadblog. (See demo video below.) The message “Run” should then pop up on the calculator pane, allowing you to get other devices online. The catch is that tethering requires you to create a bridge connection between your computer and the iPhone, which isn’t exactly an easy process for Windows users.

This kind of tethering functionality is barred from iOS apps because wireless carriers usually charge a monthly fee to enable internet sharing. Verizon and AT&T also still have some customers with unlimited data plans, which they clearly don’t want those subscribers abusing with tethering.

The app itself costs $2 in the App Store, but my guess is that Apple will soon have it yanked.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Popular blogging service Tumblr has finally updated its native iOS app to support the iPad and iPad mini — a long waited moment for the millions of Tumblr fans around the world.

Tumblr released a completely rebuilt iPhone app in early November that was faster and more responsive than the old version. Like the iPhone version, the native iPad app is fast and includes features such as pinch and zoom to make photos larger, one-touch re-blogging of posts, offline support, multi-blog management, save drafts, queue posts, and more.

Since the iPad and iPad mini are well-suited for consuming content, we expect it will be good for Tumblr, which heavily relies on photo and video sharing. It’s likely better than the iPhone app for many of things you’d want to use Tumblr for.

If you’re a regular Tumblr user, let us know about your exprience with the new iPad app in the comments below.

Photo via Tumblr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

6wunderkinder, the company behind the popular Wunderlist to-do app, has just launched a sequel to that fantastic app that works across iPhone, Android, Web, Windows, and Mac platforms and features a refreshed design.

Although there are some other great to-do list apps out there, namely Clear, Any.Do, Astrid, and Remember the Milk, Wunderlist has been own of my personal favorites because it works well across every device I own. But it’s always had a few missing features. Notably, the app didn’t have recurring tasks, which are useful when you have a task you need to do daily or weekly, and doesn’t have calendar syncing with services like Google.

Christian Reber, founder and CEO of 6wunderkinder, told me via email that his team worked on the new Wunderlist apps on all platforms for six months and completely rebuilt them from scratch. The app performance will probably be the most substantial change users will notice.

“The most substantial changes are all technical,” Reber said. “Anyone who builds native apps, knows how much work it is to build just one app. We’ve done that with five — and we are launching all at the same time. This has been a huge and tough challenge, and I’m so happy we’ve made just in time for Christmas.”

Reber believes experienced Wunderlist users will appreciate the changes and thinks it could attract new people to the fold.

“The biggest changes for the users are at first: new beautiful and rock-solid apps,” Reber said. “Everyone who used Wunderlist 1 on a regular basis, will notice a massive change in quality. We’ve also put in new features, starting with ‘our users’ most wanted,’ like Reminders, Subtasks, and Recurring Tasks. But the most important difference for all users will be the Activity Center. It helps users to stay connected while working collaboratively on lists and tasks. It tells you what everyone is working on. It may seem small, but if you use it with others, you quickly notice that you haven’t felt like this before about a similar product.”

While Wunderlist 2 does not feature calendar syncing (the only thing I want now!), Reber says it is “on our product roadmap for early 2013.” The company will also work to push out apps for various tablets and other platforms in 2013.

On the pricing front, Wunderlist will remain a free service. But Reber said the company will introduce paid premium accounts in 2013 with a yearly or monthly subscription fee. Exact pricing and feature will come in early 2013.

Check out the video below for more on Wunderlist 2:

Photo via 6wunderkinder

Facebook has updated the “Nearby” feature on its iOS and Android mobile apps, a move that could hurt Yelp and Foursquare in the location data wars.

While Facebook basically dropped out of owning check-ins, it still wants users to depend on its apps for everything they need, including finding places to eat, drink, shop, and more. Facebook has had a Nearby feature on iOS and Android, but before it was focused on showing people nearby. (A quick scan on my phone shows that hardly any of my friends check-in, so very few show up in the feature.)

But the new Nearby gets way more powerful by using friend check-ins to power recommendations around you and show great places to visit near you, both similar to what you get out of Foursquare. It also shows off business hours of places you look at, something you’d normally use Yelp for.

The company wrote in a blog post today:

Today we’re announcing updates to Nearby in the Facebook for iOS and Android apps that make it easy to discover new places your friends like.

From the app menu, open the tab to find local spots your friends have recommended, checked into, or liked. If you’re looking for a place to eat, choose a category like Restaurants to see what’s nearby. When you find a place that looks interesting, tap to see info like friends who’ve been there and business hours.

In addition to discovering new places to visit, you can share what you think by rating or recommending places to your friends. Your own suggestions become more personalized the more you and your friends rate, recommend, and check into places.

Facebook says that the Nearby feature is still fresh, so the results will get better as more people use it. The company also said it plans to include places info from third-party services “in the near future.”

The update to Facebook’s iOS and Android apps will be available later today.

Yelp investors don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about Facebook encrouching on Yelp’s territory, as Yelp’s stock is currently down 3.5 percent in late-day trading.