Tag: Discovery »

Field Trip, by Google’s Niantic Labs, is an exploration app that gives you details about the awesome places you can discover wherever you find yourself. The app can show you local history, delicious restraunts, the best places to shop, and places to just have fun. Field Trip curates information from over 200 publishers such as Thrillist, Zagat, Spotted by Locals, Arcadia History Press, and Cool Hunting.

You can start your adventure today by downloading Field Trip for free.

Noot Mobile for iOS is a new app, described as a "news discovery engine" that's intended to make finding relevant news on the go simpler. Launch the app and choose from thirteen news categories, including Entertainment, Sports, World News, and more, each with their own subcategories, all aggregating news from numerous sources. Articles can be shared, saved to the front "Saved Articles" section, and sources subscribed to for easy access from the front page. As well, there's a "Learning Technology" that's meant to help suggest new topics that match the user's interest over time.

You can download Noot Mobile off the App Store now for free.

Powerslyde is a free iOS app that detects the games and apps you have on your iPhone and then makes recommendations for other apps and games you might like. You can use the app to discover great apps that you might not have known about yet, and recommend those apps that you love to your friends and social networks.

This week, Powerslyde users have recommended some great apps to fill out your iPhone. Give them a quick peek below. We've grabbed five of the most recommended ones, and here they are.

Skype
Instagram
Paper by FiftyThree
LostWinds2: Winter of the Melodias
Rolando

Interesting list, to say the least. It's a delight to see older games like LostWinds2 and Rolando (one of the first iOS games ever) come in as some of the most highly recommended apps this past week. It's also fantastic to note those three non-game apps, too. Paper is a fantastic mixed media art app that still resides on my own iPad, while Skype is indispensable as a business and keep-in-touch tool. And Instagram continues to be my favorite way to filter and share iPhone pictures socially.

What about you? What are your top recommended apps? Let us know in the comments below.

Powerslyde says,

There are millions of mobile apps in the app store. How do you discover the right ones for you? Powerslyde helps you find the right apps for you with a little help from your friends. Receive personal app recommendations, automatically see when your friends add new apps, and share apps with your friends with one swipe.

Newly universal, Vodio may be just what you're looking for when looking to discover new video from the web.

Vodio is like Flipboard for videos. It originally launched on iPad, but just came out on iPhone this week. It brought a new feature with it: Highlights. Based on videos you liked on your social networking profiles like Twitter and Facebook, as well as what you've previously watched, it'll try and compile the best videos that it think you will like, and update them regularly. (It of course, asks for permission to look at your Twitter and Facebook profiles.)

Looking for some fellow musicians to jam with? Or perhaps it’s time to really get together that Afrikaans metal band together, for real? That’s what musicr is designed to do: bring local musicians together. Users can fill out a musical profile that shows their interests and musical proficiencies, like what instruments they play. Then, they can find other people with smilar interests who play other instruments to help get a band together, or people who play the same instruments to practice with and get tips, or just some cool folks to jam out with.

The app also serves as a great vehicle for self-promotion. Share photos of instruments and setups to wow friends and other users on the service, or even just to prove that yes, you do own a 12-string guitar. Use status updates share info on upcoming gigs, or to say how that song is coming along, or anything music-related.

The app is coming soon to the App Store.

iOS users with a Sprint subscription are in for a treat as the company has just launched SprintTV, a new way to stream television content right to your iPhone or iPad. The app offers free episodes of TV shows like 30 Rock, NCIS, Access Hollywood, and more, as well as live sports from ESPN Mobile and breaking news from ABC and NBC.

The basic service is free to all Sprint subscribers, with options to purchase additional packs for a monthly fee. Channels, such as Nickelodeon, Lifetime, Discovery and more are available, and Sprint offers a number of packages for folks who would rather watch their TV on a tablet than at home.

Sprint's appearance marks another entrant into a marketplace featuring apps from ESPN, ABC, HBO and others. It seems we're quickly marching towards a future where nearly all of our entertainment is available not only through our home TVs and cable boxes, but via smartphones and tablets as well. Seems that the day when we may be able to cut cable and live a life free of the service providers could be fast approaching.

Visiting HowStuffWorks.com has given millions the information they crave on just how things actually do work. A Discovery Communications property, the website was founded by Professor Marshall Brain in 1998 (yes, that's actually his name) to help explain, well, how things work.

While the iPad app was released just last week, the iPhone version of the app is the winner of a Webby Award for the Best Mobile Education and Reference App, as well as having been listed by Apple staff once as a New and Noteworthy app and twice as a Staff Favorite.

With the app on an iPad, users have access to over 40,000 articles, 12,000 videos and over 2,000 audio and video podcasts from the comfort and safety of your magical device. The videos are also AirPlay enabled, letting users wirelessly stream them to their AppleTVs. Quiz and trivia nuts rejoice, as HowStuffWorks for iPad also contains over 1,000 quizzes that contain over 30,000 questions. Every article and podcast has a "Related Stuff" button to allow real knowledge hounds the ability to dig deep on any of the topics presented.

Podcasts Include:

- Stuff You Should Know
- Stuff You Missed in History Class
- BrainStuff
- Stuff Mom Never Told You
- TechStuff
- Stuff to Blow your Mind
- CarStuff
- Stuff from the B-Side
- Video Podcasts:
- Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know
- Stuff of Genius
- Coolest Stuff on the Planet
- New! Stuff from the Future

The app includes a search system, daily featured content, and new facts and quotes every day. Users can save their favorite topics and articles, as well as share with friends and family via email, Twitter and Facebook options - a requisite feature in this day and age.

While all the content is available on the web for free, HowStuffWorks for iPad is designed for Apple's magical tablet from the ground up, even going so far as to be a separate app from the iPhone version. As can be seen in the screenshots below, the interface and visual design fits right on the larger, shiny screen of the iPad.

HowStuffWorks for iPad is available now for the grand total of Free. How's THAT workin' for ya?

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With my recent review of Music Hunter, I'm in the mood to share my favorite apps for music discovery in this weeks Favorite Four.

Music Hunter
Since I already mentioned Music Hunter, let's start with that. Despite its cheesy name, Music Hunter provides an experience rivaled by no other music app. The app is visually pleasing and has an almost limitless potential (I think the samples it uses are pulled from iTunes). I've already browsed for a few hours in my couple of days with the app and added a ton of songs to my favorites list. While the app is only $0.99, it will lead to MUCH more spending from leading users to buy tons of music (except for those those shady pirates). Unfortunately for iPhone users, Music Hunter is iPad only.

Rdio
Rdio isn't a direct music discovery tool, but it definitely aids the music discovery process. Rdio is one of three major music subscriptions services (Rhapsody and MOG being the other two). For $9.99 a month (for mobile access), Rdio allows access to millions of songs and even allows downloading to mobile devices (stop paying for the service and the songs are no longer available). After finding new songs on Music Hunter, I went right over to Rdio and added nearly all of them to my collection. Rdio has a free 7-day trial; it can't hurt to check it out.

Discovr
Discovr, like Music Hunter, provides a visually stimulating music discovery experience in an audio-focused app. I enjoy Music Hunter more, mainly because I can sit back and it will play through samples until I tell it something (Discovr's samples must be tapped each time). But Discovr's mindmap-ish view of artists takes a fun angle to the browsing experience. One thing Discovr has over Music Hunter is the sheer volume of information provided for each artist: samples from most albums, blog posts, reviews, biographies, links, and YouTube videos. Discovr is geared toward people who are interested in finding artists and Music Hunter toward people interested in finding songs.

Aweditorium
I can't talk about music discovery without bringing up Aweditorium. Aweditorium was the first music discovery app I used that focused on the visual experience. Pictures of artists are tiled on a huge moving wall. Tapping on one starts one of their songs and provides information on the artist. What's unique about Aweditorium compared to the other music discovery apps is that it's filled with independent artists. So Aweditorium is a must-have for any music discovery enthusiast; the songs on Aweditorium aren't likely to be found on other apps. This one is iPad only like Music Hunter.