Apps

How Walmart is going all out with mobile

TUSCON, Ariz.-- Here's the takeaway from a panel called, "Shopping Outside the Box: The Intersection of Data and Dollars," that took place at the Techonomy conference: For all retailers -- that means brick-and-mortar giants -- it's all about the data.

"Data is the weapon," said Dan Schulman, the Group President of Enterprise Growth at American Express.

And, increasingly, that data is coming from mobile devices. The challenges facing brick-and-mortar stores are only growing as online shopping moves from the desktop to smartphones. People look up prices online while they're inside a store. … Read more

Nexus 4 sells out in U.K. on Google Play as site suffers

Google's latest smartphone, the Nexus 4, is sold out in the U.K., less than an hour after it went on sale.

The 4.7-inch Android device went on sale in the U.K. on Tuesday, alongside Google's two latest tablets, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 -- and it looks like the devices are proving popular. According to reports on Twitter, some customers found that stocks of lowest priced Nexus 4, the 8GB version, had been snapped up within a mere 15 minutes of going on sale.

Reportedly the Nexus 4 is out, a day earlier than … Read more

Apple adds Passbook-enabled gift cards to its store app

Apple is finally tapping into its own Passbook app by adding it as an option for store gift cards.

You can send someone a gift card either through the Apple Store app on your iPhone or iPad, or the Apple Store gift card Web page. In the Apple Store app, you'll need to scroll to the bottom of the home page and tap on the section for Apple Gift Cards and then choose the option to send an Apple Store Card by E-mail.

Either from the app or from the Web page, you can choose among blue, silver, or … Read more

Great local search apps for iOS

I was going through the app listings the other day and came across LocalScope, a unique local search tool that helps you find things near your current location. Obviously, many people already use Google Maps (no current version for iOS) for this purpose, and the Yelp-powered Apple Maps gets better every day, but after looking at LocalScope (reviewed below), I went on a search for other apps that tailor their results just for what is right around your area.

This week's collection of apps is all about searching for services around your location. The first gives you tons of listings and a surprising bonus feature for finding your destination. The second offers a slick radial interface and tons of categories to pick from. The third is LocalScope, and uses social data to find places, videos, and images from people around your location.… Read more

Get five Android games for whatever price you want

Most game bundles have one thing in common: the games have been around awhile. They might be solid titles, sure, but many times they're so old that most gamers already have them.

Not this time. The Humble Bundle 4 for Android comes with five games, four of which are making their Android debut. In fact, they're not even available via Google Play yet, so you couldn't purchase them separately if you wanted to.

Don't have an Android device? Don't sweat it: you also get licenses for the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of each game.… Read more

Listen to notifications on Android with SpeakMe

Alerts on our connected Android devices can sometimes pick the worst moment to sound off. For instance, when you're in the middle of working with raw meat in the kitchen or carrying in 10 bags of groceries at once -- these are prime opportunities to get alerts... right? Yeah, not really. So why not just have your device read the alert to you? That's exactly what SpeakMe does.

The capability to read notifications out loud is available on most versions of Android. However, that option also reads each menu item, each action -- and everything in … Read more

Google TV music, movies arriving in Europe next week

Google is making Google Play's music and movies available in Europe later this month.

From November 13, owners of a Google TV set-top box or enabled television in the U.K., Germany and France will be able to download movies and music from the Google Play store, the company said in a Google+ post.

The movies and music -- previously only available in the U.S. -- won't, however, be available for download to other Google devices such as Nexus smartphones or tablets, but its availability is unlikely too be far behind.

Due to licensing restrictions by Hollywood … Read more

You can replace Siri with Google's Voice Search, but there's a catch

I'll catch some flak for this, but I still like Siri.

In fact, I find it extremely useful for things like setting reminders and sending text messages hands-free. It's not perfect, but neither is it as useless as many people seem to think.

That said, Google's newly updated Voice Search is all kinds of awesome. It's blazing-fast, amazingly accurate, and in many ways just plain smarter than Siri. Use it a few times and you'll immediately start wishing you could ditch Siri for it -- or, at the very least, make it as push-button accessible.… Read more

You can now use Paul Allen's personal movie-sorting app

Must be nice to be a billionaire like Paul Allen and have your own movie-sorting app. Well, now the Microsoft co-founder's technology is available for the rest of us too, in the form of the Fayve app.

Fayve started out as a way for Allen to manage his own collection of videos, according to GeekWire. His staff, tasked with developing technologies and tools for managing Allen's stuff, created the product for his use and then found it to have a broader appeal. They altered it to make it ready for public use, the report said.

"Paul has … Read more