Gmail's 'Pretty Fantastic' iPhone App Is On The Way A native Gmail app for iPhone is on the way, reports MG Siegler. Google doesn't have a great history with iOS apps -- Siegler cites Google Voice perpetually crashing after upgrading to iOS 5 -- but this appears to be a different story. He writes "those who have seen the app tell me it’s pretty fantastic. Perhaps even surprisingly so." We can expect better message threading, one-click starring functionality, and maybe even Google+ integration. But the killer feature will be push notification -- immediate notice that you have a new email when you receive it.
“Batch” May Be The Perfect Mobile Photo Sharing App (No, Seriously) A few months ago Daily Booth CEO Brian Pokorny told me that most of his team was working on a second product. “What is it?” I asked, “A mobile photo sharing app?” I was joking, because everyone and their mother seemed to launch a mobile photo sharing app in the last year or so, to the point that we groaned whenever we saw a new one. “Yes. “Ha ha. “Yes.” “No, you’re not serious.” “Hah.” And so the conversation went. Batch is now in the iPhone app store. And it is absolutely amazing. Batch allows people to create albums, called “Batches,” with photos from an event or whatever. That last sentence is the important one. You sign in via Facebook, so it already knows your friends. It’s the perfect app to add to my new iPhone (with Google Voice!). Photos can be kept private or shared with others. There are some features I’d like to see them add to Batch soon. I’d also like to have the ability to tag photos, not just batches. Try this. Like this: Like Loading...
SoundCloud Lands on the iPad - Peter Kafka - Media SoundCloud, the buzzy music-sharing service/utility, has arrived on the iPad, via a new free app. If you’re one of the 3.7 million people who have downloaded one of the company’s iOS, Android or Mac apps, you’ll have a pretty good sense of how the tablet version works. For the rest of you, here’s a quick demo video: Introducing the SoundCloud iPad app from SoundCloud on Vimeo. “Company X has an iPad app” isn’t an inherently interesting story, but for music start-ups, moving to the tablet isn’t a foregone conclusion. Spotify, for instance, has yet to show up on Apple’s tablet. SoundCloud makes a lot of sense on the iPad, though, because it’s not a pure-play music service: It’s partly a utility that allows people to easily post sound files anywhere they want on the Web, and it’s partly a social service designed to let people discover those files. Meanwhile, the Berlin-based start-up, which raised $10 million from Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures last year, seems to be a on a tear.
Atomico Invests $4.2M In 6Wunderkinder: German Name, Global Ambitions Exclusive - Atomico, the pan-European investment firm started by the founders of Skype, has invested $4.2 million in 6Wunderkinder, an interesting startup out of Berlin that offers well-designed productivity tools for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and the Web. They earlier raised over 600,000 euros in early-stage funding. The Series A financing round also comes with additional investment from High-Tech Gründerfonds, an earlier 6Wunderkinder backer, though the size of its contribution to the round remains undisclosed, as does an earlier T-Venture (Deutsche Telekom) investment. 6Wunderkinder offers a cross-platform, cloud-based task management tool called Wunderlist, which enables users to make detailed to-do lists that can easily be shared with friends and coworkers. To receive an invitation to the beta, you can sign up here. I gather that the beta product will be debuted ‘very soon’, meaning at some point in the next few weeks.
Fab.com Design Inspirations & Sales Path’s Second Iteration Is Less Photosharing And More Everything Sharing In the mobile startup tradition of quick product iteration, Path Two has hit the app store this evening — expanding beyond photosharing to people, place, music, chat and sleep mode sharing. Path founder Dave Morin says that the second phase of Path is about giving people a place to “capture all the experiences” on their path through life. The existing Path UI on iOS and Android has been completely revamped (beautifully) and is basically a multimedia timeline. You can right swipe for settings, left swipe to add friends, and swipe down to view your own or your friends’ Paths. To initiate a Path post, click on the + button in the left corner and out pop six option icons. Path Two lets users complete six different types of posts, competing for your sharing predilections with already existing sharing apps like Foursquare, Soundtracking, Evernote and Instagram as well as lifestyle products like Wakemate.
Quora Evri Comes To iPad With New Topic-Based News Reader Realtime semantic startup Evri is debuting its brand-new iPad application today, where it joins the crowded “iPad news magazine” space filled with the likes of Flipboard, The Daily, Zite, Pulse, NewsMix, AOL Editions, News360 and others. To differentiate itself from the pack, Evri’s app employs a combination of social news and topical streams, allowing readers to follow their interests as opposed to just following sources. The new app relies heavily on Evri’s semantic underpinnings to turn unstructured data into topic-based channels. The company’s content discovery engine analyzes feeds from 15,000 news sources, runs the data through its natural language processing (NLP) parser and extracts entities which are put into Evri’s semantic index. And unlike apps like News Corp.’s The Daily, Evri’s index is updated every 15 minutes, not…well, you know, daily. As it turns out, the Evri iPad app is a big improvement in the looks department. Evri for iPad is a free download via iTunes.
Google launches Currents, new social reading platform for iOS and Android Following an extensive period of beta testing and refining, a promising new Google product is ready for prime time. Today, the search Goliath took the wraps off of a brand new social publishing platform that used to be known under the ‘Propeller’ code-name. Our sister publication 9to5Mac is one of the publishers Google cherry-picked to be launch content partner for the service. It debuts under the ‘Currents’ moniker and is available to end users via dedicated mobile apps for Android devices and Apple’s iPhone and iPad. As for publishers, they can package their content in a web app to be presented on tablets and smartphones with a little bit of HTML5 magic. According to Google: Google Currents is a new application for Android devices, iPads and iPhones that lets you explore online magazines and other content with the swipe of a finger. Google Currents is now available for download in Android Market and the Apple App Store for US users.
Zite Debuts its First iPhone App When Zite‘s smart iPad newspaper launched in March, we were all down in Austin waiting in line for the iPad 2. It was the perfect storm of Twitter adoption, news curation and iPad frenzy for the social, simple and intelligent app’s debut. In its first week, Zite witnessed over 125,000 downloads. Since then Zite has taken off with an undisclosed number of users. We’re guessing near the 3-5 million range…but the company won’t say. Zite CEO Mark Johnson is a tightly curled, redhead Californian who’s slightly freaked out by cow’s milk. “A lot of people forgot the joy of reading. When CNN acquired Zite for just over $20 million in August, users wondered whether content would be skewed to favor Time Warner brands. “CNN knew what they were getting themselves into. Off the heels of the acquisition, Johnson is keeping up the company’s momentum. Like the iPad app, the iPhone app design is very simple. “People who already have an iPad are clamoring for it on other devices. ➤ Zite
Empathetic vs. Personalized: News.me Spun Off to Compete With Flipboard iPad magazine apps have been one of the big trends over the past year. Flipboard is the most well known and successful so far, but others have tried to get a slice of the action. News.me is a notable example, created by the same Twitter-focused stable (Betaworks) that produced TweetDeck and Bit.ly. Although News.me and Flipboard are similar products, their approaches are fundamentally different. We first came across News.me at the end of last year, when the formally stealth product began to accept invite requests. It's worth delving into the difference between News.me and Flipboard further, as it is - and will be - the deciding factor for many people when choosing which tablet magazine they use the most. News.me is a curated reading experience based on who you follow on Twitter, plus other "experts" recommended by News.me who you may choose to follow. So for me, Flipboard works better - because I have diverse interests and I prefer to personalize things.
Last but not least, Dolphin Browser comes to iPad In late August, software developers MoboTap released Dolphin, the popular browser formerly exclusive to the Android platform, on iOS. Today, the tablet-specific version called Dolphin Browser HD is available for free in the iTunes App store. Though Dolphin has a number of useful browser features such as tabs, sidebars, speed dial, desktop mode, and auto-completing URLS, there are two features that make this browser remarkable: Gesture browsing and Webzine mode, which launched on Android back in July. Dolphin Webzine should be an easy concept to grasp for anyone who has followed the transition of print media as it embraces the mobile tablet. Webzine mode automatically reformats websites in a paginated "tablet magazine" format like Flipboard, Zite, The Daily, Livestand, and Google Catalogs. Dolphin includes Webzine links to Twitter, Facebook, Techcrunch, Wall Street Journal, and Wired, but lets users select from a long list of approved sites to add to their reading list.
Eeve - Collaborative photo experiences made easy [Invites] - TNW Apps What do you get if you throw mobile, social, photo-sharing and location together into a big melting pot? You get Eeve. The London-based startup has combined the biggest buzzwords from the tech startup industry to develop what could prove to be a very popular social networking app. But relax, we’re not talking about a startup that’s claiming to be after Facebook’s crown, or even attempting to dig a sharp elbow into Foursquare’s ribs for that matter. What is Eeve? You may remember a startup called Color which was launched earlier this year, securing $41m funding in the process. And last week, we wrote about a whole bunch of beautiful apps emanating from Berlin, one of which was EyeEm, a photo-sharing app that combines Instagram, Color and Photovine and creates a new way of sharing photos that automatically adds context based on who you’re with, where you are and what you’re photographing. Now, meet Eeve. It’s also worth noting that Eeves are temporary. The story so far So how can you join?
News360 is Changing the Content Delivery Game Posted by Kat Armstrong. You’ll find a lot of news apps for your iPad, but there’s virtually nothing available for Android, the iPhone, a RIM Playbook, Windows Phone 7 devices or even your desktop. News360 is changing the game. The application makes use of semantic analysis to keep you informed of major ongoing events – and to give you content that is relevant to you. The company’s CEO took the time to talk to me about the reasons their offering is something that you’re going to want. This app is in a very crowded space. It was interesting to me to learn how different the users are based on their platform of choice. There are several cool features built in to News360. You’ll need only one tap of a button to get to your local news. Having a list of top categories to search is a great idea, yes. Which news app do you rely on each day to consume content?