Apple picker SoundHound now includes a smart assistant, Adobe Spark is coming, Google introduced the Allo, Duo and Spaces applications, and PDF Expert, the Infuse video player, Tweetbot for Mac, GarageBand and Adobe Capture CC received interesting updates. The week of applications with serial number 20 is here.
News from the world of applications
SoundHound now listens not only to music, but also to voice commands (17/5)
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A major update to the popular music recognition tool has arrived in the App Store SoundHoud. With the application running, the user should now be fine say "OK Hound" to access the voice assistant that can do wonders within the app. With simple commands, you can request to identify the music playing, add it to a playlist on Spotify or Apple Music, display the search history or all kinds of music charts, etc. SoundHound will then answer various questions about the music, such as when the song was first released.
The bad news is that the in-app voice assistant didn't work for us during our editorial testing. So it's possible that the service isn't running globally yet.
Source: 9to5Mac
Adobe Spark is a family of applications for simple creation of multimedia content (19.)
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"Perhaps you want to create a fresh web form of classic formats such as flyers, brochures or presentations. Or you are interested in popular forms of communication such as memes, magazine blog posts or explainer videos. Adobe Spark lets you do all of this and more through a user-friendly web experience.
We enable virtually anyone to create three types of content: social media posts and graphics, web stories, and animated videos. You just want to tell something and the magic of Adobe will take care of the rest with great animations and beautiful design to bring your stories to life.”
In the words of Adobe on your blog introduces the new Adobe Spark web tool. It is functionally equivalent to Adobe's iOS applications Voice, Slate a Post and the company therefore decided to combine the web tool and the application with a single name. That's what Adobe Voice is becoming Adobe spark video, Slate is now Spark Page and the Post expanded to spark post. All applications as well as the web interface Adobe Spark, can be used free of charge.
In connection with this, Adobe established cooperation with the petition website change.org. The goal of the cooperation is the education of petition initiators in the creation of multimedia. It turned out that petitions with an illustrative video get an average of six times more signatures compared to petitions without videos.
Source: 9to5Mac
Allo and Duo are two new communication applications from Google (18/5)
A few days ago, the Google I/O developer conference took place, similar to Apple's WWDC, where Google presents new versions of its operating systems, services, products, etc. Among the biggest novelties of this year's Google I/O are the Allo and Duo applications. Both use the user's phone number. So they don't require a Google account and can only be used on mobile devices. Allo communicates using text, emoticons, stickers and images, Duo using video.
Allo has three main aspects. First of all, it is quite a classic, simple design and user-friendly communication application with a few small quirks. When sending text, you can change the size of the text by holding down the "send" button (Google calls it WhisperShout), the photos you send are displayed on the full screen, and the user can draw on them directly in the application.
Second, Google's personal assistant is integrated into Allo. You can chat with him directly, ask him about various things, ask him to reserve a seat at a restaurant via OpenTable or chat with him as a chatbot. But Google can also be part of conversations with real people. For example, it will offer quick replies (in Google's demo, it offered a "Congratulations!" response after receiving a graduation photo), which looks a lot more sophisticated than iMessage's reply offers. Google can also get involved directly, for example by answering both parties' questions or offering meeting places.
The third aspect of Allo is security. Google says the conversations are encrypted and can only be read by Google's servers if its Assistant is to participate. In such a case, they are said to be stored on the servers only temporarily and Google does not obtain any information from them and does not store them for a long time. End-to-end encryption is used in incognito mode, and even Google does not have access to the content of sent messages.
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Duo, on the other hand, goes directly against Apple's FaceTim. It bets on simplicity and efficiency even more than Allo. In terms of features, this is a classic video calling app without any special features, except perhaps that the recipient of the call sees the video from the caller's side before they answer the call (only available on Android).
The main strength of Dua is supposed to be reliability. The application can smoothly switch between Wi-Fi and mobile networks during the call, and vice versa, even with a weak signal or slow connection, video and audio are smooth.
Both apps do not yet have an exact release date, but they should arrive in the summer, on iOS and Android.
Source: The Verge [1, 2]
New applications
Google introduced Spaces - a space for group sharing
Google+ is slowly dying, but the advertising giant is not giving up its fight and has come up with an application that is supposed to be an interesting alternative for users who want to share content of all kinds among a narrow circle of people. The novelty is called Spaces and combines Chrome, YouTube and a search engine into one communication application.
The principle of the application is simple. Google Spaces is presented as a handy tool for communication within a reading club, study group or, for example, for planning a family trip. Just create a space (Space) for a specific topic or purpose and invite family, friends or colleagues to the discussion. The advantage of the application is that it includes chat, Google Search, Chrome and YouTube. So you don't have to constantly jump between several apps when sharing and viewing content, just one is enough. An additional advantage is that quality search also works directly in the application. So you can easily find older posts and so on.
The Spaces app is already free available on iOS and Android, and the web version of the tool should also be functional soon.
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Important update
PDF Expert now supports Apple Pencil
PDF Expert, an excellent tool for working with PDFs from the Ukrainian developer studio Readdle, received an important update, which added support for the Apple Pencil. Thanks to this, you will now be able to use Apple's pen to edit pages and at the same time swipe between them without making unwanted lines on them.
Moreover, this is not the only novelty that the developers have come up with. There's also a brand new feature called "Readdle Transfer" that lets you wirelessly transfer files between iPhone, iPad, and Mac within the app. The transfer works similarly to, for example, Apple's AirDrop, and its advantage is that the file is transferred directly between individual devices and does not travel through the cloud.
Updated PDF Expert is available in App Street. The version for OS X also received an update with "Readdle Transfer" support and you can download it from Mac App Store and developer website.
Infuse brings a new library with Spotlight integration on iOS and smart filters on tvOS
A capable video player for both iOS and Apple TV called Infuse has also received a substantial update. With version 4.2, the latter received a brand new multimedia library, which offers support for the Spotlight system search engine on iOS and smart filters on Apple TV. Thanks to them, you will be able to easily sort movies or shows by genre, separate videos you haven't seen yet or get instant access to your favorite items.
Infused with these and many other new features download for free from the App Store. If you also want to unlock premium features, you will pay €9,99 for Infuse in the Pro version.
Tweetbot brings 'Topics' to Mac too
Tweetbot, an excellent alternative client for Twitter, this week brought a nifty new feature called "Topics" to Mac as well. Function, which arrived on iOS earlier this month, allows you to elegantly link your tweets related to a certain topic or event. So if you want to describe an event or present a longer message, you will no longer have to "reply" to your previous tweet.
Tweetbot makes it possible assign a topic to each tweet, which assigns a specific hashtag to the tweet and sets up continuity, so that if you post another tweet with the same topic, the tweets will be linked in the same way that conversations are linked. Tweetbot syncs your topics via iCloud, so if you start tweeting from one device, you can safely switch to another and spit out your tweetstorm from there.
The Tweetbot for Mac update also brings a number of improvements, including more consistent "muting" of specific tweets or users and a modified video player. Naturally, there are also bug fixes.
The latest GarageBand pays homage to Chinese music
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Apple updated its GarageBand this week for iOS i for Mac and paid tribute to the "rich history of Chinese music" with it. The update includes a variety of sounds and instruments that will allow users to infuse their compositions with a bit of traditional Chinese art. More than 300 new musical elements have arrived on Mac and iOS. Sounds can be used on iOS using multi-touch gestures and on OS X using the keyboard and external devices.
Adobe Capture CC plays with geometry
Adobe Capture CC is an iOS application that can generate colors, brushes, filters and vector objects from images and photos, which can later be used in applications working with Adobe Creative Cloud. The latest update to the app added the ability to identify shapes and patterns in photos and replicate them into continuous geometric shapes.
Further from the world of applications:
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