appstore

Facebook Snapchat Competitor ‘Slingshot’ Appears then Disappears from App Store

Known for its clever combination of selfies, text and scribbles, the self-destructing messaging platform Snapchat has become a hit. So, it’s no surprise that social media giant Facebook is interested in taking a bite out of the ephemeral messaging market.

The company has even gone so far as to reportedly offer $3 billion for Snapchat at one point. But, rather than continuing to try and buy out Snapchat, Facebook has now decided to create its own competitor, an app that existed only as a rumor until yesterday.

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Snap Fashion Lets Users Snap an Outfit to Find Out Where to Buy It

Combining the impressive technological improvements humanity has made with regard to cameras and cleverly-written software has yielded some interesting products for consumers. Case in point: UK's Snap Fashion, an application made for iPhone that lets users snap a photo of an outfit they see and get information on where to buy it.

Creative Market Launches PS Extension, Lets You Buy Your Assets In-App

Following on the heels of a similar announcement by Adobe itself, design marketplace Creative Market has announced that it too has set up an in-app marketplace for Photoshop users. Out now, Creative Market's Photoshop extension allows users to browse and buy from the company's massive catalog of templates, fonts, infographics and more without ever leaving the comfort of Photoshop.

500px Reappears in the App Store With a 17+ Rating and a New ‘Report’ Button

Last week, Apple unexpectedly booted 500px's photo sharing app from the iTunes App Store. At the time, Apple said that the issue was the app's ability to search for photos featuring artistic nudity. Since then, reports have also stated that Apple received complaints of child pornography in the App, leading 500px to launch an ultimately unsuccessful search for these images.

Whatever the issue was, it seems it has been fixed to Apple's specifications. The app is now back in the iOS app store and available to download.

Manga-Camera is Like Instagram Filters for Japanese Comic Lovers

There's an iPhone camera app generating quite a bit of buzz, and it's not Instagram or Camera+. The new rising star is Manga-Camera, a fun app that's been downloaded like hotcakes in recent days (okay, we made up that expression). It has been downloaded over a million times in just the past week, and is currently the number one most popular app in the Japanese App Store.

The app is similar to Instagram filters, except instead of making your photos look like they were taken with a retro or toy camera, it makes them look like they were drawn by a Japanese manga artist.

GLMPS Captures the Moments Leading Up to iPhone Photographs

What if every photograph included a short video showing the few seconds that led up to the shutter being pressed? That's the idea behind a new free iPhone app called GLMPS (pronounced "glimpse"). It's a camera app that stores a few seconds of video with each shot, letting users share the background behind each picture (try clicking the photo above). Unlike normal iPhone photos, displaying a GLMPS photo/video requires a special embed code, make it somewhat inconvenient to share. Wouldn't it be interesting if short videos could be stored in the metadata of photographs taken by all digital cameras? Seems kinda farfetched, but it might be possible as technology progresses.

Photosynth Comes to the iPhone to Help You Shoot Stitched Panoramas

Microsoft's jaw-dropping Photosynth technology has arrived on the iPhone as an app that allows you to easily create immersive 360-degree panoramas. All you need to do is load up the app and sweep your camera around in every direction, and the app automatically snaps photographs filling in the panoramic image (you can also tap it if it gets sluggish with its snapping).

SynthCam Allows Shallow Depth of Field Photos Using the iPhone

Ever wish you could take shallow depth of field photos on your iPhone that look like they were taken with a DSLR and large aperture lens? With an app called SynthCam you can. You simply aim the camera at a foreground object, press Record, and then slowly move the phone around a little while keeping it aimed at the subject. The app will then create a "synthetic aperture photograph" that blurs the background while keeping the subject you locked onto in focus.

Retrofy Your iPhone Video with 8mm Vintage Camera

There's a number of notable iPhone apps out there that add a vintage look to your photographs (e.g. Hipstamatic and Instagram), but what if you want to shoot vintage-looking video? 8mm Vintage Camera is an app that does just that, allowing you to choose between a number of films and lenses. You can also turn on "jitter", adding an extra measure of realism to the look.

Holographium Lets You Light Paint Words with Your iPad

Back in September we featured a creative technique that used an iPad to "light paint" 3D objects and text. Now there's an app called Holographium that allows anyone to light paint words with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. All you do is provide some text, start taking a long exposure photo, and then drag your iPad (or whatever iDevice) through the photo while the app slowly displays the various slices of the text. The resulting photograph will show the text spelled out in 3D and floating in the air.

Instagram is a Free Fusion of Hipstamatic and Tumblr for the iPhone

Instagram is a new iPhone photo app developed by Stanford grads Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger that offers Hipstamatic-style filters for your photos, easy uploads to popular services, and a Tumblr-esque community built right in. While photo sharing apps in the App Store are a dime a dozen, there are a few things that set Instagram apart.

Camera+ Shuttered from App Store for Hidden Banned Feature

It looks like tap tap tap's Camera+ added one too many features for Apple's liking. When the app developers tweeted a secret workaround that enabled the volume button to double up to control the shutter, Apple pulled Camera+ from the App Store.
Just this week, developer John Casasanta wrote in a blog post that an upgraded version of the app originally intended to launch the feature, VolumeSnap. VolumeSnap would have also allowed users to use the volume control on iPhone headphones as a remote shutter control. Pretty nifty.

But Apple rejected tap tap tap's new version, citing this as a reason:
Your application cannot be added to the App Store because it uses iPhone volume buttons in a non-standard way, potentially resulting in user confusion. Changing the behavior of iPhone external hardware buttons is a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. Applications must adhere to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines as outlined in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.7
So tap tap tap left out the feature -- at first. The app retained the feature, which was now hidden, but could be enabled by pointing the phone's browser to a specific site provided by the developers.

A Shortener for… Your Photographs?

Liquid Scale is an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that offers content aware image resizing. What does that mean? Basically it's like a URL shortener for your photographs, reducing the dimensions of the photograph but retaining the meaning.