Having officially announced the acquisition of Beats Electronics, the official Beats Music app for iOS, Android and Windows Phone have seen a new pricing and trial structure with immediate effect. Although the app itself remains largely unchanged, the previous 7-day free trial of the premium service has now been pushed to 14 days, while the annual subscription has dropped around $20 to just $99 for the whole year.
Social apps often overlap each other. It's the nature of the beast that if one service implements a useful new feature, several others will follow suit. On a day that has already seen Snapchat go all instant-messaging on us, Foursquare has announced Swarm, an app that helps you find close-by friends and discover things to do. The app represents a departure from the company's check-in ways, and also throws down the gauntlet to a neat little feature that Facebook added to Paper only a week or so ago.
In the earlier days of the modern smartphone, it was the new, casual games that really caught our attention, with the likes of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope really taking a stronghold. But as devices have improved considerably during the past few years, developers of famed PC and console apps have seen the mobile market as an important outlet, and joining the many classic titles to reach the mobile platforms, Age of Empires will soon be heading to the App Store, the Windows Phone Store, and Google's Play Store.
Remember when Microsoft promised that the official Facebook Messenger app would be making an imminent appearance on Windows Phone? That announcement was made back in February, with Joe Belfiore announcing that the native Messenger app will introduce additional features above and beyond those found in the system based Facebook messaging integration. Belfiore, Microsoft and Facebook have stayed true to that promise, with the official Facebook Messenger app for Windows Phone now available to download from the Windows Phone Store.
After being forced to ditch its SkyDrive name following a dispute with the telecommunication and TV giant BSkyB, Microsoft has today begun the rebranding process that will see SkyDrive become OneDrive. Existing users won't notice a great deal other than the new name, but Microsoft is now also offering people who use its service the ability to increase their free storage capacity via referrals a la Dropbox, with the potential to earn an extra 5GB of space.
When it comes to major mobile gaming releases, it's fair to say that Microsoft's Windows Phone platform is frequently left out in the cold. But Rockstar Games, having recently ported GTA: San Andreas to Apple's iOS as well as Google's Android, has finally brought said title to the Windows Phone Store. It was supposed to arrive last month at the same time as the Big Two, but despite taking an additional few weeks, it's finally ready for prime time. Check out the details after the break!
After being originally teased back in October of last year, the Beats Music app is now available to download for iOS, Android and Windows Phone through the relevant app stores. Beats, a company who take their music very seriously, are describing the new service as a place being "curated by people who believe music is emotion and life". The differentiating factor that exists within Beats Music appears to be the fact that the app and service is built around musical customization that exists to try and present subscribers with a perfectly curated playlist of music based on their current tastes and moods.
When considering some of the major social networks around, those that may instantly spring to mind include Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. But for every major hunt, there are literally dozens of smaller efforts vying for some sort of recognition, and Path, which has been available on Android and iOS for quite a while now, is definitely one of them. Although it has a unique, endearing interface and a wide range of features and quirks, it has continued to struggle, but with Windows Phone seemingly on the come-up having edged a little more market share in recent times, a Path app has just made a somewhat timely appearance over at the WP Store.
The official Xbox Video app for Windows Phone has finally been released by Microsoft. Users can now readily download and rent their favorite movies and TV shows right from their smartphones, and with an ever-increasing array of content, it's a must-download for all video lovers. You can find the full app info and download details after the fold.
Instagram's Windows Phone 8 app was very late to the party and it may only be in beta form right now, but that isn't stopping it from topping the download charts in the platform's Windows Phone Store. In fact, Instagram is the only app that seems capable of knocking Facebook off that top spot, with the social network now sat at number two in the charts that it once dominated. If there was ever any doubt that launching Instagram on Windows Phone, even though it's still technically a beta version and not quite finished, its overwhelming popularity should prove that the folks at Facebook got that decision right.
