April, 2013 - Softonic English

Live stream Kanye West and Lady Gaga concerts to your iPhone with SpacebarFM app

Do you love listening to live music but can’t afford concert tickets? The new SpacebarFM app for the iPhone can help you out by letting you live stream concerts to your phone.

SpacebarFM works by getting artists to sign up to be part of the service. Artists can then choose to stream their concerts for free or for a dollar or two. Users will also be able to “tip” artists with in-app purchases of $0.99, $1.99, or $2.99. This is a great way to support smaller bands. The revenue is then split between Apple, the artist, and the venue itself. Apple takes its traditional 30% cut but it’s not clear how the other 70% is split between the venue and artist. Lady Gaga, John Legend, and Kanye West have already signed up with SpacebarFM to stream their concerts this year.

While SpacebarFM is great for streaming live music, it doesn’t do much beyond that. There’s no way to listen to previously recorded shows. Still, it’s a great way to discover more music by allowing users to listen up to 5 minutes for free before charging $0.99 to continue listening.

There’s also no video feature in SpacebarFM since hiring videographers would likely cost more than the money artists would make from SpacebarFM. Still, audio quality should be decent as SpacebarFM will stream at 256kbps and 328kbps but overall quality will depend on the recording equipment used. To keep users interested visually, the app includes the option to follow or like artists on Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately there’s no album art or artist biographies yet.

UPDATE: Gregory Miller, Co-founder and CEO of Spacebar, has written us to clarify that the company does not have signed agreements with the artists mentioned but instead have a partnership with Backplane. Backplane is “a platform that allows like-minded people to connect across their shared interests,” according to their site. Here’s what Miller had to say:

“We don’t have signed arrangements with the major artists you mention, nor were we in discussions with their management companies. We announced Spacebar’s partnership with Backplane, a platform that allows brands and public figures to unite people around interests, affinities and movements and currently brings millions of fans together around major performing artists including Lady Gaga, Axl Rose, and Bloody Beetroots. Spacebar is planning to stream live performances of Backplane’s artists, such as Kanye West and John Legend in the upcoming Backplane-powered G.O.O.D. Music community, and Backplane’s other marquee artists and communities.”

You can download the SpacebarFM app here on Softonic.

Source: TechCrunch

Updated Windows 8 Weather app features interactive maps, ski resort info

Topographers and meteorologists using Windows 8 have something to get excited about today. Microsoft has updated the Windows 8 Weather app with interactive maps and ski resort information.

With the new interactive maps, users can see weather changes by the hour. Maps will change “interactively and dynamically” with moving weather apps across the world. The different types of maps include satellite, temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, and radar.

Another useful feature that Microsoft rolled out for Weather is ski resort weather condition information for 31 different countries. It’s use may be limited for the time being as summer is just around the corner.

To get the update, open up the Windows Store on your Windows 8 machine.

Source: Bing

Updated Windows 8 Weather app features interactive maps, ski resort infowillwil

Watch Dogs release date announced, new gameplay trailer [video]

Ubisoft’s highly anticipated game, Watch Dogs, finally has a solid release date. The game will be available on November 9th in the USA and on November 22nd in Europe.

Ubisoft says the release dates apply to the PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U versions of Watch Dogs. The company also states that the game will be available at the launch of the PlayStation 4, which still doesn’t have an official launch date from Sony. A version for the yet to be announced next generation Xbox is in the works as well.

Along with a release date, Ubisoft has also released a new trailer that shows off more gameplay, as well as the different versions of the game. There will the a Uplay Exclusive Edition that comes with three additional single-player campaign missions. There will also be a “The Dedsec Edition,” which offers a 23cm tall figurine of Aiden Pearce (the game’s protagonist), a steelbook case, art book, soundtrack, map of Chicago, collectable cards, and the aforementioned additional single-player missions.

You can check out the new trailer below.

Source: Eurogamer | GameSpot

Mac OS X 10.9 to focus on power users with tabbed Finder, iOS-like multi-tasking

With WWDC right around the corner, rumors are heating up about the next version of Mac, OS X 10.9. According to unnamed sources at 9to5Mac, the changes to OS X’s interface won’t be dramatic, instead focusing on features that power users want.

The new operating system will allegedly come with a revamped version of Finder that features tabbed browsing, a feature that has been requested by many. There’s a third-party application called TotalFinder for the Mac that already has this functionality.

Perhaps the biggest gripe that power users have about the last couple versions of OS X is the broken multi-monitor support (this was in my OS X Mountain Lion wishlist in 2012). Over the years, OS X has become more and more influenced by iOS, for better and for worse. When OS X 10.7 launched, it came with the ability to full screen applications. While this was great for single-monitor users, mutli-monitor users were met with an annoying shade that came down over secondary screens for no apparent reason. Even setting a video to full screen would blank out all but one screen.

Mac users can also look forward to a revised mutli-tasking system that draws from iOS’s app switcher. This makes sense for users who want to use apps in full-screen mode like on iOS devices. This may also significantly increase the battery life of Mac laptops by “freezing” applications in the background instead of keeping them running constantly.

What features do you want to see in OS X 10.9? Let us know in the comments.

Source: 9to5Mac | Image credit: TotalFinder

Google Now finally comes to iOS

You can now use Google Now on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with version 3.0 of the Google Search app. Accidentally revealed in a promotional video last month, the service has been available on Android since July last year.

Google Now gives you more intelligent search results, and Cards of useful information like traffic and weather. The app gives you useful information based on your daily routine and search history. It really requires location services and search history to be activated to be really useful. The interface is the same as the Android app, but there are a few less cards available. Boarding passes, activity summary, events, concerts, Fandango and Zillow are not available at least in this version of Google Search for iOS.

You can use voice search too, to find local information that you need (like where’s the nearest French restaurant?). The cards will appear naturally, depending on what you’ve been searching for. It might show you the latests results from your football team, or a news story you’ve been following.

Google Search already includes full screen image search, Google Goggles and swipe controls.

Download Google Search with Google Now.

Minecraft creator Notch releases mini browser game

Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson has created a new free browser game based on typing. Called Drop, it was made instead of a Ludum Dare entry, the regular game making competition with the current theme of Minimalism.

Notch says the game is influenced by the ‘end of Fez‘, and Super Hexagon. These are both amazing games, but Drop will probably remind people of Super Hexagon more. You play the game by typing the words that appear around the center of the screen. It’s fast moving, with an electro soundtrack and graphics that make following the letters appearing a real challenge.

You’ll need touch-typing skills to play Drop, which gives you no time to look for keys! If you’re great at typing, Drop will be a lot of fun. If not: good luck!

Play Drop online. Requires Unity.

Win an iPad with Hotspot Shield in our Facebook contest!

We hope you’ve been hanging out on our Facebook page this weekend, because if you haven’t, you’ll have missed the fact that we’re giving away a shiny new 32GB iPad!

That’s right – the winner of our latest competition will be sent a beautiful new iPad, complete with a subscription to Hotspot Shield. If you didn’t know already, Hotspot Shield is a powerful VPN service that lets you surf the web privately, access blocked websites, load pages faster and use less mobile data.

Even if you don’t manage to bag the big prize, we’re also giving away 5 one-year Hotspot Shield licenses.

We’re really making this easy for you – just head over to Facebook, become a fan of the Softonic Facebook page and tell us where is the most random place you’ve ever hooked up to a wifi point! You’ve got until May 10, so what are you waiting for? Go win your iPad!

New GTA V trailers coming 11am, April 30th

The next Grand Theft Auto V trailers will be released at 11am PST on Tuesday 30th March. We’re expecting one trailer for each of the main protagonists, Michael, Franklin and Trevor. Later this week we’ll get even more information about the game, as the Official XBox Magazine will publish an extensive preview of what will probably be the biggest game of 2013.

We’ll bring you everything you need to know about the trailers when they drop tomorrow. We’ll also tell you what can be learned about GTA V from them, as we did for GTA V trailer one and two.

Check out our guide to everything we know about Grand Theft Auto V so far.

Download the free Iron Man 3 official game

To coincide with the movie release, Gameloft has released a free to play iOS and Android app, Iron Man 3 – The Official Game. It’s an endless runner game, like Temple Run 2 or the amazing 2D Canabalt.

Iron Man 3 – The Official Game has optional in game purchases, and takes you through New York, Malibu and China, fighting the villains Crimson Dynamo, Ezekiel Stane, Living Laser and M.O.D.O.K. The game includes up to 18 Iron Man suits you can develop, plus various upgrades.

The main draw for Iron Man 3 – The Official Game has to be the graphics, which are really impressive and fast moving. It has swipe and tilt controls, and if you have played Temple Run, you’ll have no trouble getting into this.

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Download Iron Man 3 – The Official Game for iOS or Android.

Mailbox coming to iPad, Android and other platforms

Mailbox, the highly regarded email app for iOS is coming to iPad and Android soon. The app has an innovative approach to email management, which is great for anyone who gets a lot of email.

The app spent a long time in beta, and gained a lot of fans. It’s focused on helping you order your mails, with neat controls to swipe them into lists such as read later. It has over a million users already, despite only working with Gmail accounts and iPhone/iPad Touch. It is promising enough that the company was acquired by cloud service DropBox in March.

Although there has been no official announcement from the company, they tweeted that other platform support is coming, including Android. They also said the iPad version is coming soon.

@adamyaffe no ETA yet but the iPad version is coming soon! iCloud and other accounts may be added as we grow !

— Mailbox (@mailbox) April 15, 2013

Find more iOS communication apps here.