Gadgetory

hello began ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to Google Play weekly let's get your weekend started off the right way with some awesome app news this week we're going to talk about some Play Store improvements a new band on the word flappy and BBM voice last week we reported the extremely good news that flappy bird is dead and gone forever and if Google Play and iTunes have anything to say about it it's going to remain that way over the last week developers who did flappy bird ripoffs started noticing their applications are being pulled from their respective app downloading repositories without being told why indeed the few who did get answers were given links to the spam section of the Terms of Service which is actually quite hilarious some developers have been lashing out saying that clones of Castle Wolfenstein are allowed to exist but not flappy bird clones I think he missed the part where Wolfenstein is a masterpiece worthy of replication while flappy bird really isn't there's been no word on whether or not current flappy titles will be taken down but we do know that putting up an appt with flappy in the title will get your app taken down even if it has nothing to do with 5e bird so if you are a developer and you are about to publish an application and it does have the word flappy in it we highly recommend you change the word flappy a little while back the mobile version of the Google Play Store started showing people when applications had in app purchases and now the desktop site does as well the update has rolled out to most major markets so chances are if you're watching this the website has already been updated for you so the next time you run into an application on the actual website that has in-app purchases you will know about it it's located under the download button right next to the device compatibility message of course with this new update the question arises as to whether or not Google could be doing it better as you can see here Apple goes the extra mile and shows you the popular in-app purchases so you know what people are spending money on inside of the app well it would be nice to see a list of in-app purchases I think they're being a notification there is definitely enough of course I could be wrong it's been known to happen so if you feel strongly one way or the other let me know about it in the comments Oprah Max is a new beta application from the makers of you guessed it opera browser that helps you lower your data consumption and guess what it's available to everyone so here's how the app works on unencrypted apps which are most applications you can view how much data is being can sumed then opera max routes all of the data going to those apps through their servers compresses it and then continues to send it to your application this means you get the same content out of these apps but it uses far less data the app can be downloaded in the Google Play Store and we'll have a link to that in the written companion which is in the video description as you can imagine it is a beta which means there are some issues and that's reflected in the google play store rating and the user reviews there's no timetable for a stable release yet so if you're interested give the beta a try and see if it works for you so vh1 joined the 21st century this last week as they released their official Android application spoiler it's not terrible while there is no denying that vh1 programming has been slowly on the decline it's great news that the official application is out with the app you can view full length shows and movies from vh1 along with some music videos sneak peeks and some other stuff the only caveat is you must login with your cable provider credentials to access everything supported cable providers or AT&T u-verse Time Warner Cable directv Verizon and others I actually wanted to talk about this app for a moment because it had a feature that I really liked when you watch TV on vh1 you can use the application is sort of a companion app to get additional content related to whatever it is that you're watching I thought this was cool because it lets you engage more with the show and I know some channels do this but i'd like to see this become a standard i don't know that's just me our last bit of news actually took place late last week and it involves BBM BBM was talking about releasing BBM voice and bbm channels in the early part of 2014 and now that update is rolling out to everyone this is a bigger update than it appears on the surface it seems like BBM just added the ability to call other BBM users over data connections however when you step back and look at the big picture bbm is on par with pretty much every messaging alternative out there with the exception of services that allow video chatting like hangouts and skype of course the other things that came with the update include bbm channels which is essentially a remastered version of AOL Instant Messenger random chat room services new emojis location sharing and BBM group sizes have been increased to 50 it's true that hangouts and Skype are still better options for now but it should be noted that bbm is improving and that's that's pretty super who's a who wants to see some new and trending applications as usual if you want to check any of these applications out you can find the links in the written companion which is in the video description dormi has the potential to be a really helpful application if you're a parent this application is essentially a baby monitor for smartphones here's how it works you put a phone in a room where the baby is and then when it cries the app will amplify the sound and send it to your smartphone it has a few other nifty features like stats and it'll even notify you discreetly if you're on the phone and the baby starts to cry by vibrating your phone and giving you a little beat it's a nice a poor parents and it's free glove is a very interesting application that helps you figure out if your current mobile service is right for you what you do is download the application and then activate it and for three days the app will take usage statistics and location statistics and then based on your locations and usage it will suggest mobile plans from various carriers it's only available to San Francisco and New York residents for right now but do keep an eye out on this application because it can be really helpful once it's available in your area meg 2d is a new game out of hero craft and chances are you've played a game like this before essentially this is your classic top-down scrolling shooter view control an airplane and blow things up it's free to play and it hasn't app purchases but you shouldn't need to buy anything to enjoy the title it's a fun little game if you enjoy this kind of stuff and a great way to kill a little bit of time the NSA spying thing is still quite a big worry for a lot of people and the popular iOS app blink has made its way to Android to help with that it's a messaging service that puts privacy first by self destructing your messages after a period of time and it allows people to talk off the record this is great if you want to keep your conversations private and it looks better than most of the competition there are some bugs and compatibility issues but it's also a new app so that's kind of normal last up this week is the room to the first game in this series was spectacular even if it was a little bit short and so far we get the same kind of vibe about the room too for those new to the series this is a puzzle game where you must search for clues unlock secrets and figure out what's going on it has a wicked high rating of 4.9 in the Google Play Store and it's among the best releases in the month of March it's three bucks but we consider that three dollars well spent well that about does it for this video I'm Johanna the android authority app guide don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel and if you want to follow android authority myself or the rest of the awesome youtube team you can find our social media links in the video description below if you're hanging out for a minute we have a couple of Awesome videos for you to watch right over there finally don't forget to check out the written companion which is in the video description for all of the download links thank you again for watching and have a wonderful day