New Spotify feature!

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Do you like going out? Do you like music? Are you alive? If the answer to all three of those questions is yes, than the newest (and maybe raddest) feature on Spotify is for you!

 

 

Concerts is a really simple idea that promises to do a wonderful thing – recommends concerts in your local area based on your taste in music. The new feature will let you know when your favorite bands are going to be in town as well as offer recommendations of new artists playing in your area based on the music you listen to.

 

 

Then, if you’re like, “heck yes I want to go see this band who’s music I’m totally into in my local area”, then you can buy tickets instantly with the help of Songkick.

 

 

Suuuuper easy.

 

 

On your phone, simply open the Browse tab on Spotify and select Concerts to see a personalized list of what’s playing nearby.You can change the location as well, so if you’re traveling you can find out what awesome bands are playing there, too.

 

 

Sign up with Spotify here. You can access the Concerts feature without needing to get the Premium version, but if you’re not so into ads, you can try Premium free for 30 days, after that it’s  $9.99 per month.

 

 

 

App of the Week! Canine cuddles edition

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A new contender for the Uber sharing age is an App called Bark’N’Borrow and we must say- it’s pretty rad.

 

Want to borrow a dog for some fuzzy canine cuddles? Want to connect with other dog owners in your area? Get Rex out of the house when you’re stuck at work or need a professional dog sitter/walker? This app is for you.

 

With a solid user vetting process, premium pet insurance and 24/7 customer support, this app is a super safe and awesome way to share the doggy love around, get you connected with professional doggy services, and create a community of dog lovers.

 

Check it out here, or download it for free here!

 

 

App of the week – Feed a refugee child for a day

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Our App of the Week is a worthy one. ShareTheMeal, an App that launched globally on Thursday by the United Nations World Food Program, aims to help feed refugee children in Jordan who are in dire need of our help.

 

The app allows you to donate as little as $0.50 to help provide food for the children – an amount that has meaning. According to calculations by the U.N. $0.50 is all it costs to feed a child in poverty for a day. The idea is, when you have a meal, you might think about sharing it, and providing a refugee child $0.50 for food for a day.

 

The app was previously tested in June this year, and the results were promising. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, more than 120,000 users provided more than 1.8 million meals to children in need in the Southern African country of Lesotho.

 

The app works very simply.

 

Download the app here, add your PayPal or bank account details and then you can donate $0.50 or over, as much as you like. You can also follow your money to see where it goes – at the moment donations from the app go to Syrian children in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp who participate in WFP’s school meals program. There are, according to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 28,000 school age children who live in the camp.

 

 

At the time of writing, 1,974,501 ‘shared meals’ had been donated through the app. 

 

Offline Google Maps will save the day

 

Google Maps is pretty much a godsend, right? Right. And now Google’s made it an even bigger godsend. Now you can see where exactly the hell you are, and how you can get to where you actually want to be offline. Offline knowledge! knowledge is power… so offline power! Gee, Thanks Google.

 

 

Straight from the Sauce:

 

“Whereas before you could simply view an area of the map offline, now you can get turn-by-turn driving directions, search for specific destinations, and find useful information about places, like hours of operation, contact information or ratings.

 

You can download an area by searching for a city, county or country, for instance, and tapping “Download” on the resulting place sheet, or by going to “Offline Areas” in the Google Maps menu and tapping on the ‘+’ button.

 

Once downloaded, Google Maps will move into offline mode automatically when it recognizes you’re in a location with spotty service or no connectivity at all. When a connection is found, it will switch back online so you can easily access the full version of Maps, including live traffic conditions for your current route.”

 

 

 

Loading the map onto your phone and saving it can save a substantial amount of data and battery life, and give you offline power. Yes please.

 

 

 

Facebook’s new app Notify is here.

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The new Notify App from Facebook has begun rolling out, so what it is exactly and should you get it?

 

The Notify App is designed to deliver news from publications and websites you care about, specific to you. For example, if you like to know local weather, plus any new Thrillist articles that are specific to your city, as well as news/scores from your football team, then this app has you covered.

 

Some examples of notifications, straight from the sauce:

 

-The Final Scores station from FOX Sports provides end-of-game summaries for your favorite teams.
-The Daily AM Forecast station from The Weather Channel sends a local weather forecast at the start of your day.
-Hot New Trailers from Fandango gets you the newest trailers for the hottest movies as they drop.
-Breaking News from CNN and Top Stories from Fox News deliver the day’s news headlines.
-The 10 Best Dressed station from Vogue is your weekly digest of the best-dressed celebs.
-Daily Meditation from Headspace brings bite-sized guided meditation exercises into your day.
-The Flashback station from Getty Images delivers iconic imagery from this day in history.

 

 

‘Stations’ are the sources of the notifications, and they are distributed into interests such as entertainment, news, games, weather, etc.

 

The updates will appear as notifications on your lock screen, so if you’re interested in reading more or getting more detail, you swipe and through to open the link in the app’s browser. If you’re busy at, we don’t know, work or something when all this news is happening, then you can save for reading later. The list of notifications will also be collated in a 24-hour in app feed.

 

You can also share whatever news it is that you’re interested in through social media, email, and all the usual sharing suspects.

 

Notify from Facebook is available today for iPhone.

 

 

Check it out below! Or check it out here. And download it right here if want to be notified! (See what we did there?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon Echo – Get $30 off today only

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Amazon Echo is on Oprah’s Favorite things list!! So you know you gotta get one! Amazon knows this, so TODAY ONLY they’re taking $30 off the retail price!

 

Yup. $149.99 with free shipping is all you’ll pay for Amazon Echo. Today only (That’s the important bit).

 

Echo is kind of like Siri, but in your living room, acting as a smart hub for your home. It can play music, create lists, answer questions, get weather and news, search Yelp, and control smart devices and lights.

 

Additionally, this holiday season the smart voice assistant/speaker will be available in over 3,000 retail stores.

 

Retailers include: Staples, The Home Depot, Sears, RadioShack, Brookstone, P.C. Richard & Son, Fred Meyer, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Fry’s, HH Gregg, ABT and RC Willey.

 

Previously only available to Amazon Prime members on invitation, Echo became available for all in July for $179.99. But in case you already forgot –  get $30 off today only!

 

Check it out below if you need a well produced reminder of why you might need the Echo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon’s Prime now is the future

 

Amazon is branching out into the restaurant and grocery delivery business with Amazon Prime Now. The service will deliver food from local restaurants as well as food from grocery stores such as Sprouts, 99 Ranch, and Bristol Farms within an hour.

 

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The service is currently only available in select places like Sacramento, Portland and Seattle among others and is expanding rapidly. In LA, you can get cupcakes from Sprinkles at your house in an hour. Why the hell would you not want cupcakes from Sprinkles within an hour? We can’t think of any reason.

 

Check to see if your zip code if covered here. You can access Amazon Prime now if you’re an Amazon Prime member through the Prime Now Smartphone App. You can also track your delivery and see the progress of your driver – if you’re really, really into those cupcakes.

 

Coming soon – anything you want in an hour, thanks to Amazon. Did you read that as of today Jeff Besoz is now the 4th richest person in the world? That’s why.

 

 

Beware the InstaAgent App!

Have you been interested in who looks at your Instagram account lately? Did you download an app to help you figure it out? Was it called InstaAgent?

 

According to the good guys over at Macrumors, this app is quite probably bad news. An App developer from Peppersoft downloaded the app and it appears to be doing very bad things. Bad things like storing usernames and passwords of users and sending them to a very suss remote server.

 

InstaAgent is also allegedly logging into accounts and posting unauthorized images. Uh Oh.

 

The Android app has already been removed from the Google Play store, however as of writing it is still available in the iOS App Store.

 

Anyone who has already downloaded InstaAgent and is worried should delete the app and change their Instagram password. If you have other passwords that are the same as your Instagram password, you should probably change those as well. 

 

According to Instagram, apps that promise to provide your with information not already provided by Instagram are “likely an attempt to use your account in an inappropriate way” and should be avoided.

 

 

 

T-Mobile’s big and awesome announcement

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John Legere, everyone’s favorite uncarrier CEO, announced today at the ‘Uncarrier X’ event that as part of a new ‘Binge On’ program, video content from all platforms that T-Mobile are partnering with will be free. FREE. As in not counting on your data plan, free.

 

 

Whaat. Content providers that have already signed up include Netflix, HBO Go and Now, Hulu, Sling TV, ESPN, Showtime, VEVO, and, yup, Go90 – Verizon’s content app – as well as 16 others.

 

 

You get everything for free. Well, you have to pay those people. But if you’re with T-Mobile, you don’t pay for the data! Good news if you’re not on unlimited data plan! And if you are, well then, business as usual?

 

 

From the Sauce, Mr Legere himself:

 

“It’s free, the providers don’t pay, the customer doesn’t pay, and you can shut it off.”

 

The Binge on Service is available from November 15th. Check it out! 

 

 

 

 

 

New iPad Pro Ad released!

Pre-orders for the iPad Pro begin tomorrow and as such, Apple has released another video celebrating the new device.

 

 

It does look pretty sexy, doesn’t it?

 

Pricing for the iPad Pro starts at $799 for the entry-level 32GB Wi-Fi only model. A 128GB Wi-Fi only model is available for $949, and a 128GB Wi-Fi + Cellular model is available for $1,079.

 

 

The iPad Pro is available in the three signature iPad colors: Space Gray, Silver, and Gold. The Apple Pencil retails for $99, while the Smart Keyboard comes in at $169.