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Click the image above to watch the video on YouTube!
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Android Apps you shouldn't miss this week
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Bitly
One of the world's most popular link shortening services released it's officially Android app this week!
Download from Google Play
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ParcelTrack
ParcelTrack isn't necessarily new, but it's an excellent app that shows you all of your shipped packages in one spot!
Download from Google Play
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Fear the Walking Dead: Dead Run
Fear the Walking Dead: Dead Run is described by developers as a tactical runner based on the show!
Download from Google Play
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Card Wars Kingdom
The latest Adventure Time game is out now. It's had a rough start, but it should be a fun game once the kinks are gone!
Download from Google Play!
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Discogs
Discogs is a fun little app that helps you catalog your physical music and then helps you search for and find new albums for you to buy. It's a unique premise, especially if you like storing music the old fashioned way.
Download from Google Play
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Headlines this week
- T-Mobile is cashing in on the Pokemon Go craze by allowing people to play the game without it affecting their data cap. This is wildly unfair to every other game out there, and I'm sure the net neutrality conversation will be had. However, unless something happens, this promotion will last for about one year.
- Pokemon Go was also rolled out to the UK and Germany this week with other European and Asian territories planned for the coming weeks. It was also launched in Italy, Spain, and Portugal as well. Pokemon fever is spreading fast, but we'll talk more about that in a moment.
- That announcement came on the heels of Pokemon Go's first official update. Along with some much needed stability improvements, the game also became compatible with devices with Intel chips as well as devices running Android N. I would've focused more on that stability part than something so few people are actually using, but what do I know?
- One of the bigger announcements for Pokemon Go was that it surpassed Candy Crush Saga as the most popular mobile game in United States history. It reached 21 million active players, which soundly beat the 20 million active users that Candy Crush Saga achieved back in 2013. This came just days after it surpassed Tinder in active users and word is that it's closing in on Twitter as well, if it hasn't passed it already.
- It was also announced that Pokemon Go players would eventually get the ability to trade their Pokemon to other trainers, which is going to be freaking awesome. Along with that, they will allow sponsored locations of Pokestops where businesses can buy a Pokestop and put it in their business. You can take that as either good things or bad things, that's fine. The CEO of Niantic stated that these updates would be rolling out soon.
- Now for something completely different. This week, Pokemon Go topped porn to be the hottest search term in all of the Internet. On top of that, Pokemon Porn searches on PornHub are up 136% since the game's launch. I'm not overly proud to be a human being after that, but hey, whatever floats their boat, right?
- Of course, Pokemon Go wasn't without a little controversy. On top of being obnoxious to just about everyone who doesn't play it, the game also led a woman to a dead man floating in a river which was, obviously, rough on her mentally. There were also reports of some thugs that were putting up lures and then mugging people who came by. These events are rare, but is yet another reminder to be careful when you're out playing.
- And hey, if you're getting sick of hearing about Pokemon Go, there is a Chrome extension available now called Pokemon No that will help weed it off of your computer screen. At this point, I don't blame you if you're a little sick of hearing about it and this extension will help ease the strain of seeing it everywhere.
- Microsoft is working on a competitor to the popular IFTTT. This alternative, called CAP (or Conditional Action Programmer), functions in much the same way that IFTTT does, except it allows you to start a function by using a voice command. This would seemingly let you program your own voice assistant that does the things that you want. It's not available just yet, but if it's half as good as it sounds, it should be fun to use.
- It's been announced this week that San Francisco will be hosting the Google Play Indie Games festival on September 24th. The premise is that Indie developers will submit their games to show off and the festival will be about the wacky, fun, and awesome things they create. We'll cover as much of it as we can when the time comes!
- A new video came out this week that shows just how much effort Facebook puts into testing their app on Android devices. The device farm, which is about 200 devices and swiftly growing, tests performance on everything from high end to low end devices as wel as older devices. It's a lot of work for an app that uses so many resources.
- If you're thinking of picking up Pokemon Go and want a starter guide, we have a pretty good one here written by Edgar Cervantes!
- In this week's Android Customization post, Feisty talks about creating Bluetooth profiles for your speakers and headphones using Tasker!
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