From ambient audio-sharing apps to free, unlimited storage for all your mobile photos, we covered a lot of ground with new iOS apps in June. So by way of a quick recap and, of course, to help you filter through the debris, here’s our pick of the newbies from the past month.
OverHeard
OverHeard is a fiendishly simple sound-sharing app that wants to do for audio what Vine did for video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-P_NG_nupw
It ambiently records and preserves up to three minutes of sound wherever you are, then starts again, deleting the previous audio segment in the process. The upshot? You always have (up to) three minutes of audio recorded which means you never miss that impromptu wise-crack, offensive comment or anything else. However, OverHeard wants to be a social network too, which may be a step too far.
Shutter
StreamNation launched a new standalone companion camera app for iPhone this month called Shutter, delivering infinite, unlimited media storage through automatically storing photos and videos on StreamNation’s cloud-based servers. The real kicker that’s worth stressing here is that it’s completely free, and will remain genuinely unlimited for everyone.
Shutter lets you take photos and videos directly within the app, and doesn’t store it to the camera roll on your device, so this is entirely cloud-based, though it can make up to 500 photos available offline if you wish.
➤ Shutter
Whyd
Whyd is a social, community-based online bookmarking platform that lets you save all your favorite tunes from across the Web, including YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo and Deezer, while chatting with other Whyd users about your shared taste in music.
With many music-streaming platforms serving as siloed vaults of social activity, Whyd wants to open things up to create a cross-platform, social music service for everyone.
➤ Whyd
Path Talk
Path followed in the footsteps of Facebook this month by launching a new standalone messaging app called Path Talk.
As with other similar messaging apps, Path Talk wants to replace SMS (and, as before, Facebook), letting you converse with friends, family, and groups, with messages that are automatically erased from Path’s servers within 24 hours. Sound familiar? But it does have some nice features – for example, ‘Ambient Status’ automatically tells your friends whether you’re in transit, nearby, or even low on battery.
Overswipe
Overswipe lets you give your iPhone to your friends to show them all those cool and hilarious photos you’ve snapped. Except, YOU now control which photos they see, hiding all those embarrassing ones you’d rather keep hidden away.
Overswipe isn’t going to change the world. But it’s a pretty simple idea that fixes a problem many people have, creating an instant, siloed photo album that’s separate from the rest of your images.
BillGuard [US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand]
BillGuard isn’t a new app, but June saw the service finally roll out of North America and truly into international waters, starting with the UK, Australia and New Zealand. More countries are expected to be added in the future.
It calls itself a ‘people-powered antivirus system for bills’. Predictive algorithms alert you when there’s unexpected charges such as hidden fees, billing errors, scams and fraud on your credit card or debit card. It also delivers warnings when a similar dubious charge has been flagged by other users.
Ginger Page
Ginger Software specializes in ‘language enhancement’ tools to make it easier to write English correctly – native-speakers and learners alike.
The Ginger Page app goes beyond in-line spell-checking to give you tools that instantly rephrase certain words and gives contextual synonyms, translations or definitions – all of which can be very useful, regardless of your first language.
Cinamatic (Hipstamatic)
Back in May, the creators of Hipstamatic launched Cinamatic, a new iPhone video-editing app that was perhaps more than a little bit inspired by the ‘tap-and-hold’ recording recording functionality of Vine. It lets you record square-format skits of between 3 and 15 seconds in length.
As of this month, Cinamatic now supports iPad natively too, something that Vine or Instagram are yet to do.
Yo
You might say that the less uttered about Yo, the better. But for whatever reason, Yo really hit a nerve with the public this month due to its sheer simplicity (read: lack of features), coupled with the fact that it’s VC-backed. So it’s worth a mention again here.
Yo is a single-button, “zero-character communication tool.” Rather than saying ‘Good Morning’ to your buddies, you simply ‘Yo’ them. That’s all you can really do with it.
➤ Yo
Broken Age
Own an iPad? Love classic point-and-click adventure games? You’ll love Broken Age.
The game was originally pitched on Kickstarter, before going on to smash all kinds of records with more than $3 million in pledges.
Amazon Music with Prime Music [US only]
Amazon’s first music-streaming service, Prime Music, went live this month, which resulted in its existing Amazon Cloud Player app being rebranded as Amazon Music and updated with streaming capabilities.
The bundling of free music-streaming for Prime subscribers remains US-only for now.
Contact Box
Being able to easily share multiple contact details with groups or individuals can be useful, which is why Contact Box could prove popular.
In a nutshell, Contact Box allows users to create and organize contacts into easily shareable lists – which can be sent via email or SMS message.
Slingshot [Facebook]
Following a whoopsy of a false start, Facebook (you may have heard of it) launched a new standalone messaging app called Slingshot this month, kicking off initially in the US only, before being introduced globally too.
Jumping on the ephemeral bandwagon, Facebook wants to remain relevant to the younger generations. The gist: in order to see a photo or video sent to you by a friend, you have to reply with a photo or video.
BeamIt
You may have heard of Cooliris before, a service that reels in photos from multiple platforms and puts them in a single place for your convenience. Well, June saw the company branch out into the messaging-app space with BeamIt.
The launch follows in the footsteps of the main Cooliris app, which has also been placing more emphasis on messaging features. Essentially, BeamIt revolves around photos instead of text, and is nicely designed.
➤ BeamIt
If you’re on the hunt for more iOS apps, check out some of the best ones from May, or put your feet up and peruse our pick of the bunch from the whole of 2013. Alternatively, you can check out some of the best Android apps from June too.
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