Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

Everyone likes apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers make paid apps free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.

These apps normally cost money and this sale lasts for a limited time only. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged. 

More: 200 Awesome iPhone Apps | The best Android apps for almost any occasion

Slidebox

Swipe through your photos one by one and quickly swipe up to trash or tap to save to an iOS album. You can finally get your photos organized.

Available on:

iOS

Forager

This app is a professional meal planner in your pocket which optimizes your nutrition and leads toward the body you want fast.

Available on:

iOS

FancyDays

FancyDays helps you manage those days that matter to you and count down to them. You will never forget those important days with this app.

Available on:

iOS

TranslateSafari

The app is a Safari extension that translates and speaks aloud the entire web page of the Safari app.
A must-have app to translate and speak aloud web pages of Safari.

Available on:

iOS

Pimp My Message

Your friends won’t believe their eyes when they see color text messages arrive. Pick colors to match your school, company, favorite teams, your mood, or message.

Available on:

iOS

Size Your Ring

There is no need to go into the jeweler to get your finger sized. This app has it all — be extra prepared for next Valentine’s Day with Size Your Ring.

Available on:

iOS

Facebook videos will now auto-play with the sound on by default

Facebook’s auto-playing videos are about to get much more annoying.

If you’re not a fan of Facebook’s auto-playing videos, get ready to be annoyed. Starting today, videos will auto-play with the sound enabled by default. If you don’t have your phone set on silent, every time you scroll past an auto-playing video, you’ll now hear the audio associated with it.

Facebook says that it introduced the change after receiving “positive feedback” from a beta test conducted last year:

Videos in News Feed have previously played silently — you tap on a video to hear sound. As people watch more video on phones, they’ve come to expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on. After testing sound on in News Feed and hearing positive feedback, we’re slowly bringing it to more people. With this update, sound fades in and out as you scroll through videos in News Feed, bringing those videos to life.

Although videos will now play with the sound enabled, you’ll be able to turn it off via settings:

If your phone is set to silent, videos will not play with sound. If you never want videos to play with sound, you can disable this feature by switching off “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound” in Settings. We’ll also be showing in-product messages to tell people about the new sound on experience and controls.

You can now minimize a video and scroll through your News Feed, with the video continuing to play in the corner of your screen. Facebook is also making changes to the way vertical videos look on Android and iOS, including larger previews. Finally, Facebook’s video app will make its debut on Amazon Fire TV, Samsung’s smart TVs, and Apple TV.

HTC will launch a mobile version of the Vive this year

HTC will design and release a mobile VR solution this year.

HTC isn’t selling as many phones as it used to, and is now referring to itself as a “VR company,” much to the delight of its shareholders.

The company has informed CNET UK that is working on a mobile version of the HTC Vive, though the design and functionality is not yet clear. What is clear is that “it’s not a phone slapped onto a headset. It’d be a different thing,” according to CFO Chia-lin Chang.

The Vive, while great, requires a very powerful PC and a rat’s nest of wires to function properly, while solutions like Google Daydream and Samsung Gear VR merely require a compatible smartphone. They’re not as powerful, obviously, but you can take it with you.

HTC promises something in the middle, perhaps a bit more standalone, and slightly more powerful, than Google’s and Samsung’s approaches, but more portable than a Vive. According to HTC, the solution will be compatible with its new HTC U Ultra flagship, and will be released before the end of 2017.

Adding a SubPac to your VR setup makes a huge difference!

Is there such a thing as too much immersion?

A great VR experience pulls you in and keeps you totally engaged. It doesn’t matter if you’re battling sorcerers, diffusing bombs, operating on people, or just running a convenience store for robots. That immersed feeling is everything, and it’s never just one thing that pulls you in. A polished, natural-feeling environment coupled with some great audio can come together to build something truly special, but how much further can you go with home VR equipment?

For some, the next step is better whole-body detection. Others want a way to feel what is happening in VR with better vibration and impact vests. Some just want to increase the sense of presence by adding smells or air movement. The truth is there is no one way to move forward, as long as the ultimate goal is to increase immersion. The folks at SubPac have been working for a long time on making it easier for you to feel sounds as though they’re coming from more than just your headphones, and it makes a surprisingly big difference in VR.

Read more at VR Heads!

Master Product Management with this bundle for 79% off

Product Management is a skill that many companies are looking for these days as they bring new products to market, test new ideas, and figure out which direction to go. In today’s world, things change so fast that you’ve always got to be ahead of the curve or you get left behind quickly, and no one wants that. Wouldn’t it be cool to get involved with the next big thing, before it is the next big thing? Well, you can with the right skills.

Master these new skills for $45! Learn More

The complete Product Management bundle will help get you started with the skills you need to jumpstart your new career path. From learning the basic skillsets you need to shift your career to mastering the interview and becoming a Product Manager, you’ll get it all. With 7 different courses and nearly 500 lessons, you’ll get a whole lot of information at a huge discount here.

The courses include:

• Skillsets to Shift Your Career to Product Management – $45 Value
• The Complete Product Management Course – $35 Value
• Master the Product Manager Interview – The Complete Guide – $35 Value
• The Non-Technical Person’s Guide to Building Products & Apps – $30 Value
• Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job – $35 Value
• Product Management: Product Market Strategy – $20 Value
• Buyer Personas for Your B2B Business – $20 Value

Take a chance at a new career for 79% off! Learn More

Normally, you’d pay around $220 for these courses on their own, but right now you can pay a fraction of that. Priced at just $45 for a limited time you can finally make the move towards a new career path without going broke. Be sure to act quick as this deal won’t last long, your future self will thank you.

How to fix a stuck keyboard in your Gear VR

Getting the keyboard to open in Samsung Internet is easy, but closing it requires an extra step.

One of the coolest things you can do while playing with your Gear VR, is spend some time surfing the internet. That’s entirely possible too, with the help of the Samsung Internet app. This means you can check out 360 degree videos, or check out the latest SNL clip to give yourself a guffaw. However, some users have reported a problem where they can open up the virtual keyboard in Samsung Internet, but are unable to close it or access voice search. Thankfully there is an easy fix to this problem!

Read more at VRHeads.com

Essential Accessories for Huawei Mate 9

Got a fancy new Huawei Mate 9 sticking out of your pocket? Accessorize it with these useful add-ons.

The best part about bringing a new smartphone into your home is all the accessories that you
get to buy in celebration. Here are a few ideas of how to initially equip yourself for life with the Huawei Mate 9. And if you need some cases to accompany those new accessories, we’ve got you covered there, too.

• Ranyi Premium Hybrid case
• AUKEY Magnetic Car Mount
• Huawei Mate Desktop Charging Dock
• Arctek Type-C Car Charger
• Foneso Extendable Monopod

Ranyi Premium Hybrid case

A great case doesn’t need to be expensive or bulky. Ranyi’s Premium Hybrid case for the Mate 9 is neither, but at $8.99 it’s well worth the price.

Featuring a hardened carbon fiber back and plastic sides, the Ranyi case protects against drops and scratches without adding weight or thickness.

See at Amazon

AUKEY Magnetic Car Mount

It’s illegal in many states to hold your smartphone while you’re driving, even if you’re not actively using it. Keep it out of your hands and easy to see with a magnetic car mount that slides inside your air conditioning vent. The ultra-strong magnet comes with sticky magnetic strips you can adhere to the back of your phone or inside a case.

See at Amazon

Huawei Mate 9 Desktop Charging Dock

Keep the Mate 9 handsomly docked by your bedside or on your desk with this desktop charging dock from Encased. The stand is Type-C compatible and features a height adjustable design, in case your smartphone case is keeping the Mate 9 from properly docking. The built-in cable also enables data transfers.

See at Amazon

Arctek Type-C Car Charger

If you spend quite a bit of time in your car — commuting sure is rough — be sure to grab the Arctek USB car charger, which supports QuickCharge 3.0. It also has built in protection for overheating and overcharging, in case you need to keep your Mate 9 plugged in for the ride. This car charger is also compatible with some laptops, including the ChromeBook Pixel and Apple MacBook.

See at Amazon

Foneso Extendable Monopod

Planning to shoot photos with the Mate 9’s dual rear-facing cameras? Get the Foneso tripod and selfie stick combination! It’s the ultimate travel accessory because it holds up your phone for selfies and stands up for group shots! The camera mount stows down to 7 inches and features a Bluetooth remote. It also offers a 1/4-inch standard screw for GoPros and other smaller cameras.

See at Amazon

Prey gameplay preview: Bethesda reboot looks set to live up to expectations

So-called development hell – into which games can fall when they just, for whatever reason, aren’t coming together – can, it seems, sometimes be a good thing. That’s certainly true in the case of Prey – originally mooted as the sequel to 2006’s well regarded first-person shooter of the same name, the rights to which were acquired by Bethesda Softworks as long ago as 2011.

Somewhere along the line, Bethesda embarked on a major rethink, decided that Prey 2 would instead simply be dubbed Prey and handed the development reins to French outfit Arkane Studios, of Dishonored fame. Despite that chequered history, the resulting Prey, due to hit the shops on 5 May, has managed to retain the status of one of 2017’s most-anticipated games.

We managed – at Bethesda’s London office – to play through the first hour or so of Prey, a tantalising session which confirmed that it looks well set to live up to its considerable expectations.

The hands-on session also comprehensively demonstrated that the only thing Prey has in common with its 2006 predecessor is its name: it’s very much an Arkane Studios project, rather than some sort of reboot, and while it does contain guns, to describe it as a mere first-person shooter would be far too simplistic.

Prey review: An alternate reality

Prey’s action starts with a choice: your character has the usefully unisex name Morgan Yu, so you must decide whether to play through as a male or female Morgan.

Bethesda / Arkane Studios

Morgan, you instantly discover, works for a space-exploration company called TranStar. Prey posits an alternate reality in which President John F Kennedy was never assassinated, so by the time 2032 – when the game is set – comes around, mankind has conquered space much more comprehensively than it is likely to have done in real life.

Morgan is being prepared for a stint on the TranStar space station Talos I, so your first task is to get her (we chose to play the female character) to TranStar’s office in preparation for final tests before blasting off. Which involves leaving her agreeably flashy apartment and taking a short helicopter ride, revealing an imaginative take on what San Francisco’s skyline might look like in 2032.

After a brief encounter with Morgan’s brother Alex, we begin the test – involving answering faintly ludicrous psychological-response questions. But then disaster strikes: through the test area’s glass a coffee-mug magically appears. One of the TranStar scientists picks it up, at which point it morphs into a small black alien, which attacks the scientist. Security arrives, gas flows into the test-chamber and we pass out.

Prey review: The initial twist

Upon awakening back in our apartment, a massive story-twist kicks in – sorry, but there’s no way of dealing with this without a spoiler. We’re informed by an artificial intelligence called January that we’re in danger and must escape from the apartment.

Bethesda / Arkane Studios

In the corridor outside, a dead maintenance employee holds a wrench – which becomes Morgan’s first weapon. We use it to smash the apartment’s window, and instead of finding ourself on a balcony overlooking San Francisco, we gain access to a lab. Morgan had been on Talos I all along; a bit of exploration revealed the “helicopter” we had previously travelled in to be a sort of mock-up firmly tethered to the ground.

Next task is to reach the space station’s lobby. Having passed through various areas familiar from the testing session, and being given a hint by a moving element of the film set-like environment, we call the lift, which reconfigures the scenery, opening a path to the lobby. As we continue to explore, Prey unveiled its main gameplay mechanics.

Prey review: Play your way

Before even reaching the lobby, we encountered the odd alien – January informs us they are called Typhon, but are generally known as mimics. They certainly don’t like a wrench to the face.

Bethesda / Arkane Studios

In the lobby, we discover a key gameplay element, called a Neuromod – a liquid that cab be injected into the eye, bringing a new ability. Neuromods are clearly at the heart of Prey’s gameplay – later on in the game, they will allow you to take on the mimics’ shape-shifting abilities.

Initially, the Neuromod abilities-tree has three branches: Security, Engineer and Scientist. We played it safe by bumping up our health in the Security branch – which also governs weapons-related abilities. The Engineer branch improves mechanical repair skills – we swiftly encountered various objects like pipes leaking gas and a sparking control panel that were begging to be restored to working order. Bumping up your Scientist abilities will clearly allow you to do things like acquire the mimics’ attributes.

Prey review: Weapons and ammo

During play we started to accumulate some weaponry, which had the feel of signature to them. The GLOO gun, for example, shoots out foam which hardens instantly, so can be used to immobilise enemies before you batter them with the wrench or shoot them, and can even be used to build platforms allowing you to get to out-of-reach areas. Indeed, we were able to use it to access the Security area via a vent we wouldn’t otherwise have managed to jump up to. We were also told that the GLOO gun can put out fires and temporarily extinguish sparks.

Bethesda / Arkane Studios

The scene is definitely set for some elaborate puzzles, but unfortunately in the early stages to which we were confined, puzzling merely involved accessing new areas.

Prey takes pains to point out – typically for an Arkane game – that it sets great store in allowing you to play however you choose. Clearly, the play-off between Security, Scientist and Engineer abilities will be at that heart of that ambition, as well as being able to build platforms with the GLOO gun.

We also found a Fabricator: a kind of 3D printer which turned the junk we collected (like burnt-out circuit-boards and rubber piping) into objects like health packs and wrenches. It had loads of empty slots, so obviously operates with a blueprint-style system.

Plus there was a machine which generated a hovering, robotic medical assistant, and we found movable turrets which automatically shot at aliens.

Bethesda / Arkane Studios

You’ll need these weapons and upgrades for what’s in store. As well as the mimics, we encountered a larger, bipedal alien, which could have been a mutated human. And ammo seems to be in conspicuously short supply: dead mimics often yielded a handful of shotgun shells.

Prey review: Use your brain

Prey is clearly a game that demands you use brainpower, rather than fast-twitch skills. It feels more BioShock than first-person shooter; and unlike Dishonored, there’s no evidence of any need to employ stealth.

Vibe-wise, it has bags of promise. The game looks fabulous, with a graphics engine that is clearly more modern than that of Dishonored 2 and some neat art-direction touches: although Talos I is suitably futuristic in many respects, it also has plenty of Art Deco-style interior décor.

Bethesda / Arkane Studios

The creepy, oppressive atmosphere generated by being trapped on an empty space station with nothing but robots and a fast-multiplying population of shape-shifting aliens comes through loud and clear, even in what was effectively an extended tutorial session.

The control system, too, feels spot-on – it was noticeably more minimal and less fiddly than that of Dishonored 2, with a fast-access wheel for weapons, objects and abilities, and the chance to map key weapons and abilities to the d-pad.

First Impressions

Our brief experience of Prey has left us itching to be able to immerse ourselves more comprehensively in the game.

While we merely had the chance to scratch its surface, it feels like a title that contains a treasure trove of horror-inflected sci-fi, along with some potentially imaginative and distinctive gameplay.

Thankfully we’ll only have to wait a couple of months for it to reveal its full glory. Here’s praying it doesn’t get delayed, because Prey looks like one of 2017’s sure-fire successes.

Sony files patent for Vive-style PSVR tracking device

Sony is experimenting with its own Vive-style VR tracking device, according to a patent filing from June. The document hints at a tracker working similarly to HTC’s current virtual reality tech. Functioning as an external projector, the device would use lights and mirrors to map the player’s real world movements straight into PSVR. While Sony’s VR offering currently uses a camera to detect light from the player’s headset, the existing tracking limits users to an incredibly small space. With light often interfering with the PS4’s camera, if this new tech makes it to production it could not only give gamers more mobility but also potentially provide a more accurate and immersive PSVR experience.

While merely filing a patent doesn’t guarantee that the tech will ever see the light of day, Sony investing in a more immersive PSVR experience makes a lot of sense. Being able to physically walk around a virtual world does wonders for creating a feeling of presence and if it makes it to market, this new device could help PSVR stand toe-to-toe with the more technically accomplished Vive.

Interestingly, the patent states that the tracking device is wireless, suggesting it would connect to a PS4 through either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. With the competition already announcing wireless peripherals of their own, it’s no surprise that Sony may be following in their footsteps.The patent gives no indication, however, whether the tracker would be an add-on for the existing headset or incorporated as a part of a PSVR successor.

PSVR was released last October. Since then, Sony has kept quiet about the tech, omitting sales numbers from end of year press releases and failing to announce many new titles for the platform at its last conference. Yet with more bundles hitting the shelves and Sony’s recently released PS4 Pro offering a noticeable bump in VR performance, these patents help suggest that the company’s not done with VR just yet.

Via: CG Mag

Source: Free patents online

Bethesda’s ‘Prey’ reboot makes you fear everything

Prey is all about deception. The first-person shooter starts off simple enough: You’re a scientist beginning a new job at your brother’s massive research company. You wake up in your bedroom, do some exploring and board a helicopter on top of your roof to head to work, where you’re then subjected to some first-day testing. Everything seems to be going fine, until — much like Valve’s 1998 classic Half-Life — all hell breaks loose. Aliens run rampant in the compound, and you black out during an attack.

That’s when Prey, the upcoming retelling of the 2006 game of the same name, twists the notion of what you know. You wake up in your bedroom again, just like before, as if the first 30 minutes of the game were a bad dream. But once you start exploring, you discover you’re not in an apartment. You’re in the middle of a giant sound stage simulating parts of your life, Truman Show-style. Once escaping the sound stage, you learn you’re not in a futuristic version of San Francisco but instead on a space station that seems to be largely deserted. But one part of that earlier vision is true: The station is overrun with aliens.

Those aliens, too, are deceivers. They’re not too imposing one-on-one; a few smacks with the wrench you carry is enough to dispatch them. But they’re masters of surprise, because they can take on the form of everyday objects scattered around the space station, lying in wait for the right time to strike. At one point during the preview, I picked up a seemingly innocuous item and stored it in my inventory, only to have it start to strangle me. It was my first time playing through the game, and I didn’t know what to do, so it killed me quickly. After that, I was a lot more careful about what items I picked up.

Even the game’s name, Prey, is a bit deceptive. As Arkane has already admitted, the game has basically no common DNA with the original, outside the name. A sequel to the original Prey was announced all the way back in 2006, shortly after the original game’s launch. But it lingered in development hell for years before publisher Bethesda picked it up in 2011.

A few years after that, news broke that the forthcoming game would be essentially a ground-up reboot, with all the previous work on what would have been Prey 2 tossed aside. Somewhat ironically, this might be one of the biggest things 2017’s Prey has in common with the original: a long, protracted development cycle. When the original game came out for the Xbox 360 and Windows in 2006, it had been in development for over a decade.

There is, of course, one other big similarity as well. At a high level, the space/sci-fi/alien theme is all in line with the original, although that’s a pretty broad template to play with. But Prey may have a lot more in common with Arkane’s two Dishonored games than its namesake.

“No matter what kind of game we work on, there’s two things we always try to do,” said lead designer Ricardo Bare following last week’s media preview. “One is we try to make the world as deeply and richly detailed as possible — we treat the world and a setting as a character.” I didn’t totally get the sense that the world is a character from the brief demo I tried, but the world is vast and encourages exploration. The game’s physics also encourage you to pick up and interact with as many things as you can find.

The second thing Bare cited as Arkane’s goal was to “give the player a bunch of interesting tools, powers [and] gadgets and try to encourage them to improvise solutions to problems.” That’s another design goal that will need more gameplay time to come to fruition, as the first part of the game is fairly linear. But Bare and lead systems designer Seth Shain said the goal is to provide players with as many different ways to progress through the action as possible.

“We try not to ever make it so there’s only one way to get into a place,” Shain said. Both Shain and Bare explained that the the game’s “soft gates” would have multiple solutions depending on your play style and that they would only force players into a “hard gate” where you have to have a certain skill or object to advance as ways to drive the campaign’s story forward.

Similarly, encounters with the mimic aliens are entirely unscripted. “It’s part of their AI behavior that they know when they go into a room, they’re allowed to mimic any physics object that’s of a certain size,” Bare said. “Even as the developers, we are constantly surprised; we don’t know what object is going to be a mimic.”

That notion of giving players unusual objects and weapons was definitely on display in the Prey demo. The first weapon I got my hands on was a basic wrench for clobbering things, but then I picked up a gun that shot giant globs that stuck aliens in their tracks. A few wrench hits usually ended the threat. The fact that I went through the entire demo without ever shooting a bullet at a bad guy was unexpectedly refreshing for a first-person shooter.

At one point, you can even get your hands on a Nerf-style toy bolt gun — and Shain confirmed that it’s not only a joke but also something you can use to advance in the game. For example, at one point you’ll find that some of the office’s former inhabitants made capacitive tips for the darts, so you can shoot them at faraway computer screens to open doors.

It’s too early to tell whether this will all add up to a full, compelling experience. But based on the demo, Prey appears to offer a few things that separate it from the average first-person shooter. You may be fighting creepy aliens, but the oddball weaponry and promised improvisational puzzle-solving should help it stand out.

That will hold true even more if Arkane can continue throwing twists at the players like I saw in the game’s first hour. “We knew that we wanted to play on people’s paranoia and fear, especially thematically with the intro that sets the player up to feel deceived,” Shain said. “Then when the mimics make you feel like you can’t even trust the environment around you — that was a core piece of our design from the beginning.” The key will be whether or not Prey, which launches for the Xbox One, Windows and PS4 on May 5th, can keep players feeling unbalanced for the entire game.