Five new apps on the markets
On April Fools Day, Facebook launched a new free app for its Android and Apple users. Called Riff, it lets you film videos and upload them to Facebook and the app. Friends and strangers can then film relevant clips and attach them to the end of your video to create a collaborative project. The app’s homepage has a row of featured clips, each tagged with a certain topic. Each video has a counter that shows how many clips are attached, and which clip in the sequence the viewer is currently watching. It also shows how many people have viewed the total project. Individual clips can be reported for inappropriate content, for example, by clicking the menu button in the top right-hand corner of a clip and clicking the red whistle icon.
Available on: iOS and Android
Price: Free
Infinit
There are a dozen ways you can share files with friends and coworkers - Dropbox, Google Drive, and Airdrop, to name a few - but when speed is what you’re looking for when it comes to your file-transferring needs, you probably want to give Infinit a shot. Infinit, which also has a desktop counterpart, promises file downloads up to 30 times faster than existing solutions (roughly four-second downloads). Plus, disconnecting from the Internet during a transfer won’t disrupt it. You can send anything, from a vacation photo album to an HD movie, and files are securely encrypted.
Available on: iOS and Android
Price: Free
Microsoft Office Lens
Microsoft Office Lens is a handy app that acts as a pocket scanner for receipts, notes, business cards, menus, and more. The app then crops and enhances the image so it looks tidy, and uses optical character recognition (OCR) so that later on, you can go back and search the text in your images - no more digging through mounds of receipts or sticky notes. It can automatically generate a contact card you can add to your phone, and it converts other images into Word docs, PDFs, and PowerPoints, which you can save or share with contacts
Available on: Windows, iOS and Android
Price:Free
Sky Guide
You don’t have to know anything about astronomy to use Sky Guide. You just aim your phone or tablet at the sky and Sky Guide will highlight the constellations, stars, and planets high above you, displaying details about each. If you want to try locating things on your own, you can use the app’s built-in compass to guide you.
Sky Guide can send you a notification when an event is about to happen in the skies above your location. And it will even alert you when the International Space Station is due to fly over - and let you tweet one of its astronauts. The app functions with or without Wi-Fi, data, or GPS signal.
Available on: iOS
Price: Rs 150