MacRumors

Yahoo this week began testing a new messaging app on iOS and Android called "Squirrel," aimed at organizing private group chats with friends, family members, and work acquaintances. The app's main feature is that group access is private and people can only be added through invitation links (via TechCrunch).

Squirrel looks visually similar to apps like Slack and Discord, offering groups access to a "Main Room," where everyone can meet up and chat, and then there's an option to create side rooms for more specific topics. These can potentially include "Secret Rooms" for chats hidden from the main group and one-on-one threads. Users in all rooms can share photos, documents, or links in chats, as well as create custom reactions.

Users can mute rooms they don't have any interest in, and administrators can send "blasts" to all users that flag priority messages. Whenever someone mentions your name, a separate Activity view will accumulate these messages so it's easier to scroll through and get caught up with the conversation.

Yahoo originally debuted its Yahoo Messenger app on the iOS App Store [Direct Link] in April 2009, giving users the ability to instant message their contacts when away from their computer. In the years since, messaging apps like Apple's iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and others have surged in popularity and caused users to leave Yahoo's platform for ones more popular among their own friend groups. Today, Yahoo Messenger is #167 on the App Store's most-downloaded Social Networking app list.

According to Yahoo parent company Oath, one of the main reasons for Squirrel's creation is "improving group communication in everyday life."

“At Oath, we’re always looking for creative ways to add value to our members’ lives,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We listen closely and frequently test new product ideas based on research and feedback. Right now we’re experimenting with a new invite-only messaging app focused on improving group communication in everyday life.”

Since Squirrel is invite-only, to gain access you'll have to ask someone who already has it to send you an invite to a group. According to TechCrunch, "the ability to kick off a conversation group is also currently in invitation-only mode." The iOS app is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch [Direct Link].

Apple has stepped up its policy of removing apps from the App Store that violate its guidelines by sharing location data with third parties without explicit consent.

As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple appears to have ratcheted up its software scrutiny in the last few days by informing affected developers by email that upon re-evaluation, their app violates two sections of the App Store Review Guidelines and will therefore be removed from sale:

Apple finally decided to start enforcing guidelines on selling location data via @jeromep1970 pic.twitter.com/YKAWfMBq35 — Thomasbcn (@Thomasbcn) May 7, 2018

Legal - 5.11 & Legal 5.1.2
The app transmits user location data to third parties without explicit consent from the users and for unapproved purposes.

Apple's contention is that the apps in question don't provide enough clear information to users regarding what their data is used for and how it's shared once it's been collected. There also seems to be concern that the data collection isn't specifically for improving the user experience or enhancing app performance.

The company's retrospective action is likely related to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which sets the rules for how businesses manage and share the personal data of customers.

GDPR is a European Union rule to protect EU citizens, but as with its website cookie consent policy, basically every company with an online presence is affected by the law. An updated version of the GDPR goes into effect on May 25 to underline this applicability. Interested readers can find a summary of the key changes to the regulations here.

Apple recently expanded the indoor mapping feature first introduced in iOS 11 to new locations, including the Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport and indoor malls located in Dallas and Houston, Texas. The additions were noted on Apple's Feature Availability page for iOS 11.

At launch, indoor maps were only available in a handful of airports and malls around the world, but Apple has been steadily adding additional mall and airport maps.

Indoor maps are now available in more than 35 of the largest airports in the world, while indoor mall maps are available in a select number of cities in the United States and Europe, including Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Jose, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

Apple's indoor mapping feature provides full layouts of each mall or airport location with icons for restaurants, elevators, bathrooms, shops, and other notable landmarks. Different floors are clearly marked, making it easy to navigate through unknown areas.

At airports, Maps users can see the location of gates, terminals security checkpoints, check-in desks, and baggage claim areas, which can be helpful when in a new location. As for malls, stores can be filtered by categories like clothes, beauty, food, and shoes, making it quicker to find what you're looking for.

A full list of all of the airports and mall locations where the Apple Maps indoor mapping feature can be used is available on Apple's website.

At the 97th annual ADC Awards, which honors the best work in design, advertising, motion, and other commercial creative arts, Apple's "Barbers" ad for the iPhone 7 Plus won a Best of Show award.

First introduced in May 2017, the "Barbers" ad features a barbershop where images captured with an iPhone 7 Plus are used to advertise the shop's skills. The attractive images, taken with the iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode, cause customers to line up out the door.

Portrait Mode uses the two camera lenses in the iPhone to create a DSLR-like depth effect to make portrait shots pop by blurring the background. The feature is now available on the iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X.

"Barbers" was awarded a 2018 Motion and Film Craft Gold Cube, a Black Cube for Best of Show, and a 2018 Advertising Merit Award. Furlined, the agency that produced the spot, also won Production Company of the Year.

Google today outlined several new features coming to Google Maps at its Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California this morning. First and foremost, this summer, Google Maps will be updated with a new personalized "For You" section that offers up recommendations based on your interests.

The Maps app is gaining a dedicated "For You" tab that is designed to "tell you what you need to know about the neighborhoods you care about." It will feature new restaurants opening nearby, trending spots, and more, based on places you've rated and places you've visited.

For You will be accompanied by a new "Match Score" that predicts which restaurants you're most likely to prefer based on your personal preferences, which is designed to help you to choose between multiple restaurant suggestions.

To facilitate making plans with others, Google Maps is gaining a feature that will let you long press on any restaurant or location to add it to a shortlist that can be shared with friends to get their input. Once shared, your friends can add additional suggestions to the list and vote on the place they'd most like to visit to find a group favorite.

Google also announced a new augmented reality feature that's coming to the Street View version of Maps for walking directions. When you're using Google Maps to find a location that you're walking to, you'll see an AR overlay with specific directions on which way to go and information on exactly what's around you, reimagining walking navigation.

Google says it is augmented GPS with VPS, or a visual positioning system meant to estimate a person's precise position and orientation using visual landmarks.

Google did not say when the augmented reality Google Maps features will launch, nor which platform they'll be available on, so it is unclear when and if we will see the augmented reality features in the Google Maps app for iOS devices. Given that most Google Maps features roll out to both Android and iOS, it's reasonable to assume that AR maps will come to iPhones and iPads.

Along with improvements to Google Maps, Google also announced changes coming to Google Lens, available in Google Photos and Google Assistant apps. Google Lens is gaining smart text selection, which will allow it to recognize text in the real world and then translate it to text on a device, so you can essentially copy and paste real world text.

Real-time functionality is coming to Google Lens, allowing it to proactively gather information about everything the camera is seeing to overlay live results directly on top of real-world items. A new Style Match feature will let Google Lens scan images and then find related items. So, for example, you can scan a lamp and find items in the same style, or scan an outfit and find similar clothes.

Google Lens is being integrated directly into the camera app on select Android smartphones like the Google Pixel and the new LG G7, which will give Android users quicker access to Google Lens functionality. All of these new features are rolling out over the course of the next few weeks.

Fandango today added a "Buy Tickets" button on the company's Instagram profile, letting visitors to the page purchase tickets to films currently in theaters as well as pre-order tickets for unreleased movies (via The Hollywood Reporter). The move is said to be part of an overall push by Instagram into a "shoppable tags" commerce feature, and comes after the social network debuted a native payments option for select users last week.

The Buy Tickets button sits to the right of Fandango's existing Shop button on its Instagram profile, and when you tap it a mobile.fandango.com page loads with movies both now playing and coming soon. You can choose a film, find a showtime, and sign into your Fandango account (or check out as a guest) to complete the purchase.

"As millions of movie fans have gravitated to social media platforms to discover, share and engage with their favorite movie content, Fandango has been essential to that experience, offering ticketing capabilities and access to the most comprehensive network of U.S. theaters," said Fandango president Paul Yanover. "We're very excited to integrate ticketing into our Fandango Instagram, and look forward to working with our studio partners to help transform consumer passion into advance ticket purchases."

Instagram has featured ads that users can tap and purchase items with for over two years, but it's important to note that Fandango's initiative is housed entirely on the company's profile page and won't be a sponsored Instagram post. This should make it easier to navigate to Fandango and quickly purchase a movie ticket if you're already in the Instagram app.

Although movie subscription services like MoviePass and Sinemia have been gaining more attention over the past few months, Fandango says its traditional ticket ordering business has grown as well. The company says its own sales made up 33 percent of the U.S. box office for the opening weekend of Avengers: Infinity War, which is now the highest-grossing opening weekend at the domestic box office with $257.7 million earned in three days. According to comScore, Fandango nets more than 60 million unique visitors per month.

When pre-purchasing tickets, Fandango's iOS app also integrates with Apple's Wallet app, so movie theaters can easily scan your pass at the box office on the day of the showing.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced changes to its revenue sharing model with developers that will significantly undercut Apple and Google.

Starting later this year, the company says developers will receive 95 percent of the revenue earned from sales of their apps, in-app purchases, and new subscriptions on the Microsoft Store, excluding games and apps sold in volume to organizations, but only when a customer uses a direct link to access and purchase the app.

If the customer was referred to the app by Microsoft, such as in a featured collection on the Microsoft Store, developers will receive 85 percent of revenue. The new fee structure will apply to Microsoft Store purchases on all Windows and Surface platforms, but excludes purchases on Xbox consoles.

Microsoft presumably hopes reducing its commission to just five percent will encourage developers to create apps for its platforms. Microsoft, Apple, and Google all currently pay developers 70 percent of revenue earned from purchases on their app stores in what has long been the industry standard.

As of the end of 2017, the App Store and Google Play had an estimated 2.1 million and 3.5 million apps available. Microsoft last confirmed having over 669,000 apps in what was then called the Windows Store in September 2015.

Ring today launched a standalone "Neighbors" app on iOS [Direct Link] and Android devices, pulling out the local security and crime-prevention feature from the main Ring app into a standalone experience.

With Neighbors, Ring connects users in a nearby area who own any model of the Ring doorbell, and allows them to upload footage of criminal activity to make it easier to prevent and catch package thieves, burglars, and more. Users can scroll through their Neighborhood's recent feeds to check out potential crimes and other safety posts shared by nearby Ring owners and the Ring team. Feed posts include text, photo, or video alerts captured via Ring doorbells.

The app can warn users about topics like Crime, Suspicious activity, Safety warnings, and Strangers wandering around.

Jamie Siminoff, Chief Inventor and Founder of Ring, said: “At Ring, we come to work every day with the mission of reducing crime in neighborhoods. Over the past few years we have learned that, when neighbors, the Ring team and law enforcement all work together, we can create safer communities.

Neighbors is meant to facilitate real-time communication between these groups, while maintaining neighbor privacy first and foremost. By bringing security to every neighbor with the free Neighbors app, communities can stay on top of crime and safety alerts as they happen.”

Additionally, police and sheriff's departments throughout the United States are now joining Neighbors in an expansion of the crime-stopping program. Local law enforcement will be able to share real-time crime and safety alerts with their communities, and users will see the updates in their Neighbors feeds, which also includes an interactive map.

The debut of a standalone Neighbors app follows Amazon's acquisition of Ring in February, and a price drop to $99 for the Ring Video Doorbell in April. In the wake of the acquisition, Ring promised customers that HomeKit support is still coming, stating that the Ring Pro and Floodlight Cam are currently being tested for HomeKit, "and as soon as testing is completed" the company will "update everyone with a release date."

Neighbors by Ring is available to download for free on the iOS App Store [Direct Link].

Twitter is testing a new feature for its mobile apps called "Secret conversation," which would allow users to send direct messages that are encrypted (via TechCrunch). The end-to-end encryption would put Twitter's messaging platform on the level of apps like Telegram or WhatsApp, ensuring that a conversation between users is only ever seen by those sending the messages and not a surveilling third party.

The Secret DM feature for Twitter was found within the Android application package by Jane Manchun Wong, and it includes "Encryption settings," details about what encrypted messages are, and Encryption keys to verify a secure conversation between you and the message's recipient. Wong also found that users will soon be able to quote tweets with GIFs and place a "Quality Filter" on search results.

As TechCrunch pointed out, APKs typically include code for features that companies are testing or will be launching soon, but it's unclear when exactly Twitter's encrypted messaging update will debut.

Last week, Twitter found a bug that "stored passwords unmasked in an internal log," and although no one appeared to have accessed the plaintext passwords it advised all users to update their own passwords "out of an abundance of caution."

Philips has announced Hue 3.0 for iOS and Android, a major update to the smart lighting system app that introduces a new-look interface, new scene options, and a redesigned color picker.

"In designing the upgrade, we took advice from lighting designers, user experience specialists and, most importantly, from our customers," said Philips Lighting marketing chief Jasper Vervoort. "The result is an app befitting the world's most loved smart lighting system for the home."

The new interface allows Hue owners to change the brightness, color, and shade of white of individual lights, and includes more convenient shortcuts for adjusting lights in fewer taps. For example, pressing and holding on a room setup or individual lights lets you change the color or set your four last used scenes.

The new color picker lets you group and ungroup lights in a room, and choose an exact shade of white or colored light from the palette. The app also comes with 30 new scenes, as well as a much-requested picture-to-light feature that lets you extract relevant colors from your favorite pictures and apply them to your lights.

Elsewhere, the app includes lighting routines to automatically dim lights at night and gradually turn them on in the morning, while the location awareness feature means lights can be set to turn on when the owner arrives at home or turn off when they leave. Meanwhile, the timer function activates lights after a specified time by triggering a scene or simply flashing the lights.

Philips hasn't given an exact release date for the Hue 3.0 update, which is said to be coming "this month", but there's a good chance it could begin rolling out as soon as today. [Direct Link]