Apps: Twitch For Xbox 360

Recently I’ve begun to love the idea of watching others play games rather than playing them myself.  It’s cool if you just want to see new games played through to the ending(s), but there’s also the potential amazement of watching someone beast at a game in ways you didn’t think possible.

Enter Twitch, which is a video game broadcasting (live streaming gameplay) and chat community.  They used to do stuff like this on Justin.TV all the time, before the co-founders branched out and created Twitch.TV as a result.  Apps for Twitch have been on Google Play and iTunes for a minute, but this week an app hit the Xbox 360 as well.

Check it out now in the Apps section of the dashboard.

Apps: Tumblr For Windows Phone

Tumblr staff has unleashed the native app for Windows Phone users:

Tumblr for Windows Phone has arrived!

• Find and follow the things you love
• Share photos, gifs, video, quotes, chats, links, and text
• Jump between your dashboard and Explore with just one swipe
• Display the latest images from your dashboard on your lock screen and live tile
• GIFs play as you scroll

Get the app

Apps: SeriesGuide Show Manager

Keeping up with TV episodes can be a chore.  Its not like the old days thankfully; we have OnDemand, Netflix, Hulu and other places to watch re-reuns plus most have the ability to set reminders for watching upcoming shows.  Still there’s a little extra that feels missing when it comes to features and convenience all in one package, and that’s where this app comes in.

SeriesGuide is pretty much everything you could want.  You can search/add any show that interests you and it will tell you when the next episode (new or old) will air.  It will tell you the season and ep # plus the original year it aired.  If the show is currently filming, it’ll tell you when the season premiere is.  You can set specific shows as your Favorites, and it even connects to your GetGlue account so that you can check-in from within the app.

Android users, be sure to scoop it up on Google Play.  Check out the premium version SeriesGuide X for $1.29 as well.

Apps: GifBoom

2012 saw the rapid growth of another fun photo-sharing app: GifBoom.  The app, as the name suggests, allows you to create gifs using your phone’s camera and then share them to other networks like Twitter and Facebook.  GifBoom by itself is a growing social network, but viral sharing has given it a boost in notoriety in the past few months (just like Instagram).  It also allows you to add effects/filters to spice up your creations.

Last Summer when I first tried the app, it was mostly popular with kids and teens.  However the company has been reaching other demographics lately, gaining users such as model Ashley Sky.

Download: Google Play | iTunes

Google Scan And Match Service

Google Music has come a long way since it launched last year.  Despite allowing you to upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them anywhere from the cloud, uploading was the only way to actually get your library on the service.  I’ve uploaded 10,000 songs twice so I know how long it can take.  But thankfully, they’re doing something about it.

Google’s new Scan & Match service, which launched on Tuesday, will scour through a user’s offline library and automatically adds songs/albums if they match media that is already available in the Play Store.  Apple and Amazon have both had similar services for awhile, and while Apple’s has an annual fee of $25, Google’s will be totally free.  Will be interesting to see this rollout and improve over time.

[Via Android Police and HuffingtonPost]

Apps: Tumblr For Android Tablets

After getting a tablet weeks back, the first things I noticed was that some apps were not optimized to use all the extra screen space or many weren’t available for tablets at all.  At least today Tumblr gives us something to be happy about:

staff:

Exciting news — Tumblr for Android is now available for your Android tablet!

Apps: Viddy For Android

Another former iOS-only app makes it way to Android.  This one comes in the form of Viddy, the video sharing network that has been labeled the “Instagram of video.”  For whatever reason, after a huge climb in signups over the past year, the actual amount of daily users has taken a huge dive.  With that in mind, the Android app pretty much arrived at the right time.

There’s no landscape mode for tablets and the amount of video time that can be recorded is extremely short (about 15 seconds).  It has a large and growing base of users that includes celebs like Rihanna so it could be worth a look.  Only Android 4.0+ devices are supported right now.

Download/Install

Apps: GTA Radio

Probably one of the best apps any GTA fan could download.  GTA Radio features the radio stations from most of the more popular games (from GTAIII from 2001 up to the more recent GTAIV in 2008).  Since many people were probably too busy driving at high speeds or killing people, they never got the chance to really sit back and truly enjoy the music or chatter on talk stations.  This app fills the void.

Sorry, iOS users.  This is Android-only.  Both phones and tablets are compatible.

Download: GTA Radio

Pinsta: Pinterest-like Instagram Viewer

I’m not the most dedicated of Instagram users, but its always nice to browse through new photos (and not crappy memes/textgrams).  When I stumbled upon Pinsta months back, it actually made me want to browse through my feed much more than I was doing before.

Out of all the IG web viewers out there, this is one of the coolest.  It has all the best features from the others and combines them into a Pinterest-like design.  The individual profile pages are particularly dope, providing a cover image at the top of some of your most popular photos.

Webstagram, Statigram and all the other Instagram viewers have their own appeal, but give Pinsta a try too.  It might become your favorite.