Mobile App, Smartphone | featured news

A new smartphone app is on hand to help Icelanders avoid accidental incest. The app lets users "bump" phones, and emits a warning alarm if they are closely related. "Bump the app before you bump in bed," says the catchy slogan.

Online professional networking service LinkedIn is dressing up its mobile application to impress people who are increasingly scrolling through content on smartphones....

Douglas Rushkoff says Facebook's new app just increases disorientation and isn't getting rave reviews from users... And when I looked up Facebook Home online to try to find out just what it was, the first search results that came up were from users sharing how to disable it. This way, consumers can buy the discounted phones on which Facebook Home ships, and turn them back into a regular Android smartphones, where Facebook is just another app we can use in our own good time.

Smartphones are powerful tools, and with the right apps and accessories, they can become even more so. A California-based tech company has launched a tool that turns a regular iPhone 4 or 4S into a powerful biometrics scanning tool. AOptix has unveiled its app and a wrap-around device for turning the smartphone into a portable iris, face, fingerprint and voice scanner.

Could this be the deadliest smartphone app ever? A German security consultant, who's also a commercial pilot, has demonstrated tools he says could be used to hijack an airplane remotely, using just an Android phone. Speaking at the Hack in the Box security summit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Hugo Teso said Wednesday that he spent three years developing SIMON, a framework of malicious code that could be used to attack and exploit airline security software, and an Android app to run it that he calls PlaneSploit.

It's about time someone came up with a tech-savvy way to determine the optimal taxi route.As hard working as they are, some cab drivers may take a slower, more congested route to run up the fare, but the free Taxi Turvi app strives to help passengers judge whether their drivers are taking the best course possible.

Made-in-China mobile devices are clicked on every continent. The same isn't true of Chinese mobile software, which is mostly aimed at domestic users. One company that reckons it has a product that crosses continents is UCWeb, a developer of mobile browsers that has gone head-to-head with Tencent's mobile platform in China.

Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing start-up Instagram has shifted the spotlight to the newest phenomena in mobile apps: uploading personal videos from smartphones.

Microsoft, struggling to dent the dominance of Apple and Google in the smartphone market, is aggressively courting app developers for its Windows Phone.