Google launches YouTube Kids app for iOS; US only for now

As a report had indicated last week, Google has gone ahead and unveiled a YouTube app for kids called YouTube Kids. Its the first product that Google has built from the ground up for kids that is aimed at making it safer and easier for your little ones to browse and watch videos on topics they want. 
The app has been designed keeping kids in mind and comes with large images, bold icons and bigger buttons to allow for easier navigation. Additionally, it features voice control, just in case your child prefers searching for videos by voice commands rather than typing on the search bar

YouTube Kids only provides access to four different categories of videos that are suited for childrens: Shows, Music, Learning and Explore. It will contain content from DreamWorks TV, Jim Henson TV, Talking Tom and Friends and more with contents from more providers coming soon.
The app features handy parental control options like built-in timer to limit the screen on time, sound settings that will allow parents to turn off the background music, the ability to completely turn off search and more.
YouTube Kids app is available for download for free in the United States on the iOS App Store. The app is also available for download on the Google Play Store, and will soon be available on Kurio and nabi kids tablets.
Download: YouTube Kids
[Via YouTube]

Legend turns text into fun animations to spice up your messaging apps

Static chats are already old news. It’s time to throw something fresh in the mix with images featuring animated texts. You poignant posts on WhatsApp should have even more of an effect.

Legend – Animated Text in Video & GIF is a text creator that lets you customize whatever you have to say and turns it into a fun animation that you can share with others through your various messaging apps.

This app was created by Stupiflix, the development team that brought us the video editing apps Replay and Steady Camera.

Users begin by entering text. Ask your friends what their dinner plans are, tell your mom that you are on your way home, or ask your coworker to cover for you while you take a nap.

Then, choose an animation style along with a color and background combination. You can save the animation as a video or GIF. Then, post it to Instagram, Twitter, iMessage, WhatsApp, and more.

You can also add and crop one of your own pictures from your camera roll, or import and trim a video clip to use as the background image. You can enter up to 100 characters and it works with slow motion and time lapse videos as backgrounds. All Legends are six-second videos or GIFs in square format.

The app automatically suggests styles based on time, distance, and percentages. If you don’t like the first one, swipe to the left or right to see a different selection. The app recognizes and highlights things like hashtags and usernames. It displays emoji within the animation and understands colors.

Download the best deals on apps and games for a limited time (Feb 16)

We have some great apps for you today that have gone free for a short duration on the App Store, including Battery Life Magic Pro, Reverser Cam, Battlestations: Midway and more.

Free Games:

• Aliens Abducted HD: This is an extreme geography challenger! Travel with 3 aliens over the world in a life or death game, only your knowledge can save them!$2.99 → Free
• Starbounder: Harkening back to the golden age of PC shareware titles, Starbounder delivers the kind of intensity that only hardcore gamers can handle!$0.99 → Free
• Moto Race: Moto Race – Collect coins and don’t crash, complete the levels as fast as possible to achieve maximum score points.$1.99 → Free
• Royal Defense: Invisible Threat: The castle needs a hero – hordes of trolls are surrounding it! Build towers, save money, learn spells, and keep the enemy away!$0.99 → Free

Free Apps:

• Battery Life Magic Pro: The Battery Saver: Improve battery life by running full cycle charges & following the tips in the app. $0.99 → Free
• Wake Alarm Clock: Meet Wake, the most beautiful and intuitive alarm for iPhone & iPad. $3.99 → Free
• Paper Keyboard – Fast typing and playing with a printed keyboard: Description. $0.99 → Free
• ViewExif: ViewExif is an iOS extension which allows you to view exif metadata of photos. $0.99 → Free
• Reverser Cam – Backward Video Camera: Record hilarious backward videos with Reverser Cam. Get started with just one tap and instantly view your recordings when you’re done. $1.99 → Free
• 7 Minute Workout – Quick Fit: Get in shape with this scientifically proven, full body workout, in only 7 minutes. $1.99 → Free

Game Price Drops:

• Defender City: “Defender City” — is game of a genre of tower defense, and as well as it is necessary to all games of this genre, your task to hold the fort and not to give to the enemy to reach your base. $1.99 → $0.99
• Wings Of Valor for iPad: Based on the gameplay of the famous Wings of Fury. Use your base carrier to reload and repair your plane. Tight dog fight, Torpedo run, Bombing attack… You can play all of them. $1.99 → $0.99
• Wings Of Valor: Based on the gameplay of the famous Wings of Fury. Use your base carrier to reload and repair your plane. Tight dog fight, Torpedo run, Bombing attack… You can play all of them. $1.99 → $0.99
• Mechanic Panic: Work was great, until the day the elevators stopped working.
  A catastrophic explosion has rocked the world’s first Space Elevator. Thankfully you’re on the job! $1.99 → $0.99

App Price Drops:

• Printability – print Safari page to PDF: Just make it printability and share pdf anywere! $1.99 → $0.99
• Sid Meier’s Railroads!: All aboard! Build a railroad empire and shape a nation!$2.99 → $1.99
• [OS X; On sale for $4.99, down from $19.99]
• The Movies: Superstar Edition: Behind every box office hit is a Hollywood mogul… in The Movies Superstar Edition, that mogul is you! $19.99 → $4.99
• Battlestations: Midway: Take command of the greatest battles of the War in the Pacific.
  $14.99 → $4.99
• Battlestations: Pacific: Battle your way to victory in the air, on the water, and underwater in this unique combination of action and strategy. $14.99 → $4.99
• BioShock: Welcome to Rapture. A city where opportunity awaits those brave enough to grasp it. A city where the artist need not fear the censor. Where the scientist is not bound by petty morality. Where the great are not held back by the weak. $19.99 → $4.99

If you like any of these apps, make sure you download them right away......!!!!!

PSA: A jailbreak tweak can permanently brick your iPhone or iPad

As jailbreaking iOS devices has gotten easier over the years, the likelihood of bricking them in the process has reduced. But don’t think your device is safe once jailbreaking is complete. One developer has discovered an exploit that can brick iPhones and iPads permanently.

Redditor arcticsn0w has created a proof-of-concept tweak called KilliOS that, once installed, prevents your iOS device from ever booting up again. It’s irreversible, so if it happens to make its way onto your iPhone or iPad, there is no going back.

What’s worrying is that the exploit is based on a recent bootcolor-changing jailbreak tweak from dayt0n that alters a device’s VRAM. While arcticsn0w doesn’t intend to break devices with his code, he has made it available to prove how dangerous it can be.

“It is an empty package which messes with nvram values in the postinst script, and then forces a reboot,” arcticsn0w explains in his original Reddit post. “Installing this package will instantly kill your device.”

KilliOS is supposed to serve as a warning to jailbreakers; it is meant to demonstrate that unknown tweaks from untrusted sources could quite easily render your iPhone or iPad completely unusable. If you don’t always use safe repos, then, this should be an eye-opener for you.

RedmondPie reports that arcticsn0w never intended for KilliOS to be malicious, but rather to prove what malicious code can do. He did make it available to download via his own repo initially, but he quickly pulled it and made the source code available via GitHub instead.

The hope is that other developers will be able to use that source code to create a patch that can prevent KilliOS and similar packages from doing permanent damage to iOS devices. One Redditor has already created a “quick fix” that will prevent certain scripts from bricking your device, but it doesn’t yet block KilliOS.

Jailbreaking doesn’t have to be unsafe; if you stick to trusted repositories — those provided by default in Cydia — you shouldn’t have to worry about malicious code like this. But if you add untrusted repos manually and download unrecognized packages, you’re asking for trouble.

[via RedmondPie]

Apple’s plan to bring Apple Pay to China have stalled

Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is very interested in bringing Apple Pay to China and other markets of the world. In fact, the first iOS 8.3 beta seeded by the company to developers last week had support for China UnionPay in Apple Pay. 

However, it looks like the company’s efforts have hit a roadblock with its talks with UnionPay stalling. In addition, Apple is yet to acknowledge regulators, which has led to a confusion as to whether or not Apple Pay even meets the government’s requirements before the service can be launched to the public.

The central bank official who asked not to be named said regulators have not intervened in negotiations between Apple and UnionPay, which began last year and were reportedly aimed at an agreement by March.

Many regulators who looked into how Apple Pay worked have already raised doubts about its compliance with Chinese regulations and security standards. For access to any NFC system in China, the NFC chip used by Apple in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus should be compatible with PBOC 3.0, which it is not apparently.

In addition, a central bank employee in China told Caixin that the Chinese government wants Apple to open a data center in mainland China to store the customer-related information of its Apple Pay clients so as to “prevent data leaks.”

Other people from the industry believe that UnionPay does not want Apple Pay to enter the Chinese market as it does not want to lose its prowess over the financial transaction market in China.

“Letting Apple Pay enter China will have a profound impact” on the payment market, said a financial sector source. “For UnionPay, cooperating with Apple means opening its settlement system. It would be hard to say who’s in control.

Sources also suggest that Apple has been in talks with eight different banks in China, but talks have stalled because of the profit-sharing ratio. Apple charges 0.15 per cent of the 2 percent fees that is paid by merchants. However, many sources believe that this rate is too high and since support for Apple Pay will not give any bank a significant competitive advantage over others, it is unlikely that anyone will accept this offer from Apple.

[Via Caixin]

VLC for iOS will be back in the App Store shortly; Available for users who had installed it previously

Towards the end of last year, the VideoLAN team revealed that VLC for iOS was all set to return to the App Store as soon as it was approved by Apple. More than 1.5 months later, it looks like the VLC team is finally ready to release their app on the App Store once again. 

While the app listing is yet to go live, many users on Reddit are reporting that they were able to update their existing installation of VLC to the latest version (2.4.1) earlier today.

In case you had installed VLC on your iOS device before it disappeared in the September 2014, you can head over to the Purchased section of the iOS App Store to download the app right away. If not, you will have to wait until the app’s listing goes live on the App Store.

VLC for iOS was first launched in late 2010 and was pulled from the App Store in early 2011 because of licensing issues. The app returned to the App Store more than two years later in 2013, but disappeared once again in September 2014 for unknown reasons.

The latest version (2.4.1) of VLC for iOS is not going to come with any significant new features except for folders support and optimizations for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

[Via Reddit]

QR Mode turns the stock Camera app into an awesome QR code reader

In some countries, like Japan for example, QR codes are prolific and people user them often. Although that’s not the case in the United States, and probably never will be, it does seem like there has been an uptick in QR code usage in the last few years. A new jailbreak tweak called QR Mode will certainly help its cause, among jailbreakers at least.
QR Mode is by far the best looking and best functioning QR code reader on Cydia, and it’s even better than standalone app offerings found in the App Store. Its feature set is well-rounded, its implementation seriously impressive, and it doesn’t feel overly intrusive. Although it suffers from a few bugs, QR Mode is well worth its $1.99 asking price, especially if these bugs can be stamped out.
The great thing about QR Mode is that it supports a plethora of QR code types, and features data parsing that allows you to perform actions with the data read from these codes. The following QR code types are supported:

• Text
• URL
• vCard
• SMS
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Location

After installing QR Mode, head over to the Settings app and find the tweak’s preferences. Inside of the preference panel, you’ll find a single kill-switch for enabling the tweak. Once you enable QR Mode, tap the Camera app shortcut in the upper right-hand corner to launch the stock Camera app.
QR Mode adds another mode to the stock Camera app called Scanner. Swipe over to scanner, which resides to the right of the Photo mode. Once you’re in scanner mode, the interface will change to reflect the QR code scanning abilities.
At the top of the screen you’ll find a history button for going back and viewing previous QR codes that you’ve scanned. At the bottom of the interface, you’ll see a message that says Scanning for QR Code as it waits until a code comes into view of the viewfinder.

Scanning a code involves simply placing the camera in front of the code that you want to scan. You don’t actually have to press any buttons to initiate the scan, as that is done automatically. Once a scan is completed, you’ll find contextual information related to the scan at the bottom of the screen. For example, if your scan was a phone number QR code, you’ll see a button to launch the Phone app and dial the number, if you scan a location code, then you’ll find a button to launch Apple Maps with the scanned location.

You’ll may also find buttons to copy a link, perform a google search, open a web page, etc. For links and Google searches, you’ll be able to load up a built-in browser right from the stock Camera app, and it looks about as native as it could possibly be. I did, however, notice a few bugs when using the browser. The main bugs that I encountered caused the Camera app to lock up and require a force close. These crashes were quite annoying, but I’m hoping that the developer of QR Mode will issue a bug fix release in the near future.
No, the QR Code will probably never be as ubiquitous as it is in some other countries, but having a jailbreak tweak like QR Mode is very nice and encourages its use. It surely won’t hurt the way QR Codes are viewed in the states, and it’ll make you think twice the next time you pass one while you’re out with this tweak installed.
What do you think about QR Mode? Are you as impressed as I am? If so, you can try it for $1.99 on the BigBoss repo.