While the Instagram API uses both non-secure HTTP and secure HTTPs connections, the weird thing is that it uses the non-secure path for your account’s authentication. All it does is store a standard cookie on your device, sent without encryption. What this means is that if you’re using an unsecure connection, like public Wi-Fi at Starbucks, someone could potentially intercept that cookie and use it to authenticate themselves into your account.

The hacker can then utilize a variety of API calls to do all sorts of nasty things with your Instagram account, deleting your #foodporn pics with ease. The sad thing is that the person who discovered this security hole contacted Instagram about it, but hasn’t heard anything back. The solution is actually pretty simple on Instagram’s part: start using secure, encrypted cookies instead.

In the meantime, the actual threat level is pretty low, since it’s unlikely the guy at Starbucks is going to try and hack into your Instagram account, but you should be aware that the threat is there.

[Source]

The post Security Threat: Unencrypted Cookies in Instagram iOS App appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Unlike most weather apps, that just give you a straight forward weather, time, area design and no imagination, Partly Cloudy delivers an incredible re-design of how to check the weather within seven days, and at any place in the world.

Design 

Weather forecasts have never been so fun, the app creates a spinning wheel, which when turned can tell you the weather and other climate features at a certain time.

The circle time frame is incredible because it not only gives you text to identify the weather, but it will give you colour graphs and water spurts on the circle to tell you how much rain will fall and how hot it will be.

Since now, there has never been a largely recognised iOS app that takes away the traditional design of a weather app, and mixes it up so it looks nothing like the traditional app.

Partly Cloudy is truly a show of what you can do with an app if you have the right tools and ideas available.

Not only does Partly Cloudy work without having to zoom in or out, or scroll across the page, but it gives you all the information you need in more than one format.

Information 

Apart from telling you the temperature at a specific time, it can tell you what you should expect at that time, i.e, light rain, heavy snowfall.

Partly Cloudy will separate the temperature into highs and lows, giving you a general range of the temperature could be at that time.

There is also wind force and precipitation on the graph – useless if you are planning a barbecue but don’t want to be blown away by high winds.

On the wheel itself, it gives you a colour graph to tell you the amount of rain and amount of precipitation at a certain time.

It does this by filling the circle up with more water when the precipitation is heavier.  There is also wind force that is delegated in lines: larger ones show more wind force.

All this information is a lot to cook up and enough to satisfy the avid geographer when they go exploring.

You can change from 12 hours, 24 hours or 7 days on your info-graph. You can also change where you want to find the weather out.

Usability 

The app is incredibly simple to use, as soon as you hit the wheel page you don’t need to go anywhere else.

All information is in front of you, and it only takes a tap on the little ‘i’ in the top left corner to figure out what all the symbols and numbers mean.

If you do get stuck, Partly Cloudy has added a tutorial for you to understand what to do on the app. The tutorial is pretty good and gives you detailed information on all parts of the app.

We tested if the app would crash, by spinning the wheel very fast, it kept up with us but occasionally blanked for a second, then showed the weather.

Pros

• Fun way to find out the weather
• Can use it wherever
• Tons of features
• Simple user interface

Cons

• Some may not like the redesign
• Has some mishaps with guessing the weather
• Costs a chunk

Partly Cloudy – Overall 

Realistically, we couldn’t think of any bad points for this app, it is incredible and doesn’t give you and problems with the user interface, or with a lack of information. The only problem, and it isn’t really a bad point on the app itself, is that it costs a bit more than all the free ones floating about, and it has some trouble predicting weather outside Berlin, sometimes.

Pick it up on the Apps Store today.

The post Partly Cloudy – iOS Review appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Found in the Featured ‘New’ section, Catch Notes is a note taking app with a lot of different and unique features. While the app is still young, it presents some brilliant features that could make it a contender against Wunderlist, Evernote, and other huge note taking apps.

The idea of note taking is to take notes, so people that find taking notes on a mobile device pretty dumb won’t find this app appealing at all. The whole point of Catch Notes is to offer various mediums for taking notes and simple ways to catalogue these notes.

Functionality and Features

Apps with multiple functionalities and features really appeal to a user, not only does it mean they don’t have to commit to five different apps to get the same service as Catch Notes, but it means they have everything in one place.

Opening up the central button allows you to check all the different formats that Catch Notes allows to store notes. The five different features are:

• Alarm clocks
• Checklists
• Photos
• Voice memos
• Text

This lets you add your weekly shopping list, set an alarm for waking up, add a voice memo on a recent plan, check a text document for planning ideas and look at a photo about a development idea.

All five of these features are unique and some apps only give you one of these five. Catch Notes delivers all five of those and the functionality on all of them is top-grade.

Catch Notes offer ‘Pages’, to help you sort out what kind of note this is. For someone that takes notes on any subject, finding the right one can be a nightmare – so using specific pages for specific information helps you find that one note faster. They have also added a search toolbar, if you are still stuck.

A sharing tool allows a user to connect with another Catch Notes user, and share a certain page to them. The other Catch Notes’ user may be able to edit the page, depending on what rights the admin gives them.

An example of the sharing tool in use could be an app development team – the leader could set a page as “Work” and then add the other developers. They will only be able to see the shared page – no private notes that the leader has took.

Pros

The app has tons of solid features – in many ways it can act as a multi-app, because it has five really different mediums for storing information. The speeds of the app are very good too, you will never see a loading screen and we’ve never noticed a screen-crash or failure on Catch Notes.

Along with fast functionality, five-feature note taking, pages to differentiate content, sharing tools and a simplistic interface, the app is also free, although there are premium plans for people that use Catch Notes a lot.

Cons

The app is still in early stages – even though it has all of these wonderfully functional features, it hasn’t been added to browsers or got its own application on Windows or Mac, as far as we know. Catch does have a web domain that allows you to add and edit your notes, though.

The main and possibly only con of this app is that it isn’t functional on all services – to people that want a native Windows application that they can load up at the start, that isn’t here yet. Wunderlist and Evernote pride themselves on being compatible with everything, so to beat them, Catch Notes needs to be compatible.

Catch Notes – Overall 

The app is free and for mobile users, it is a very good app to adopt, especially if you use alarm clocks, note takers and lists on a regular basis.

The only problem is for people looking to fully adopt this into a business and personal app, they will need to pay for premium content – there are quite low limits to what a free user can have, 70MB per month and five spaces is all a basic Catch Notes user can have.

Get the app for free here on iOS or Android

The post App Review: Catch Notes for iOS appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

One of the new features is called “ability to move own video preview,” which I assume would mean that you can move around that video preview window when you’re about to engage in a video chat. The developers also promise increased accessibility, improved stability, a new sign-in screen, some “minor” UI improvements, and a series of bug fixes. The app has now also been coded to auto-restart if it unexpectedly crashes.

As before, the Skype iOS app is available as a free download through iTunes.

[Source]

The post New UI and Features for Skype iOS Apps appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Coming from the same developers who created Kik, the Clik app works like this: load up the ClikThis.com on your smartphone, or scan the home page with your QR scanner app which will send you to iTunes for download.  Once the app is installed, load up ClikThis.com again on your desktop, the site will show one massive QR code. Scan that code using the Clik smartphone app and now you are linked.

The Clik app basically lets you search for YouTube videos, look at the trending videos, and so on. If you tap on a video, it’ll start playing in your computer’s browser. As I understand it, all the app is doing is telling the browser session which video to play based on the YouTube ID. That’s pretty restrictive in scope, but the SDK could theoretically be used for other web content too. It just needs to be coded.

I still don’t get why you’d want this, especially since it’s so much easier browsing for YouTube videos on a computer using the full site, but at least Clik is free and it might be a novelty thing for parties to make your smartphone into a sort of remote control DJ.

The post Remote Control Your PC YouTube Experience with Clik iPhone/Android App appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

One of the biggest draws of the native Gmail app for iOS is that it would provide push notifications. This way, you didn’t have to keep refreshing to see when you get that important message. Other nice features include the ability to search your entire inbox, autocomplete email addresses, get a split view on the iPad, use the priority inbox, swipe right to view labels, and more. Unfortunately, none of that is working right now.

Reports flooded the web, complete with screenshots, showing that people were getting a “notification error” on the login screen: “no valid ‘aps-environment’ entitlement string found for application.” Whatever that means. The long and the short of it is that Google has now pulled the new Gmail app from the App Store altogether, posting this update on the official Google Enterprise Blog:

Earlier today we launched a new Gmail app for iOS. Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app. We’ve removed the app while we correct the problem, and we’re working to bring you a new version soon. Everyone who’s already installed the app can continue to use it.

Are they not rubbing salt in the wound with the “continue to use it” bit at the end there?

The post Native Gmail App For iOS Is Dead On Arrival, Pulled From App Store appeared first on Mobile Magazine.