Audiobooks.com offers a 30 day free trial that comes with three free audiobooks.
The platform lets you download titles for offline reading and listening, and allows you access titles across four devices.
Spotify has started giving Premium members 15 hours of free audiobook listening every month.
Many best sellers fall under 15 hours, which means you can enjoy a free audiobook every month.
Libro.fmLibro.fm is an interesting audiobook app because it lets you buy audiobooks while supporting your local bookstores.
As 2023 draws to a close, we reflect on some of our favorite apps that made everyday life a little easier this year.
While flashy new AI apps and rival social networks were grabbing headlines, sometimes the most useful innovations fly under the radar.
The apps on our best-of list may not have arrived in 2023, but they became daily staples that streamlined our work or brought small moments of joy.
PSPlay makes it easy — it’s Remote Play on the go, as advertised.
Beyond that, it delivers features that Sony’s official Remote Play app doesn’t, like support for third-party controllers, picture-in-picture mode and screen capture — making it well worth the $5.99 price.
But this year, give the gift of good security (and privacy) and eschew tech that can have untoward risks or repercussions.
Location data is some of the most sensitive data belonging to a person; location can determine where someone was at a particular time, which can be highly revealing and invasive.
Even one of the better-known family tracking apps, Life360, was caught selling the precise location data of its users to data brokers.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t discuss the benefits and pitfalls of tracking your kids with your kids.
And this year, another smart sex-toy maker exposed the user and location data of its customers thanks to its leaky servers, which the company has yet to fix.
Google announced today that it will pay $700 million as a part of a settlement with the U.S. Attorney General for a lawsuit over Google Play Store.
Third-party app stores and side-loadingFor at least seven years, Google will support app installs on Android outside of Google Play through different ways including third-party app stores.
Google won’t force developers to launch their apps at the same time or earlier on the Google Play for at least four years.
Plus, Google can’t stop them from displaying fees linked with Google Play or Google Play’s billing system.
OEM clausesGoogle can’t enter a deal with phone makers to have Google Play as the exclusive app store on devices to place Google Play on the home screen for at least five years.
And it’s going to look really familiar to former users of Zenly as Amo’s third app is a location-sharing app — just like Zenly.
With its second app Capture, Amo is creating a social camera app.
Amo’s new app, Location, is probably the easiest one to describe and understand.
Brought to you by the original team behind location-sharing app Zenly.
•… pic.twitter.com/y8uIRAINQG — amo (@amoamoamo) December 19, 2023Location is both a utility app and a social app.
Apple has started experimenting a feature on the App Store that allows developers to offer “contingent pricing” for subscriptions.
That means developers can club subscriptions for two apps at a discounted price.
While the feature is in the test phase, Apple said developers can promote this discount on off-platform marketing channels, according to 9to5Mac.
DMA asks app distribution platforms such as Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store to allow users to install apps through alternative ways.
Apple’s marketing language on this feature indicates that the App Store can handle complex processing of payments and subscriptions even when multiple apps and developers are involved.
In this edition of WiR, we cover Cruise slashing 24% of its driverless workforce (and, relatedly, Tesla’s autopilot recall), Twitch’s new nudity policy conundrum, Adobe’s updated app design language and Instagram launching a generative AI–powered background editor.
Most readGemini comes to more apps: Google’s Gemini GenAI models — specifically Gemini Pro, a lightweight version of a more capable model, Gemini Ultra, set to arrive in the coming months — is making its way into more Google products.
Duet AI, the company’s suite of dev assistance tools for code completion and generation, will soon start using Gemini.
So will AI Studio (formerly MakerSuite), Google’s AI app design experience on the web, and Vertex AI, the tech giant’s managed AI dev platform for enterprises.
Called Spectrum 2 (no surprise there), the new design system backs off a bit from the austerity of the current Spectrum design and adds quite a few more splashes of color.
Apple has agreed to pay out $25 million to settle a class action lawsuit over its Family Sharing feature, which lets users and up to five of their family members share access to apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books that they purchase.
The lawsuit, which was first filed in 2019, alleged that “Apple misrepresented the ability to use its Family Sharing feature to share subscriptions to apps.”The news was first reported by MacRumors.
Court documents from the lawsuit allege that Apple advertised Family Sharing on as an option on apps that did not support Family Sharing.
“The vast majority of subscription-based Apps, which is a growing percentage of Apple Apps, cannot be shared with designated family members,” the court document reads.
All or virtually all of these Apps, however, included the statement that they support Family Sharing on their landing pages through January 30, 2019.”The lawsuit alleges that Apple was aware that the subscription-based apps did not support Family Sharing, but still placed an ad for Family Sharing on them.
Meanwhile, the app’s broader update for all users brings several new features, including Trending Topics, to see what’s popular on Bluesky right now.
On Bluesky, users can choose from multiple, custom feeds — a sort of algorithmic choice that other microblogging platforms like Instagram Threads and X don’t have.
Of these, the “Trending Topics” section — available from the app’s search tab — is the biggest highlight as it makes the world of Bluesky feel more like Twitter/X.
(It also reflects the community that has sprung up there, as tags like #furry and #nsfw are among the trending topics at this time).
Graysky Pro is an optional subscription that supports the app’s continued development and includes additional features.
There is no denying that AI-powered apps are growing in popularity and numbers on both app stores. Text-based ChatGPT and image-based Midjourney are some of the most popular AI tools…
