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Sky+ gains a Top Picks section and more binge-watching features
As the viewing habits of its customers change, Sky has overhauled its programme guide and planner to better serve shows that people want to watch. The company's new box, Sky Q, built on that by introducing Top Picks, a human-curated catalogue of programmes and movies that are too hot to miss. Now it's rolling out to more customers as part of a new Sky+ update that makes it even easier to go on a binge-watching spree.
T-Mobile Top Picks brands the Android Market, magenta-style
T-Mobile's been keen on making its Android customers aware of particular apps since the launch of the myTouch 3G and the App Pack, but there's a problem -- App Pack is its own app, which is kinda unwieldy when you've already got the Market sitting there. That's where Top Picks appears to come into play, the carrier's next-gen effort to inject some of its opinions into its users' app selection process by integrating directly with the Market, much as Verizon has done on the Droid. Customers can expect to get updated with Top Picks "over the next couple of weeks," though it requires Android 1.6 -- we're guessing that means no CLIQ or Behold II love for the time being.
My Favorite iPhone Apps: Erica's Take
When it comes to the iPhone, it's really really difficult to narrow my app love down to just three picks. So with apologies in advance for all those amazing applications that didn't make this cut, let me jump in with three choices that I simply do not live without on my (jailbroken) iPhone: Cydia. When Jay Freeman's Cydia first debuted, I was hesitant to use it. It sucked up the root partition space like a sponge and its interface was, at best, preliminary. And now, in 2.0, Cydia owns me. It's simply fabulous. From its command-line Unix support to its fully overhauled interface to its extremely workable update system, Cydia provides a powerful software distribution system, perfect for modern smartphones and a great competitor to AppStore. Boss Prefs. Boss Prefs offers a wonderful services application. It lets me enable and disable services such as EDGE, Bluetooth and SSH from a central application. Because I only intermittently subscribe to data plans, Boss Prefs ensures that I won't accidentally start downloading a la carte data that starts at about $500 million (or so) per kilobyte. It also lets me enable and disable my mail accounts, so the iPhone works perfectly for whichever mode I'm in: intrepid TUAW blogger at large or private Soccer Mom on the go. Othello. Othello is my current fidget-game-on-the-go. When I'm stuck waiting somewhere for a few minutes, I pull out Hongtao Guo's perfect take on Othello. With three playing levels, optional sound and a really nicely designed interface, Othello provides the perfect time waster. There are other free versions of Othello under various names on AppStore but I particularly like this implementation. Although I wish it would put me directly into the game board rather than the welcome screen, that's my only criticism of a lovely, free application that's a great deal of fun.
