When Prisma went live on iOS not too long ago, the smart-filter app quickly went viral. It didn’t take long for it to dominate the App Store charts, and Android users were clamoring to use its capabilities on their devices. Now the wait is finally over: Prisma has arrived on the Google Play Store.

On the surface, Prisma appears to be nothing special. It basically just looks like a collection of image filters: you snap a photo, pick a style, and use a slider to adjust the results. Sounds pretty ordinary, right? This feature is common to everything from Instagram to Snapchat to, hell, essentially any app that uses your camera.

What sets Prisma apart, however, is that it uses artificial intelligence algorithms to generate its images. Rather than simply overlay a dumb filter, Prisma reconstructs the image from scratch by making intelligent design choices. After just playing around with it for a few minutes, the magic becomes evident. The only downside is that applying each filter does take a few seconds, since the new image has to essentially be built from the ground up.

Many of these filters take their cues from famous painters or distinctive visual art styles. Whether you want to make your snapshot look like an impressionist oil painting, a gritty graphic novel, or a piece of modern art, this app has you covered.

This is a free app that requires no sign-up and it doesn’t even throw ads in your face. The no-nonsense interface neatly integrates with social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, making Prism a handy one-stop-shop for all your image sharing needs. The results can be kind of mixed, but it’s seriously fun to play around with.

Click the button below to give this app a whirl. Try it out for a bit, then let us know about your experience in the comments!

Play Store

Version: 1.0 (1)

arm + arm64 + mips + x86 + x86_64 
Package: com.prisma 

8.31 MB (8,713,565 bytes)

Download here   Click here

Be an artist! Turn your photos into awesome artworks:
- Modern art filters!
- Stunning photo effects
- Fast sharing

Prisma transforms your photos into artworks using the styles of famous artists: Munk, Picasso as well as world famous ornaments and patterns. A unique combination of neural networks and artificial intelligence helps you turn memorable moments into timeless art.

Please free to contact us contact@prisma-ai.com

 

Facebook on Wednesday released an updated iOS Messenger app and announced that its Android version would become more broadly available after two weeks in limited testing.

The updated standalone app, which was 

The update also adds the capability of communicating with Messenger app users who aren't Facebook friends, using only their registered telephone number. It also introduces a fresh navigation look for accessing recent conversations, settings, and other people using the app.

"As more and more people use Facebook to connect with their friends on mobile, we are focused on building the best mobile products," Facebook said of the update. "Facebook messaging started as a desktop chat experience, but when it comes to messaging on mobile, people want something faster and lighterweight."

The renovation is part of Facebook's effort to make Messenger the go-to smartphone app for instantly getting a hold of friends and address book contacts. Along with enhancements in speed, function, and design, the updated app is based on a "mobile-to-mobile" philosophy that intends to make sure people using the app are immediately available to each other on their smartphones.

Update: Sony's PlayStation App that allows you to link your PS4 with smartphones and tablets is now available in North America, ahead of the console's imminent release on Friday.

The app can be grabbed now from either the App Store or Google Play. A European release is expected next week on November 22.

Original story follows.

Original Story: Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation App announced earlier this year will be available for iOS and Android devices in North America on November 13 and in Europe on November 22.

The App is set to provide second screen functionality for some PS4 titles, as well as let you access your PSN profile, check up on friends and trophies, send messages to other people who have the App or to PS4, PS3, and PS Vita users. You'll also be able to make purchases using the App and remotely download it, and also use your smartphone or tablet to turn your console on and off or as a keyboard for typing.

Full details on what to expect when the app goes live can be seen in our walkthrough, below.

After "a whirlwind trip to Asia" visiting Android partners, Google's SVP Sundar Pichai has just confirmed -- by way of the above photo -- that the next version of his mobile OS is called KitKat aka Android 4.4. The exec shared this geeky nugget on both Google+ and Twitter, while his company has updated the Android developer site with a page chronicling Android's milestones so far. Details are light at the moment, and Google teases its upcoming release with just the following line:

Pichai also announced that there are now over one billion Android device activations, surpassing the 900 million mark back in May this year. This is well ahead of the end-of-year target that Chairman Eric Schmidt predicted back in April. Just to recap, here are all the previous dessert-based names that contributed to these figures: Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6), Eclair (2.0), Froyo (2.2), Gingerbread (2.3), Honeycomb (3.0), Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), and Jelly Bean (4.1-4.3). Naturally, it's "K" after "J" now. More after the break (pun intended).

Update: We've added Nestle's wacky promo video as well.

Update 2: Go ahead and grab the kids, because you'll now find a short clip of the KitKat statue's unveiling. So... is anyone gonna break off a piece of that, or what?

Trademark issues? Not to worry, as Google got Nestle's blessing to use the "Kit Kat" trademark (albeit without the space), but with a twist. John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships, explained to the BBC that "this is not a money-changing-hands kind of deal," but instead, they wanted do something "fun and unexpected."

Following one conference call with Nestle back in end of November, the deal was sealed just 24 hours later. And after finalising the details secretly at MWC, the chocolate snack is now doing a joint promotion with Google to give away someNexus 7s and Google Play credit in the US and the UK. The BBC reports that there will be more than 50 million Kit Kats promoting the Android mascot in 19 markets (including Brazil, India, Japan and Russia), but it's not clear whether the giveaway promotion will make its way to those countries as well.

Lagerling also confirmed that his team did originally consider "Key Lime Pie" as a potential name for Android after Jelly Bean, but the issue was "very few people actually know the taste of a key lime pie." Fair enough. Until Google drops another Android activation number on us, feel free to make a guess on what's coming after KitKat. Hint: it begins with an "L."

Whether you have a $50 mini PC that you leave plugged in all the time or a 5-inch smartphone that you carry with you, you can use any Android device as a full fledged web server that’s accessible either on LAN or from anywhere on the Internet. With an Android web server, developers can easily test their code without paying for a hosting service. Freelancers can carry a copy of the web tools they’ve built with them to show their clients. Home and small office users can even set up custom web tools for users on the local network.

Here’s how to set up a web server on your Android phone, tablet or mini PC.

1. Install and launch KSWEB on your Android device. The app only has a six-day free trial, after which it costs $2.99. There are a number of other web server apps, including Bit Web ($2.39) andServers Ultimate, but we chose KSWEB for this tutorial because it is one of the simpler options.

 2. Navigate to the IP address listed by KSWEB in your computer’s browser or to localhost:8080 on the device itself.

That’s still true. In April, mobile-tracking firm App Annie revealed that while Google Play is catching up to the App Store in terms of raw download numbers, Apple’s digital-distribution market is paying out 2.6 times more in revenue to developers than Google Play.

A huge part of the battle for mobile-app dominance is fought in the gaming market, and Google finally got serious about improving the gaming experience on the Android platform this year when it introduced the Google Play Games services and app.

“Android’s growing rapidly as a mobile-gaming platform,” Google Play Games lead product manager Greg Hartrell told GamesBeat. “It’s enabling game developers to reach this unprecedented audience of players. Recently, we started sharing that three in every four Android users are playing games. That represents a very large number of gamers.”

Hatrell comes from a gaming background. At Microsoft, he worked on Xbox 360 and led the Xbox Live team as senior group program manager. Xbox Live is Microsoft’s multiplayer networking system. Now that he’s at Google, Hartrell wants to take what he learned developing and managing Xbox Live, which is one of the best multiplayer systems in the world, and combine that with Google’s strengths.

That led him and the Google Play Games team to introduce the Play Games services at Google I/O in May.

Google Play Games services is a networking system that lives in Google’s cloud. It enables developers on Android, the web, and even Apple’s iOS to build games with a host of social and multiplayer features. For example, one of the earliest games to launch with Google Play Games services is the watercraft racing game Riptide GP2. Thanks to Google’s cloud infrastructure, the game supports online multiplayer, leaderboards, achievements, and cloud saves.

Players just need to log in with their Google+ account and the system handles everything else.

At a small event in July, Hartrell’s team released the Google Play Games app, which centralizes and surfaces all of an Android user’s games in one location. Players can even see what their friends are playing and quickly discover new titles.

Google is pitching all of these features to developers, who have to implement the Google Play Games code in order to take full advantage of these features as a way to acquire and retain players.

“We’re seeing some very positive metrics from our developers that have adopted Google Play Games,” said Hartrell. “For example, Glu Mobile integrated Play Games services into the vast majority of its newer titles and many of its older ones as well. With its title Eternity Warriors 2, Glu shared with us that it saw seven-day retention improve by 40 percent and an increase in play sessions by 20 percent.”

In the short time since Google introduced the Play Games products, developers integrated the services into over 1,000 games. In addition to Glu Mobile, Hartrell pointed to major releases like Temple Run 2, which now use Google Play Games services to track a players’ performances against their friends using the leaderboard functionality.

“We’re going to continue to see a lot of great games integrate with our platform,” said Hartrell. “Not only does it bring benefits to game developers, but it also brings great experiences to their players.”

The shortcut of explaining Google Play Games as an “Xbox Live-like service for mobile” only works to a certain extent. Gaming is what an Xbox 360 is all about, and the type of player that owns an Xbox 360 is usually focused on one particular type of gaming experience. That is to say, Xbox 360 specializes in fully fleshed out “hardcore” games like Call of Duty, Madden, and Braid.

Meanwhile, Android simultaneously features deep military-strategy games and Candy Crush Saga. I asked Hartrell how his team balanced building a multiplayer infrastructure that can serve both a hardcore gaming audience and one that binges on social games. He says that from Google’s perspective, the mechanics don’t matter all that much.

“Fundamentally, Google Play Games is about taking these hundreds of millions of gamers and bringing them together,” said Hartrell. “Gaming is the thread that really brings us together, right? The way we do that is to continue to evolve the platform in a way that brings fantastic social experiences to users and enables them to experience great moments together, so that we can move away from a world where mobile gaming is this solitary type of experience.”

One of the most interesting aspects of Google Play Games services is that it works on iOS. The software lives totally in Google’s cloud, so any game on just about any platform can tap into Google and use features like cloud saves and leaderboards.

The question is: Has anyone released a game for iOS that uses Google Play Games services?

“We don’t really have specific titles that we can showcase right now, [but] we’ve seen some response there for certain,” said Hartrell. “As you can imagine the Android side gets more attention by virtue of who we are.”

Last week, Google updated its developer site with a step-by-step explanation of how to integrate Google Play Games services into an iOS app. I’ve looked myself, and can’t find a single game that’s done this so far.

“We can only say that we’re seeing great interest in being cross platform,” said Hartrell. “It’s a big part of our initiative to get players together wherever they are.”

Gaming on Android has never compared well to iOS. Some games come out later on the Google Play market. Other titles don’t come out at all. Hartrell looks at this issue in a positive light.

“I think that what we’ve found is that 19 of the top 20 mobile-game developers have already adopted Android,” he told me. “It’s already a great place for them to bring their experiences and their craft to game players. From that perspective, we’re pretty satisfied with the adoption we’ve seen. I’d be hard pressed to find a developer who isn’t at least already considering developing on Android. We’re talking about 900 million active devices.”

And yet, some developers still don’t bring their games to Android. Popular titles like Tiny Wings, Ridiculous Fishing, and Tilt to Live don’t have Android ports despite those 900 million active devices. I asked Hartrell what he would say to those studios that are still holding out on developer for Android.

“What I would say is the game developers that are adopting Google Play Games and publishing on Android are experiencing great momentum. If you are a [developer] holding out from developing on our platform, then you got to think about those numbers. It’s a real party over here right now, and we want everyone to experience it. It’s a really amazing moment in gaming.”

Hartrell also said he would point to those numbers from Glu Mobile and the overwhelming number of Android-device owners that play games. Again, 900 million devices … three out of four Android owners play games.

But I suspect that the real thing keeping most developers from developing on Android — those that are still holding out — is those aforementioned revenue numbers. I shared that hunch with Hartrell, who said that was probably a fair statement but things are getting better.

“From a momentum perspective, compared to last year, we’re paying seven times the amount of revenue to app developers and game developers,” he said. That means more developers are making more money.

“In terms of what we’re doing next, the Play Store is supporting more countries. Developers can now sell apps in over 130 countries. Over half of Android users can now charge purchases directly to their mobile bill through carrier billing.”

Carrier billing allows cell-phone owners to purchase apps and other content from Google Play and charge it to their carrier. Their carrier will then add that cost to their next monthly bill. This payment method is extremely popular in international markets like Japan and Korea. This should help developers generate more revenue, but it’s unlikely this alone will close the gap.

Another big incentive is that Google Play Games services beefed-up its anti-piracy measures. Developers can use the tools to keep players from accessing certain features or the entire game if it doesn’t authenticate properly.

It’s up to developers to take advantage of that to protect their games.

For Google, its job is to continue improving Play Games services so that it does blossom into a flourishing social and multiplayer ecosystem.

“We’re going to continue to iterate to bring the best of Google to game developers,” said Hartrell. “From a principal standpoint, we’re going to focus on bringing players together wherever they happen to be.”

An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the Embark deal, adding, "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." The spokeswoman didn't disclose any details about the deal, including how much Apple paid for the several-person team, and didn't have any information regarding the future availability of Embark's Android apps. Embark currently has 10 iOS apps in the Apple App Store.

Besides Embark, Apple has been busy snatching up navigation and map applications in recent months. On July 19, Apple acquired two mapping companies -- Toronto-based Locationary, focused on crowdsourcing location data for local businesses, and New York City-based HopStop, which aggregates massive amounts of data from several hundred transit agencies to help mobile users get from Point A to Point B via subway, bus, train, taxi, walking or biking. In March, Apple spent $20 million on another Silicon Valley startup, WiFiSLAM, which allows users to detect and navigate locations with pinpoint accuracy, including "step-by-step indoor navigation to product-level retail customer engagement to proximity-based social networking."

The bigger picture here is Apple's obvious intentions to build a much-improved Maps system by the time it releases its next mobile and desktop operating systems, which are typically announced in the summer and released in beta at the same time. Apple unveiled iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks on June 10 at its Worldwide Developers Conference, but neither operating system featured an improved mapping system. It's always possible Apple could upgrade its Maps apps in small iOS and OS X system updates over the year, but we're far more likely to see an improved Apple Maps next June when we're introduced to iOS 8 and, perhaps, OS X Yosemite?

Apple Maps, introduced in June 2012 as a major feature in iOS 6, was harshly criticized by developers and consumers, especially since Apple had removed Google Maps as the mapping mainstay in iOS to make room for Apple's in-house solution. A Frankenstein monster of three separate companies --Placebase, Poly9 and C3 Technologies, purchased in 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively -- Apple Maps still lacked a great deal of important information about roads, buildings and directions. With engineers and information from WiFiSLAM, Locationary, HopStop and now Embark, Apple should have plenty of granular mapping and navigation data to help Apple Maps be a real contender by the time we see iOS 8 next year.