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Snapchat Introduces New AR Feature: World Lenses

One of the most popular Snapchat features since its launch has been Lenses, the AR tool that enables you to overlay photo subjects with all kinds of fun, sometimes wacky filters – you can make yourself or someone else look like a dog, bunny, or bumblebee, give them disproportionate features, colored hair, and more.

Today Snapchat has launched an expansion of its Lenses feature called World Lenses. Snap shares the news:

While Snapping with the rear-facing camera, simply tap the camera screen to find new Lenses that can paint the world around you with new 3D experiences!

There are a wide variety of Lenses available today, including floating bubbles, speech phrases, a house of mirrors-like effect, and more. Many of the Lenses contain several options within themselves – the speech phrases, for example, can be tapped on to cycle through alternate words and styles.

The current number of World Lenses available in the app seems healthy, but there are apparently many more in the pipeline. The Verge reports that the lineup of Lenses will change daily.

Snap has released a short video that shows World Lenses in action.

Logitech Adds HomeKit Support to Its POP Smart Button

Logitech announced today that it is adding HomeKit support to its POP Smart Button, which debuted last year. The second generation POP button connects to your home WiFi, supports up to three customizable gestures, and acts as a sort of macro to trigger other HomeKit devices. For example, you could put a POP button in your bedroom that when pressed in the morning would change the temperature of your HomeKit thermostat and turn on your lights. You could add another POP button to turn off the lights and lock your doors when you leave home. The POP button also works with some non-HomeKit devices like Sonos music systems and Logitech’s Harmony Hub home entertainment control device.

The adoption of HomeKit support by Logitech greatly expands the utility of POP buttons and may be a sign of the growing popularity of HomeKit devices. With the increasing number of HomeKit-enabled products, the POP button should make it even more convenient to trigger HomeKit’s scene functionality.

Logitech says that the POP Smart Button will be available soon exclusively at Apple Stores and on Apple.com and later this year from other retailers. The base POP Smart Button Kit will retail for $59.95 and includes one button and a bridge to connect it to your home WiFi. Additional Pop buttons will be available for $39.95 each.

Clean Up Your Inbox Today (and Keep It That Way Forever) with SaneBox [Sponsor]

What if you had someone to go through your email and find just the important messages? SaneBox does exactly that. Once set up, it leaves your important messages in your inbox and moves the rest to a SaneLater folder for reviewing later. That initial inbox purge is powerful because it reduces your inbox to a manageable number of messages. With additional training to tell SaneBox what’s important to you, it only gets better at dealing with your daily deluge of messages.

There’s much more to SaneBox than shuffling unimportant messages into a designated folder, though. If there’s something you never want to see ever again, send it to the SaneBlackHole, which is much easier than unsubscribing to unwanted messages.

You can also set up SaneReminders by sending messages to an address that sends a reminder to you at a later date if the recipient of your message hasn’t responded after a certain amount of time. Or forward a message to SaneReminders to have it pop back into your inbox at a later date when you are ready to deal with it.

SaneBox works on top of your existing email setup. There’s no particular app to download or new email account to set up. It all works server-side so you can use any email client you want.

Sign up today for a free 14-day SaneBox trial to take back control of your email. MacStories readers can receive a special $25 credit automatically by using this link to sign up.

Internet Archive Adds Early Macintosh OS and App Emulation

Over the weekend, the Internet Archive introduced a curated collection of Mac operating systems and software from 1984 through 1989. The Internet Archive already hosts browser-based emulators of early video games and other operating systems, but this is its first foray into Mac software.

The collection includes classic applications like MacPaint, programming tools such as MacBasic, and many games including Dark Castle. Each app can be run in an in-browser emulator and is accompanied by an article that chronicles its history. It’s fun to play with the apps in the collection and realize just how far apps have come since the earliest days of the Mac. It’s also remarkable how many computing conventions used today were introduced during those earliest days.

I’m happy to see the Internet Archive start this collection. These operating systems and historically-significant apps may still run on old hardware maintained by a handful of people, but it’s emulation efforts like these that make those apps accessible to a broader audience.

Apple Updates TestFlight with Improved Testing Options

Yesterday Apple launched TestFlight 1.5 on the App Store. The update’s release notes didn’t highlight any specific changes, but developers are discovering today that its release was timed with a few major updates.

Developers can now create different builds of an app to be distributed to different groups of testers. These changes will make A/B testing of apps possible for the first time, so developers can gauge feedback from different groups who are testing different versions of the same app.

Multiple builds can also be distributed to the same people so that testers can choose from a variety of builds that they wish to test.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/851837283900825600

Longer testing periods is another change – up from 60 days to 90 days. These are not yet noted in Apple’s official documentation, so they are likely still in the process of rolling out. Developers we’ve spoken with as well as the MacStories team have been able to see builds with an expiration time of 90 days.

MailButler - Your Personal Assistant for Apple Mail [Sponsor]

No one has ever said ‘I want to spend more time on my email.’ Staying on top of important messages is critical, but managing your inbox can quickly become an unproductive time sink. MailButler is a series of Apple Mail add-ons that supercharge it so you can get through your email messages quickly and efficiently.

Just because you are catching up on email messages at 1:00 AM doesn’t mean you want your message to hit someone’s inbox at that hour. With MailButler, you can schedule your emails to be sent during normal working hours and then track whether the recipient opened your message. MailButler also helps you put your best foot forward with beautifully-designed, professional message templates and signature management.

MailButler is just as effective at managing messages you receive. When you need to focus on your work, you can pause your inbox until you are ready to deal with it. MailButler also makes unsubscribing from unwanted email much faster than hunting for that tiny ‘unsubscribe’ link buried at the bottom of a message. As you process messages, MailButler can even turn them into tasks or Evernote or OneNote notes, which is a more effective way to handle actionable and reference items than letting them sit in your inbox.

Everyone could use help with email. MailButler is the assistant you need to take back control of your inbox. Try MailButler for free today.

Microsoft Releases Social Scheduling iMessage App, ‘Who’s In’

Microsoft has introduced a new app called ‘Who’s In’ to the iMessage App Store. The app is designed to help friends plan social events together without ever leaving the iOS Messages app.

When you want to coordinate an event with friends, opening ‘Who’s In’ will present several types of activities to choose from:

  • Eat and drink
  • Watch a movie
  • Visit an attraction
  • Create your own

After making your selection, a Bing-powered list of relevant options will be presented such as restaurant names, movie titles, etc. These are sorted based on your location, and once you’ve picked one, you’ll be asked to specify a date and time for the event to take place. These details are all compacted into an iMessage card that gets saved into your message body so you can send it to friends. When they receive your message, they can vote on whether they’ll be attending or not.

In many ways ‘Who’s In’ resembles the scheduling app Doodle, but with a more narrow focus on the specific activities featured in the app.

‘Who’s In’ is available for download from the iMessage App Store.

Apple Launches Clips Video App for iPhone and iPad

Apple has released a new app for iPhone and iPad, the previously announced video tool Clips.

Apple describes Clips as an app “for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.” Essentially it’s a stripped-down version of a video editor like iMovie, optimized to make edits fast and user-friendly on mobile. Its key focus is allowing you to shoot seconds-long clips and string them together into a video worth sharing.

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