Stardew Valley officially launches on iOS

Popular farming simulation and role-playing game Stardew Valley is now officially available on mobile through Apple’s iOS platform. The game is available for both the iPhone and iPad. If you’re unfamiliar with the title, it’s similar to games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing. You’ll be tasked to take over a small, failing farm and you work to make it a successful farm once again by planting and tending to crops, raising animals, and crafting goods to sell. You also do things like fight monsters to earn money, engage with townspeople, and mine ores or fish, among other things. The game cycles through seasons so there will always be new crops and activities to partake in year round. The game costs $10.99 but comes with no in-app purchases.

You can now use GIFs as your Tinder profile picture

Think a static Tinder profile photo is too bland? Well, you can use GIFs, if you’re on iOS, that is. The dating app is testing out this new feature here in Canada, Sweden, the US, UK, and many other countries. Tinder is calling it Loops and it is as the name suggests Loops a two-second clip of you doing something you love or showing off your personality. You can record a clip or use an existing video. If you want to use an existing video, all you need to do is tap on the “Add Media” button. Once you have that, select the part you want to loop and then add that to your profile. Easy-peasy.

Amazon Alexa app on iOS now has voice control support

It took many, many months (or even a year or two) since Amazon has been able to add voice control support to its Amazon Alexa iOS app. It might have felt like this wasn’t going to happen but it’s finally here. The update will be rolling out to users in the coming days so keep an eye for it. What this brings to users is the ability to ask for help from Alexa. Since it’s not baked in natively, you’ll need to tap a button to interact with it. But once you do that, you can ask Alexa questions, access skills, listen to music, and control smart devices. There will also be a visual component in the app for queries related to weather, sports, movies, and calendar.

Source: TechCrunch

Netflix to experiment with vertical video teasers for mobile

Netflix is hoping to hook more mobile users to consume media on its platform. The streaming service announced it will be trying to use short Snapchat-like vertical videos on mobile to show users teasers of the shows and movies on its platform. The hope is this will make it easier for users to decide which programs to watch. While within the 30-second video, you can swipe right or left to see other trailers, press play to watch the show or movie, or add the title to your Netflix list. Of course, the show or movie itself will play in standard horizontal format as that is better for extended viewing. Like everything else on the service, the recommendations will be personalized to you. Video previews on Netflix are available on TVs and PCs but now Netflix wants to turn the attention to its mobile and tablet users. The feature is coming first to iOS and will be landing on Android “in the coming months.”

Source: Quartz