Google's Gboard keyboard turbocharges typing and search on iOS

In a surprise move, Google has released a replacment keyboard for iOS that integrates swipe functionality, access to search, emoji and animated gifs. As Google explains it, "Searching and sending stuff on your phone shouldn’t be that difficult. With Gboard, you can search and send all kinds of things—restaurant info, flight times, news articles—right from your keyboard. Anything you’d search on Google, you can search with Gboard. Results appear as cards with the key information front and center, such as the phone number, ratings and hours. With one tap, you can send it to your friend and you keep the conversation going."

I've been using Goard for few days on my iPhone 6S Plus and my iPad and find it to be more versatile than many third-party keyboards including iOS's stock keyboard. If you already like Google services, this one's a no brainer and worth checking out. 

YouTube helps businesses create video ads

You don’t have to be a big corporation to be able to share your online ads on YouTube. The streaming video giant is now helping out small businesses create their own video ads with its new suite of products called YouTube Director. The free YouTube Director for Business app is available for iOS users in Canada and the U.S. and allows you to create video ads right from your smartphone. You don’t even need to worry about editing as well. You can check out the app in action in the video above where YouTube challenged five video owners to create their ad.

Or if you want YouTube to create a video ad based on your app, if you have one or if that’s your business. YouTube Director can generate a video ad based on the assets you have like logos and app screenshots in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Source: YouTube

Apple's free Swift Playgrounds iPad app can empower future programmers

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

One of the announcements made at yesterday's WWDC keynote was the Swift Playgrounds iPad app. As Apple explains it, "Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary new app for iPad that makes learning Swift interactive and fun. Solve puzzles to master the basics using Swift — a powerful programming language created by Apple and used by the pros to build many of today’s most popular apps."

Geared towards children but with enough content to delight users of all ages, the app gamifies programming and allows users to code on one part of the screen and run their program on the other, giving them instant and real-time access to their programs. Coming as a free download this fall, Swift Playgrounds looks like an empowering app and great place for anyone to get into the mindset of coding Swift for future success in the app economy.

Get access to the public beta for iOS 10 and macOS Sierra starting July

At the moment only developers have access to the beta software of Apple’s products (iOS 10, macOS Sierra, and watchOS 3). But if you want to get your hands on the beta build and familiarize yourself with the new features, next month Apple will be opening iOS 10 and macOS Sierra to public testers. To be one of these testers, all you have to do is sign up on Apple’s dedicated page for the Apple Beta Software Program using your Apple ID. If you don’t have one of those, you can create one for free. After you agree with Apple’s terms and conditions, you can then enroll your device to receive notifications of new updates and releases for download.

Once you’re a member, you just have to make sure you have the latest version of iTunes on your PC and when the beta is released in July, just connect your enrolled iOS device to the computer and open iTunes or run Software Update. For macOS Sierra testers, you can get the beta software from the Mac App Store. A quick reminder, though, and Apple reminds you of this is that you shouldn’t install beta builds in your daily drivers or work devices as these builds come with risk. Beta tests are meant to work out the issues these OSes have so putting it in something you need daily could pose a problem.

Source: Apple Insider