Twitter is making it easier for you to shop on its app

Whether you like it or not, e-commerce is coming to your favorite apps. This time, Twitter is partnering with payments startup Stripe to help merchants sell their goods right on Twitter. The project called Relay lets merchants reach Twitter’s audience with tweets from participating brands now showing a “Buy” button. The button will pull up a pop-up screen where you can select the products you want to purchase. You’ll then give your credit card information to Twitter once and it’ll store that information for future Relay payments.

Stripe already works behind the scenes to power payment systems of apps like Lyft and Instacart. They hope Relay will help simplify the mobile buying experience for Twitter users. Right now, Warby Parker is one of the merchants trying out Twitter’s new Relay system. At the moment, people can select a color and size of a particular nonprescription sunglasses style without having to leave Twitter. 

Source: Stripe | Via: BuzzFeed News

VideoLAN developing VLC app for Apple TV

VideoLAN, the team behind VLC app, is making its presence felt on Apple’s ecosystem. According to VideoLAN’s lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the VLC app for Apple TV is still in its early stages but they are making progress with it. “Finally, some code to build VLCKit for the new tvOS was merged. It’s very early though, but we have video playback!”

VLC is an app that lets users play video and audio files in a variety of formats. But they aren’t alone in supporting Apple TV. The company behind Plex, an app that lets you stream files from your computer, also has plans for Apple’s set-top box. We should be hearing more about these in the near future.

Source: JBKempf.com | Via: The Verge

iA Writer introduces new features for its apps

Distraction-free writing app iA Writer is bringing some new features to its Mac, iOS, and Android apps. The Mac app now lets you swap quickly between documents with Swipe to File Library feature. You can also get a quick HTML preview of your current document with new Swipe to Preview gesture. iOS users will see a new look for the app as most arbitrary menus have been taken out. There’s also a new customizable keyboard bar that allows you to add different functions to the onscreen keyboard. Meanwhile, the Android version of the app gets a new keyboard extension, night mode, and new menu system.

Source: Lifehacker | Download: Google Play Store (US$4.99) + iTunes App Store ($11.99) + Mac App Store ($22.99)

Wikipedia on Android now comes with article previews

Wikipedia on Android is making it easier for you to do your research with its latest update. There’s now a preview pop-up feature that shows you a snippet of information and a few images of a particular article, while reading one of Wikipedia’s entries. You can opt to click through and read the rest of the entry or go back to your original search. The app also now supports tabbed browsing so you look through different research threads without losing track of anything. Wikipedia now also has a quick language switcher button as well, which you can access once you’ve tapped in the “Search Wikipedia” box.

The Wikimedia Foundation plans to bring the preview feature to iOS soon and “is exploring” bringing the feature to mobile web as well.

Source: The Next Web | Download: Google Play Store (Free)