Best new smartphone and tablet apps for iOS, Android and Windows: Kamcord, Loppimal, and more

Each week, Digital Spy rounds up the biggest mobile apps for tablets and smartphones. This week's highlights include an Android app for recording gameplay footage and fun music creation software for kids.

1. Virgin Media WiFi Buddy
Available on: iOS, Android
Price: Free (requires Virgin Mobile account)
Publisher: Virgin Media
If you're a Virgin Mobile customer with an iOS device, there's no reason not to download the WiFi Buddy app now it's arrived on the App Store - unless you have something against free public WiFi, of course.

The Virgin Media service grants users access to 22,000 complementary public WiFi hotspots around the UK that are operated by The Cloud.

You'll find these located in retail stores, bars, hotels, stadiums and other public places up and down the country, such as your local Marks & Spencer, Wetherspoons, WH Smith, Pret A Manger, Greggs, and many other places.

© Virgin Media

© Virgin Media

2. Gett
Available on: Android, iOS
Price: Free
Publisher: GT Get Taxi
Uber rival Gett is a firm we've featured in our round-up before, but we thought the taxi-booking app was worth flagging down again now that it's expanded across the UK.

The service recently launched in 18 new locations - Oxford, Cambridge, Reading, Slough, Milton Keynes, Brighton, Bristol, Bath, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Leicester, Coventry, Sheffield, Nottingham, Bradford, Hull, and Newcastle.

With London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow and Leeds already covered, Gett has left Uber in the dust on these shores.

© GT Get Taxi Ltd

© GT Get Taxi Ltd

3. Kamcord
Available on: Android
Price: Free
Publisher: Kamcord
Broadcasting and sharing gameplay footage is all the rage these days, and there are plenty of solutions out there for recording your play sessions on mobile.

Kamcord for Android devices is one of the better options as it does not require rooting and it allows users to record their own commentary track while they play.

Many Android phones have a built-in solution for this kind of thing, but for those that don't, there's Kamcord.

© Kamcord

© Kamcord

4. Opera Mini
Available on: Windows Phone, Android, iOS
Price: Free
Publisher: Opera Software
Opera Mini has provided a viable alternative to default web browsers on iOS and Android for a while, and now it has exited beta on Windows Phone.

This is good news for anyone seeking a replacement for Internet Explorer on a platform with comparatively fewer third-party web browsers to choose from.

Opera Mini is a speedy browser that promises to consume less data than its rivals and put security and privacy first.

© Opera Software

© Opera Software

5. Happn
Available on: iOS, Android, Windows Phone
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
Publisher: happn
There are almost as many online dating apps out there as there are online daters, but Happn turned our head when it introduced Spotify integration.

This is a bit of a first for a dating app and it's clever idea, allowing users to serenade each other with the song of their choice, or make their profile stand out by adding a backing track.

Happn also takes an inventive approach to pairing people up by matching them based on proximity, sending them an alert when another account holder has passed them by.

© happn

© happn

6. Loopimal
Available on: iOS
Price: £2.49
Publisher: Lucas Zanotto
Loopimal is aimed at the youngsters, or adults with youngsters, who want to try their hand at music making.

The app presents children with a colourful mini-sequencer and shapes that they can drag onto a looping timeline to create a range of different sounds.

If the upbeat sounds aren't enough to convince your kids to take their first steps into music creation, then the dancing animals just might.

© Lucas Zanotto

© Lucas Zanotto

7. Alexi
Available on: iOS
Price: Free
Publisher: Alexi
Curated content is a key feature behind the success of music streaming services like Spotify, and Alexi for iOS devices brings this concept to the world of literature.

The app serves users with a recommended reading lists compiled by Alexi editorial staff, as well as celebrity guests including David Mitchell, Sarah Hall and Bret Easton Ellis.

Unfortunately, there's no way to purchase the featured books in-app at present, but that's what Kindle, Nook, and real-life bookstores are for.

© Alexi

© Alexi

8. Adobe Photoshop Mix
Available on: Android, iOS
Price: Free
Publisher: Adobe
Adobe Photoshop Mix will appeal to professionals and laypersons alike, allowing them to edit and share all of the images they have captured using their mobile device.

It's integrated with Adobe's Photoshop CC software on desktop, allowing users to send their photos across if more extensive editing is required.

An internet connection and an Adobe ID are required to use the app, and a subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud is necessary to take full advantage of the software.

© Adobe

© Adobe

9. Flipd
Available on: Android
Price: Free
Publisher: Flipd app
With messaging apps, social works and mobile games all vying for attention, it's a small miracle that we smartphone owners get anything done.

Flipd app is an app for targeting this particular problem. It will lock users out for their phone for a set period of time in an attempt to boost productivity.

The Android service even allows users to set out-of-office-esque alerts for their contacts during their digital detox.

© Flipd

© Flipd

App of the week

Loopimal for iOS devices is our app of the week, as not only are we all for anything that sparks creativity in children, but the app's design and execution is first rate.

As well as encouraging children to experiment with sound, it will also given them a rudimentary introduction to coding, which is essentially about connecting symbols to actions.

 

Google cracks-down on revenge porn: Victims can ask for humiliating images to be taken down

Google is taking steps to crack down on so-called revenge porn - the practise in which sexually explicit images of people are posted without their consent.

The company has traditionally resisted efforts to erase online content from its internet search engine.

But now it says it will put up a form that will allow victims to make requests to remove items from searches.

“We’ve heard many troubling stories of ‘revenge porn’: an ex-partner seeking to publicly humiliate a person... or hackers stealing and distributing images from victims’ accounts,” Google search vice president Amit Singhal said in a blog.

“Some images even end up on ‘sextortion’ sites that force people to pay to have their images removed.

 

Crack-down: Google takes steps to stamp out revenge porn

“Our philosophy has always been that search should reflect the whole web. But revenge porn images are intensely personal and emotionally damaging, and serve only to degrade the victims - predominantly women.”

Mr Singhal said Google will “honour requests from people to remove nude or sexually explicit images shared without their consent from Google search results”.

He said it was “a narrow and limited policy, similar to how we treat removal requests for other highly sensitive personal information, such as bank account numbers and signatures”.
He added: “We know this won’t solve the problem of revenge porn - we aren’t able, of course, to remove these images from the websites themselves.

“But we hope that honouring people’s requests to remove such imagery from our search results can help.”

Twitter implemented a similar policy earlier this year, banning “intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject’s consent.”

Mo Farah’s training camp at centre of documentary alleging banned drug use

Mo Farah’s training partner Galen Rupp has taken the banned anabolic steroid testosterone since he was 16 under the supervision of the pair’s coach Alberto Salazar, according to a television documentary to be screened on Wednesday night.

A wide-ranging investigation into the Nike Oregon project, the prestigious training camp in America where Farah has been based since 2011, alleged the existence of a culture where rules were stretched, bent – or broken.

The 29-year-old Rupp, who won 10,000m silver at the London 2012 Olympics behind Farah, was accused of being a regular user of the asthma drug prednisone, which is banned in competition. Meanwhile Salazar, a former marathon world record holder who is regarded as the best endurance coach in the business and has worked as a consultant for British Athletics since 2013, is said to have mentored Rupp to help him flout strict rules about using intravenous drips. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.

The most serious charges are made by Steve Magness, who was chosen by Salazar to be his No2 in 2011. Magness, a respected coach and author, told the BBC’s Panorama that he was in Salazar’s office when the reports showing the blood levels of every athlete in the Nike Oregon project were put on his desk.

“Under one of Galen’s it had ‘currently on testosterone and prednisone medication’ and when I saw that I kind of jumped backwards,” explained Magness. “Testosterone is obviously banned and everyone knew that. It was all the way back in high school – and that was incredibly shocking. At that point I actually took a picture of it. I wanted to essentially to have evidence in case something happened.”

The programme showed Rupp’s blood chart to David Howman, the chief executive of the world anti-doping agency, who said he was “disturbed and very disappointed”.

Both Salazar and Rupp strenuously deny that the athlete has taken testosterone. In a statement Salazar said the legal supplement Testoboost had been “incorrectly recorded as ‘testosterone’ medication”, and that “the allegations were based upon false assumptions and half-truths”.

Rupp said: “I have not taken any banned substances and Alberto has never suggested that I take a banned substance.”

Salazar is also alleged to have asked his son, Alex, to conduct laboratory tests to see how much testosterone cream would trigger a positive test. According to Magness, Salazar Jnr told him they were worried that someone could rub some cream on one of their athletes after a race. Magness said he believed that explanation to be “ludicrous” – and that they were instead trying to figure out how to cheat.

Magness, who left Salazar’s group after the London Olympics, said he had gone to the US anti-doping agency with his concerns but now feared the repercussions of speaking out. “It’s incredibly scary,” he said. “It would be much easier to just shut up, do my job. I’ve got a good job and reputation.”

The documentary reveals that six other people who were associated with the Oregon Project have spoken privately to Usada with concerns about alleged illicit practices and unethical behaviour. Usada declined to comment.

However, none of the insiders said they had witnessed evidence that Farah was doping. And in a statement Farah said: “I have not taken any banned substances and Alberto has never suggested that I take a banned substance. From my experience, Alberto and the Oregon project have always followed Wada rules.”

However, Farah is bound to face questions given his close relationship with the man whose training genius and cutting-edge scientific research helped him become the Olympic and world 5,000m and 10,000m champion. On Wednesday night Andy Parkinson, the former chief executive of UK Anti-Doping, warned: “Any athlete who’s involved with this group, including Mo Farah, has a responsibility to ask themselves, ‘Do I feel comfortable in this environment and am I going to be able to continue to compete clean in this environment?’”

Mo Farah and Galen Rupp train on the grass at the Nike campus in Oregon. Photograph: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

Another unnamed runner who worked with Salazar for several years said that in 2007 he was feeling run down and went to see Dr Loren Myhre, the Nike lab’s head physiologist before he died in 2012. That athlete claimed: “I did a blood test at Nike and my thyroid was low and testosterone was low. Dr Myhre suggested that I go and see an endocrinologist that Alberto and most of the athletes work with, to get testosterone and thyroid. He said: ‘This is what Alberto does. You’ll feel better and you’ll be able to train better’, and so then I said: ‘Well, isn’t that cheating?’ And he goes: ‘Well no, Alberto does it’.”

“I did mention something about being, like, wouldn’t it test positive? He said, ‘No, no, no. We’ll get you into the normal range’.”

Meanwhile Kara Goucher, the 10,000m world championship bronze medallist who trained at the Oregon Project until 2013, said that Salazar had coached Rupp to try to get a Therapeutic Use Exemption for an intravenous drip before the 2011 World Championships. Under Wada rules, such drips are prohibited and anyone caught manipulating the TUE process to get one would be liable for a ban.

“I had a conversation with Galen in 2011 and he told me how tired he was and how he was so excited to have the season be over,” said Goucher. “And fast forward a month and he shattered the American record. That’s not how it works.”

The show’s presenter Mark Daly also showed how apparently easy it is to avoid the biological passport, which is designed to detect athletes who take the blood-boosting drug EPO. Daly took micro-doses of the drug that were big enough to substantially improve his performance but not too much to trigger a red flag in his biological passport.

The programme also quotes three witnesses who have made sworn statements to say that Allan Wells, who won 100m gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, was a regular steroid user. Wells denies the allegations.