Sasuke Blog

Snapchat debuted its web player just in time for the Oscars on Sunday night, giving everyone a nice behind-the-scenes look at the red carpet and the actual show. Snapchat.com is featuring a curated Live Story — the same one you can watch in its app — from Snapchat reporters, starting with celebrities on the red carpet, some award predictions, and videos of the show recorded by people in the crowd. The story showed who won which awards, with behind-the-scenes moments as well as custom graphics and filters (though it didn't show entire monologues). You can watch it here ; it's unclear whether that will self-destruct after 24 hours, like other Snapchat videos do. This was certainly an interesting experiment for Snapchat, but it could even be a launching pad for future projects and development on the web. (Previously, you've only been able to watch Snapchat's content on mobile). For upcoming events like the Tony Awards or sports championships, we could be seeing more Snapch...

This week, Android Engineer Kenneth Mojica discusses features in the Beta release of Android Studio 2.0. To get started, Instant Run is a huge time-saver and makes easy work of changes to your app. Mojica assures us that the new emulator is much faster and adds multi-touch support for testing pinch and zoom gestures. Android Studio 2.0 is still in Beta, so keep that in mind when making the decision whether to upgrade or not. New to development or a pro who needs help? Just tweet your question to #AskADev. We’ll pick the best ones and have a developer answer them.

With Facebook rolling out its redesigned like button to everyone and all of the sweet gadgets coming out of Mobile World Congress, you may have missed some of this week's best new apps. Each weekend, we round up a few of our favorite new and updated apps. This week's list includes an app to help you take better food photos, a music player app for Android and a beautifully addicting game from the creators of 2048. Check out the gallery below to see our top picks. If you're looking for more, take a look at our last roundup of can't-miss apps.     Foodie The newest app from Line, Foodie is all about making sure your food photos look perfect. Snap a new picture or pull one in from your camera roll and the app lets you add dozens of filters — all with aptly named titles like “BBQ” or “Crispy.” It also provides a guide to let you know when you’re holding your camera at the perfectly straight overhead angle for the most centered shots from above. Pro-tip: If you’re snapping a ...

    Mobile app developers who wanted to easily port their apps from Android or iOS to Windows 10 devices were in luck when Microsoft announced it created tools to help with that transition last year. But now Microsoft is going back and dropping the Android bridge, focusing on just iOS. In a blog post, Microsoft announced that while it has been updating the Windows Bridge for iOS, it is dropping the Windows Bridge for Android project with an interesting explanation. See also: Microsoft may be running the biggest Turing test in history “We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing,” wrote Kevin Gallo, director of Windows' developer platform. “We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devic...

   Apple Pay rolled out in China last week to a mixed response. Domestic players WeChat Wallet and Alipay have had years to figure out how the Chinese epayments market works, and a new player — especially one that doesn’t offer staple services like discounts, online purchases, and savings accounts — is facing an uphill battle. But if any foreign company can make a lack of features work to its advantage, it’s probably Apple. It’s probably not, in other words, going to be Samsung — but that hasn’t stopped the company from putting China in its crosshairs, and launching its payments service in the mainland on Wednesday.   Samsung Pay’s biggest selling point won’t entice China Samsung Pay launched yesterday in China in an open beta, with a full version expected in March. Entering China is part of Samsung Pay’s greater plans for expansion in 2016, where it is also targeting Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, and the UK. But it’s hard to be optimistic about Samsung Pay’s chanc...