If you're a swingin' cat who loves to make the rounds, chances are that you've used Eventbrite to register for an outdoor concert, book-club meetup, film festival, or sake tasting. Now you can do so, sans PC, using the company's revamped mobile app. The well-designed Eventbrite Android app boasts an improved design, robust event listing, and the ability to purchase tickets, but it still doesn't support multiple accounts or the ability to create your own events directly from the mobile app—for that you need a PC.
Welcome to the Party, Pal
Eventbrite for Android has three main sections: For You, Popular, and Friends. For You is where you find Eventbrite-recommended titles that are based on the interests that you select upon setting up your account. Popular lets you see the most registered events in your area. Friends? Well, that's pretty self-explanatory: You use it to view the events that your friends plan to attend. Unfortunately, it's useless to a person like me because it only taps your Facebook contacts, and I don't have an account. I would prefer additional options, such as Gmail or Twitter. I'm surprised the service doesn't have hooks into social networks that are more in favor with the younger crowd, as I'd assume that would be a important part of its potential user base.
The app taps your smartphone's GPS to display events in your area. As a New Yorker, I receive information regarding events happening in each of the five borough, as well as the occasional happening in northern New Jersey. Like Ticketmaster's Android app, Eventbrite displays shows and gatherings as easy-to-read panels that feature eye-catching images, pricing information, venues, and dates and times. In a nice touch, each event has an associated hashtag that lets you explore other related happenings. You can also apply filters if you desire more laser-focused selections. For example, I favor free music events that are held on weekends. Ticketmaster lacks many of these filters, save for the ability to search for shows by venue.
Tapping a panel, say Sneaker Con New York City 2016, opens the event listing. You can view a description, a Google Map embed that lets you see how to travel to the location from your current one, and related events. I like the information that Eventbrite provides, but would also like Yelp-like venue photos to complete the experience. Another minor complaint: Unlike the Eventbrite website, the Eventbrite app doesn't let users create events, so you can't set up a book club reading in your local park (unless you do so using your phone's browser, but that's not an ideal experience).
It's important to understand what kind of bookings you can make with the service—and what kinds you can't. Eventbrite specializes in smaller, cool events, such as tastings, music performances, conventions, and readings. Ticketmaster, on the other hand, offers tickets for high-profile shows, such as The Book of Mormon and The Lion King. This is not the sort of thing you'll find on Eventbrite.
Event Registration and Ticket Purchasing
The registration process begins once you've found an intriguing event. You simply tap the big, green Register/Get Tickets icon (the label changes depending on whether the event is free or paid), select the number of registration/tickets using the drop-down box, and bring a finger to the Register/Order Now button. This initiates the checkout process in which you must input your name, email address, and credit/debit card information (if purchasing tickets) within a 15-minute time frame. If you don't complete the purchase within the allotted time, you lose the held ticket and need to begin the process anew. You can also bookmark events to check out later, and invite Facebook friends to events by tapping the Facebook icon and selecting a homie.
Tapping the profile icon takes you to a screen on which you can view all of your event registrations and ticket purchases, past and present. To view them, simply sign in with your preexisting account credentials or the ones you created on checkout. Some events come with barcodes, so you can use your phone as a ticket instead of physically printing one out—that's very convenient. You can also add the event to your calendar or contact the organizer via email.
Sadly, Eventbrite doesn't support multiple account logins. This makes things a bit frustrating for people like me who use Eventbrite for both professional and personal reasons. The ability to switch between accounts would be a welcome addition.
Paint the Town Red
If you already use Eventbrite on a regular or semi-regular basis, downloading this app is a no-brainer. If you have no experience with the site, download the app anyway—it's a solid tool for discovering and booking cool happenings in your area. Small flaws aside, Eventbrite for Android is an app that belongs in your Android arsenal. But if it's big-name Broadway shows you're after, Ticketmaster is a better choice.
Sprayscape is very much in this vein. It's not intended to be the next Instagram and isn't designed to compete for your attention. Instead, it's a cool idea brought to the masses along with encouragements for developers to examine the source code and build their own projects.
If that were it, I probably wouldn't be reviewing the app. Photo-stitching software that takes still images from a standard camera and converts them into interactive spheres are hardly new. The venerable Photosynth is a case in point. Google itself has a very serviceable VR camera app already in the Google 
To start a new chat, tap the button to the upper right. Doing so calls up a list of all the people in your contact list who have also installed Signal. Tap one to start a message, or tap the symbol in the upper right to start a group-messaging session. Group messaging works just like person-to-person, and anyone can add or leave the group at any time.
When I travel to the Black Hat security conference, I use the Signal app to stay in touch with home and my colleagues at the conference. When connected to Wi-Fi, calls sound excellent, slightly better than regular phone calls. There's minimal latency in the conversation, and only occasional, mild audio distortions. Without Wi-Fi, things can be a little touch and go. Most of the time, calls sound just as good over cellular connections as with Wi-Fi. But when LTE isn't available, or you can only pull down a few bars, calls sometimes drop or fail to connect.
Using a phone number also raises some legitimate privacy concerns, as does Telegram's requirement that it view your contacts to connect you with other users. Any Telegram user who has your phone number in their Contacts list will see you in their Telegram contacts. This is part for the course for such apps, but I still prefer adding contacts in apps the old-fashioned way.
The other type of messages are known as Secret Chats, and these trade the accessibility of Cloud Messages for better security. When you start a Secret Chat, the encryption keys for the messages are managed on the sender and recipient's devices. These are the only devices that can read the Secret Chats. This means your Secret Chats aren't held on Telegram's cloud, and by extension aren't available on any of your other devices. This sounds like a downside, but really it's the best method for sending a message you want secured in the best possible way.
Note that stickers and attachments by definition have to live in Telegram's servers. But for attachments to Secret Chats, Telegram has a special scheme for dealing with this problem. Telegram's excellent and exhaustive documentation explains that attachments are encrypted with a separate key that is itself encrypted, along with the location of your attachment. These encrypted attachments appear as random data on Telegram's servers, and are periodically deleted.
You can also draw on images, but Telegram now lets you place any of your downloaded stickers, too. The app even includes special masks meant to fit over images. Like sticker packs, these are numerous and high quality, with everything from snake-hair to cyber sunglasses. If you tap the mute button after shooting a video, the app converts it to a looping GIF, and lets you draw as well as add stickers and masks. It's a lot of fun.
It's important to understand that Allo is only for text messaging. Google's companion video chat service is Google Duo. Allo's design is typically Google, in that it uses lots of white space and pops of color. It's also very fast and responsive, with elements leaping to your touch. It's an excellent experience. The app has all the usual bells and whistles of modern chat services, including stickers, and you can also send video, audio clips, photos, and emoji with ease. Allo includes eerily human canned text responses that will allegedly sound more like you over time as the service learns. I felt oddly compelled not to use the canned responses, because they felt too much like actual speech in my testing.
The Allo Assistant's ability to divine when it's appropriate to respond is, to me, more important than what it can actually do. Unfortunately, my experience was rather uneven. I said "I want to get lunch" during a test conversation with another Allo user, and the Assistant appeared but when I asked the same question a few hours later the Assistant was silent. Siri and Messages apps are always there, and always available.
You're then presented with a deck of cards. The top flips over and the game begins. A character, perhaps a monk, your executioner, a princess, or the devil, presents your royal highness with a problem that only your divinely inspired mind can tackle. Perhaps a major matter of state, an invitation to war, or your faithful hound asking to be taken for its regal walk. Each card is rendered in an abstract, pixelated style. It's reminiscent of retro games, to be sure, but has a uniquely iconic look. This isn't a homespun effort, mind you. Reigns looks great and plays smoothly.
Too much or too little of any stat triggers a variety of different deaths. Perhaps you'll be killed by a rampaging mob after forsaking your people. Perhaps the Merchants will end up owning everything and you'll be left with nothing more than a title. Perhaps you'll get so rich that you eat yourself to death at a lavish banquet. These are just a few of the many, many ways you can and will die in Reigns.
There are several ways to stave off the inevitable, cold, vise grip of death. You can authorize the construction of barns and hospitals, which can stave off certain kinds of problems. These improvements last for several reigns, too. You can also discover items and foodstuffs that modify how the game works, such as displaying how each swipe will affect your stats before you take it.
Blissful Frustration