Eventbrite (for Android)

By Jeffrey L. Wilson

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.

Safe downloads and expert advice Windows 10 Launch Patch 64 bit windows 7 64 bit operating system full version free windows 8 operating system free full version

You've finally been able to download Windows 10 and said goodbye to Windows 7/8. But your still one step away from fully enjoying Microsoft’s new operating system – you still have to install the first patch.

Why you should download this patch?

The first patch for Windows 10 (official name: KB3074683) fixes some of the “day one” issues of the highly anticipated operating system – fixing bugs and optimizing code.

Unfortunately we cannot be clearer about all the bugs and problems that this patch fixes as Microsoft has decided not to give many details about the latest update to Windows 10. Don’t be too suspicious about this though, as it may simply be to protect against people being able to discover security flaws from earlier builds.

The patch is less than 400MB to download, but occupies around 1GB when installed. This version of the patch is for the 64 bit version of Windows 10 and is not compatible with 32-bit version.

Why does Windows 10 already have a patch?

Surprised that there is already a patch out for Windows 10? Don’t be, the more complex the program the more chances there are for unexpected errors - especially when you consider how many varieties of PC there are in the world.

Just imagine the number of problems that Microsoft will have been able to detect and correct through people running the preview version of Win 10! By opening the operation system up to so many people with the preview program, Microsoft has been able to find and correct many problems with this patch before the OS even officially launched.

More than recommended: required

Downloading this patch for Windows 10 is not only a good idea, its essential. We know that you really want to start using your new OS, but the security and performance improvements this update offers means it’s worth waiting a few minutes longer.

Safe downloads and expert advice EA SPORTS Cricket 2007 ea sports cricket 2007 full game free ea sports cricket games 2015

Even though EA SPORTS Cricket has legions of fans, EA haven’t always been the fastest – or most reliable – when it comes to new releases. If you’re looking for more cricket action, take a look at Cricket 07, the 2007 – and latest - installment of the hugely popular cricket series.

This version of the game brings several improvements to EA SPORTS Cricket 2005, while still being compatible with Windows XP and Vista, not to mention Windows 7. Among those improvements are full control over foot choice, shot, direction, power and timing, meaning that your cricket is even more realistic than before. If you're confused as the keyboard controls for EA Sports Cricket, check out our guide about how to play EA Sports Cricket.

In addition to the extra control, players get to enjoy new camera angles, and realistic, brand-name equipment. When you add this to the improved game-play and professional-sounding commentary from Mark Nicholas and Richie Benaud, it’s clear that EA SPORTS Cricket 07 is a solid addition to the family.

Looking at the game in 2011, EA SPORTS Cricket 07 looks dated. Even so, it’s the latest offering in the EA SPORTS Cricket series, and a solid game nonetheless.

The ArtPC by Samsung isn't your average looking desktop

Google Sprayscape (for Android)

By Max Eddy

Ever since Google unveiled Cardboard several years ago, the company has had a clear goal of putting the power of virtual reality into the hands of anyone with a phone. One small example of this push is Sprayscape, an Android app that puts an artsy twist on the 360-degree camera. With Sprayscape, you can create bizarre VR spaces with your phone, giving you a taste of what mobile VR can offer.

Art Experiments
Part of Google's ongoing effort to promote Android as a platform for unique research and creation is Android Experiments. These are apps or projects that use Android devices in unique ways, far outside the realm of calls, email, or Flappy Bird. At Google I/O, one such experiment used an Android phone to control a robotic pencil to produce contour drawings of anyone who stood in front of it. Another used a phone to __play music by tapping sticky notes with chords written on them. These could be stuck to anything—me, that other guy, a large fake guitar, or pretty much anything.

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.

The app bills itself as "a perfectly imperfect VR-ish camera app for Android." This is equal parts explanation and disclaimer. There are aspects of Sprayscape that are difficult to use, and others that are downright confounding. Sometimes it's intentional, other times not so much. But in the end it's the experience that matters, and that's what Sprayscape delivers.

Smeared Face Sphere
You can install Sprayscape on just about any device. I used both a Nexus 5X and a Pixel C, although it was much easier to use on a smaller device with more camera functionality. With the Pixel C, controlling my camera view was much more difficult.

When you first fire up the app, you're dropped into a warped grid-space, like a torus or stretched-out sphere. Instructions appear, encouraging you to tap the screen. Doing so captures an ovoid image through your device's camera. Dotted lines urge you, map style, to move your device around and take more images. Pretty soon, you've created your first Scape, the app's name for a 360-degree photosphere.

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 __play store called the Cardboard Camera, and other developers have already produced even more capable offerings.

The difference is that unlike those apps, Sprayscape does a bad job, and that's good. Bear with me now.

The app makes no effort to stitch individual images together. Instead of a neat, seamless view, it's a collage of colors, faces, and whatever else you point the camera at. You adjust the size of each image by tapping a button in the lower right corner; there are only three size settings and they are all oval-shaped. You can also toggle between selfie and rear-facing cameras.

I found the images produced on my Pixel C and Nexus 5X to be a bit blurry, as if the exposure were left on too long. Instead of capturing individual images, tap and hold the screen to create a colorful smear instead of a distinct picture. This effect reminded me of the fun and interesting ways that Windows 3.1 would crash.

This quirkiness is the crux of Sprayscape and it's completely intentional. The smeary, overlapping images are otherworldly. My first Scape, with warm oranges, my own face, and a half-glimpsed door, reminded me of surrealist art, like something out of a David Lynch film. All of the quirks of the app come together in the final product, a surprising and frequently bewildering creation. Like glitch art or vaporwave, my Sprayscape creations felt like they only partly came from me, with the rest contributed by an unseen digital influence.

Enter My Beautiful Nightmare
Once your Scape is complete, you can save by tapping the check mark. Saved Scapes live in your Google Drive, and if you think they look weird in the app just wait until you see them flattened out as JPGs. You can view all your Scapes by tapping the nested-squares button in the bottom left. However, I occasionally had some trouble finding my way back to this screen.

The app lets you share Scapes through Facebook and just about any other app that can access the Android share option. These are really just links to your Scapes, which are viewable as 3D spheres on the Web. But it's best experienced in actual VR. To that end, you can view your horrifying madness spheres on either a Cardboard headset or the forthcoming Daydream View VR headset.

Welcome to My David Lynch Orb
Sprayscape is a fun experiment and a neat toy to tinker with. Your friends will probably wonder what the heck you're posting, and you will probably be equally surprised with the results. I don't think people will create stunning works of art with Sprayscape, but it may encourage new ideas. Sprayscape doesn't promise much and offers few tools, but it's an avenue for spontaneous creation. Best of all, it requires no special permissions to run, so you can download and try it out without any risk.

Safe downloads and expert advice WWE 2K16

Previously published by THQ, the yearly WWE wrestling simulator has only made its way to PC since 2K purchased the license. This means that - despite over a decade of games - there are currently only two installments available on Windows PC.

This means that - if you are looking for a game to help you relive your favorite WrestleMania moments - there is no better place to start than this year’s WWE 2K16.

Attitude Era

But suggesting you buy a game just because it’s the most recent version isn’t much of an endorsement is it? Well, don't worry, even though the game is the same base game as WWE 2K15 (with many of the same mechanical problems) there are some standout reasons to pick it up.

First up, this year’s installment boasts the biggest roster of muscle bound Superstars yet. While it is true that this is a rather predictable bullet point, it has the advantage of allowing you to set up all kinds of fantasy bookings between Legends and the most current roster. The perfect way to pit Mankind against Dean Ambrose.

Another huge bonus for WWE fans is that the single player 2K Showcase focuses on a more iconic story than last year. While WWE 2K15's looks in to the fall of Degeneration X and the Cena vs CM Puck rivalry was interesting, these pale in comparison to the chance to relive "Stone Cold" Steve Austin’s run through WCW and the WWE Attitude Era.

Survivor Series

This include matches like the incredible WrestleMania 13 Submission Match between The Texas Rattlesnake and Bret the Hitman Hart. Here the goal is to setup those historic moments from the fight that are still shown in video packages to this day. Executing on this can be frustrating, but it is incredibly satisfying to watch the scenes play out if you manage it.

The 2K Showcase is joined by a Career Mode which lets you build your own Superstar. Starting in the NXT developmental league you must form rivalries and alliances along your journey – helping you to build your skills and develop a reputation. Again, this can be tricky, particularly as your new fighter starts off incredibly low leveled, but taking them through the progression is rewarding.

Unfortunately, developer Yuke's’ game engine feels stiff and dated. Not a huge surprise, it is! The team has not had a year off to rebuild since 2000. Despite having had a next gen visual overhaul a few years ago, characters remain wooden and often glide and jerk around the ring before entering canned animations rather than moving naturally.

King of the Ring

WWE 2K16 is not an amazing wrestling game but, for WWE fans, it is the only wrestling game. While it would be great to see what 2K and Yuke's could do if they took a full two years to rebuild the franchise from the ground up - it looks like these yearly updates are all we are going to get. Not perfect, but still solid fun and filled with options and modes to keep you going until next WrestleMania.

Notes

Clicking download takes you to the Steam Store where you can purchase the game.

Duolingo (for iPhone)

By Jill Duffy

If you're studying a language, no doubt you've heard of Duolingo, which is the best free program you'll find. The fantastic Web app comes with equally free mobile apps that let you practice your language on the go, and the iPhone app is, like the website, the best free language-learning app you can find. A new feature, which is exclusive to the iPhone app at the time of this writing, gives language learners a new way to practice their skills by having in-app chats with a bot. The conversations are tightly scripted, and you can't openly converse the way you might with a real human, but it's still refreshing to see something novel in a language app. The rest of the content, which mirrors what's on the Duolingo website, is still all there and remains very high quality. With excellent exercises and wonderful interface, the Duolingo iPhone app earns a rare five-star rating.

This review focuses on the Duolingo iPhone app and what it has to offer. For a deeper dive of the service at large, see our full review of Duolingo.

Supported Languages
If you speak English, the Duolingo iPhone app offers 19 languages for you to learn. They are Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Welsh. At the time of this writing, on the full Duolingo website, Hebrew, Hungarian, and Vietnamese were listed as still being in beta.

Additional language-learning programs are available for speakers of other languages, so if you have a Spanish speaking friend who is looking to practice English, Duolingo has a program for him or her, too.

Duolingo's list of supported languages has grown quickly over the years, but at least one in-demand language is still missing: Mandarin. Duolingo has a language incubator project, where you can see new languages on the roadmap for rollout. You can also see the full list of available languages and those in beta by going to Duolingo's Courses page.

If you're looking to learn a language now that isn't on Duolingo's list, I would recommend paying for a different program. I've tried many other free mobile language-learning apps, but none are as good as Duolingo. One option to try is Pimsleur Comprehensive, which offers around 50 languages, including many that are harder to find, such as Ojibwe, Twi, and Icelandic. Pimsleur is almost exclusively audio-based and not as interactive in the technological sense, but it's reasonably affordable and is excellent for learning on the go. You can install Pimsleur's MP3 files on your iPhone in the same way that you'd upload other kinds of music.

If you want more interactive language-learning software and don't mind paying for it, I'd encourage you to move to a full-sized computer or laptop and try Rosetta Stone, an Editors' Choice, or Fluenz, another very good program. Both Rosetta Stone and Fluenz have Mandarin programs. They also both have mobile apps where you can continue your learning. Once you have a subscription, you'll be able to log into the iPhone app for either one.

How Duolingo Works
From a user's perspective, Duolingo works like most other language-learning programs. You work through exercises or activities in order to complete lessons, which are part of larger units. The structure is clear and shown on a dashboard. Icons and short descriptions of the lessons, like "Gerunds" guide you along your language-learning journey. Fully completed sections turn gold, and they stay gold as long as the content is still likely to be fresh in your mind. Sections that you have passed, but are no longer gold appear in color with a progress bar beneath them. Sections that are currently locked to you because you don't have the skills yet to do them are gray.

The apps sync to keeps track of your progress across both on your iPhone and in the Web app. So you can practice conjugating verbs in German at home and pick up where you left off in the iPhone app during your commute.

A placement test lets new users who are familiar with a language jump ahead to a point in the program that's right for them. Equally helpful is an option to test out of a section, so if you know adverbs really well, you can skip them, so long as you pass the test.

One thing about Duolingo that's different from many other language-learning apps is that you must move through the material sequentially and unlock sections to progress. Other language-learning programs, including Rosetta Stone, Fluenz, and Transparent Language Online, let you bounce around at will.

The core learning is extremely clear to see and work through. The language-learning parts are solid and replicate some of the typical drills you'll find in more well-known language software. Duolingo works your reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, though you can disable anything that requires your voice input in case you are in a place where talking aloud in a language you don't actually speak might be uncomfortable.

Exercises build on one another, so that you're introduced to words and concepts at the right point in the learning schedule. Typical lessons have multiple choice questions, listen-and-write exercises, and translation exercises. In some exercises, you listen to a sentence and write it in the new language. In others, you translate a written sentence from English to the new language, or vice versa. In the multiple choice questions, I really like that sometimes there can be more than one right answer—you tap checkmark boxes next to whichever correct answers you see.

The service does rely on crowd-sourced information to power its language learning, and occasionally, especially at the higher levels, you might find incorrect information. However, the errors are few and far between, and much less than any other crowd-sourced language learning program I've seen.

No matter how you start learning and practicing with Duolingo, you can do so with multiple languages. In other words, for the low, low price of nothing, you can start programs in Dutch, Swedish, and Portuguese if you like, whereas many language-learning programs lock you down to just one language. That's pretty incredible.

Duolingo Bots
Duolingo's iPhone app recently received a facelift, and to be honest, I'm not crazy about it. The biggest change is that people (or rather, flat images of cartoonish human figures) now appear in most of the exercises. These figures are meant to be speaking to you some of the time, but I find that they take up space unnecessarily.

As mentioned, a new Bots feature lets you hold in-app chats with robots. The Bots area appears to be the source of the new flat family of characters. When you start a chat, a little face appears as if you are messaging with the person. She or he typically asks you a question or tells you in the language you're learning to do something, like "Say hi to my friend, Roberto," and you have to take appropriate action. You can't type anything at will. Only certain answers will be accepted as correct. And you can't type an infinite number of characters either.

The Bots conversation remind me a little of middle school Spanish oral exams, where you are expected to answer a certain way, repeating back key information ("What does Robert eat?" "Robert eats pizza.") or further the conversation in a specific way ("How are you, Jill?" "I'm well, thank you. And you? How are you?").

You aren't required to use the Bots section, but you will earn points for conversations that go toward your daily and weekly goals. Honestly, I could take them or leave them, so I appreciate that they're optional.

Mobile Design
The exercises in the Duolingo mobile app are very similar to those on the website, but with a few adaptations that make them easier to complete on a tiny mobile phone. In one exercise, for example, the app shows you a sentence, and you must translate it and type it in the language you're learning. On the iPhone, instead of typing each word verbatim, sometimes you'll see a bank of words from which you choose the correct ones and put them into the correct order.

Duolingo is forgiving of minor typos, which is excellent, especially on an iPhone where the small screen makes it harder to type accurately. The iPhone also makes it easy to insert special characters by pressing and holding any key for options that use that letter as its base.

In the Duolingo iPhone app settings, you can disable sound effects, speaking exercises, and listening exercises, which again is tremendously helpful for a mobile app. You can also dismiss speaking exercises as they come up without visiting the settings. These kinds of design choices are what make Duolingo exceptional.

Practice and Learn With Duolingo
I've been a Duolingo user, off and on, since the very beginning, and the app has really grown quite a bit with solid content and language-building exercises effectively packaged in bite-size chunks.

I can easily say that Duolingo is the best free tool for learning a language. The iPhone app works well, handling special characters and some translations with greater ease than even the full Web version. It's an ideal way to practice another language anywhere you have a few minutes on your hands. Additionally, it doesn't have to be used exclusively on its own. Duolingo makes for a great companion app to other kinds of language study, whether it's in a classroom or with another piece of software.

Samsung teases 'Art PC Pulse' with Windows 10 in new video for Oct. 10 reveal

PicsArt (for iPhone)

By Michael Muchmore

PicsArt, the popular image-editing and photo-social-networking app continues to reinvent itself, adding AI-enhanced art filters like those popularized by the Prisma app, which can transform mobile photos, giving them the appearance of bona fide artworks by masters like Picasso or Mondrian. Alongside this addition, this iPhone app has undergone a clarifying redesign and now features a more appealing price structure: You no longer have to pay to remove ads. But perhaps PicsArt's most original contribution is the concept of remixing photos and drawings.

Getting Started
PicsArt is available for Android, iOS, and as a Windows Univeral app for mobile and desktop; I tested it on my iPhone 6s. It's a not insubstantial 153MB download, so make sure you clean out your phone's storage. As mentioned, the app is free to use, and there's a good selection of free content, but there are in-app purchases for clipart sets, stickers, fonts, and frames, most of which cost 99 cents or $1.99. You can start to get a feel for what PicsArt can do without even creating an account—a trait I like in any app I'm testing.

Interface
The latest PicsArt update gets a lighter, cleaner, less-cluttered look, though it still encompasses a wealth of editing tools. The Home screen is your social photo feed, which you swipe down just like you can in Instagram. Following other users takes just a button tap, and you can heart, comment on, repost, or remix the image, if the poster has included the #FreeToEdit hashtag. If the blue Remix pencil button shows a number, you can tap it to see other users' remixes of the image at hand.

Hitting the magenta Plus sign button lets you add your own image, either from the phone camera, the Camera Roll, or by starting a drawing on a blank canvas. You can also start creating a collage from the Plus sign. Your Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram photos are also potential starting points for your PicsArt creations.

You can pinch to zoom, reveal more controls with a plus button, see before and after views of your image, undo the last action, and reset your picture to its original state. Every effect offers adjustability via sliders and a brush that lets choose where to apply or remove the effect.

Tools include curves, masks, clone/stamp, cropping with shape, brushes, borders, text and lens flares. Photoshop, watch out! And don't even get me started about clip art. There are sets for travel, sports, nature, birthday, mustaches, baby, love, rabbits…the list goes on and on.

Drawing tools also push the app into Photoshop territory, with more than 20 brush types and shapes that transform on a 3D plane. You can adjust the opacity, size, and even the "squish" for the marker brush. You get 30 font choices for text overlays, use a color picker and adjust the size to taste with a handle. You can start a drawing with or without a photo background, and the feature supports Photoshop-style layers.

Of course you also get red-eye correction, tooth whitening, stamp-and-clone, and blemish removal. The blemish tool did a good job on minor skin issues. One thing you don't get—at least not as powerfully as in Adobe Mix and Photoshop Touch—is auto-object selection and edge detection. For example, when I brushed artificial tan onto a friend's face, the brown overlay affected the background as well as his skin. The cloning tool is fun, but don't expect content-aware object removal like that in Adobe's Photoshop and Mix.

Magic Effects
Prisma may have popularized AI-powered filters that turn your photos into works of art, but PicsArt's Magic Effects have a trick not possible in Prisma: You can apply them to just a selected area of a photo. So you could have a model's eyes look natural, while everything else looks like it stepped out of a Mondrian painting.

PicsArt applies its Magic Effects using your phone's local processing. This means that, unlike with Prisma, you don't need an Internet connection to use it. But do note that, since they are highly processing-intensive, they take longer to render than most photo filters. In my testing, they averaged about 15-20 seconds to finish. That's about the same time it takes to apply Prisma filters. But another advantage of this approach over a cloud-processing system like that used by Prisma is that you'll never get "server overloaded" messages.

When applying Magic Effects, you also get a choice of blending modes reminiscent of those used by Photoshop layers. So you can choose Normal, Multiply, ColorBurn, Darken, Lighten, Screen, Overlay, SoftLight, HardLight, and Difference blending modes. It's fun to try these out, but I find that the default setting often looks best. Prisma offers more basic art styles—30 compared with PicsArt's 10—and some of those are more impressive than PicsArt's, though company representatives told me that more would be added.

Collages
Collages aren't possible with most photo social apps, but PicsArt offers a cornucopia of layouts, borders, and backgrounds for collage creation, as you can see in the image below.

Sharing
The app's wealth of editing tools means you can put serious time into working on an image. You can save the picture to the Camera Roll at any point with a button tap, but naturally you'll want to share that work with others, and the app is by no means deficient in sharing options. Facebook, email, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger sharing are built in, and when uploading to PicsArt's own service you have options to simultaneously share to Facebook and Dropbox. When uploading an image, you can add keyword tags and location.

The app—and the PicsArt website for that matter—allows all the standard social networking activities; commenting, favoriting, and following. The interface is well-designed and intuitive, making good use of swipe gestures.

Contests are a nice plus from PicsArt, and they make sense, given the numerous creative tools the app offers. Users vote, and the winners are highlighted on PicsArt's blog.

The Formula for PicsArt's Success
PicsArt takes just about the opposite approach to photo enhancing from, say, Instagram. Where the latter stresses simplicity, PicsArt offers vastly more image-editing options. Not only are its filters more adjustable, but it offers near-Photoshop-level tools like layers, clone stamp, curves, and masks. Drawing tools and clip art make it far more than just a photo app. All of this, however, comes with a risk of over-modified, unnatural photos, which Instagram does a good job of preventing by limiting the options and the extent to which those options can affect images.

Those who love to tinker with photos on their phones and jazz them up to the hilt should probably dump Instagram for PicsArt. Or at least use PicsArt to edit before sharing photos to Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, and the rest. But they may just find enough like-minded image makers on PicsArt's own robust social network to satisfy their needs. PicsArt is a clear PCMag Editors' Choice, but for a larger community and some pretty nifty photo tools of their own, try fellow iPhone social-photo-app Editors' Choices, Flickr and Instagram.

Signal (for iPhone)

By Max Eddy

Since the Snowden revelations of 2013, technology companies have been touting their security bona fides like they would new designs or breakthrough features. Messaging apps now list encryption schemes alongside stickers and GIF makers. The Signal iPhone app from Open Whisper Systems does the best job bridging the gap between usability and excellent security, although using it does mean sacrificing some of the fun of messaging.

Starting Up
Signal is available for free through the App Store, and I had no trouble installing it on my iPhone 6. The app is also available for Android, where the greater latitudes of Google's platform allow it to function as a total replacement for the stock SMS app. The apps can communicate cross-platform.

Signal uses your phone number to automatically find other Signal users with whom you can chat securely, so naturally you have to register your phone number. Just tap in your digits, and add the registration code sent to your phone via SMS. This same process is more or less the norm across mobile messengers. Even Google Allo needs your phone number. Editors' Choice winner Facebook Messenger, notably, does not. Though Signal's developers have taken steps to ensure that this exchange protects your privacy, they acknowledge that a perfect solution has yet to be found.

Open WhisperSystems recently announced that the iPhone app is now interoperable with the existing Chrome browser app. Linking the two is as easy as taking a photo of a QR code. It's simple, similar to how WhatsApp handles multi-device messaging, but without the need to keep your phone within range of your computer. You can easily de-register computers from the Settings menu in the Signal app, keeping you in control of which machines can access your account.

Secure Signaling
The Signal app has been completely overhauled since I last reviewed it. Gone is the awkward bottom-screen navigation. There are now just two screens: Inbox and Archive. The Inbox shows your recent messages, both read and unread. Tap on a message to open it. Swipe left to either Delete or Archive it. Archived messages are stored in the Archive section, where they're close at hand but out of sight.

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.

Messages in Signal look a lot like messages in the iOS 10 Messages Messages app. Your text appears in blue speech bubbles on the right of the screen, and incoming messages appear in grey bubbles on the left. You can also send images you've already taken and added to the Photos app, or shoot fresh videos or photos directly from Signal. For security's sake, any pictures or videos you take with Signal aren't stored on your phone.

Text can only take you so far, but you can speak securely though Signal as well. Inside any one-on-one chat, you can tap the phone icon in the upper right to begin an encrypted VoIP conversation. Again, you can only talk to other Signal users, and those are the only people that show up in the Contacts section. When you receive a call, Signal pops a push alert and plays a tune reminiscent of a vaporwave track. Answering pulls up a custom call screen, which sports all of the features you'd expect, such as Hold, Speakerphone, and Mute.

Signal also displays a random, two-word phrase for every call. Both you and the person on the other end of the line see the same phrase and can confirm each other's identity by speaking it aloud. Cryptocat and some encrypted chat services use similar secret phrases for authentication.

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.

The Price of Security
As I mentioned earlier, Signal on iPhone only allows you to contact and chat with the people in your Contacts who also have Signal installed. That's because Signal encrypts messages end-to-end; only the recipient of your message can read it. Yes, you may have a hard time getting your friends to sign up, but it all but guarantees that no one—not Signal, or any government agency that subpoenas Signal—will be able to read your messages.

The Android version is more capable in this regard. It sends unencrypted SMS messages to users who don't have Signal and encrypted messages to those who do, functioning as a complete and seamless messaging replacement. Google Allo sends SMS messages when the recipient doesn't have Allo installed, but those messages come from seemingly random phone numbers and are difficult to understand.

Messages sent through Signal are secured with the Signal encryption protocol. It's open source, which means that its code is thoroughly picked over for potential problems. That's in sharp contrast to Telegram, which has lots of fun features and end-to-end encryption, but uses a proprietary protocol that hasn't been examined. It might seem like a small distinction, but security experts agree that open source software is generally safer than closed, custom software.

It's worth noting that Apple's Messages app also sends end-to-end encrypted iMessage messages to iPhone users. The Messages app was recently updated with extensive changes, including an integrated app and sticker store, making it perhaps the most capable messaging service out there. It's the only service I've seen that offers features and security, but is locked to Apple hardware. If you send messages to non-Apple users, they receive unencrypted SMS messages. Signal is totally crossplatform, and, unlike Apple, is very open about its technology.

Send a Signal
Signal does not let you do everything. You won't get to send stickers or other frivolous frills. It doesn't work with other social media platforms, so you'll have to convert friends and family to use it. Instead, Signal offers the easiest way to send secure messages. It's easy to use and its protocol is thoroughly tested. And the organization that supports it is run on grant money by volunteers and is disinterested in monetizing Signal's users or their data.

For its excellent experience and transparent security, Signal is an Editors' Choice winner for secure mobile messaging. Add it to your tool kit of messaging services, and reach for it when security is your primary concern.