Finally, no more leather stitching in Find My Friends.

Who knows what Apple's app designers were thinking when they crafted Find My Friends to look like a leather glove, complete with stitching.

With the arrival of iOS 7, all of the core apps (and most of the optional ones) got a much-ballyhooed "flat" redesign -- except for Find My Friends. It remained, to many, the ugly odd-app-out.

Well, today it's ugly no more. Apple just pushed out Find My Friends 3.0, which has no major new features but an entirely new appearance. The orange-hued icon meshes well with other iOS 7 apps, while the app itself carries the iOS 7 look and feel across all corners.

In case you're unfamiliar with it, Find My Friends helps you locate friends and family members on a map. You can also share your own location, either permanently or temporarily. Best of all, the app offers location-based alerts. It can notify you when, say, a child gets home from school or a friend's flight gets in.

Now, when you view a friend's location on the map, you can see a small pop-up of their profile photo (if they have one), helpful if you have several friends clustered together. The app also displays three handy menu options: Contact, Notify Me, and More.

Find My Friends remains a free app, a... [Read more]

Instagram for Windows Phone.

After much anticipation, the official Instagram app launched on Windows Phone on Wednesday. The app comes just one week after the Twitter-owned video social network Vine popped up for Windows Phone.

The news isn't much of a surprise, as we've known that Instagram would eventually show up, thanks to an announcement at Nokia World. For a little history, Instagram started on iOS in October 2010, moved to Android in April 2012, and now, a little more than three years after its initial debut, has at last popped up on its third mobile platform.

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Adobe wants photography pros and enthusiasts to sign up for a subscription that bundles Lightroom, Photoshop, and other services for $10 a month.

Adobe Systems' $10-per-month photography software subscription is open to anyone for the next two weeks, a significant expansion of a program that previously was only available to those who already use Creative Suite products.

The original deal required people to own Photoshop Creative Suite 3 (CS3) or later. The new deal lifts that restriction, addressing criticisms from photographers who were interested but didn't qualify. While the original deal is open until the end of the year, the new offer is available only through December 2, Adobe said in an announcement Wednesday.

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Whether you're hosting your first Thanksgiving or are an old [chef's] hat, entertaining on T-Day is often fraught with fires, both literal and figurative. What should you prepare? Which wine should you serve? How should you get the word out? What are some good conversation topics? Which games can you play to de-stress, and how can you keep tabs on the big games during the big feast?

OK, we sense your anxiety. But before you grab another Xanax and call your mother or mother-in-law for cooking advice, try out these 10 lightweight, highly rated apps, guaranteed to keep you in the game and feeling free as a bird (OK, bad analogy!).

Invites

JustWink Greeting Cards

Why send an Evite for your Thanksgiving event when you can invite guests with a JustWink card? After loading the app, you must first confirm that you're over 17, as there is some "age-restricted material," which we never noticed. You can select categories such as Thanksgiving or Hanukkah, Reminders (where you sync with your Facebook friends), and More (where you can locate a store, check your Facebook settings, or review your order history). Under Facebook, you'll get a list of your Facebook friends in cute print and can select them to send cards on the day of or seven days in advance of their birthdays. Under fea... [Read more]