PLANET OF THE APPS: 10TH MAY 2011

It's Tuesday, which means our technology guru Stuart Dredge returns to brings us news and reviews of some of the latest downloads for your smartphone, as we tap into app culture.

NEWS

Music APIs from Lollapalooza and Rdio The US Lollapalooza festival has just launched an API (applications programming interface) for developers to make all manner of whizzy apps in the run-up to the festival. They get easy access to data on the artists playing, stages/venues and so on. At the same time. US music service Rdio has launched its own API for the same reason - to get developers making cool music apps. So the news is that all this activity should mean a bunch of really interesting, innovative music apps coming our way in the next 6-12 months.

Telegraph subscription app The Daily Telegraph (I know...) has just relaunched its iPad app, and is the first newspaper here in the UK to use Apple's new subscriptions system. That means you pay £9.99 a month, and get a new e-issue delivered every morning at 5am (well, when you first turn your iPad on that day). But Conde Nast and Hearst Magazines are also starting to use the subscriptions system too, so the news is whether people are going to start subscribing to newspapers and mags on their iPads/tablets.

Imaginary Range An iPhone and iPad app that claims to be 'a hybrid comic and game experience' - it's part digital comic and part game, with the idea being that you read the comic and then play the mini-games in between sections. Geek heaven... But also an example of how apps are splicing different entertainment types (another example being Swedish House Mafia's app, which is part book, part music album and part documentary film).

REVIEWS

LiveShare This is the latest interesting photo-sharing app: it gets you to create groups of friends, and then share photos from your phone. The idea being that if you're all at the same wedding or festival, it's a way to group your pics together to look at afterwards, in a way that Facebook etc can't.

On The Way to Woodstock iPad app all about the Woodstock festival - info on the artists, 100+ big photos, YouTube videos etc. I interviewed the developer last week, and they were really interesting - they also have a similar app on the History of Jazz.

Pulse iPad music game - a really nice one - you tap on pulsing circle shapes and beautiful music plays. Sounds really good too - good candidate to be played live on air.