Spotify’s CEO and Founder Daniel Ek hosted the conference in New York to announce that third party apps from the likes of The Guardian, Rolling Stone, PitchFork and Last.fm, will be entering Spotify Software via a bespoke app store.

Apps will be made using JavaScript and run within Spotify via HTML 5. Once downloaded, they’ll appear tucked away in the left panel in line with your playlists, maximising to fill the middle space when in use. It’s up to developers as to what they can do with this tech, but apps at launch revolve around reviews and ticket buying, as well as an app dishing up song lyrics to accompany tracks from TuneWiki.

Ek said that he’s wanted “Spotify to be like water: available everywhere, seamlessly,” but that just being ubiquitous isn’t enough; by becoming a platform it can offer users much more in terms of music discovery.

We’re not sure if altering Spotify from a background app to a platform itself is entirely necessary, but it’ll be interesting to see which apps will change our mind on that one. Will you use Spotify apps? Or is the big green music machine trying too hard to echo the likes of Apple and Facebook?

No related posts.

First off, you’ll need Google Chrome – at this stage YouTube’s new look is only available on its parent company’s browser, as you might expect. Got Chrome? Navigate to www.youtube.com and do the following.

• Click View > Developer > JavaScript Console
• The console should enter at the bottom of the screen
• Paste this into the console: document.cookie = “VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE = ST1Ti53r4fU”
• Press enter
• Reload YouTube
• Close the console

As you should be able to see from our gallery, it’s a fairly easy process to coerce YouTube into its new look. The redesign integrates social sharing with Facebook and Google+, as well as generally tightening up the look to fit more in line with Google’s recent aesthetic shift.

Let us know what you think of the new look YouTube below.

No related posts.

The enterprising chaps at XDA Developers have just released an APK of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard, which requires no root, and should run on any Android phone running 2.2 or up.

We’ve just given it a whirl on a Google Nexus S, and it seems a great improvement on the already excellent Android 2.3 keyboard. The keys look ever so slightly larger, noticeably less laggy, and you can now long press on the auto-suggestion words to see many more instead of having to drag across right.

Check out the best Android keyboard apps of all time here

It’s too early to say, but perhaps one of the biggest improvements can be found in the settings: the Android Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard bases its auto-corrections and suggestions based on the previous words you type: it’s context sensitive, in other words.

While this is an unofficial app, there’s only one caveat we can see: the microphone button is missing, presumably since only Ice Cream Sandwich phones can make use of the new realtime voice dictation it offers. You can download it now at the link below: just turn it on under Language & Keyboard in settings.

(Android Market via XDA Developers)

No related posts.

It’s localised for whatever country you’re in, so you’ll see prices in pound sterling. Microsoft has kept schtum on the details but we’ve been playing around with it  this morning. There are no real shocks: nice clean design, screenshots and reviews, though no indication of download numbers as provided on market.android.com, or videos of apps.

Perhaps more of a surprise is that several high profile launch partner apps are already available for download: if you’ve got Windows Phone Mango (coming soon!), you can download WhatsApp and the Guardian news app, which offers each editorial section as its own live tile with scrolling headlines, right now.

Let us know how you get on in the comments.

Out Now | £free | Microsoft

No related posts.

Remember that porn bunker we told you about yesterday? The one set to keep the internet awash with smut even after the prophesied 2012 apocalypse? We’ve just been passed the blueprints for it. These guys are taking the end of the world very seriously indeed.

We’d already been told to expect a fully stocked bar and performance stages. What we didn’t expect were hydroponics, gun racks, or wall-mounted disaster monitor screens. Less surprising, we’ll admit, are the co-ed glass showers, rotating stage with “emergency pole access” and access to “private fertility chambers”.

Pink Visual, the adult studio behind the forward-thinking leering lair, hope to break ground soon, and complete underground construction by September 2012. Their grand plan is that “the bunker will be fully operational well before the end of the “Great Cycle” tracked by the Mayan Calendar Stone.”

Get a good look at the blueprints below. Just don’t ask us how you book yourself a room there…

No related posts.

However, what’s slightly strange – and potentially a lot scarier – is the fact that, according to the crowd, David Cameron is one of the lucky few who is considered preferable to the Führer. Still, only just…

Have a go here, or click through our gallery for a couple of surprise ones you might not have guessed. Wave goodbye to getting any work done today!

No related posts.

BREAKING: Sure, Apple’s AirPlay is an easy way to stream music from your iPhone to your speaker system. But can it let you turn your lights on and off, adjust your heating and scan CDs with NFC? No? Google’s new Android ecosystem extension, Android At Home, can. Ladies and gentlemen, you are going to like this.

Demoed at Google’s I/O conference in California today, Android At Home is a new concept, letting you control devices in your home from your smartphone, akin to various apps and gadgets we’ve seen over the last few years . The first light bulbs which will support it will be made available from Lighting Science later this year.

But it goes one further: in a tech demo the company calls Project Tungsten, Google showed how you can stream to supported stereos from within the Google Music app, akin to how AirPlay works on iOS devices. The company also showed how the speakers could scan a chipped CD and instantly add that disc’s songs to your Google Muisc account and start playing in seconds.

There’s no word on when this technology will roll out, but we’re very, very excited by the possibilities, so we’ll be following this one closely for you.

Out TBC | £TBC | Google

No related posts.

Nokia’s been rumbling about Symbian software updates for a while now, and as we heard yesterday, this will be the one to look forward to: as well as refreshed icons and what Nokia says is a faster browser, Ovi Maps has been boosted with faster search, and at last, at long last, there’s an on screen portrait QWERTY keyboard.

This update will roll out on all new Symbian phones going forward, starting with the new Nokia X7 launched today. We’re also told it’ll be backwards compatible with all existing Symbian 3 phones, the Nokia N8, E7, C7 and C6.

Nokia UK marketing director John Nichols tells us today that the Symbian Anna update is about the company “taking real life consumer feedback..we’re adapting our software and making our improvements on the back of this consumer feedback”. We’d add that it’s done that a few years too late, but is it enough to get you to stick with Symbian? Sound off in the comments while we dive for more details.

Out TBC | £TBC | Nokia

No related posts.

Out Now | £free | Vimeo (Available on the iPhone App Store)

No related posts.

One of the most striking things about Windows Phone 7 is its ultra-clean ‘Metro’ user interface, said to be based around the kind of highly readable signage found in railway stations or airports.