The message below was sent out to our email subscribers this afternoon.

Hello. We’re sorry to tell you that today’s edition of The Appside Daily Bulletin was the last, as we’re closing the service down.

We sent out the first Bulletin in August 2011, with the website joining it the following year. It’s been hugely fun to write, and we’ve had some great feedback from our 1,100+ Bulletin readers on how much they enjoy receiving it.

However, our parent company Music Ally’s business is expanding in other areas, where the editorial resources will have more of an impact. So we’ve taken the hard decision to shut The Appside to enable us to focus on those.

We’re open to offers to continue providing apps briefings on a paid basis for individual companies – mail info@theappside.com if you’re interested. And we may yet restore the Bulletin in another guise.

We won’t be selling your data to anyone, but if we produce any apps-relevant research from Music Ally, or decide to pick up where we left off, we may pop you a line about it. If you’d prefer that not to happen, there is an ‘unsubscribe from this list’ link at the bottom of this email.

Thank you for reading. Co-writers Ben and Stuart will still be gainfully employed: Ben for Music Ally, The Guardian and NME, and Stuart also for Music Ally, as well as his Guardian Apps Blog and Apps Playground children’s apps website.

You can follow them on Twitter at @bencardew and @stuartdredge if you’d like to keep up with them. Thanks again!

The Appside

The post A Fond Farewell from The Appside appeared first on The Appside.

The Twitter app gives Glass users access to their stream, allowing them to post messages and photos, TechCrunch explains. Users will have to specify which Twitter contacts they want to receive notifications from, to avoid too many distracting updates. Facebook for Glass is basically a photo sharing tool, allowing users to post pictures to their Facebook page, than add captions by voice input. The CNN app, meanwhile, can apparently send video to Glass and stream news in a browsable feed, with the user able to set up customisable alerts.

Also producing apps for Google Glass are Evernote, Tumblr, Path and Elle.

The post Twitter, Facebook and CNN join Google Glass app rush appeared first on The Appside.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of The Appside Focused in-house briefings, to augment our website and daily newsletter. If you are wondering where to put your budget in 2013 and why, please contact briefings@theappside.com for more details.

The post The Appside launches briefing service appeared first on The Appside.

The app presents four of Deutsche Grammophon’s recording of the symphony, with users able to switch between them at will, watch a synchronised musical score, follow Beethoven’s original manuscript from 1825, and view a “BeatMap” of the orchestra, showing who’s playing what.

Video interviews with musicians, conductors and writers are also included for extra detail. The app follows on from Touch Press’ similar The Orchestra app, which came out in December 2012, showing how its format can be adapted for specific recordings and labels.

The app is also freemium: free to download with two minutes from the second movement of the symphony, with an in-app purchase unlocking the full content.

The post Touch Press goes freemium for Beethoven’s 9th Symphony iOS app appeared first on The Appside.

It’s the CBeebies star’s first app, produced and released independently, combining animation, educational mini-games and video of Fletcher telling the story himself, as well as getting into character as Goldilocks and the bears.

Fletcher co-created the app with Allan Johnston, following their collaboration on long-running (and award-winning) TV show Something Special. “A few years ago, we wouldn’t even be talking about doing an app. We’d probably be collaborating on a DVD or another TV format,” Fletcher tells The Guardian.

“I’m a bit antiquated when it comes to technology, but I’m astounded at the way children are now using apps from a very young age as a learning tool. It seems like a natural progression to explore that format.”

The post Justin Fletcher’s Goldilocks book-app includes live-action video appeared first on The Appside.

TechCrunch reports that the funding was led by Charles River Ventures, with their Partner George Zachery joining Pebble’s board of directors. Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky told TechCrunch that the company has now fulfilled 70,000 of the 85,000 orders placed on Kickstarter, with tens of thousands of additional orders having been placed. Pebble is now aiming for retail availability in four to six months.

Pebble released an SDK allowing developers to create custom watch faces last month and has now added Pebble Sports API, allowing developers to build GPS-enabled smartwatch apps.

“We are pledging to support the developers hacking on Pebble,” Migicovsky told TechCrunch. “We want to make the Pebble the go-to place for developers.”

The post Pebble gets $15m investment, has fulfilled 70k orders appeared first on The Appside.

News of the new funding comes from a regulatory filing, The Next Web reports, and suggests that company has big ambitions. MessageMe launched its app in early March reaching 1m active users in two weeks, despite considerable competition in the messaging space.

MessageMe does at least have a USP, though: it offers integrated, images, videos, music and doodles in messages.

The company said that this helps to create an experience that is “not only more accessible, but more personalised”, with this content available from one “easy-to-use” interface.

The post MessageMe reportedly raises another $10m appeared first on The Appside.

Ohio’s Brandon Ashmore helped the App Store to pass the milestone when he downloaded the game earlier this week, winning a $10,000 App Store gift card in the process. There has been considerable excitement over  the 50bn milestone and the news should boost downloads of Say The Same Thing, which gets users to choose random words, then guess the connections between them, in a Words With Friends-esque fashion.

The game itself is free, although users can pay to remove ads or to buy virtual bananas.

Announcing the news, Apple revealed that the App Store is currently generating more than 2bn downloads a month. “The App Store completely transformed how people use their mobile devices and created a thriving app ecosystem that has paid out over nine billion dollars to developers. We’re absolutely floored to cross this milestone in less than five years,” says SVP of internet software and services Eddy Cue, in a statement.

The post OK Go’s word game Say The Same Thing was App Store’s 50 billionth download appeared first on The Appside.

The Portable Gaming Report Q1 2013 reveals that iOS and Google Play both saw growth in game downloads and consumer spending in the quarter, with iOS now the leader in consumer spending on games. Gaming-optimised handhelds, meanwhile, experienced significant decreases in consumer spending and packaged game shipments in Q1, due to the seasonal nature of their business. The report predicts that Google Play is now likely to surpass gaming-optimised handhelds in 2Q13.

It is worth noting, too, that these figures do not include revenue advertising – which would put iOS and Android far ahead of the handheld devices.

The post Smartphones and tablets rule portable gaming market appeared first on The Appside.

Pet Rescue Saga, which has more than 6m daily average users on Facebook, will be available on iOS and Android “early this summer”. In doing so, it follows in the footsteps of King’s hit mobile title Candy Crush Saga, which is currently seeing more than 500m million gameplays a day on mobile alone. To celebrate the launch, King released some new user figures: it now has 70m DAUs (up from 66m in April) in total, with its games clocking up 21bn gameplays a month across mobile, social and online.

King currently has three top 10 Facebook games: Candy Crush Saga (15.5M DAU), Pet Rescue Saga (6M DAU) and Farm Heroes Saga (4.8M DAU).

The post Pet Rescue Saga heading to mobile, as Kings user numbers grow again appeared first on The Appside.