Mobile applications

VLC — is a program that simply opens a file. It sounds modest until you recall the era when for each video, you had to search for its own codec and install…

The summer of 2016 is hardly the only case in history when a mobile game drove millions of people to the streets. Pokémon GO from the studio Niantic …

Telegram has long ceased to be just a messenger: channels made it a media outlet, bots — a platform, and groups of hundreds of thousands of people — a public…

Instagram started as an application for square photos with film filters — phones took poor pictures, and the filter honestly saved the shot. With…

Spotify appeared in 2008 with an answer to piracy that no one had been able to formulate before: to make legal listening more convenient than…

Duolingo did to language learning what mobile games did to leisure: broke down training into short lessons and added points, levels, leagues, and tournaments…

Google Maps has long ceased to be a map in the classical sense — it's more of a reference book about everything that has an address. Since 2005, the service has collected in one place…

Uber is a case where the program is not important, but the idea is: the company does not own cars and formally does not hire drivers, but brings together demand and supply…

Skype is a rare example of a product that won its era and did not survive the next. In 2003, it made the impossible mundane: a call beyond borders became…

Chrome appeared in 2008 with a technical idea that was fresh at the time: each tab is a separate process. A fallen site does not bring down the entire…

TikTok changed not video, but the way it is shown. Before it, the feed was built from what you are subscribed to; here the algorithm from the first minute recommends…

At first Shazam worked like this: you called a short number, held your phone to the speaker, and half a minute later you got an SMS with the song name…

Waze is built on a simple deal: you give your speed and coordinates, and in return you get others'. The traffic map here is drawn not by sensors but…

The strength of Yandex Maps is in the details that global services don't get around to: entrance numbers, barriers in courtyards, entrance to a specific office…

Discord was invented for gamers: they needed a voice chat that doesn't eat frames in the game, doesn't require server setup and allows you to invite…

Firefox today is the only notable browser that is not built on Google's engine. Chrome, Edge, Opera, Yandex Browser — all inside Chromium…

WhatsApp won not with features, but with the fact that it has everything. The messenger appeared in 2009 as a way to not pay for SMS, and ended up becoming…

Signal exists not as a product, but as a principle: a non-profit foundation, open source for clients and server, no ads or data trading, supported by…

Viber took off in 2010 on a simple idea: call abroad for free over the internet, when roaming cost like a plane wing. Since then…