Adam Balkin highlights the coolest and newest apps for your cell phone or mobile device in the weekly segment "App Wrap."
Facebook AMBER Alerts
Facebook has decided to take seemingly every user’s constant need to check their feed and focus that desire to do some good. It is teaming up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children by integrating AMBER Alerts into Facebook news feeds. Instead of being bombarded with constant alerts and eventually learning to just glance over them, you will only get alerts that apply to missing children in your area. Facebook says its community has already helped find missing children by posting and sharing information on them. This will work in a similar way by allowing users to share the most updated information on the child and the case with friends. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says seizing on the power of Facebook’s almost 200-million users in the U.S. could prove to be one of the most effective tools in finding abducted children.
In-App Purchases to Benefit World Wildlife Fund
If you would like to offer your help to the environment, that may be as easy as playing your favorite mobile game. Publishing giant EA is teaming up with the World Wildlife Fund to raise money for different environmental causes by allowing you to make in-app purchase upgrades within eight mobile games, with one-third of the proceeds going to the WWF. From Madden to Plants vs. Zombies 2 to Tetris, the special upgrades are marked, and allow you to kill two birds - or rather, save two birds with one stone. The WWF upgrades will be available for just the next few weeks.
For more on the initiative, you can check out ea.com/wwf.