New Android apps worth downloading: Waze update, Livestream for Producers, Rope Rescue

Todays new apps start with a big update to Waze, a social mapping app that can help you get where youre going, and share your location with your friends. Livestream for Producers is next, making it easy for users to broadcast videos through the Livestream service. Finally, theres Rope Rescue, a casual puzzler in the vein of Cut The Rope and other quality titles.

Waze Social GPS Traffic & Gas update (Free)

Whats it about? Waze is mobile GPS app thats good for finding locations, spotting traffic, and finding things like gas stations and restaurants. It also packs a bunch of social capabilities, as well.

Whats cool? The big new update to Waze adds a lot of new social features. You can sign in to Waze using your Facebook account, and the app will track your progress to your destination when youre traveling and share it with friends, and vice versa. The app also now supports private messages and lets users send pick-up requests to friends to share their location and navigate to their pals.

Whos it for? If you think you can get some use out of being able to share your location with your friends, find them easily, and send them messages, Waze is for you.

Whats it like? Googles Maps is always a solid choice for navigation help and social interaction, and you can get check-in capabilities that are similar from Facebook and Foursquare.

Livestream for Producers (Free)

Whats it about? Livestream lets users broadcast videos through the service, ad-free, on event pages. Youll need a Livestream account to make use of the app, though.

Whats cool? The app turns your Android device into something of a portable content producer. You can shoot and upload video and photos to your event page, and also make text updates. The Android app also includes an FTP server function, which means you can send images from DSLR cameras over Wi-Fi.

Whos it for? If youre into video blogging and sharing content, Livestream makes for a handy way to do it. The app packs a lot of convenient features for content production.

Whats it like? For video viewing and sharing, YouTube is obviously an extremely popular app and service. You should also give Qik Video a shot.

Rope Rescue ($2.99)

Whats it about? A similar puzzle in spirit to games like Angry Birds and Cut The Rope, Rope Rescue has players using as little rope as possible to create a pulley system to reach each puzzles goal.

Whats cool? Casual puzzle games like this one get players thinking in different ways, and Rope Rescue is definitely among their number. Your job is to use the shortest route you can in each puzzle, while also connecting all the pulley wheels to the goal. Its easy to learn but tough to master, like all good puzzlers, and there are obstacles to avoid like knives and fire. It takes careful motion and thinking to get the best scores you can.

Whos it for? Casual mobile gamers are the target audience here, but anyone who likes some lightweight puzzle-solving will have fun.

Whats it like? Cut The Rope is a similar puzzle experience, but with the opposite goal you need to cut ropes rather than string them. For another simple but smart puzzle experience, try Wheres My Water.

Download the Appolicious Android app