July, 2013 - Softonic English

Google Play Games out now on Android

Google Play Games for Android has been released for Android, as promised at this year’s I/O conference. It’s a hub for all your Android gaming bringing you cloud saves, achievements, and online matchmaking. Essentially, it’s Google’s answer to Apple’s Game Center or Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

The new app makes it easier to find new games, and connect with friends and see what they are playing also. It’s also a home for joining multiplayer games, and you can track your achievements and compare yourself to other players.

Cloud saves will mean you can play your games on any Android device you are signed in to – so progress you make on one device can be continued somewhere else. They also mean that if you lose or break your Android, you still won’t lose your in game progress.

Download Google Play Games

Shadowrun Returns released today

Shadowrun Returns is a Kickstarter-funded spiritual sequel to the 1993 SNES isometric action RPG. There was another Shadowrun game in 2007, but that was a multiplayer shooter, and satisfied neither fans of the original ‘pen and paper’ role playing game, nor the Super Nintendo classic.

Available for PC and Mac today, and coming soon to Android and iOS, Shadowrun Returns puts the action back in an isometric cyberpunk-fantasy metropolis. Shadowrun is set in a future where magic has returned to the world, giving the game an unusual mix of cyberpunk and fantasy. It’s a turn based tactical role playing game, where you’ll need to develop your characters and use a mix of weaponry and spells to win. This new game was developed by Jordan Weisman, one of the creators of the original pen and paper RPG.

The graphics are have a beautiful hand painted look to them, and it really looks like the modern update that fans of the original have been waiting for for twenty years.

Check out the launch trailer.

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Search anonymously with these Google alternatives

Are you still worried that Google and Bing are sending your search data to the NSA, or just want more privacy? We’ve tried out four search engines that aren’t monitored by government agencies and allow for anonymous web browsing. These are just a few samples, and the folks at PRISM Break have an extensive list of anti-NSA apps and services. We’ll take a closer look at our favorites and share the best of the lot.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo evaluates the meta search data of over 50 third-party search engines. This includes Yahoo! Search Boss, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, and even Wikipedia. It even has a web crawl that automatically searches the web to analyze web pages and help populate the search index.

DuckDuckGo claims that it stores no IP addresses and individual user searches. Cookies are rarely used as well. Within the options, you can enable HTTPS encryption and ensure that anonymous when clicking search results. The company even provides an amusing introduction video about its search functionality.

Seeks

Seeks is another meta-search engine that uses OpenSearch, as well as results from Bing, Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Blekko. Seeks acts as a buffer between the user’s search queries and the corresponding service, allowing for anonymous searches. Seeks then generates a combined overview of all the search results from each source.

In addition, the search provider is working on a so-called Web proxy network for searches. Once enabled, whenever the user access a search engine like Google directly, they will instantly see the Seek results. Seeks’ goal is on transparency and has an active community working on further developments. Their project page shares the technology they use and invites users to cooperate in making the searches even better.

Startpage

Startpage uses just the results of Google, but adds in a proxy between the user and the search giant. This prevents the company from gaining any form of personal data.

The about page claims that Startpage does not log any data and actively encrypts all transactions. If you still want the power of Google, but want to maintain privacy, Startpage is an excellent choice.

YaCy

YaCy is a bit different than the other options, using P2P searches to index the web. YaCy uses a background client and creates a local search index directly on your hard drive. By connecting all of these indexes to each user, YaCy turns into a powerful but decentralized search provider.

Each participant must install the software and allow it to run in the background. When you conduct a search, YaCy will look in its local database, not on servers of search providers. The safety factor of YaCy is very high. For absolute security, there is also a stealth mode that allows searching without sending additional data to the P2P network. The results are more limited, but can still be useful. It’s up to individual taste if you really want to connect directly to other users, though.

Film-based games for Android

The film industry loves tie-ins with major blockbusters, especially turning popular franchises into games. While some might be hesitant to spend money on a game, there are quite a few fun movie-related titles on Android and iOS. While these free games might seem like a giant promotion for the movies, they are fun in their own right. We’ll showcase five great free movie-based games available for Android tablets.

Despicable Me: Minion Rush

Despicable Me: Minion Rush is a free Android game based on the animated movie Despicable Me 2, focusing on the lovable Minion characters. Players mainly control the character Merry, a malicious Minion who will do anything to please their master, Gru. The main mode of the game is a typical runner, in the vein of Temple Run and its clones. Your goal is to run an obstacle course and collect items for bonus time. However, the designers decided to enrich the game with additional elements. There are lots of extra mini-games, and you can customize Minions with weapons and outfits. Although the gameplay isn’t new, Despicable Me: Minion Rush is fun enough to warrant a try.

Download Despicable Me: Minion Rush on Android

Men in Black 3

Men in Black 3 focuses on the mysterious MIB, most well-known for Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin). However, you instead take control of a rookie agent, who faces many challenges as a new recruit. However, you do help manage the MIB agency, requiring you to create new departments and purchase new building space, such as an armory. To better tie in with Men in Black 3, the game features missions in both the present day and the old 1960’s featured in the film. There are lots of fun puzzles and evil aliens to battle.

Download Men in Black 3 on Android

Pirates of the Caribbean: Master of the Seas

Did you dream of being a pirate as a kid? Pirates of the Caribbean is both a popular Disney ride and film franchise, making the appeal of pirates greater than ever. Disney also has a great Android game, allowing you to become the ruler of the seas. Gameplay allows you to explore the world, discovering new islands and looting the treasures on them. Being a pirate raider, expect a lot of exciting battles. The game is a dynamic and requires a bit of luck, as many encounters are random and cannot be fully planned or strategized. This creates the possibility of hours of gameplay. One down side though is that the graphics are a bit dated and lower quality than what we expect on Android tablets.

Download Pirates of the Caribbean: Master of the Seas on Android

Ice Age Village

It’s time to enter the distant past in an icy land. Ice Age Village on Android is a game that harks back to the animated franchise Ice Age. The goal of the game is to build a village community, but you won’t be alone. Characters such as Manny and Sid will be around to help construct and maintain your creation. The graphics are refined and beautiful, which is very nice on tablets. However, these intense graphics may be part of the reason why Ice Age Village is nearly 70 megabytes in size. It might be better to download the game over Wi-Fi if your data is limited.

Download Ice Age Village Android

Iron Man 3

Take control of Tony Stark and his state-of-the-art armor in Iron Man 3 for Android. While your goal is to save the world, Iron Man 3 plays like another runner. Well, maybe a flyer is a more accurate term, as Stark uses his jet boots and hand repulsors to race around the world. This doesn’t change the basic gameplay, which is still avoiding obstacles and collecting points. After completing levels and gaining money you can purchase new armor and upgrade what you already own. The game’s graphics are fantastic, but we’ve experienced slowdown in some stages.

Download Iron Man 3 on Android

Do you own any of these games? Which is your favorite? Are there other movie-based games you love?

Google officially unveils Android 4.3

Sundar Pichai, head of Android and Chrome at Google, has unveiled Android 4.3, a variation of the current Jelly Bean operating system, once again postponing the expected arrival of Android 5.0, Key Lime Pie.

Android 4.3 Jelly Bean is a modest update of Android’s most current operating system. One of the biggest changes is the inclusion of Bluetooth Smart, a new Bluetooth system with emphasis on maximizing energy efficiency.

The new camera interface was less of a surprise. Both the HTC One Google Edition and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition included the latest version of the app. The new interface provides easier access to menus without having to manually tap options as was previously the case.

The dial pad also received a face lift with the inclusion of new graphics and special characters commonly used in other countries.

Other changes are more technical and although they may not be appreciated at first glance, will certainly have a positive impact on the user experience. Google has improved the system’s touch sensitivity for swiping in order to eliminate the occasional lag suffered by Android users. There have also been updates to OpenGL ES 3.0, which will benefit the 3D graphics processor.

The new Android 4.3 also includes the ability to save a record of notifications- clicking on an app allows you to see which notifications it has generated. In this sense, it seems that Google has created a system for third parties (what are referred to as “Notification Listeners“) to read and interact with mobile notifications. This translates into external devices such as Google Glass, for example, being able to read, delete or interact with handset notifications without notifying the user more than once on more than one device.

Another development which may also go unnoticed is the Wi-Fi settings’ advanced options. The “Scanning Always Available” option allows Google’s location services and other apps to search for networks even when Wi-Fi is disabled.

We are still patiently waiting for the major Android update; the biggest rumor is that Google could launch Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie in October, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of Android. Until then, Android 4.3 Jelly Bean offers an improvement on the current user experience.

Minecraft Skin Studio comes to Android

Minecraft Skin Studio finally has an Android version. Released last autumn for iOS, Minecraft Skin Studio lets you create skins for the phenomenally popular indie game.

As well as being creative, Minecraft Skin Studio also allows you to rate other user’s skins, and download them. There are already an incredible 500,000 skins available to look at, which is plenty to be getting on with. The Android version gets a redesigned interface, more suited to ‘less fruity devices’, as Mojang says.

Watch the trailer to get a better idea of how Minecraft Skin Studio works

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Read more about Minecraft here.

Open Office 4.0 released

Open Office 4.0 has been released, a major update to the popular free office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux. It has new interface features, enhancements and bug fixes, and also a new logo.

The most notable change is the sidebar, introduced to take advantage of wide screen monitors with more space. The side bar is editable – you can collapse parts you don’t use often. The sidebar can also be adjusted by width, right down to a thin tab bar.

There are lots of small improvements in the spreadsheets, and new color and gradients palettes. You’ll also find new galleries and a better print preview. The new logo was chosen from 40 alternatives that were rated by 50,000 users, but it’s hardly a radical departure from the old one!

Open Office 4.0 still doesn’t look as polished as Microsoft Office, but it’s far and away the best free alternative.

Grooveshark added to Google’s piracy search blacklist

Popular music streaming site Grooveshark has been added to Google’s piracy filter. This is a blacklist of words that are excluded from appearing in Google Instant and Autocomplete results.

When you start typing into the Google search bar, you immediately get suggested results that can speed your search. The blacklist includes swear words and others that might be offensive, as well as keywords closely related to piracy, like ‘pirate bay’. While you can still see results for these words, being removed from autocomplete and instant results in big drops in search traffic for those terms.

Grooveshark has been in a kind of limbo for some time. While it made a deal with music giant EMI in 2009, that was later canceled for apparent failure to pay royalties. There have been legal proceedings against the service since 2012, by the music industry, and its apps have been removed from both Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The root of Grooveshark’s problem seems to be that it lets users upload music to the service, regardless of whether or not they are the rights holders.

What is not clear is why Grooveshark has been singled out above other piracy related keywords that are not on the Google blacklist – according to Torrentfreak it doesn’t receive as many copyright complaints as other services and sites that are not on the blacklist. Google says its algorithms determine which words are prevented from appearing in autocomplete, but does not expand on how they work.

[Source: TorrentFreak]

Facebook will let you say why you don’t like a post soon

It’s not a ‘Dislike button‘ but Facebook is planning to give users the power to say why you don’t like something in your news feed. If a friend posts something you don’t like today, you can only opt to hide it, report it or follow it. But you can’t say why you are hiding it.

With ads on Facebook, if you choose to hide them, you are asked why. This means Facebook can better tailor ads to you in the future. Bringing this kind of feature to the news feed will allow your news feed to be better tailored to you, and in the case that something is offensive, allow Facebook to identify it faster. The data Facebook gains from this feature will also give it even better tools for targeting ads. The ‘promoted posts’ that currently appear in your feed are not always as relevant as you, or advertisers, might like.

According to ABC News, Facebook will start testing this new feature soon, and it could be rolled out in three or four months. This is the closest you’re likely to get to a ‘dislike‘ button on Facebook, but your friends won’t be able to see that you don’t like something.

[Source: ABC News]

Watch a 13 minute video of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag gameplay

Ubisoft are keeping up the pressure with more new Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag info, this time it’s a huge 13 minute open world gameplay video.

Opening in September 1717 with a trademark dive, we see protagonist Edward Kenway pick up an assassin contract, which gives us a look at the breathtakingly large world map. What follows is an exciting naval chase, then boarding the enemy ship. Ships certainly start a lot quicker than their real life versions, but that keeps it fast and exciting.

Watch the video below to see the rest, including dramatic sea storms, exploration and experience the seamless gameplay between land and sea.

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Keep up with all the latest on Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag.

The game will be released on October 29th on PC and consoles.