FIFA 15 trailer shows improvements to agility

Electronic Arts debuted a new trailer highlighting the new improvements to agility and control for FIFA 15. For soccer fans, this means that there will be improved control and animations when playing the game.

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The FIFA series is the only game that’s officially licensed and features real names and teams. Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series has been the only contender against FIFA by EA, but PES 14 didn’t have a release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One like FIFA 14.

Obviously if you’re a soccer fan, you’ll want to play FIFA 15 to get the “true” experience.

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Follow me on Twitter: @chrislikesrobot

Shazam for Mac IDs songs and shows from the menu bar

Popular music identifying app, Shazam, is now available on Mac. The app runs in your menu bar so you can access it no matter what you’re doing on your computer.

The app sits quietly in the background, ready for you to ask what song is playing. A window will pop up with the result and a history of songs you’ve looked up. From there, you can choose to buy a song from iTunes (Mac | Windows).

Shazam for Mac does more than ID songs; it also looks up TV shows.

Apple and Shazam already have a partnership on iOS. Shazam provides music tagging services for Siri when someone asks, “Siri. What’s playing?”

You can get the app from the Mac App Store for free.

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Follow Lewis on Twitter: @lewisleong

App of the Week: Yet Another Cleaner [video]

Softonic’s App of the Week highlights some of the coolest, most unique, and biggest app releases for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac. This week, keep your Window PC spic and span with Yet Another Cleaner.

Despite the name, Yet Another Cleaner is anything but. With virus detection and protection, adware clean-up, and a software manager, Yet Another Cleaner is the perfect tool to keep everything on your computer in tune. Check out the video below to see exactly what it’s not just another cleaner.

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If you’re looking for one of the most popular and reliable cleaners for your PC, try Yet Another Cleaner.

Download Yet Another Cleaner for Windows.

Make sure to check out some of our past App of the Week features:

PlayStation Now PS4 open beta on July 31

I tried out PlayStation Now on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 during the closed beta period and found it to be an interesting way to play older PlayStation 3 games. The cost of playing new games is wallet-crushing and as people move from PS3 to PS4, there are still a lot of excellent games that people will have missed.

Sony states that the goals for the open beta are “content, pricing, rental durations, look and feel and stability testing the back end technology.”

PlayStation Now will be available in open beta on July 31.

The current library of games consists of mainly older titles that a lot of people probably ignored, but Sony announced more games coming to the streaming service. It’s unknown if the open beta will have these games immediately, but expect PlayStation Now to host Saints Row IV, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeros, God of War Ascension, Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, and Street Fighter IV Ultra.

playstation now open beta games

Looking at the FAQ, the open beta will be different by offering different pricing tiers and rental durations.

If you’re interested, sign up for the open beta at the sign up page.

Source: PlayStation Now

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Follow me on Twitter: @chrislikesrobot

Yahoo! Finance apps redesigned with news and interactive graphs

Yahoo! released a major update to its Finance apps for Android and iOS today. The Android update is so dramatic, Yahoo! basically threw out the old app and replaced it with one built from the ground up.

Yahoo Finance for Android animated GIFIf you’ve downloaded Yahoo!’s other myriad of apps like Weather (Android | iOS) or Mail (Android | iOS), you’ll feel right at home. The redesigned app looks and works like its siblings with a flat interface, detailed graphs and slick animations.

At the top, there are tabs for Home, News and Markets. The Home tab gives you an overview of all the stocks you’re tracking. The Markets section provides finance data for the US, Europe and Asia.

Graphs are interactive and you can sign up for notifications for big fluctuations in the market.

You can find the apps in the Downloads section below.

Downloads

Yahoo Finance (Android | iOS)

Source: Yahoo!

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BitTorrent Bleep secure chat client stops snooping

BitTorrent announced its intentions to build a secure messaging app many months ago but now we finally get to see the program. Initially called BitTorrent Chat, the company has now changed the name to BitTorrent Bleep. The app promises secure chats, never collecting metadata or storing messages. Traditional messaging and calling sends your messages to a company’s servers, which you have no control over.

BitTorrent Bleep updated screen interface

Bleep works by creating a “direct decentralized connection.” This means there are no companies or servers acting as a “middleman” collecting data. This works similarly to BitTorrent Sync (Android | iOS | Mac | Windows | Windows Phone), which allows you to create your own secure personal cloud by using direct connections between devices.

We only have one screenshot of the app, and it looks pretty basic. There’s a contacts list to the left and a chat window to the right. Chats show up in bubbles, reminiscent of Apple’s iMessage app for Mac.

iMessage Mac chat demo

Bleep is currently in pre-alpha, so don’t expect a polished experience yet. The app is only available to Windows 7 and 8 users for now, but the company promises to bring it to other platforms later. You can sign up for the pre-alpha test at the source link below.

Source: BitTorrent

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Follow Lewis on Twitter: @lewisleong

Google Chrome 64-bit for Windows is almost ready

Windows can try out the latest beta for 64-bit Chrome. The browser has been in development for a while, but is now stable enough for a beta release.

The browser offers three key advantages over the 32-bit version we’re using today: speed, security and stability. 64-bit software can utilize modern processors more effectively and Google claims you’ll see a performance increase of 25% on average.

The 64-bit version of Chrome is also more stable, claiming half as many crashes as the 32-bit version. Security is also increased by allowing the browser to use a randomization security technique that makes targeting key parts of the browser difficult.

Windows 7 and 8 users can try out the Chrome 64-bit beta without replacing their current installation of Chrome. The installer will also import your settings and bookmarks. Get it below.

Downloads

Google Chrome 64-bit beta for Windows 7 and 8

Source: Chrome Releases

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Homefront: The Revolution now in the hands of Deep Silver Dambuster Studios

There’s been troubling news for Crytek recently and that impacted the future of Homefront: The Revolution.

Today, It’s been announced that Koch Media and Deep Silver acquired the Homefront brand from Crytek and have transferred all assets to Deep Silver Dambuster Studios, a new studio under the publisher.

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The official announcement and early gameplay shown at E3 2014 showed a lot of potential for the series and now it looks like Homefront: The Revolution will see a proper release when it’s finished with development.

Maybe now they can add a Korean character (voiced by Daniel Dae Kim?) in the game that works alongside main character, Ethan Brady.

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Follow me on Twitter.: @chrislikerobot

The little button that will improve your Facebook experience

Hidden in your Facebook feed is a button that can improve your Facebook experience almost instantly. Few people know about it, but if you find out how to use it, it’s a gem that will make everything about Facebook better.

The small arrow that’s next to each post isn’t hidden, but it’s hard to notice. If you haven’t seen it, this is what I’m talking about:

facebook-arrow

Facebook doesn’t really explain what each option does, so I will.

Hide people and pages

The first part of this menu hides posts you don’t want to see in your News Feed. When you hide a post, Facebook will take note of this to try and show more relevant posts.

dont-want-follow-facebook

You can also unfollow people who follow these pages, or you can choose to hide these types of posts. Instead of unfriending someone, you can mute the page that your friend likes.

If you think you made a mistake, you can undo it by going into Settings, which is the small gear icon next to the News Feed.

edit-settings

When you open the window to remove people and pages from your feed, you also have the option to add them again.

hide-posts-facebook

Another useful feature is the ability to report a page. This lets you report a post or person if the content is spam, or if it’s a fake account.

facebook-spam

Get notifications of interesting posts

If there’s a post you want to follow, you can Get Notifications for that specific post. This means that every time someone comments on the post, you’ll get a notification from Facebook, which is useful if you want to track how people are reacting to a specific story.

get-notifications

Save news to read later

A new feature that Facebook recently added was the ability to save posts to read later.

save-facebook

To see what you’ve saved, click on Saved in the sidebar menu. The Facebook app also has this feature.

saved-items-facebook

This feature is very similar to apps like Pocket or Instapaper; the advantage of saving it in Facebook is simply that its Facebook.

Lots of features in this tiny menu

With all these options, why doesn’t Facebook give the button more visibility? Maybe the company doesn’t want to distract you, or maybe hiding pages isn’t great when Facebook is trying to advertise to you. Lucky for you, now you know how to avoid it.

Follow me on Twitter: @remoquete

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Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare trailer warns of PMC Atlas

Activision always plays a good hype game with its Call of Duty games and in the newest trailer, it explains the history of the world that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes place in.

The single player campaign trailer does a great job explaining the back story and prepares you for the conflict before you enter the role of Mitchell, a former US Marine who is now part of Atlas. The largest private military corporation (PMC) in the world, Atlas may serve as the villain in the game with Kevin Spacey‘s role as Jonathan Irons being the main antagonist.

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Since PMC’s are corporations, these companies aren’t loyal to a country and are willing to fight for the highest bidder.

One thing to note is the graphic improvements from this new trailer compared to the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare reveal trailer.

call of duty advanced warfare kevin spacey

Left: Reveal Trailer | Right: Campaign Trailer

The character model for Kevin Spacey looks much better in the newest trailer and shows that the new engine may actually show off the power of PlayStation 4 and Xbox 360 rather than the “enhanced” look of Call of Duty: Ghosts.

An interesting thing I saw in the trailer is that there is a female soldier fighting in an exoskeleton. Hopefully there will be a more varied cast in this game.

call of duty advanced warfare female soldier

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be available on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on November 4, 2014.

Source: Call of Duty (YouTube)

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