News - Softonic English

More Grand Theft Auto V artwork released

Rockstar released the official Grand Theft Auto V cover art a couple of weeks ago and now the company has sent out more detailed artwork called “Cash and Carry.” According to the press release from Rockstar, the two new images show two of the three main characters, Michael and Franklin, “getting things done” in various vehicles.

Franklin is depicted on a dirt bike, riding through the Los Santos equivalent of the Los Angeles River Basin.

Michael, on the other hand, is shown riding on a jet ski, hilariously named, “Speedophile.” The background shows a Ferris wheel on a boardwalk.

The new artwork shows GTA V‘s emphasis on vehicular driving and combat. Rockstar has shown off other vehicles available in the game including the classic BMX bike, sports cars, and a jet fighter.

Be sure to check out all of our other GTA V coverage here.

Pulse Newsreader acquired by LinkedIn for $90 million

LinkedIn confirmed yesterday evening that it purchased the news reading app, Pulse, for $90 million. LinkedIn now joins the ranks of CNN and Yahoo! in purchasing news reading apps. CNN acquired the Zite news reader app, which looks like a hybrid between Flipboard and Pinterest. Yahoo! purchased the mobile news aggregator, Summly, in March of this year. Like the other newsreader acquisitions, it’s not clear how exactly Pulse will be integrated with LinkedIn.

It’s interesting to speculate what LinkedIn will do with Pulse as it evolves beyond a professional social network. While LinkedIn already has its own news feed for industry stories, it’s not as consumer oriented nor as flexible as Pulse. With the death of Google Reader, other news aggregators and news feed apps have taken off. LinkedIn is no doubt riding this resurgence in popularity for news reader.

In the mean time, LinkedIn has reassured Pulse users that the service will stay the same. Of course, this could change in the future.

Source: LinkedIn

Shootmania Storm out now

Shootmania Storm is now available to buy on Maniaplanet and Steam. The fast paced multiplayer first person shooter has had a long beta phase, resulting in an established community of gamers with lots of user created content already out there.

Shootmania Storm takes the philosophy of Trackmania and applies it to the FPS. So it’s fast paced, arcade gameplay with an emphasis on giving players simple tools to create their own maps and objects. In Shootmania, that’s an easy to use map editor, with great tools for making your own weapons and guns.

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‘Batman: Arkham Origins’ will launch on Oct. 25th, will feature a handheld companion game [video]

The third game in the Batman Arkham series has been revealed. Batman: Arkham Origins will be available on October 25th of this year with a handheld companion game. The game will feature the origin story of Batman and will take place before Batman: Arkham Asylum. This will be an interesting look at a young, naive Batman as he struggles to figure out how to fight crime. Hopefully the game will show the same gritty environments and story as Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One.

There is little known about the game besides the fact that it’s an origin story. The Game Informer cover shows a snowy Gotham City and a picture of Deathstroke. This is the first time players will see Deathstroke in game from the Batman Arkham series.

A handheld companion game, called Blackgate, is also in the works and will feature 2.5D platforming. The game will be developed by Armature Studio, the folks behind the Metroid Prime trilogy. It will be released on the Playstation Vita and Nintendo 3DS. There’s no word about how the handheld game will tie in with Arkham Origins but it’s speculated that it will be used to discover more information about the characters in the game.

Batman: Arkham Origins will be released on the PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U on October 25th.

Source: Game Informer

Nokia Music released for Windows 8 and RT

Nokia announced its music subscription service, Nokia Music+, at the beginning of the year but it was only available to Windows Phone 8 users. Today, the company released its Nokia Music app for Windows 8 and Windows RT. There have been some improvements made to the service, most notably the improved Mixes feature, which lets you listen to playlists that are “hand-crafted” by Nokia employees. This is similar to what Songza has with their human-created playlists. Nokia Music will also include the ability to make radio stations from multiple artists. Mixes can be downloaded for offline listening as well.

While Nokia Music for Windows 8/RT is free, only Nokia Music+ subscribers will get all that the app has to offer. Subscribers will be able to listen to music at a higher bitrate, have unlimited skips for radio stations and mixes, and lyrics that are synced with each track. Free users are given a free 7 day trial and the subscription service will only cost $4 per month but it’s much more limited than services like Spotify. It’s more similar to Pandora’s premium service since you can’t listen to and download full albums like you can with Spotify Premium.

The app itself looks really great with huge pictures of the artists in the background of the now play screen. There are also artist bios, recommendations, and information on where the artist is performing if he or she is on tour. The app can be snapped left or right so you have a persistent media player while you multitask in another app.

Nokia Music is up against some stiff competition as Microsoft has its own music subscription service in the form of Xbox Music, which offers similar functionality. Still, users may find Nokia’s Mixes and multiple artist radio stations compelling features.

Be sure to check out our full review for Nokia Music here.

Source: Nokia

Rdio launches social video service called Vdio

After four years in development, Rdio has finally launched its video streaming service, Vdio. The app takes a lot of social cues from the Rdio music streaming service, allowing users to display and see what their friends are watching. Vdio users will be able to follow their friends as part of its recommendation engine. Users will also be able to make video playlists and share them. This provides much more of a social experience than Netflix, even though Netflix recently announced integration with Facebook.

Vdio won’t survive long without a robust content library and it’s nice to see that Vdio does indeed have a good amount of content available. Currently, there are shows and movies from networks like ABC, CBS, Fox, Showtime, Comedy Central, BBC, NBC, Disney, Universal, and Warner Brothers. TV shows cost $2.99 while entire seasons will run you between $14.99 and $42.99. New movies will cost $4.99 to rent and $14.99 to own. Strangely enough, Vdio isn’t a subscription service like its music counterpart, Rdio. This may prove to be a misstep if Vdio wants to compete with Netflix.

Vdio is still quite new so it’s only available on the web and iPad. The iPad version does support AirPlay so you can stream movies to your TV using an Apple TV. Apps for other platforms should be coming down the pipeline as well. Rdio is giving away $25 worth of credit for current Rdio subscribers to play around with content from Vdio. New subscribers can get this “free” $25 credit also by signing up within the next 60 days.

If Vdio is successful, music streaming competitors like Spotify may follow suit to provide music and video content.

New iOS version of HotSpot Shield released, adds iPad support

HotSpot Shield VPN for iOS received a major update today, optimizing the app for iPad and adding useful new features. The popular VPN (virtual private network) application allows you to browse the internet securely, save data and access web sites and apps that are blocked outside of certain countries, such as Netflix, Hulu or Pandora.

Once enabled, HotSpot Shield VPN lets you protect your identity when using the internet on your iOS device by encrypting all traffic, allowing you to communicate privately. HotSpot Shield compresses all the data sent through the connection so your connection devours less data – the developer claims savings can be up to 50%.

What’s new in HotSpot Shield VPN 2.0

The new version of HotSpot Shield boasts a tablet-friendly user interface for iPad users, which makes it very easy to set up and start using the VPN client.

HotSpot Shield VPN 2.0 now allows you to choose the country of the IP location, between USA, UK and Japan. This means that no matter where you are you can browse content normally restricted to users in that country.

Other changes in the new version of HotSpot Shield for iOS include iCloud support, improved malware protection and the ability to check your data savings and protection status more easily.

If you’re a student it’s well worth considering installing HotSpot Shield on your iOS device. The developer, AnchorFree, is offering a free annual subscription of the service to students in the US and UK. In conjunction with this, it’s offering scholarship awards for colleges and universities as part of a scheme called the ‘College Privacy Challenge’.

Patch 1.3 for Crysis 3 released

Crytek’s Crysis 3 gets its third patch today, with Patch 1.3. It’s an update for all platforms, PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox.

It has a range of bug fixes, and anti-cheat measures on PC. One interesting point is the ‘reduction of bandwidth usage‘. In a Q&A session, a Crysis 3 developer explained that reducing bandwidth usage should improve latency issues. Latency issues cause slowdowns in gameplay, which can make the game unfair and frustrating.

Read on for a full list of fixes.

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GTA V official cover art released

Rockstar Games has published the official box art for Grand Theft Auto V, their sandbox game coming out on September 17th. It shows the three protagonists, Michael, Franklin and Trevor. Unlike the screenshots released last week, there appear to be no revelations we can glean from this artwork.

The inclusion of a dog is likely to cause controversy with groups like PETA, who have previously complained about Super Mario’s abuse of animals, but a GTA game without controversy just wouldn’t feel right, would it?

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Firefox 20 released today

Firefox 20 will be available to download later today, as version 21 moves into Beta testing. It has two major new features – per window Private Browsing, and a new download manager.

Private Browsing allows you to use the internet without your browser saving any information, cookies and so on from sites you visit. In Firefox 20, you can open a Private Browsing window while keeping your other normal window open, a feature already available in Chrome.

Here’s how it worked when first introduced to the Nightly Build last year:

[source: Ehsan Akhgari blog]

The new download manager is a bigger deal, as Firefox’s old manager was really in need of a refresh.

Firefox 20 adds a neat download button next to the Home button, which shows you the last three downloads when clicked. The icon changes to a progress bar when you are downloading. Clicking ‘Show All Downloads’ opens a new window, but with a completely redesigned ‘panel based’ download manager.

Download Firefox for Windows or OS X.