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Angry Birds Rio to launch exclusively on Amazon Android App Store

The next installment of the Angry Birds series for Android will be launched exclusively on the new Amazon Appstore. According to a post on the Appstore’s blogs, users will not be able to download Angry Birds Rio from the Android Market, when the game is released.

Angry Birds Rio

Instead, the long awaited sequel to the smash hit game, will be distributed solely via the Amazon Appstore. This is a major coup for Amazon, as it means millions of users will swoop on its yet-to-be-released store, when the South American-themed sequel to Angry Birds finally arrives.

The Amazon Appstore team has created its own Twitter feed @amazonappstore, so you can follow its progress up until launch.

Google Chrome 10 final released

After several weeks of beta testing, Google have launched the final stable version of Google Chrome 10 that improves speed, safety and JavaScript performance amongst other things.

Google announced that speed in particular has been given much attention with a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark suite. Preferences have also been improved, now being accessible in a separate tab rather than a dialog box which also offers suggestions as you type if you’re stuck on a particular issue.

Google Chrome 10 has also been made safer for Windows users with the addition of sandboxing technology for Adobe Flash but unfortunately this isn’t available to Mac users yet.

Coming soon: Avoid traffic with Google Maps Navigation

One of the most frustrating parts of most peoples’ daily commutes is running into traffic jams. Sometimes your tried and true route works fine. Other days there’s an inexplicable bottleneck with no accident in sight. Maybe it’s an unavoidable part of working life. Google doesn’t think so however.

Today, Google announced that you can now automatically be routed around traffic while driving with the beta version of the Google Maps Navigation app for Android users. Google Maps for Android is already an incredibly popular app to help you find where you want to go. In fact, Google estimates approximately 35 million miles are driven by Navigation users daily. What it adds up to is quite a bit of time saved overall by missing all the roughest traffic jams.

Google Maps Navigation routes users around traffic and uses real-time traffic conditions to do so. It does this by applying knowledge of current traffic on the roads, as well as employing information about routes that historically have had heavy traffic at specific times of the day. The end result has the potential to save you time and fuel. Google Maps Navigation is currently available for Android users in North America and Europe, with expectations to extend to other locations in the future.

Instagram releases official public API

The photo-sharing mobile app Instagram, launched only a few months ago has just released its official real-time API. Instagram is not the first of its kind to open a public API – its direct competitor PicPlz already took this step – but in any case this is great news for the two million people who are sharing pictures and comments on the popular photo sharing network.

Thanks to the Instagram API, third-party developers will be able to create new apps and tools based on the photos that are being published to Instagram. The API is read-only at the moment, and enables developers to grab images according to tags, locations and geographies as they’re posted to the network.

The Instagram API is an important stage in the spreading of this app – currently only available for the iPhone – to other platforms and applications. You can already see it in action in Foodspotting, a food-sharing app, and Dropbox, a file-storage service. The first one will display all your Instagram photos tagged with #food or #foodspotting, while the second one will create an automatic backup copy of your Instagram images in the cloud. Other apps and services that plan to make use of Instagram’s API soon are Flipboard and About.me.

According to Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom:

“We really wanted to push our API to the next level to support a new kind of interaction around photos — one that supported the real-time nature of the content that people create on Instagram. We’re really excited about creating a more open platform. We will continue to focus on building our own application for Android, but we see the API as a way to reach more users on more platforms right now”.

Google launches recipe search engine

Today the search engine giant Google announced the launch of a search engine dedicated to finding recipes for all your cooking-related endeavors. Currently located in the More tab of your Google search immediately under the Shopping view, all you have to do is type in a favorite dish, and Google has you covered.

This might seem like a relatively small niche area to be diving into, but Google claims its popular search engine receives about 10 million recipe searches a day. This is a mere one percent of Google’s entire daily search volume, but it was apparently enough to give the topic some attention and development.

This is a great service for anyone who just wants some great recipe suggestions and those who are more health-conscious alike. Users can now search recipes for a variety of different factors such as calorie counts, individual included or omitted ingredients, cook time, and recipes from particular online cooking publications. It’s even possible to search recipes based on holidays and get some great results.

Move over, web and phone apps like Foodily and Epicurious. There’s definitely a new recipe finder in town, and its scope is undeniably impressive.

Google launches wedding planner portal

Happy Valentine’s Day! There’s good news for all you love birds out there, and this time it’s brought to you from Google. A few days ago, the internet search giant launched its very own portal focused solely on helping couples plan their wedding day: Google Weddings.

In a way, it might sound weird that Google’s getting into the wedding business. That was certainly my first thought when I heard the news. If you take a moment to think about it though, it does make sense. You can use Google Docs to access a myriad of different pre-made wedding templates, for example. Create a website with Google Sites to share important information with your guests. Even create announcements with Picnik or organize and share photos on Picasa with your friends after the event.

With all the great web apps available through Google, it’s actually quite a convenient way to get organized for your special day. The best part about it is that a lot of people already make use of these tools now, so they’ll be familiar when you get started planning for this new event. For those who don’t, Google has very kindly made a Google Weddings tutorial page to help get you started. For an event that’s notorious for often being incredibly complicated to plan, things just got a little simpler thanks to Google.

Follow the latest news in Egypt with Livestation

Recent events in Egypt have proved how powerful the internet can be at getting news out when official channels are blocked. One of the big beneficiaries has been Livestation which has seen downloads rocket over the past week. The main reason is because huge numbers of people have been searching for Al Jazeera’s coverage of the drama unfolding in Egypt which you can watch on the excellent app.

Livestation has official agreements with many other major channels such as the BBC World, CNN and The Discovery Channel meaning that you’re guaranteed high quality programming and images. Even better, you can interact with other users very easily via an online chat function which also gives viewers a chance to rate their favorite channels.

You can add channels by going to the developer website and simply clicking “Add to player” and you’ll find that it’s automatically added to your channel list in Livestation. The presentation of Livestation is superb – you can select channels in a 3D revolving list of logos in much the same way as you do albums in iTunes. The quality of the streams in terms of video and sound is usually first class (although can vary as evidenced above) and expanding it to full screen mode usually retains excellent quality.

The latest version has added several handy new features. Not only have more interesting channels been added – The United Nations TV Channel and UNHCR Channel – but you can now tweet directly from Livestation. Simply add your Twitter username and password and a special screen grab function allows you to post images of what you’re watching at any time. The search function has also been significantly enhanced allowing you to filter results by Premium Partner, Viewer Added and Free Partner.

On the downside, the chat function is still sparsely populated. You might find that many channels simply have no one to chat to. There’s also no way to record programs which I’d like to see in the next release. Mac PPC users are also out of luck as the latest version doesn’t support them.

You get more tips on how to get the most out of it from the Livestation blog. Livestation is available for download on both Windows and Mac.

Rovio to release Angry Birds “Rio”

Angry Birds fans will be pleased to hear that developers Rovio have announced that it is to create a version of the game based on the upcoming animated movie “Rio” due for US release in mid-April.

The “twist” to the hugely popular original game is that the original flock is kidnapped and taken to Rio where they then escape and seek to help their friends – two macaws named Blu and Jewel who will be the stars of the 20th Century Fox film.

Consisting of 45 levels with more available via automatic updates, the game will initially be released on smart-phones and tablets. However, since the original has also recently been released on Mac and Windows, don’t be surprised to see more platform releases if it takes off.

If you can’t wait until then, you can find video previews of the game here.

Microsoft finally launches Office 2011 trial for Mac

Three months after it first hit the stores, Microsoft have finally launched a free trial of Office 2011 for Mac. The 30 day trial is fully functional and gives users a long overdue opportunity to decide whether they are willing to invest up to $280 on the full version. I tested the beta version back in April and you can see my in-depth review of the final release here.

Many Mac users will ask why has it taken Microsoft so long to release a trial version of the popular office suite. Is it just Microsoft being typically awkward with Apple users or some kind of marketing ploy? The reasons behind the seemingly belated release are unknown, but if you haven’t tried it yet and are still on Office 2008 it’s definitely worth taking a look at. Office 2011 is a far more polished, OS X-integrated suite with the massive bonus that you can now use Microsoft Outlook.

Wayback Machine releases a new interface

Is there any way to know how Google, Microsoft, Apple or your own website looked like a few years ago? The answer is Wayback Machine, a kind of online time machine that works like an archive for the Web, storing snapshots of websites since 1996 up until now.

Wayback Machine is a lot of fun to browse, but the interface is a bit off-putting. It displays all available snapshots, organized by years, in an almost endless side-scrolling table. Well, that was until now. The unofficial Internet archive has just released a new version with a much better-looking interface. Results are now displayed in a calendar that fits your screen just right and is much easier to browse.

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