News - Softonic English

Pre E3 screenshots released of The Elder Scrolls Online

New screenshots have emerged for The Elder Scrolls Online, Bethesda and ZeniMax Online’s highly anticipated massively multiplayer online role-playing game. We expect to see much more of the game at this year’s E3 in Los Angeles.

The new images show more of the variety we’ll see on the vast continent of Tamriel. There’s the beautiful deserts of Hammerfall, the port of Daggerfall, as well as Aldcroft and Stormhaven. The screenshots also show a battle with two giant snakes.

We don’t know a great deal about the story in The Elder Scrolls Online, but it’s set around a 1000 years before the events of Skyrim, and chronicles three factions fighting for control of Cyrodil, the capital of the empire. The game will feature both third and first person views.

Check out the rest of the screenshots below.

[Source: Gamespot]

Opera Next 15 released

Opera has announced the release of Opera Next 15, available for Windows and Mac. Despite not mentioning it in its blog post, the biggest news is the abandonment of the rendering engine Presto, in favor of WebKit, the engine of Chrome and Safari.

For better or worse, Opera Next 15 now looks closer to Chrome than ever before. There’s a unified search and address bar, which is quickly becoming the standard among browsers. There are also new configuration options. The Opera Mail client has been split off from the desktop browser, and can now be downloaded as a standalone app, again for Windows or Mac.

The move to WebKit will be short-lived, as shortly after Opera announced the change, Google itself announced the development of its own web browser engine Blink. This will be used in future versions of Chrome and Opera too.

Opera Next 15 has some other improvements. Speed Dial has been cleaned up, and now looks much brighter. There is a new feature called Stash, where you can store pages temporarily. Opera describes this as a ‘back pocket for your browser.’ Discover is like an Opera home page delivering curated content from a single place, with 13 categories and 30 languages.

Download Opera Next for Windows or Mac.
[Source: Opera Blog]

New Euro Truck Simulator 2 DLC screenshots released

SCS Software has released new screenshots for the first Euro Truck Simulator 2 downloadable extension pack, which promises a big map expansion, covering the rest of Poland, plus Slovakia and parts of Hungary.

The eastward expansion of the game, according to the developer blog, is out of respect for the incredible popularity of the game in Poland. SCS says it will look at other parts of Europe like Spain, Russia or Scandinavia once this DLC is completed. There is still no release date for this Euro Truck Simulator 2 expansion pack, but it will be announced ‘soon’.

As well as an expanded map, the expansion pack will feature ‘more objects, new objects, improved forests with larger density,’ and improve game speed on average machines. The original Euro Truck Simulator 2 will still be patched and updated too, so you will not be forced to buy the DLC pack to get the game running as well as possible.

Check below the break for a full gallery of Euro Truck Simulator 2 DLC screenshots.

Continue reading “New Euro Truck Simulator 2 DLC screenshots released”

Need for Speed Rivals launching this year on current and next-gen consoles [video]

Electronic Arts has revealed the next game in the Need for Speed franchise: Need for Speed Rivals. The game will launch this year on current generation consoles and PC on November 19th and sometime later this year for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Fans of Need for Speed Most Wanted will be happy to know that developer Criterion Games will be collaborating on Need for Speed Rivals. The new game will let players choose between racing as street racers or cops. Both sides will allow you to rank up within the game, unlocking more cars, customization options, and pursuit/escape technology unlockables. Players can look forward to an open world full of challenges and collectables to unlock, much like Most Wanted and Burnout Paradise.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Need for Speed Rivals is the ability for friends to instantaneously drop-in and drop-out of your game. This feature will be called AllDrive and will let your friends appear in your personal, open world to play with or against you. There will also be multiplayer, of course, where players can compete on live leaderboards and challenge other players.

While this game will be released on current-gen consoles, the Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, Nintendo fans will be left out in the cold. EA announced last week that it had no Wii U titles in development.

[Source: Polygon]

Google Hangouts Easter Eggs lets you change background colors, release ponies

Google’s Hangouts messaging app already includes 850 different emoji icons but what if you want something a little different? Well you’re in luck since the engineers at Google have built in some hilarious Easter Eggs into the app.

To activate these, simply refer to the chart above. These commands are simple with a “/” followed by the command. For example, “/ponystream” unleashes a torrent of “My Little Pony” looking characters across your chat window.”/bikeshed” will change your chat background to a random color.

There’s also the famous “KONAMI code,” which lets you change your background to an cartoon landscape. My personal favorite is “/pitchforks,” which unleashes an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob. To get rid of the Easter Eggs, simply close and re-open the chat window.

Unfortunately these Easter Eggs don’t work on the mobile version of Hangouts. If you want to try them out, you’ll have to use the web or Chrome app.

[Source: Moritz Tolxdorff (Google+)]

Yahoo! press event Monday, may announce $1 billion Tumblr acquisition

Yesterday, All Things D reported that Tumblr and Yahoo! may be working on a partnership or acquisition. With Tumblr’s latest valuation at over $800 million, there are rumors that the acquisition would cost close to $1 billion. Today, CNBC tweeted that Yahoo! would be holding a “product-related news event” in New York City on Monday. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer will be speaking at the event.

Yahoo! has been aggressively reinventing itself with all new Android and iOS apps and a strategic partnership with Twitter. The acquisition of Tumblr could further Yahoo!’s evolution by providing the company with a new demographic: users 18-24 years of age. Yahoo! CFO, Ken Goldman, said that the company needed to be “cool again.” Goldman goes on saying “One of our challenges is we have had an aging demographic. Part of it is going to be just visibility again in making ourselves cool, which we got away from for a couple of years.”

Yahoo! seems to be on a buying spree, with reports that the company is in talks to purchase Hulu. Recently, Yahoo! tried to buy the video streaming site, Dailymotion, but that deal fell through.

The event on Monday will take place at 5PM EST.

[Source: All Things D | The Verge | Image: Lewis Leong]

Windows 8.1, Google Hangouts and GT6 in the Softonic Minute

Google Maps, Windows 8.1, Google Hangouts and Gran Turismo 6 in the Softonic Minute

Here’s your Friday dose of this week’s top news in the world of software.

<!–
By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C
found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/.
–>

<!–
This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon
as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after
the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line.
–>
brightcove.createExperiences();

Windows 8.1 has a release date. Microsoft has confirmed that on June 26, you’ll be able to download the first version. It will be a completely free update and could include features that users have been demanding since day one, like a start button.

Gran Turismo 6 confirmed. The driving simulator will go on sale at the end of the year for PS3. An official trailer has been released and this July, we’ll see an official demo.

Google reinvents Google Maps. Significant improvements were presented during the Google I/O developer’s conference and include the best features of Google Earth and a recommendations feature. The design is notably better and focuses on providing information that’s of use to you.

Google Hangouts can be downloaded. A new threat to Whatsapp and LINE was one of the major announcements at Google I/O. A multiplatform messenger that spans all the Google services, it also offers group videocalls. All that, and free.

For all these stories and more, click here.

Hands on with Google Hangouts

At Google I/O 2013, Google revealed its solution for the fragmentation of its messaging services. Before Hangouts was announced, users had to use multiple services like Google Talk and Google+ Messenger, along with Google Voice if they made calls. Google Hangouts was previously the name of Google+’s video conferencing feature, but now the messaging services are all integrated into one app.

Released as an app for Android, iOS, web, and Chrome extension, Hangouts streamlines chat into one simple service. You sign in and the service syncs to all of your devices. One of the best parts is that Hangouts recognizes which device your using and only sends one notification so you don’t get them on multiple devices at once.

Hangouts is a much needed update to chat with Google contacts. One of the best things about the release of Hangouts is that Android users can now chat directly with iOS users without having to use Google+ Messenger.

But Hangouts is late to the messaging game with competitors like Facebook Messenger, KakaoTalk, WhatsApp, and numerous other chat apps offering more features than Hangouts, like free voice calls and stickers.

Chrome and Hangouts Extension

Hangouts is available for use inside the Google+ and Gmail sites. It works just like Google Talk and Google+ Messenger except it’s one service instead of two. If you ever used Google Talk or G+ Messenger inside a browser, you will get the update to Hangouts automatically.

Google also released a Chrome extension for Hangouts, allowing you to chat with friends without having to have an open up Google+ or Gmail. Hangouts connects to the service and contains persistent chat windows. The chat windows will sit on top of other windows, but you can change this in the options. You can see who you’re talking to in your taskbar, but when friends send messages, the chat window will pop up with a notification and sound by default to notify you.

The extension also works in Chrome OS, but it works more like a standalone chat app than extension. Notifications for chats come from the Notifications tray in Chrome OS and they contain the user photo and the message. The Hangouts extension on Chrome OS are different from web and Windows, but they are equally simple to interact with.

Android and iOS

After Google released Hangouts in the Google Play Store, I looked at how Hangouts would replace the Google Talk app. Looking in the app manager, I saw that Hangouts was integrating to replace the Talk services on my Android phone. It took a couple minutes, but Hangouts replaced all the services previously associated with Talk.

Using Hangouts on Android is very streamlined and features two main screens: one for current Hangout chats and the other showing a photo selection of contacts and frequent contacts. It integrates Gmail and Google+ contacts together and also pulls other contact information from my phone. The problem with importing my phone info is that it doesn’t show a single contact with multiple accounts as one contact, but displays each individual separately, resulting in a messy and cluttered contacts list.

Google Hangouts on iOS has a similar interface, but doesn’t support emoji like on Android. It’s still supports the core actions for messaging and photo sharing, but feels behind the Android version in terms of usability.

It’s also a universal app with iPad support, but the results of messaging on iPad aren’t as successful on the larger screen. As you can see, there’s a lot of wasted space.

Good start but room for improvement

Hangouts is Google’s first step in trying solve fragmentation of its messaging platforms. It doesn’t support Google Voice or SMS, though those are expected to come in future updates. Google is late to messaging. Google needs to spend time to quickly improve the service

It’s already easier to communicate with friends who use Google services and cross platform support is excellent with intelligent notifications. It’s superior on the web and Android right now, but iOS should get the same attention for bigger updates unless Apple doesn’t want Hangouts to compete with iMessage.

Android and web users don’t have much of a choice with Hangouts replacing Talk, but it’s a great replacement with lots of potential. It just isn’t there yet.

Twitter releases app for Google Glass

Google Glass is getting a bit more useful today with the release of Twitter for Google’s eyewear. Users will be able to share photos, update, and get notifications from Twitter.

Photo sharing is straightforward; simply take a photo and use Twitter to share. Tweets will show up with the hashtag, #throughglass with a link to your photo.

Twitter for Google Glass users will also be able to get notifications for tweets, mentions, and direct messages. Users can reply to message by voice with Glass. There are also options to reply, retweet, and favorite Tweets that show up in your feed.

Glass owners can head over to google.com/myglass to turn on Twitter.

[Source: Twitter]

Yahoo! updates homepage news feed with Twitter integration

Yahoo! is partnering with Twitter to offer select tweets within Yahoo!’s news feed featured on its homepage. With this new deal, Twitter will offer up relevant and personalized tweets in Yahoo!’s news feed.

This announcement makes sense as Yahoo! tries to reinvent itself as a mobile focused company. Last month, Yahoo! launched completely redesigned apps for Android and iOS, which featured Summly, a technology that trims stories down into digestible summaries. The new applications also offered customizable newsfeeds for its users so only relevant stories will be shown. Twitter integration is one more service that allows users to create custom streams.

The roll out will happen over the next few days to all US desktop and mobile web users.

[Source: Yahoo!]