Category: News

Star Wars Pinball out now for iOS

Zen Studio’s Star Wars Pinball is now available for iOS (iPad and iPhone). The game comes with one table, and there are in-app purchases for additional tables. Zen Studios has made a great name for itself with Pinball FX and Zen Pinball, so it’s great to see it bring Star Wars tables to iOS.

All the tables in Star Wars Pinball are new and original – these are not versions of classic branded tables from the 80s. Like Zen Pinball, Star Wars Pinball mixes great feeling physics with cool effects that you can’t see in real life.

Zen Studios’ Mel Kirk said the toughest thing about the Star Wars franchise was picking what to use. ‘The universe is so big, there are so many memorable characters and moments – it was a challenge to simply pick what to use in this first set of tables.’

The game is full of samples and sound effects that will be immediately familiar to any fan of Star Wars. Check out some screenshots below.

Continue reading “Star Wars Pinball out now for iOS”

New look Pinterest rolling out

Pinterest is getting a face-lift. The increasingly popular social network for collecting the things you love announced its new look in a blog post today. Lead Product Designer Jason Wilson explained how testing and feedback began in January, and now everyone can see the results as they are rolled out.

The new layout makes using the Pinterest homepage easier. You can now browse Pins from the same board, Pins from the same source and People who pinned this also pinned’. These are all designed to make discovery even easier on Pinterest.

According to the blog post, one of the aims of the redesign is to stop you losing your place when you’re exploring.

Read our review of Pinterest.

Samsung releases tons of first-party apps with the Galaxy S4

Samsung Galaxy S4 keynote

In possibly the most awkward keynote in the history of keynotes, Samsung revealed its newest phone, the Galaxy S4, and tons of new first-party applications.

The main takeaway from Samsung’s presentation is that it has its sights squarely on Apple and Google. There’s going to be an AirPlay and iMessage clone, but there were also a handful of innovations that Samsung showed off at the event. Let’s see what the Korean company showed off. Continue reading “Samsung releases tons of first-party apps with the Galaxy S4”

Twitter planning on launching a music discovery app this month

twitter iconTwitter purchased We Are Hunted, a music discovery service, last year and now it plans on releasing an app that uses its technology. According to CNET, an unnamed source has told the website that Twitter plans on launching an iOS application called Twitter Music by the end of this month. More evidence can be found in the #NowPlaying hashtags of We Are Hunted employees.

This is no doubt an ambitious project undertaken by Twitter but it won’t be doing it alone. Twitter will be piggybacking content from SoundCloud, the music hosting and streaming site. SoundCloud is a great platform for artists to put up and share music so it’s no surprise Twitter chose SoundCloud as the backbone of its Twitter Music app.

Twitter Music will be the first step that Twitter takes to becoming a full-fledged media company, competing with the likes of Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody. Twitter is already the home of thousands of musicians so it can leverage them for Twitter Music.

At the core of Twitter Music are song recommendations. The app will recommend artists for you based on who you currently follow, which means users will have to be following artists in order for this to work properly. Media will be displayed within tweets with a fully integrated SoundCloud player. It looks pretty slick.

While Twitter has 65 million active users, it’s still unknown whether people want or need Twitter Music as a service when there are already great music discovery apps like Spotify and Pandora. There is still plenty we don’t know like how Twitter will monetize Twitter Music. All we can do is wait and see.

Source: CNET

Hands on with the new Facebook News Feed

Facebook announced a revamp of its News Feed yesterday and today we have a hands on for you. There are plenty of changes to the News Feed, which can be confusing at first. Here’s what it’s like to use the updated News Feed.

This is a huge redesign and will change much of the core interface of Facebook. Will users adopt it with open arms or will there be an uproar to bring the old News Feed back? Let’s find out.

If you signed up to receive the News Feed update, you should be getting it soon. Once you do, you will be greeted to a series of helpful tutorials about what’s changed. The first thing you’ll notice is that the apps, pages, and your chat list have been combined into one column on the left.

facebook news feed sidebar Continue reading “Hands on with the new Facebook News Feed”

Facebook’s new News Feed isn’t just for users, it’s for advertisers

Facebook’s reveal of its new updated News Feed brings a much needed change to the interface of the social network. Each new iteration to the user interface adds another “necessary” feature to bring more content before your eyes. The previously announced Timeline update in addition to the updated News Feed, changes the interface of Facebook to focus on visual rather than written content.

The example Facebook used was Pinterest, which is focused on curating content with images through different user-created “pin boards.” Facebook is looking to do the same with its classified feeds. You will be able to specify the content that you want to browse, but Facebook is smart to aggregate your information and compile it with your friends’. Facebook mentions that News Feed will display events, which it already does in the feed, but now it sounds like the company will be able to push promoted events in your feed that correspond to the specific category. Continue reading “Facebook’s new News Feed isn’t just for users, it’s for advertisers”

New patch for Crysis 3 released

Patch 1.2 for Crytek’s technically impressive Crysis 3 has been released for PC. It’s a very PC specific patch, too, with the fixes all concerning problems that don’t occur on consoles.

Bigger changes will be coming soon on all platforms, with ‘Data Patch 3‘. This includes tweaks and fixes based on user feedback and Crytek’s observations, to improve the balance of the game. So some weapons will be slightly altered to make the game fairer.

Read on for the patch notes.

Continue reading “New patch for Crysis 3 released”

Facebook’s new News Feed

Down in Menlo Park, CA, Facebook presented its latest update to the Facebook platform. Previously, the company revealed Timeline and the original News Feed as improvements to the usability of Facebook across desktop and mobile platforms. As the changes impact the massive population of Facebook users, the company is smart to present their new features and design in small parts. Last week, a Timeline update was announced without a release date.

Today’s announcement focused on the News Feed. While a great tool to view less important updates from friends, it quickly became saturated with content that was irrelevant to users.

Here’s how Facebook is going to fix that problem.

Continue reading “Facebook’s new News Feed”

Facebook news feed event rumors

Facebook logoFacebook will hold a press event tomorrow in Menlo Park, California to announce something about its news feed. Here’s what we think they’ll announce at the event.

A feature and facelift for the Facebook news feed is much needed as it was updated last in 2011. Josh Constine of Tech Crunch speculates that Facebook may introduce “content-specific news feeds,” which means users will be able to switch between feeds for different content. Currently there are different types of content feeds but are buried within Facebook’s interface. The new news feed could yield better exploration of different feeds like Music and Photos.

More evidence for richer content in the news feed comes straight from the mouth of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

“One of the product design principles that we’ve always had is we want the organic content to be of the same basic types of formats as paid content, right? So, historically, advertisers want really rich things like big pictures or videos and we haven’t provided those things historically. But, one of the things that we’ve done in the last year is you’ve seen the organic news feed product that consumers use moving towards bigger pictures, richer media and I think you’ll continue to see it go in that direction.”

Redesigning the news feed would be beneficial for users and advertisers alike; users can find more content and advertisers can provide more relevant ads.

facebook pages feed

Bigger photos and a more eye-catching interface are undoubtedly going to be a focus at tomorrow’s event. Facebook’s rival social network, Google+, just updated its users profile pages with a ridiculously large cover photo and a card-style redesign. This shouldn’t be surprising as many companies are focusing on a more media rich interface. Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Windows RT has big, beautiful animated icons. Flipboard turns webpages into a digital and personalized magazine with big images and easy to read text.

Facebook could also introduce more gestures for the news feed on mobile devices. Currently, iPad users can swipe down on a photo to minimize it.

Nothing’s for certain but we will be at the Facebook event tomorrow so stay tuned!

In the mean time, let us know what you think Facebook will reveal tomorrow.

Source: TechCrunch

SimCity launch plagued with issues

EA origin iconThe much anticipated SimCity is out today in North America but things haven’t gone very smoothly. Users first reported trouble downloading the game and accessing the game’s servers. Electronic Arts has responded and acknowledged the issue, stating that they’re working on a fix.

SimCity fans have taken to Twitter to voice their discontent about all the issues they’ve been facing. One of the biggest gripes that fans have had with the SimCity launch, was the inability to pre-load the game prior to the release date because developers wanted to work until the last minute polishing the game. Valve’s Steam, Origin’s biggest rival, has had this ability for years. Users can “pre-load” a game so that it’s ready to play when the embargo has been lifted.

Fans are frustrated with EA as a connection to its servers is required to play the game, leaving many SimCity fans out in the cold. One user even reported waiting a full 8 hours with no success connecting to EA’s servers. If you’re one of the users affected, let EA know via Twitter or the support forums but in the mean time, check out our preview of SimCity.

simcity 5 night

Source: Ars Technica