Daily Roundup: SXSW wrap-up, touring the Sony Archives in Tokyo and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Touring the Sony Archives in Tokyo
From robot dogs, to Walkman Cassette players, to, yes, a golden guinea pig, Sony’s Archive building outlines 60 years of the company’s history. Read on as Engadget’s Matt Smith travels to Tokyo and visits some of Sony’s most fundamental products during a tour of the facility.
Life in 140 characters or less: My first eight years on Twitter
Back in 2006, Engadget’s Nicole Lee wasn’t sure “tweeting” would ever catch on. The social network’s early days were simple, full of seemingly boring conversations and awkward third-person updates. Much to her surprise, the charm of Twitter prevailed in the test of time.
Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 review
Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 stands just a little taller that its predecessor, the Galaxy Tab 3, packing a full HD display. And while the Tab Pro 8.4 does have a sleek, premium feel, its seven hour battery life leaves us wanting. But if you’re not worried about power, this $400 tablet is a worthy alternative to the iPad mini.
SXSW 2014 wrap-up: Snoop Dogg, stun copter, Snowden, Mario Kart and more!
SXSW 2014 was full of awesome gear like IBM’s Watson-powered food truck and Chaotic Moon’s stun copter, but today we’re saying farewell. It’s not too late to catch up on the action, though. Check out some of our favorite highlight photos from the event right here.
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Filed under: Misc
DotEmu Launching ‘Little Big Adventure’ March 25th (a.k.a Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure)
The company behind bringing back classics like R-Type and Another World, DotEmu, have been hard at work on their next game to return from the ashes. The legendary RPG Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure, will be making a comeback on March 27th. Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure was first released in 1994 by Frederick Raynal and was a pretty big success.
The game will make its triumphant return on iOS and Android but under a different name. The rebranded game will be known as Little Big Adventure. Check out the trailer for the upcoming release.
If you remember this game then I am sure you will be all over picking it up at launch. If you are about as clueless as I was in 1994, I was only 12, then you might want to know a little bit more.
In Little Big Adventure, you play as Twinsen, a young soon-to-be-hero living on Citadel Island in a world ruled by the dictator Dr. FunFrock. You’ve been having strange dreams in which your planet is about to be destroyed. These dreams don’t make Dr. FunFrock particularly happy, and he locks you away in an insane asylum. As Twinsen, you’ll need to escape from your cell and discover your incredible destiny as a descendant of a long line of magicians in charge of protecting your planet’s secret!
LBA boasts and epic story, challenging puzzles and tons of character dialog. I can only image how large the game file must be. Be on the look out March 27th for the games release. We will mark it on the calendar and let you know when we see it.
TIP: Password protect your purchases through Google Play
In the wake of news that Google is facing a class-action lawsuit due to unauthorised charges accumulated through in-app purchases without parents permission. The lawsuit has been filed against Google in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by a New York resident, Llana Imber-Gluck, whose child spent $68.95 on the Marvel Run Jump Smash! game without her permission.
You can help avoid such a situation by password protecting your Google Play in order to prevent unauthorised purchases.
- Open the Google Play Store app.
- Touch Menu > Settings (depending on your device, your Menu icon may look different).
- Under “User controls,” check the box next to Password – Use password to restrict purchases.
- Enter your password when prompted.
After checking the Password box, you will be asked to enter your password before making the next purchase on Google Play. After signing in to your account, you will be able to make purchases on Google Play for 30 minutes without having to re-enter your password. After the 30 minutes has expired, you’ll have to re-authenticate by entering your Google account password.
Taking necessary steps to prevent transactions from being carried out with your consent will help protect against any unexpected charges arising from purchases on your account, especially on a shared device.
The post TIP: Password protect your purchases through Google Play appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Eddy Cue on iTunes Festival: ‘It’s All About the Artists and the Music’
For several years, Apple has put on a month-long concert series in London called the iTunes Festival. This year’s series included performances from a number of artists, across a variety of genres, including Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Elton John, Ludovico Einaudi and many more.
Even with the huge success of the festival in London, Apple was hesitant to put on a similar series in the United States. This month, however, at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, Apple presented an iTunes Festival with a number of different artists including Willie Nelson, Soundgarden and Coldplay. Apple journalist Jim Dalrymple sat down with Apple’s iTunes chief Eddy Cue to discuss the concert and why it took so long to bring it to the States.
“I wasn’t sure we would ever bring it to the U.S.,” Cue said. “We have something so special at the festival in London that you had the feeling that if you did it anywhere else, it just wasn’t going to be quite good enough. You have to have the right place. The combination of Austin, which has a culture of music, and this venue is fantastic — it’s made for music.”
Cue went on to note that Apple is “not trying to pitch our products”, instead the company wants to focus on “the emotion of the artists and the fans.”
Dalrymple says that it’s not just the fans who like to enjoy the music — after playing its opening performance, the band Imagine Dragons went offstage and then sat in the balcony to watch Coldplay, an atypical thing for a major musical act. Apple doesn’t choose huge stadiums for its musical events, though it could probably sell out. Instead, Apple chooses small venues like the 2750-seat Moody Theater in Austin that it used at SXSW. It also gives away tickets for free, allowing all fans an equal opportunity to see their favorite acts, regardless of their ability to pay for tickets.
He also mentions the production behind the iTunes Festival, saying that the sound quality is the best he’s ever heard at a live event. With concerts being streamed live around the world on iPhones, iPads and the Apple TV, quality is important. Cue says that Apple takes a lot of pride in the iTunes Festival because the company has “such an admiration for what the artists do.”
Apple updated both the iTunes Festival iOS app and the companion Apple TV channel ahead of this week’s iTunes Festival. On-demand streams of the Austin concerts will be available for a limited time, while concerts will also stream live through Saturday.
Tonight, Isaiah Rashad, ScHoolboy Q and Kendrick Lamar will appear, with Capital Cities, Band of Skulls and Soundgarden on stage on Thursday. Friday will see G.R.L, Zedd and Pitbull, with Mickey Guyton, Willie Nelson and Keith Urban wrapping up the festival on Saturday. The full lineup is also available on the iTunes Festival website.
iTunes Festival can be downloaded free from the App Store. [Direct Link]
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Google Wallet Adds “Orders” in Latest Update [Download]
It is that magical day of the week when we usually see some Google apps get updates. Sometimes they are just bug fixes and other times you get a completely overhauled app. With today’s Google Wallet update you get a whole new feature that should help out many people who order things and use Wallet to pay for them.
Inside the Google Wallet app you and activate a new “Orders” features. Once activated, it will allow you to see your various orders and see the shipping details of each. It cross syncs into your Gmail account and will pull the order receipts for you. Google has also set things up with various U.S. shipping partners so that when an update to your package is pushed, you will get a notification through Wallet.
Looks good to me. As always, the update is rolling out over the “next week” and is only for Android 4.0+ (US Only). If you don’t want to wait then you can always head over to GappsEarly and grab the apk right now and side load it.
Google Wallet – Play Store
Google Wallet APK location – Gappsearly.com
Via Google Commerce
Apple now warns users of in-app purchase settings in iOS 7.1
Sure, Apple’s legal scuffle over in-app purchases made by misbehaving youngsters has ended, but the firm’s added a precautionary measure to avoid additional costly mishaps. Among other changes included in iOS 7.1, Cook and Co. snuck in an alert after micro-transactions that tells users similar payments can be made for the next 15 minutes without entering their password. Of course, the notice also directs the wielder of the iOS device to adjust the restriction if it’s not to their liking. The 15-minute policy is far from new, but the message is likely a welcome — albeit tiny — addition for parents with shopping spree-prone offspring.
Source: CNET
Engadget HD Podcast 389 – 3.12.14
If the Titanfall release had coincided with the start of March Madness, there probably wouldn’t have been a podcast this week. As it is, we had to tear Richard away from his Xbox One to help Ben review the HD details that have been pouring in. There’s a constant shuffle of content, ISP deals and updates to go through, as well as a certain monstrous LED-lit HD display to ogle. Your hosts leverage their experience and know-how to help speed you through the week’s news, leaving some extra time to watch some TV. We hear Neil deGrasse Tyson and Seth MacFarlane’s reboot of Cosmos has gotten some great buzz and rated an introduction by the POTUS. As always, there’s plenty of HD to go around, so head on down to the streaming links to join us for this weeks episode.
Hosts: Richard Lawler, Ben Drawbaugh
Producer: Jon Turi
Hear the podcast:
05:35 – Department of Justice comes out against Aereo’s TV streaming in Supreme Court case
09:41 – Aereo’s internet TV service in Denver and Salt Lake City shuts down today
11:07 – Aereo’s not for sale … not now, anyway
13:18 – Dish wins all the wireless spectrum in the FCC’s latest auction
16:01 – Vudu will soon let you send movies to your Chromecast
18:19 – Chrome beta for Android lets you send web videos to your Chromecast
19:35 – Apple TV update hides unwatched channels with ease
23:14 – Jacksonville Jaguars get the world’s biggest LED-lit HD displays, little else
27:55 – Sharp’s near-4K TVs are now available, starting at $2,500
29:03 – Verizon and DirecTV’s internet TV hopes perk up thanks to Dish, Disney
35:51 – ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ TV series is a Netflix original — but only outside the US
39:41 – BBC makes popular TV channel ‘online only’ to cut costs
43:19 – Got Comcast? You can watch House of Cards without a Netflix subscription
45:39 – Netflix reportedly reaches another Comcast-style agreement, but with a Norwegian ISP
47:31 – Amazon Prime Instant Video adds Orphan Black as a streaming exclusive
50:05 – Cosmos debuts tonight with a special message from Barack Obama
52:06 – Must See HDTV for the week of March 10th: Cosmos, Vice, F1 and Titanfall
Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[RSS – AAC] Enhanced feed, subscribe to this with iTunes.
[RSS – MP3] Add the Engadget HD Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator.
Contact the podcast:
Threes! addictive number game available on Google Play
The popular addictive number puzzle game Threes! has been released for Android on the Google Play Store. Threes! involves matching numbers in a puzzle which will be sure to test your mathematic skills.
The App has been ported from iOS by Hidden Variable Studios and remains the same price at $1.99. The developers of Three! published the following infographic showing the various statistics of the game that give an interesting insight into the popular puzzle game.
The current high score for Threes! is 808,989 from user chu121su12 so if you think you can beat that, click on the link below and grab your copy of Threes! now.
The post Threes! addictive number game available on Google Play appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Fiverr arrives in gorgeous new Android app experience
The team over at Fiverr have just released a great looking new App for Android which will allow users to browse gigs anytime, anywhere.
If you’re not familiar with Fiverr, it’s a place where talented users offer their services with anything from designing graphic logos to promoting your social account, starting at five bucks!
Fiverr for Android is part of our ongoing commitment to bring you the best Fiverr experience possible. Mobile will continue to be a major priority and this is only the beginning of the great things to come.
Up until now, the mobile experience of Fiverr on Android was pretty bleak and non-enjoyable, but with the dedicated App this is all about to change. You’ll be able to search the marketplace for gigs, and also receive real-time notifications for any messages that are received from your buyers/sellers.
Check out a video of it in action below.
The post Fiverr arrives in gorgeous new Android app experience appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Pioneer Working on Aftermarket CarPlay Compatibility
Pioneer Electronics, a company that manufacturers many in-car electronic systems, is looking into the possibility of implementing CarPlay compatibility with both its existing and future products. The news comes courtesy of a Pioneer customer service representative and was relayed to MacRumors via a reader.
Introduced in early March, CarPlay is Apple’s iOS vehicle integration system that allows an iPhone to take over the in-dash display of a car, providing Siri-controlled voice access to features like Maps, phone functions, messages, and music.
While the service initially debuted solely in new cars from Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo, it appears CarPlay could be introduced into a wide range of existing vehicles through Pioneer, which offers aftermarket navigation and audio systems for cars.
Because Apple has thus far only announced CarPlay partnerships with specific car manufacturers for new 2014 models, it has been unclear whether the service is compatible with older vehicles. CarPlay does, however, work in conjunction with BlackBerry’s QNX Car Platform, which is used to power many existing in-car infotainment systems installed in a wide variety of automobiles, suggesting aftermarket solutions are indeed a possibility.
Mercedes-Benz, one of Apple’s official CarPlay partners, has also indicated that it is working on aftermarket installations, but Pioneer’s potential solution is more promising as it would be available in a wider range of existing vehicles.
Apple has officially announced deals with several different vehicle manufacturers including Honda, Ford, GM, Jaguar, and Hyundai, in addition to Volvo, Ferrari, and Mercedes-Benz, but it appears the company is also striking deals with accessory manufacturers like Pioneer, suggesting CarPlay could be widely distributed to vehicle owners over the course of the next few months.
(Thanks, Matt!)
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