Titanfall Creators in Talks With Aspyr, Mac Version May Be in the Works [Mac Blog]
Titanfall, the multiplayer first-person shooter developed by Respawn Entertainment exclusively for Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, may be coming to the Mac in the future.
In a post on Twitter last night (via Polygon), Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampella said the company is in talks with Mac game publisher Aspyr over possibly bringing Titanfall to Mac. “We are talking to Aspyr,” he told a fan asking about a Mac version. “They should do it.”
Back in February Zampella expressed similar sentiments, telling fans that he would like to see a Mac version happen after the game launched for Xbox and PC on March 11.
In Titanfall, players fight in six-vs-six online multiplayer matches, controlling mech-style Titans and pilots to complete team-based objectives. The game won more than 60 awards when it was revealed at E3 and has received largely positive reviews.
Crafted by one of the co-creators of Call of Duty and other key developers behind the Call of Duty franchise, Titanfall is among the most highly anticipated games of 2014, having been shrouded in mystery for nearly three years. The visionaries at Respawn have drawn inspiration from their proven experience in first-person action gaming, and are building on that pedigree by taking a new approach to game design and creating an all-new universe with Titanfall.
Aspyr has published multiple major gaming titles for the Mac, including Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands 2, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and more. There is no word on when a Mac version of Titanfall might be released.
     |
Office 365 Personal offers cheaper access to Microsoft’s productivity suite
Micorosoft’s Office is still pretty ubiquitous, but it’s facing challenges from a number of cheaper (often free) competitors that have quite a head start in the cloud. Office 365 Personal is an attempt to ward of some of those would be usurpers by delivering 20GB of Skydrive storage and 60 minutes per-month of Skype calls along with the standard Office apps for $70 a year or $7 a month. The Personal package gives you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access on one desktop computer (be it Windows or Mac) and one tablet as well as their web app counterparts. The Home Premium option, which costs $100 per-year or $10 per-month will remain, though it will be renamed simply Office 365 Home. The more expensive option give you the ability to install the suite on up to five computers as well as access from a smartphone. The Personal subscription will launch sometime this spring, though Microsoft hasn’t given an exact date just yet.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Office Blog
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition arrives on Verizon for $600 on contract, $700 without
The focus right now might be on Samsung’s Pro tablets, but the South Korean company also has a little something called the Note 10.1 2014 Edition. Introduced back last summer, this LTE-ready slate is available on Verizon starting today, featuring a sharp 10.1-inch, 2,560 x 1,600 display, 32GB of internal storage (up to 64GB via microSD), a 8,220mAh battery and Android 4.3. Naturally, you can also expect to see a lot of TouchWiz, with features like Multi Window and My Magazine — hey, gotta use that S Pen sometime, right? Just be prepared for your wallet to take a hit: Verizon is selling the Note 10.1 2014 Edition at $600 with a two-year contract. And if you’re not interested in signing on the dotted line, then you’ll have to pay $700 if you wanna take home the tablet, no strings attached.
Filed under: Tablets, Samsung, Verizon
Source: Verizon
Google Drive’s reduced rates make cloud storage even more affordable
Google Drive has been the cloud repository of choice for many people since it launched back in 2012, and now the company is dropping prices to make it even more attractive. While users will still get 15GB for free, the 100GB package now costs $1.99 a month, down from $4.99. What’s more, the 1TB option has received more than a 50 percent price cut: it now costs $9.99 per month, a big drop from its previous rate of $49.99. Need even more room? 10TB+ plans start at $100 a month. Best of all, if you’re already paying for Drive storage, you’ll automatically be converted to a better plan at no additional cost and the storage still spans Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.
All told, compared to Dropbox, at least, Google’s new rates are quite tempting: Dropbox offers just 2GB for free, and charges $10 a month for 100GB. Business plans, meanwhile, start at $15 per user per month. The first two tiers do allow for added space for free based on referrals, one gigabyte at a time.
Filed under: Storage, Internet, Google
Source: Google Drive Blog
T-Mobile to upgrade all of its 2G markets to LTE by mid-2015
Happy birthday, T-Mobile LTE! It’s been exactly one year since the UnCarrier launched its next-gen network, and it’s taking advantage of the occasion by announcing further expansion. T-Mobile plans to flip the LTE switch in every market that currently has a 2G/EDGE connection — in other words, everywhere else on the coverage map that isn’t enjoying fast data right now. While the massive expansion is scheduled to be “substantially” complete by the middle of next year, many customers will notice a change before then, as 50 percent of the expansion is expected to take place by the end of 2014.
At first blush, this sounds like a rather lofty goal for T-Mobile — its current LTE deployment is nothing to laugh at, but the fast speeds often go away as soon as you leave metro areas. A nationwide rollout of this magnitude over a period of just 15 months is rather impressive for the fourth-largest operator in the US. At least part of this rollout will involve the minty-fresh 700MHz A-Block spectrum T-Mobile just acquired from Verizon back in January; since lower frequencies have a broader range of coverage, it’s now much easier for T-Mobile to deploy LTE to the masses without incurring massive costs in the process. For anyone concerned, this expansion doesn’t mean that EDGE will go away entirely (not yet, anyway), because there are still plenty of devices that rely on 2G technology. But for those of you who have an LTE smartphone or tablet, you’ll soon be able to enjoy faster speeds even outside the city limits.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, T-Mobile
Samsung Galaxy security flaw discovered that provides remote access to data
Security has always been an interesting topic on Android and that discussion just got another reason to exist with a development team discovering a security flaw affecting the Samsung Galaxy series that could enable remote access to data on your device.
The development team behind an open-source operating system based on Android called Replicant OS, discovered that this ‘backdoor’ affects not only the version of Android running on Samsung Galaxy devices, but also those custom firmwares based on stock Android images such as Cyanogenmod.
The ‘backdoor’ is said to be caused by “the proprietary software that is in charge of handling the communications with the modem, using the Samsung IPC protocol, implements a class of requests known as RFS commands, that allows the modem to perform remote I/O operations on the phone’s storage.”
What that means is that hackers have the potential to harness this method and remotely access data stored on the device without your consent.
Some of the handsets known to be affected include:
- Galaxy Nexus (I9250)
- Galaxy Nexus S (I902x)
- Galaxy S (I9000)
- Galaxy S II (I9100)
- Galaxy S III (I9300)
- Galaxy Note (N7000)
- Galaxy Note II (N7100)
- Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (P31xx)
- Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 (P51xx)
Expect Google and Samsung to fix this very quickly.
The post Samsung Galaxy security flaw discovered that provides remote access to data appeared first on AndroidGuys.
iOS 8 Screenshot Reveals New Healthbook, Preview and TextEdit Icons
A screenshot of an iOS 8 homescreen with the new Healthbook, Preview and TextEdit icons was posted to China’s Weibo microblog and spotted by 9to5mac. The source of the screenshot cannot be verified, but insiders close to 9to5 claim the icons represented in the image are legitimate.
Healthbook is Apple’s rumored fitness app for iOS 8 and its icon revealed in the screenshot loosely matches earlier descriptions. It may connect to the iWatch and track vital health and fitness parameters such as calories burned, heart rate and potentially other statistics like hydration and blood glucose levels.
Preview and TextEdit may debut in iOS later this year as part of an expansion of Apple’s iCloud service. Their icons mirror those of their OS X counterparts, which is unusual as Apple uses different icons for its OS X and iOS apps. This suggests the icons are placeholders and may change before the apps are released. Tips is an unknown app, and its role in iOS 8 is not certain.
Overall, the screenshot shows the iOS 8 design appearing essentially identical to that of iOS 7, although this may change over time as work continues on the next-generation operating system. Apple is expected to unveil iOS 8 later this year at WWDC 2014 and release it publicly sometime this fall. Besides underlying improvements to services like Maps and Siri, it also is expected to include health and fitness features that will integrate with Apple’s iWatch wearable device.
| |
Oculus VR, EA, Avegant and others join to form ‘Immersive Technology Alliance’
Well, this is certainly a motley crew: a variety of companies in the virtual reality space are teaming up to create the “Immersive Technology Alliance.” The group is an evolution of an earlier consortium, The Stereoscopic 3D Gaming Alliance — apparently the world of 3D gaming no longer needs their support? Anyway, the renamed group includes major game players like EA as well as little teams like Technical Illusions (of CastAR fame), as well as the company most responsible for re-introducing VR, Oculus VR. The ITA list includes all the players you’d expect, but also has a few outliers in Epson and Panasonic; Sony isn’t part of the ITA just yet, but that may change sooner than later. The group’s first public appearance takes place next week at San Francisco’s annual Game Developers Conference and we’ll be on-hand to document the shindig. Also, to ask Panasonic what it’s doing there. Head below for an example of immersive technology (an Engadget editor punching virtual sharks, obviously) and the full list of members (thus far).
- Epson
- Avegant
- Oculus VR
- GameFace Labs
- Big Blue Bubble
- I’m in VR
- YEI Technology
- EA
- Jon Peddie Research
- MTBS3DS
- Crew Communicatons
- TGC
- HDMI
- University of Ontario Institute of Technology
- Next3D
- DDD
- Digital Extremes
- Survios
- Vrelia
- Virtuix Omni
- Nanoveu
Netflix’s three new originals include ‘Shrek’ and ‘Madagascar’ spin-offs
Netflix is set to make good on its largest-ever deal for original content by launching no fewer than three new original Dreamworks series. With such varied and popular character base to choose from, the streaming giant confirmed today that it has chosen to launch spin-offs from two of the animation studio’s biggest franchises. So what are they? The first is King Julien: a spin-off of the Madagascar franchise that focuses on a certain royal lemur, and the other is Puss In Boots: a Shrek-themed show featuring that swashbuckling cat with the adorable big eyes. Last up is Veggie Tales in the House: a reboot of the faith-based series that features a cast of, you guessed it, various fruit and vegetables. They follow Netflix’s first Dreamworks spin-off, Turbo Fast, which debuted last December but wasn’t available to binge watch. Instead, the company says it will push the second cluster of new episodes live on April 4th. The streaming giant expects to make the three new original series available by “late 2014,” giving you plenty of time to familiarize yourself with the feature films.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Netflix (PRNewsWire)
MIT’s robot fish is nearly as speedy and squishy as the real thing
Robot fish are typically pale imitations at best — even when they move quickly, they don’t move all that gracefully. MIT’s new soft robotic fish should be much closer to the real animal, however. Instead of relying on rigid joints and motors to swim, the new fish wiggles its tail fin by inflating a channel with carbon dioxide. The switch to pressure-based power results in not just more natural-looking movement, but the kind of explosive energy that you’d expect from an undersea critter; a strong CO2 blast will turn the robot 100 degrees in an instant. The current design is built more for speed than longevity, but MIT’s researchers foresee a longer-lasting model that could follow schools of real fish and study them without drawing attention.
Source: MIT
AIVAnet 