MLB Manager 2015 heads to the Play Store for this season
The 2015 MLB season starts on April 5 when the St. Louis Cardinals head to Wrigley Field to play the Chicago Cubs. For the next seven months, baseball will be the primary sport to watch as teams vie for a World Series victory. Fans can play their own version of the season and future seasons with the new MLB Manager 2015 game. You play as the manager of a team performing all of the day-to-day duties that come with the job. Managers setup lineups, depth charts, and the pitching rotation for gameday. Then, managers make calls from the dugout. The game even allows some general manager controls to be accessed such as contract negotiations, trades, and promotions. This game is an analytics spin on baseball simulation.
Hit the break for more.
There are three modes within MLB Manager 2015:
- Major League Baseball Game: Choose your favorite MLB team and play out the 2015 season and beyond. There is no limit, guide your team into the future!
- Fictional Game: MLB Manager creates one of the four fictional baseball worlds and populates it with fresh players and clubs. Select a team and start from scratch.
- Historical MLB Game: Choose one of three past MLB seasons — 1919, 1939, or 2012 — and see if it produces a different outcome.
Come comment on this article: MLB Manager 2015 heads to the Play Store for this season
What Sci-Fi tech are you most looking forward to seeing in the years to come?
Recently a number of technologies have begun to surface commercially that seemed like science fiction only a few years ago. This includes improved virtual reality experiences, foldable displays, transparent displays, improvements in augmented reality, and many other technologies that seem to come straight out of movies like the Minority Report.
For this week’s Friday Debate, we discuss what “sci-fi” technology we’re most excited to see evolve and how it might be applied to Android, and/or mobile devices, in the future. This can be both technology that we’re still far away from seeing, or tech that has recently started to emerge in early form — though we’ll try to keep ourselves at least semi-grounded in reality.
We’ll start by hearing what Team AA has to say, and then we invite all of our readers to sound off with their own thoughts in the comments below!
Gary Sims
The one piece of future tech that I am most looking forward to is the miniature fuel cell. By that I basically mean a battery, but not a battery. Batteries work by using a chemical process to store electricity and they are either disposable or rechargeable. All our phones and tablets use rechargeable batteries.
A fuel cell is slightly different, it doesn’t store electricity, but rather it generates it by converting chemicals into electricity. Fuel cells in the future will probably use quite different processes to the ones we see today. But if a clever spark (pun intended) could invent a cell that works from a small amount of fuel material, but can produce low levels of electricity for long periods of time, that would be brilliant.
You would no longer charge your phone, you would just pop in a battery sized fuel cell which could work for several months, even years. When fuel in the cell is depleted, you could take it back to get it recycled and buy a replacement cell, and so on. Bliss!
Other than fuel cells, I think there is some great potential in flexible displays and also in projector technology. The latter will influence not only smartphones and tablets, but also other devices like smart glasses and interactive displays.
The one thing I would like to see sooner rather than latter is peer-to-peer syncing between my own devices. The tech for this exists but it doesn’t yet seem to have been implemented on a large scale. By peer-to-peer what I mean is that my tablet and my smartphone sync everything between them, so that at one level they are an exact copy of each other, the same emails, the same photos, the same movies, the same music. But rather than them both syncing with the cloud, they sync directly with each other, over Wi-Fi or some other local network connectivity. That way I can keep things out of the cloud but duplicated amongst my devices. If and when I want to access the cloud, say for email, only one device needs to do it and the other will sync locally.
Bogdan Petrovan
By far, the “sci-fi” technology I am most excited about is human-like natural language interaction and artificial intelligence. Think the “Computer” aboard Star Trek’s Enterprise, which can understand and execute whatever command the crew is issuing with (super)human-like intelligence. In fact, Googlers have repeatedly offered the Star Trek Computer as an example of what Google is working to achieve long-term. Deep learning algorithms sifting through petabytes of data are already learning to see the world, and hear the world, like we do. One day, and I believe it’s a matter of years, rather than decades, all this intelligence will be available from our smartphones (or whatever gadgets we will be using to get online).
We call Google Now a “virtual assistant” now, but let’s face it, that’s a very generous description. 10 or 15 years from now? Google Now will probably be able to do anything a human assistant can, save for fetching you coffee. Though there will probably be an app for that.
Like Gary, I look forward to a big battery breakthrough. Batteries are still in the dark ages compared to the advance of other technologies, like processors and displays. Fortunately, a lot of research resources are dedicated to solving the battery problem, as illustrated by the stories about promising new developments that pop up almost every month. The problem is commercial implementation, or getting the phenomena observed in the lab to work in real life situations. In sci-fi movies, heroes never run out of power, and I believe that’s where we’re heading towards. And if the battery tech conundrum can’t be solved soon, ubiquitous wireless charging may help hide the issue.
I look forward to seeing what can be done with folding displays as well. The idea of transforming a 5-inch smartphone into a 10-inch tablet is extremely sexy, and truly the stuff of sci-fi.
All of these developments are likely to become “real” in a decade or two in my opinion. If they don’t, I will sure be disappointed.
Matthew Benson
The sci-fi genre question is a bit like the old chicken and egg debate. One thing that is a bit clear is that sci-fi movies often take technology to new levels simply because they don’t need to be grounded in reality. I think back to the infamous “evleaks” fake render of the HTC One M9 and how great it looked. Manufacturing such a product however, is a totally different issue.
Still, I think movies like Minority Report are fantastic catalysts that give real tech things to aspire to, in no small part because they actually put it out there for the masses to notice. I dare anyone to ask ten random people what the original Microsoft Surface was and see if they actually know. Chances are, assuming any of those 10 people saw the Philip K. Dick short story-turned-movie, they would definitely know what “scrubbing an image” was and could probably recall the exact scenes in Pre-Crime that made use of the giant display.
The funny thing is that we are now getting ever so much closer to the technology depicted in Minority Report (the movie that is) and yet it’s not even detectable. Our smartphones and tablets can often recognize ten different touch inputs at a single time. You can use apps like Bump to literally push your data onto someone else’s device. Products like the Moto X 2014 respond to floating hand-gestures. Just stop and think for a minute: what would your reaction have been 20 years ago at such a spectacle. Heck, go back just 10 years if not even less time. Isn’t it ironic that we’re practically living in the future we dreamed of and yet now that it’s here, it seems neither exciting nor revolutionary?
I have always found it interesting to consider the earlier visions of the future if only for the fact that they were typically of things that are still today impossible. Look at The Jetsons, or Total Recall, or Blade Runner. You had androids, flying cars, space colonies…it seems like these visions are still impossible because they weren’t based on any present reality. When Minority Report (the movie) was created, touch screens had already long since been invented. The movie simply presented a futuristic version of what we already had. One might argue The Jetsons was the same, but it was in no way based on reality.
I find the whole virtual reality craze now to be rather…anti-climactic to say the least. While I will fully admit that listening to the Friday Debate Podcast (MWC Edition) did manage to convince me the HTC Vive may be truly awesome, I can’t help but feel deja vu. Surely some of you reading this can recall, back in the mid 90’s, how virtual reality was going to be the next big thing. Nintendo went all out making a disaster of a “portable” console ‘inspired’ by it, movies and television like The Lawnmower Man or VR.5 were revolving around it, and the entertainment world as a whole was trying to convince everyone it was coming soon and would change everything.
In the end of course, nothing changed and virtual reality was dropped as quickly as the 3D television fad that was arguably designed as little more than a way for Japanese television companies to try and remain relevant in the face of dominant Korean players. While I eagerly wait to be impressed by things like Oculus Rift or the Vive, I am looking forward to something more like the technology in say, Interstellar, Elysium, or Oblivion.
BTW: +1000 to anyone who actually knows what VR.5 was.
Moto G (2014) now receiving Lollipop update in the UK
If you own a Moto G (2014) and reside in the UK, you may want to listen up, as Motorola has just started pushing out the much-anticipated Android 5.0 Lollipop update to all unlocked variants of the handset located in your region.
All the changes you’d expect to find in Lollipop are bundled into this upgrade, including support for multiple accounts, improved notifications, a smoother multitasking experience and the recently-announced Material Design guidelines.
As is customary with all manufacturer updates, the upgrade is being distributed in stages, but if you don’t feel like waiting for a notification confirming that it’s ready for your device, you can search for the update manually. To do so simply follow the four steps below:
- Open the Settings app
- Scroll to the bottom and tap on “About Device”
- Hit “System Updates”
- Tap on “Check for update”
If you own a Moto G and you’re situated in the United Kingdom, why not drop us a line in the comments section below letting us know when you receive the update?
Come comment on this article: Moto G (2014) now receiving Lollipop update in the UK
Coppertino Announces LOOP Music Locker With Support for HD Audio Files, VOX Music Player for iOS [Mac Blog]
Coppertino, the company behind the popular VOX Music Player for Mac, has some major announcements to share exclusively with MacRumors readers today, including its upcoming expansion to iOS, an update to the VOX Mac app, and the launch of an all new music storage service, LOOP.
LOOP is a new cloud-based music locker service that will be built in to both the VOX Music Player for Mac and the upcoming VOX iOS app. Unlike most music lockers available, LOOP will support any type of music file, including FLAC, and it offers unlimited storage. Songs stored in LOOP can be streamed in full quality to any device with the VOX Mac and iOS apps, and music can also be cached for playing offline.
Many of the popular music lockers like iTunes Match or Google Play Music limit the number of songs that can be uploaded and only support a few file types. iTunes, for example, only supports MP3 and AAC, while Google Play Music supports MP3, AAC OGG, and WMA. You can upload FLAC music files to Google Play Music, but they’ll be transcoded to MP3. LOOP can play them natively, but access to high quality music files comes at a cost — the service is priced at $49.99 per year or $4.99 per month, which is a bit more expensive than Google Play Music (free) and iTunes Match ($24.99/year).
Along with LOOP, Coppertino’s iOS app is big news, because it’s the first time the VOX Music Player has expanded beyond the Mac. Like the Mac app, the iOS app will play any type of music file and it’s deeply integrated with the LOOP music service, giving users access to all of their uploaded songs and albums. Like the VOX Music Player for Mac, the iOS app will be available for free — only the LOOP music storage service costs money.
Coppertino’s new music service, its upcoming iOS app, and the updated Mac app are still in testing and aren’t quite ready for launch, but the company wants to get MacRumors readers involved in the beta testing process with early access to the apps and to LOOP music storage.
The first 700 MacRumors readers who are interested in checking out the LOOP music storage locker and the new VOX apps for Mac and iOS can sign up on Coppertino’s website. Those of you who are interested just need to enter an email on the Coppertino site and the company will send a link to download the apps and instructions on signing up for LOOP. Testers will need to install both the iPhone app and the Mac app to take part in the beta program.
During the beta testing period, MacRumors readers will get free access to the LOOP music locker to test it out and can opt for a longer free trial period after the service launches. MacRumors readers will also get an option to purchase access to the LOOP service at a discount, dropping the price to $34.99 for the year instead of $49.99.
Coppertino’s existing VOX Music Player for Mac, which will get an update with the LOOP service in the near future, can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Microsoft’s universal app strategy for Windows 10 shown off in MWC 2015 video
Microsoft’s Windows 10 universal app presentation at the Mobile World Congress 2015 trade show earlier this month has finally been posted in video form, with the company going over their strategy for giving developers a way to make an app that will work across all Windows 10-based devices.
Moving from an iPhone to the Galaxy S6? You need to know these things
It only takes a few minutes to move in to your new smartphone, as long as you push the right buttons.
Switching phones has always been kind of a pain, and smartphones didn’t so much make things easier as create different problems along the way. If you’re an iPhone user planning to grab a Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 edge, it’s not going to take you long to notice how moving from one ecosystem to the other isn’t exactly as simple as entering in a username and password. Not to worry, though, we’ve got everything you need right here.
The biggest challenges when moving from iOS to Android is making sure you’re not jumping through hoops on the simple stuff. Contacts, email, social networking, and any photos or files you want to move over. As long as you still have your iPhone nearby, all of this stuff is a breeze once you know what buttons to push.
Google teams with Johnson & Johnson for robotic-assisted surgery
Google’s mysterious facility, Google X, is churning out next level technologies — a self-driving car, delivery drones and Internet balloons. Its Life Sciences division is now teaming up with Ethicon, one of Johnson & Johnson’s medical device companies, to develop robotic-assisted surgeries. “Through this collaboration, we are looking to provide surgeons with a technologically advanced system that would help them make the best, most informed decisions,” Gary Pruden, Worldwide Chairman, Global Surgery Group at Johnson & Johnson told Engadget. “The surgeon remains the ultimate decision maker, but they will have even more support with precision movements and data-enhanced decision making tools.”
A robotic-assisted surgery is like a high-tech laparoscopy. It’s a minimally invasive procedure, where instead of a surgeon, robotic arms insert surgical tools into the patient. But the arms are not autonomous; a surgeon pilots them. The device eliminates the slightest human tremor and it requires smaller incisions for access, which invariably reduces blood loss. Barring complications that can arise in any medical procedure, the surgeon-robot combination makes a patient’s recovery a whole lot easier and quicker.
Robotics in surgery isn’t a new concept, though, it’s been around since the ’90s. But according to Pruden, “today’s robotic options for surgeons are limited, requiring substantial financial outlay and infrastructure investment.” When the collaboration between the two companies goes through — pending approval from the HSR Act (an antitrust law) — their combined capabilities could potentially build an advanced robotic platform that is more accessible than its current counterparts. “We think it will be smarter and will provide more information for surgeons doing critical tasks,” he says. “It will be more cost-effective.”
Via: Business Insider
OnePlus’ self-imposed OxygenOS deadline delayed, assures better communication in the future
The OnePlus One is definitely due for some new software, but it looks like owners of the handset will have to wait. Last week, OnePlus explained in a blog post that its OxygenOS update would be ready for consumers on March 27th. However, the company has just revealed that the software is mostly ready, though due to some quality control issues, OxygenOS won’t be rolling out to consumers today.
As for a timeframe for the update? The representative from OnePlus explains that OxygenOS will roll out “very soon”, though we don’t have any more information beyond that. In hopes to win back the trust of its users, though, the company plans to be much more transparent in its progress updates. From OnePlus:
We know you’ve been waiting for a long time, and we owe you answers. So, until OxygenOS is officially released, we will share our progress with you. Every day, no matter how big or small the news is, this post will be updated with information in order to give you more visibility into the process.
To make up for the delay, as promised, OnePlus is giving away five 64GB Sandstone Black OnePlus One handsets to a few lucky forum members. The five winners have been announced, and their names can be found in the OnePlus forum post.
As for the update to CM12, we still have no official word from either Cyanogen or OnePlus as to when we can expect a rollout. We’ll need to check back in a few days to see what the companies are up to.
Spotify ready to hit the road on Android Auto
Android Auto, Google’s platform to connect your vehicle to your smartphone and related services, is still slowly working its way to the market. When automobiles start hitting showrooms with Android Auto support built-in, users with Spotify accounts will be glad to know they can access the service through Android Auto.
Spotify has released an update to their Android app that now supports Android Auto. There are a few aftermarket head units on the market now that support Android Auto, so owners of those units will be able to take advantage of this new Spotify feature.
Along with the addition of Android Auto support, Spotify indicates the Discover feature has “gone horizontal” and the daily charts have been improved. You can grab the Spotify app using one of the links below.
Come comment on this article: Spotify ready to hit the road on Android Auto
‘Citymapper’ and ‘Transit App’ Offer In-Depth Looks at Transit Experiences on Apple Watch
As a few popular iPhone apps begin rolling out updates for their built-in Apple Watch apps ahead of the April 24 launch, a pair of transit-focused services have posted on Medium to share detailed looks into exactly what kind of experience users can expect from Citymapper and Transit App on the Apple Watch next month.
Sifting through the data gathered from its iPhone app, Citymapper learned that its users frequently turned their phone on and off throughout one trip, unlocking to reorient themselves and quickly locking the device again to save battery. That’s where its upcoming Apple Watch app comes in, Citymapper promising an experience tailor-made for the wrist-worn device.
This is the nature of transit information when you move across the city. You need snippets of information. Different things at different times, depending on where you are along the way.
Transit info works well on a device that focuses attention on one thing at a time. And where the transaction cost (ie hassle) of getting additional information is low (raise your wrist and swipe). Using a wearable app may also be safer. City dwellers are generally walking too fast, crossing streets, using stairs, jostling through crowds.
Citymapper has a few cool things planned for its Watch app, with Glances showcasing “how messed up your city is”, pointing out stalled bus and train schedules around a user’s location. The app will even notify a user, with the much-touted wrist-tap feature, when to get off of a current bus or train route to continue along their way.
Citymapper on the Apple Watch will be available in every city Citymapper has already established itself, including places like New York City and Rome, and support English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, with more cities and languages “coming soon.”
Transit‘s Apple Watch app appears to be providing less of a notification-heavy experience and more of a straight-forward curated list of departure times and easy-to-follow directions, with a static “Take Me Home” button always on hand for when users get lost. The company aims to shave off as many precious seconds as possible with its wrist-worn experience.
It’s not every day that developers get the chance to build something for a completely new platform. And we think that the Apple Watch might just be the ideal platform for us. Sure, it’s not so difficult to pull your phone out of your pocket. But it’s while we’re in transit that those seconds matter most.
With Transit App for Apple Watch, all of that friction is gone. No matter where you are, you will have instant access to departure times for nearby routes — on hand at all times. Sprinting for the bus? Need to know which route is leaving soonest? Don’t want to interrupt your game of Candy Crush? We’ve got your back.
Both Citymapper [Direct Link] and Transit App [Direct Link] promise to be available on day one of the Apple Watch’s April 24 launch.
AIVAnet 