Upton Upstaged: Mariah Carey to become new face for ‘Game of War: Fire Age’
Developer Machine Zone launched a series of advertisements for Game of War: Fire Age featuring model Kate Upton last fall during football season. The high production value of the advertisements as well as the sex appeal of Kate Upton in the spots became very popular. Machine Zone even spent millions for a slot to air a commercial during Super Bowl XLIX. Why can the developer do this? Because Game of War: Fire Age generates $1 million per day, which allowed Machine Zone to spend $40 million on marketing in all of 2014.
Upton, the face of Game of War: Fire Age, will need to continue focusing on her modeling career as the developers behind the game have plans for a new face.
The next face of Machine Zone’s beloved game will come from the entertainment industry. The developer, according to TMZ, has signed Mariah Carey to a deal in the range of seven figures. Carey, who turned 46 in March, will participate in a shoot that will last around two days in order to produce a 30-second commercial for Game of War: Fire Age. The man in charge of the commercial will be Alan Taylor, the director of the upcoming Terminator Genisys film. We can only hope that Carey behaves for Taylor and all of the production staff. The entertainer has become known for being tardy, dramatic, and unruly in recent years.
Selecting Carey to replace Upton as the face of Game of War: Fire Age comes across as an odd move. The trajectory of both careers are going in opposite directions. Carey’s most recent album, her first since 2010, flopped critically and commercially. She’s been performing in Las Vegas since last month and will continue to do so until February of next year. Meanwhile, Upton has been taking on a few acting roles in addition to modeling. Who will consumers, especially that of Machine Zone’s game, want to see more of? The answer is clearly Upton. Let’s not count out Carey just yet, though, because she may deliver the performance of a lifetime in her Game of War: Fire Age commercial.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Source: TMZ
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Leak: ‘Street Fighter’ DLC coming to ‘Super Smash Bros.’
Street Fighter‘s Ryu is almost certainly coming to Super Smash Bros. (SSB). Multiple files featuring the character have been extracted from a recent update, adding weight to a rumor that began back in April. The evidence is pretty compelling: there’s a video (below) that seems to be Ryu’s victory sequence, an image depicting what appears to be a recreation of his stage from Street Fighter 2 and a selection of color options for the character.
Capcom (which owns the Street Fighter franchise) has already licensed Mega Man out for SSB, but Ryu would be the first character from the legendary fighting series to make its way over to Nintendo’s brawler.
In addition to the Ryu leak, a video pulled from the same update shows Fire Emblem‘s Roy — a character that previously starred in Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube — slashing his way around, meaning we will hopefully see at least two new characters announced at Nintendo’s pre-E3 SSB presentation, which kicks off at 10:40AM ET tomorrow.
Via: Polygon
Source: Reddit
Start putting together IFTTT recipes with your Amazon Echo
The functionality of Amazon’s Echo digital assistant expands beyond the hardware itself. Now, Amazon Echo supports IFTTT recipes. After connecting the Amazon Alexa Channel, users have access to an additional 121 channels with various commands. It works with Twitter, Evernote, Todoist, Gmail, and many other services. For example, start listening to music with the Amazon Echo and, if paired with the Twitter channel, a tweet could be sent containing the song title.
Source: Amazon Alexa Channel (IFTTT)
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Facebook to improve your News Feed by factoring in how long people view a post
While it may seem like your Facebook News Feed stories are selected completely random, the equation the social network uses is far from complicated. They just take into account interaction – so, how much other people like, share or comment on any given story. But we can all agree that only tells Facebook a fraction of the information needed to decide if a post is important or not.
Do you always like, comment or share posts you are interested in, anyways? In fact, you may not even “like” these publications, yet still find them interesting to read or view. This is why Facebook has decided to improve your News Feed by considering a fourth factor when deciding whether a post is important enough to steal a bit of your time or not – they will now take into account how long people spend looking at these Facebook posts.
So the idea is that Facebook can actively measure how long each user spends looking at a specific story, in comparison to others in their News Feeds. So if you are scrolling down and happen to stop and look at an image for a few seconds, big brother Facebook will know and make it more likely that the same publication shows up in other people’s News Feeds.
In terms of topic quality, this seems like an awesome idea. It will take advantage of a whole new dimension that was completely dismissed in the past. Granted, some of you will hate the idea of Facebook knowing even more information that it already does. It can be a bit creepy, but all in the name of a better feed.
Facebook has been constantly trying to improve News Feed quality, and they even made it so you could report hoaxes. This is just another step to a perfect feed, so I am all in. Are you? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think about these changes!
Scientists defy gravity with ‘perpetual’ water pump
Scientists have figured out how to pump water upwards in a thick tube using a combination of surface tension and water-repellent materials. Before you get your hopes up, it’s definitely no perpetual-motion machine — but the discovery from Beihang University researchers in China could bring other benefits. Here’s how it works: The right angle pipe shown above is filled with a small amount of water, which can’t drain thanks to a copper mesh doped with a superhydrophobic (water-rejecting) material at the bottom. When a small droplet is introduced, it’s drawn upward by surface tension, albeit very slowly (the above GIF is sped up about 75 times).
Filed under: Science
Via: New Scientist
Source: Wiley
Google executive talks about the new permission system
At Google I/O, Android M was announced with a revamped permission system. Instead of being told what an app can access up front, Google has switched to an as needed system similar to what is found in iOS.
This is a welcome addition to the Android operating system. They started to offer something similar back with Jelly Bean (4.3) called App ops, but they pulled it with KitKat (4.4.2). Head of Android and Chrome OS development, Hiroshi Lockheimer, gave the Guardian some insight about why this was and what took Google so long to implement this new system.
“App ops was launched somewhat out of context; we really needed to solve the whole story, not just launch App ops without moving apps from install time to run time permission requests“
“App ops was launched somewhat out of context; we really needed to solve the whole story, not just launch App ops without moving apps from install time to run time permission requests“
Lockheimer informed Guardian that apps “were not built with the notion that certain functionality could be turned off behind their backs”. If a user were to deny permission to a certain aspect of an app without the app developer being prepared for the permission to be denied, the app would not be able to handle the denial.
“The way Android works is that there is no advantage we can give to Google’s applications, everyone operates on a level playing field“
“The way Android works is that there is no advantage we can give to Google’s applications, everyone operates on a level playing field“
Lockheimer claims that Google’s apps are subject to all of the rules that all other third-party apps are. In this regard, Google is a third-party developer in its own right. Basically, all this means to users is that you can deny Google apps permissions just like any other app. They are not above the rule.
The video segment from I/O explains how Android M’s new permission system will work.
For apps targeting APIs below 22, turning off permissions in the settings app will feed the app blank data in place of the data from your device that they would expect. This way, the app still functions (sort of) without any critical failures.
Developers can continue to target APIs corresponding to Lollipop (5.1) and bellow, but they won’t be able to implement features from Android M and other features in the future.
Our friends over at Google hope that the new features that come with APIs 23 and over will be enough to get developers to jump onto the new permission system bandwagon.
I am not to hopeful since fragmentation forces a lot of developers to stay on Ice Cream Sandwich APIs (level 14) in order to reach a decent amount of users.
If Google really hopes to get everyone working out of newer APIs, they are going to have to do something to fix fragmentation, but that is another story for another time.
The post Google executive talks about the new permission system appeared first on AndroidGuys.
You can now test Lollipop on the Motorola DROID Turbo… on the web
The Motorola DROID Turbo is an awesome smartphone, but one dreaded problem always lurks around Verizon-exclusive devices like this one. It takes forever for Big Red to update them! Usually even longer than with all other smartphones. Every device and their mothers is already on Lollipop, yet the DROID Turbo is staying far behind in the race.
Many months after the Lollipop release, the Motorola DROID Turbo is expected to finally get its Android 5.1 update (yes, it skipped previous iterations of Lollipop) by mid-June. So… very soon, and it seems Verizon and Motorola may be just in time to fulfill this promise. At least if the latest update to the official online Motorola DROID Turbo demo serves as any corroboration.
This tool is at Verizon’s website and allows potential customers to get a general gist of how the Motorola DROID Turbo works (as well as other devices). It’s actually quite helpful for anyone looking to get a new device they may not be familiar with. You can experience all sorts of aspects of the UI without even stepping out of your desk. From phone calls and advanced calling to messaging, cloud services and even SIM card information.
What really tickled our fancy is lower in the web page, though. Scroll past the simulator and you will see a bold setnence that reads: “Last Modified: 06/11/2015 to Android 5.1″. So all the software you see here will come from the Lollipop-based OS. Give it a quick test if you are feeling curious. And keep in mind this may be proof that the update is just around the corner. Hopefully you get it sooner than later. Just try not to destroy your thumb by smashing on that update button all weekend!
This is how Google Web Light makes websites look in slow connections
If Google is to get a hold of the next billion first smartphone owners, they need to do much more than just sell affordable smartphones. This much we have established. This is something the Search Giant really focused on at Google IO, where they announced more initiatives that would improve the smartphone experience in emerging markets.
One very important issue that was addressed was slow connections. Google never named this feature, but we do know it is being internally named “Google Web Light”. This is a service that would optimize websites for 4x faster loafing and less data consumption. About 80% less data, to be exact. In short, it should make your browsing much faster than it would be if you loaded a regular page.
Google Web Light would automatically activate when the browser detects slow internet speeds (we don’t know how slow), and only in select emerging markets. This means we likely won’t be seeing this feature coming to the USA anytime soon, and so far it’s only available in Indonesia.
I guess what matters here is we haven’t quite seen how pages will look when this feature is active, until today. In fact, Google has a page that allows you to preview it, and we just wanted to show you an example so you can get an idea of how Google Web Light works. Here is how the Android Authority mobile site looks without, and with the optimizations.
#gallery-1
margin: auto;
#gallery-1 .gallery-item
float: left;
margin-top: 10px;
text-align: center;
width: 50%;
#gallery-1 img
border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
#gallery-1 .gallery-caption
margin-left: 0;
/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
So there’s an obvious decrease in details and imaging, which was to be expected. Images also show in much lower quality, but at least your data speeds will seem much faster and pages will load in a jiffy.
I honestly can’t see why this should only be a feature for emerging markets. I hate trying to browse the internet when out of the city. A feature like Google Web Light would truly be a life saver. Wouldn’t you agree?
OnePlus 2 rumored to launch this July with a $322 price point
We can all agree OnePlus has never been good at hiding details. In fact, they get a kick out of hyping up the audience. They seldom give leakers a chance to do their job, but today we are getting a taste of some unofficial news. Are we feeling good for some pricing and availability murmurs? Because that is exactly what the guys at MyDrivers have for us.
While we have previously heard the OnePlus 2 may cost around $400, the latest rumors say it may actually be cheaper than that. Internal sources claim the device will launch this July for 1999 Yuan, which equals to about $322 USD.
Keep in mind this will be the Chinese price, and we have no idea how the next OnePlus flagship device will be priced in the USA and other markets. And that is if this information happens to be correct. Remember we still have to take things with a grain of salt around here. That is, until someone from OnePlus comes around and spills all the beans about the OnePlus 2.
Other details are still to be uncovered, but we are expecting a device with a Snapdragon 810 processor. This means this handset will definitely be up there with the best of the best, just as its predecessor was when it disrupted the market. We have also heard rumors of a couple versions being in the works, so the water isn’t exactly clear yet. It’s best we wait for official news before we get too excited.
What do you guys think, though? Would you pay about $322 for the OnePlus 2? If I was to place some bets, I would bet towards a higher price point for the USA. The OnePlus One was $300, so maybe $350 for the OnePlus 2? Just don’t quote me on that.
Amazon to launch ‘Catastrophe’ comedy series on Facebook
Amazon is slated to debut British comedy Catastrophe in the US on January 15th, but you won’t find the pilot episode on Prime. Instead of bringing the series straight to its video platform, the e-commerce company will post the 30-minute pilot on its Facebook page. In fact, viewers in the country can exclusively watch it on the social network for 48 hours (and for free!), starting on Monday, 7PM Eastern time. This might be the first time Amazon has taken this particular approach. It typically gives viewers free access to the first episode on Prime, so they can leave feedback and help the company decide which titles to pick up.
Amazon secured the exclusive rights to show Catastrophe in the US shortly after the series’ first season started airing on the UK’s Channel 4. It stars Twitter star Rob Delaney as an American man who knocks up an Irish woman played by Sharon Horgan and moves to London to be with her and his baby. The pilot, by the way, will make its way to Prime Instant after its 48-hour stint on Facebook. If you’re a subscriber, you can stream it and the rest of the first season episodes starting on June 19th.
Source: Amazon (Facebook)
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