PlayStation is the new home of ‘Call of Duty,’ first with beta and DLC
At tonight’s pre-E3 press conference, Sony made yet another big splash by announcing itself “the new home of Call of Duty.” The next entry of the franchise, Call of Duty Black Ops III, will have a beta exclusively for the PlayStation 4 in August, and map packs will arrive first on PlayStation. It sounds like the agreement will last longer than just the one game, with Andrew House saying the PlayStation-first DLC is “starting” here. There’s a lengthy new trailer for the game too, which you can see after the break.
Check here for everything happening at E3 2015!
Source: PlayStation Blog
‘Uncharted 4’ looks like a ghost from E3’s past
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We knew Uncharted 4 was coming, but tonight we got to see something much better looking than our tease from last E3 and the PlayStation Experience event from late last year. The game looks great with lots of destruction (tiles falling off walls during a firefight, for example), but also packs in familiarity for better or for worse: Armored patrol carriers careen through walls in dogged pursuit of protagonist Nathan Drake, and the market fight sequence felt awfully reminiscent of the Uncharted 2 reveal from many E3s prior. “>
Drake gets into some vehicular mayhem of his own, knocking out wooden supports from terraces that overlook alleys. The scale feels much bigger, however, based on the onstage demo tonight from Sony’s media briefing. The whole time, Drake’s accompanied by Sully, offering comic relief, moral support and hopefully a neckbrace to help prevent whiplash. And sadly, we still don’t have a release date — just that “2016” window from this past March.
Check here for everything happening at E3 2015!
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/U-l6UjVLmhU?rel=0
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
iPhone Photography Awards Showcase Best Photos of 2015 [iOS Blog]
Photos from the winners of the eighth annual iPhone Photography Awards have been posted on the IPPA website, offering a look at some of the best pictures captured with an iPhone over the course of the past year.
As in previous years, the photos feature a range of different subjects, from people to landscapes to animals. This year’s first place photo, by Michal Koralewski from Poland, depicts a man playing traditional Polish songs on an accordion.
The second place photo is an impressively clear image of a bird in flight, while the third place winner features a couple on a train. According to the contest, all photos were taken with an iPhone, and photo editing with apps like Instagram and VSCO was permitted.
Along with the top three winners, IPPA also chooses winning photographs from several different categories, including animals, architecture, children, flowers, food, landscapes, nature, panorama, and more. The image below, taken in Cairo, took the top slot in the “Travel” category.
Apple’s iPhone 6, iPhone 5s, and iPhone 5 continue to rank as the three most popular cameras on photo sharing site Flickr, which is no surprise given the quality of the images that can be captured with the phones. Apple continually improves the picture quality in its iPhones, and rumors have suggested that the upcoming iPhone 6s could include the biggest camera jump yet.
Photos from all of the winners of the 2015 iPhone Photography Awards can be found on the IPPA website. The site is also now accepting entries for the 2016 awards.
LastPass hack another testament to how vulnerable apps are
Password management service LastPass was hacked on Friday. “…our team discovered and blocked suspicious activity on our network,” the company said in a blog post today.
Luckily, it seems that no pertinent information was breached. However, email addresses and password reminders were compromised, meaning that you may want to go change you LastPass password and turn on multifactor authentication for better security.
This isn’t the first time LastPass has been hacked, having experienced breaches before. In fact, password managers aren’t as secure as you may think.
This is just another testament to how vulnerable apps are. Sometimes it’s because of poor programming and a lack of safeguards put in place. But, other times it’s on an operating system level. Just like a keylogger can find its way on your Windows machine, similar malicious software can find its way on our phones.
This isn’t just a problem with Android, but with all operating systems. Security flaws are everywhere, and there’s really no way to fix it.
As the old maxim goes, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” And that rings true among hackers, particularly of the black hat type.
source: LastPass
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Facebook Moments allows you to share photos easier than ever
Have you ever gone to a party where everyone is taking pictures, yet you never manage to see them? Sure, you can hassle people and try to get some of them, but that can consume all your time. And even then, chances are you will be missing most of them. There has been no real solution to this until now.
Facebook just announced Moments, an app that makes it amazingly easy to share photos with all your friends. The best part is you really don’t have to do a thing! All you really need to do is sync your camera gallery to the service. Facebook will then use its impressive (and slightly creepy) face recognition technology and sync images with other Facebook Moments users.
When synced, these photos will be grouped based on when they were taken, as well as which users’ faces were recognized in the images. Your friends can choose to sync with you and all participant images will be grouped together for the whole group to see, download or share. You can even search through synced folders based on which friends are in your images. Simple as pie.
What is special about Moments?
Facebook has really managed to get us excited with Moments, and that is not something we can say for every other cloud service out there. Sure, we can all upload our images automatically to a bunch of cloud storage applications, but other services do nothing but keep these images stored for you. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to share them or not. And we all know life can get busy; we don’t always have time to be sharing all the photos we take.
This app will make an otherwise cumbersome task amazingly simple, but will it take off? Other photo sharing apps have been left behind in this fierce app battle. This is mostly because people don’t want to download apps they don’t need. Not to mention, it’s hard to get a substantial amount of friends, family members and acquaintances to coincide on using a single service.
Do you think Moments will take off?
We are sure things will be different for Facebook, though. I mean… it is Facebook, after all. This is the biggest social network around and has the leverage necessary to really take things to a new level. Everyone is on Facebook, so the app will already know who your friends are and how their faces look. In addition, the social network will be cross-promoting this service through Messenger. Your friends will get a message every time you want to share photos with them.
There’s no news on whether this service will be integrated to Facebook in the future. Product manager Will Rubens does stress that for now the plan is to keep this service running independently. And it makes sense – this is not a solution for sharing images with the world. It is much more intimate by nature.
You can go ahead and download Facebook Moments straight from the Google Play Store. Go check it out and start sharing! By the way, how do you feel about Moments? Are you as excited about it as me, or do you think it will be a total fail?
Google shuts down new Chrome Bookmark Manager, goes back to previous version
Remember that new Chrome Bookmark Manager we reported on last October? It was interesting and unique when we first saw it, back when it was just an extension you could opt to use or not. Then Google went trigger happy and decided to integrate the new page to the Chrome browser. It was a mess and people hated it, which is likely the main reason why the Search Giant has just decided to kill it and revert back to the previous Bookmark Manager.
We know many of you will be happy about this. That Bookmark Manager simply wasn’t ready to hit the market. It was slow, confusing, cluttered and flashy. It just made no sense to have it on a browser that is known for speed and simplicity, which is the complete opposite of what this page was.
I would understand part of pleasing the consumer is giving them attractive products, but this really made no sense. Yes, it was good looking and eye-catching, but come on… it’s just a bookmark manager. There is no need to complicate it. I mean, people barely ever use it! Many of you will only really notice changes to the star (bookmarking) menu, which is also back to the previous version.
And so Google takes it all back and decides to give us that simple and clean (and arguably ugly) Bookmark Manager that we all loved. It’s in the latest update to Chrome, so go and hit your browser’s menu button to see if your update is ready.
If you are a fan of the new Bookmark Manager and really don’t want to let it go, it’s still in the Chrome Web Store. That’s where it belongs, really. At least until Google can figure out a way to make it more intuitive and seamless. But what do you guys think about this new Bookmark Manager? Did you hate it too, or were you actually a fan? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
The Xbox One’s revamped interface is all about speed and community
When Microsoft said it had a new Xbox One user experience in store at E3, it wasn’t joking around. The company has unveiled its redesigned console interface, and it has very little in common with the tile-based UI you use today. The focuses here are on speed and community — there’s a quick menu for some of your most common tasks, and a prominent activity feed shows what your friends are up to. Oh, and Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant will play a big role on the Xbox, too. You can tell the system to handle certain duties (such as starting a party) at any point, even while you’re playing. Microsoft hasn’t said just when the new experience arrives beyond “soon,” but the tech giant has historically rolled out these bigger Xbox updates late in the year.
Check here for everything happening at E3 2015!
Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Check out Sony’s 2015 E3 conference live
Sony’s setting itself up for a pretty big 2016 — with the release of the Project Morpheus virtual reality headset, a remastered Ratchet & Clank title and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End all expected next year. But does that mean there’s nothing to look forward to in the second half of 2015? Watch as Sony outlines its plan for this year and beyond at 6PM PT (9PM ET) on June 15th. You can expect the company to discuss first-party franchises (possibly including some that have yet to make their PS4 debut) as well as the upcoming roster of third-party and indie titles. Heck, there might even be a few last-gen titles that have earned the right to a “remastered” makeover. Check out the livestream below and rest assured we’ll have all the news from the event in our liveblog right here.
The PlayStation 4 is getting a media player
Believe it or not, Sony couldn’t even wait for its E3 event to get started to share some news about the PlayStation 4. The company is launching a media player for its console with some playback features you might miss from your PS3. It’ll stream media from DLNA-compatible devices on your local network, for a start, and you can plug in a USB drive if you’d rather play locally-stored music and videos. The player should be available later tonight, so it won’t be long before you can try it for yourself.
Check here for everything happening at E3 2015!
Source: PlayStation Blog
‘The Last Guardian’ is still happening and it’s coming to PS4 in 2016
The Last Guardian. It still exists and Sony opened its big E3 showcase with footage of a toga-clad boy exploring ancient structures with his giant behaving-like-a-pet Fox-Hawk-Dog beast. Fumito Ueda’s beautiful on-off-on-again game is filled with the stylistic licks of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, but now with the power of PS4 beating behind it. The E3 event finally showed off how the game will play out, with your beastly buddy doing its fair share of destructive creation — and also coming through in a pinch. The long-delayed title is coming next year. Can you believe it?
Check here for everything happening at E3 2015!
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