From adorable to appalling: The week of E3 that was
E3 is one of the most exciting events of the year. There are plenty of announcements from Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA and many other companies. Behind the scenes, though, the power of the brands is out in full force, featuring life-size product placements that make you feel like you’re in another world. And yes, that includes zombies.
JXE Streams: Talking ‘No Man’s Sky’ with Hello Games
Another E3 has come and gone. This one was particularly spectacular. We got to play Volume with Mike Bithell. We got to talk about Yooka-Laylee with legendary Rare composer Grant Kirkhope. We even got to bask in the announcements of seriously unlikely sequels like Shenmue 3 while simultaneously reveling in brand new games like ReCore. E3 2015 was amazing, but we’re not done! We have one more developer stream in store for you. Join us on Twitch.tv/Joystiq at 12PM ET/9AM PT while we discuss No Man’s Sky with Hello Games.
Tune in right here to this post or to Engadget.com/gaming starting at 12PM ET/9AM PT. Want a chance to talk with the team at Hello Games about their new sci-fi epic? Then watch at Twitch.tv/Joystiq! How do you build a game with a procedurally generated universe full of thousands upon thousands of unique worlds? Let’s find out together.
JXE Streams will also be on the air starting at 3:30PM ET/12:30PM PT to wrap up E3 2015 and usher in the weekend!
[All games are streamed at 720p via OBS.]
Blackberry to possibly enter Android arena with the “Prague”
Do you remember Blackberry? You know, the once uber-popular device manufacturer that has since fallen from the minds of most consumers. Well, they have been trying to become prevalent again for some time now and their latest attempt is to release an Android powered device dubbed the Prague. What? Yes, that is correct. Instead of running on their Blackberry 10 OS, the Prague would be a low-end device running on Googles popular OS that will cater to emerging markets.
“… a Reuters report has added credence to what we discussed in our podcast months ago, with claims that BlackBerry will offer an Android-powered device alongside its BB10 offerings.“
This is all speculation, of course, as Blackberry has not officially announced Prague nor that it would be running on Android. The rumors started from a report that N4BB received a few weeks ago and they are convinced that the device will release sometime in August. As with most rumors, we won’t know what specs the device will have nor if it will even be powered by Android until we receive an official announcement from Blackberry. Here is hoping that the rumors are true though, as Blackberry is known for making very secure devices and in this modern age of hacking, it would be nice to have such a device, running on Android.
Source
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Amazon releases Cloud Drive SDK for better app integration
Amazon has released the Cloud Drive SDK so developers can integrate the platform into their apps. Amazon’s Cloud Drive is an excellent cloud storage solution, but a big hurdle has been that apps aren’t able to easily take advantage of the service like they can with, say, Dropbox or Drive.
Amazon notes that four apps have already taken advantage of the Cloud Drive SDK, albeit three of the four are from a single developer. Keep in mind that the Cloud Drive SDK isn’t a standalone development kit. It’s actually bundled in with Amazon’s Mobile App kit.
If Amazon has piqued your interest, just head on over to the source link below for the SDK.
source: Amazon
Come comment on this article: Amazon releases Cloud Drive SDK for better app integration
Samsung’s Galaxy J5 and J7 with front-facing LED now official
Samsung has officially revealed its new line-up of the Galaxy smartphones in China, with, for the first time, a front-facing LED flash to brighten up those selfies in low-light conditions. The smartphones’ specs were previously leaked through the Chinese certification authority TENNA and their UI was revealed through Samsung’s user manuals. The two devices will be available starting this week in China, however no information was provided about their international launch.
The J5 and J7 feature a 5MP wide-angle front-facing camera with a single front-facing LED flash. The back camera has a 13MP sensor with an aperture of f/1.9. Other specs that the two smartphones have in common include 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, dual-SIM card slot, and LTE connectivity. Both the J5 and J7 run Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box with a similar UI as the one found on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The devices are a direct response to HTC’s Desire EYE, Sony Xperia C4, and the Asus ZenFone Selfie which all have high res front-facing camera with front-facing flash.
The J5 features a 5-inch HD display, a 64-bit quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor, a 2600 mAh battery, and is priced at 1,398 CNY (~$225).
The J7 features a slightly spacious 5.5-inch HD display, with a snapper 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor, and a larger 3000 mAh battery, priced at 1,798 CNY (~$289).
The J5 and J7 are mid-range smartphones aimed at younger customers (“selfie generation”) , looking to take high quality selfies no matter the lighting conditions.
Via: SamMobile
Come comment on this article: Samsung’s Galaxy J5 and J7 with front-facing LED now official
A video game as metaphor: How a Twitter freakout inspired ‘Adr1ft’
It feels like a lifetime ago, but early 2013 was a really strange time for video games. In the lead-up to Microsoft debuting the Xbox One that May, the mood was incredibly tense. Rumors were flying that the then-unnanounced console would require a constant connection to the internet in an effort to thwart used-game sales. Redmond’s refusal to comment wasn’t helping the situation, either. Enter Adam Orth.
Back then, he was the creative director for Microsoft’s gaming division. When he tweeted rather indignantly that he didn’t “get the drama” of having an always-online console April of that year, saying the reaction didn’t go over well would be a massive understatement. “Sometimes the electricity goes out. I will not buy a vacuum cleaner,” he continued.
“The internet totally erupted,” he says. “I got death threats.” He resigned from his post shortly thereafter and set his Twitter account to private. Adr1ft is his way of coming to terms with that situation. In the game, you play as the lone survivor of a wrecked space station that’s floating above Earth. Oxygen is constantly leaking out of your spacesuit and every pulse of your thrusters to move around consumes it.
“The destroyed space station is a metaphor for my life at the time,” he says. “This isolation is that I felt entirely alone. Instead of talking about it, I just made a game about it.”
Orth tells me that he’s always been fascinated by space games. The seed for Adr1ft was in the back of his mind for a bit but it wasn’t until his Twitter incident that he had a eureka moment. “It went from something that would be really cool to do, to something I had to do,” Orth says. “It took over my life.”
He quit Microsoft that April, and says that the entire game, universe and story were complete that July; his first prototype took a week to build. But making the game wasn’t exactly therapeutic — at least not at first — because he says that developing games isn’t an immediate act. Meaning, even after a day’s work you won’t necessarily have a video game to play.
“I don’t really think of it as a cathartic experience, but as more of a creative experience simply because about a week after the thing with Twitter happened, I knew what was going on,” he says.
“The destroyed space station is a metaphor for my life at the time,” Orth says.
Surprisingly enough, Redmond has been very supportive of the game. “Microsoft was never bad to me. Ever. I was bad to them,” he says. “[It was] my mistake.”
Every piece of narrative in Adr1ft comes from Orth’s life in some way, he says. And the game isn’t just about him, he’s brought in the experiences of others to build the story out as well. For example, the medical officer on the ill-fated space station? He’s an addict whose old cravings aren’t helped by the fact that he’s having a hard time with sobriety. The mission’s been going on for far too long and the bottle is looking more and more attractive as a way to cope. He also lied to get his job. His entire narrative arc is him telling an Alcoholics Anonymous group about how hard he’s trying to stay on the wagon.
Given that a bad judgment call combined with a one-to-millions communication platform led to Orth leaving a job at one of the biggest tech companies on the planet, you’d think that he’d be bitter or angry. Or even that some of those emotions would’ve made their way into the game. That isn’t the case as everything is pretty calm. Well, until you start running out of oxygen that is.
“There’s no male power fantasy here,” he says. “It’s not a heroic save-the-world story, it’s ‘save yourself.’”
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Apple pulls the original iPad Mini, its last non-Retina iOS device
Pour one out for the OG iPad Mini, as Apple has just removed it from its website and online store, 9to5Mac reports. It proved Apple could effectively build a smaller tablet, though its low-resolution (1024 by 768) display doesn’t hold a candle to the sharp Retina screens we’re used to today. And with the iPad Mini 2 at $299 (and no shortage of deals available), there simply wasn’t any room for the older tablet on the market. Now Apple is only promoting the iPad Mini 2 and 3 online. And given the $100 price difference between those two tablets, as well as the fact that they sport the same hardware (aside from Touch ID on the iPad Mini 3), we recommend snapping up the iPad Mini 2 for now. By dumping the original iPad Mini, Apple now has a fully 64-bit lineup of iPads, which should make life easier for developers moving forward.
[Photo credit:Noah Berger/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Filed under: Tablets, Mobile, Apple
Via: 9to5Mac
Source: Apple
Verizon gets slapped by New York City’s mayor
Way back when, Verizon pledged to build fiber optic services to every home in NYC, but for some reason, it never got around to finishing it. Unfortunately, New Yorkers are used to getting what they want, and so Mayor Bill de Blasio has slammed the company saying that it needs to sort out the problem, or else. The city has delivered Big Red a very public ultimatum: either it brings its FiOS network to “every household” in the five boroughs, or it’ll face some heavy penalties.
The saga began back in 2008, when the city agreed that Verizon could operate a local cable TV franchise in exchange for a fiber optic network. The deal was that every person in NYC that wanted super-fast broadband would be able to get it by June 30th, 2014. Naturally, the overwhelming number of consumer complaints prompted the mayor’s office to conduct a full investigation into what the hell was happening.
City official Maya Wiley sums it up thus, saying that the audit found “an alarming failure on the part of Verizon to deliver on its franchise agreement.” Other charges leveled against the telco include marking blocks as being fiber-ready, when in fact it “had not installed the necessary equipment to deliver service.” Then there’s the accusation that Verizon didn’t track purchase requests from new users before the fall of 2014, again in “direct violation of the franchise agreement.” Apparently upwards of 30,000 requests for new installations were not dealt with within the agreed six or 12-month period.
Oh, and Verizon also got a public slap on the wrist for not cooperating with the City’s audit of the FiOS rollout. It stands accused of significantly delaying or failing to provide access to “various other records, reports and contracts requested by the City to conduct a full assessment of FiOS implementation.” If you’re a New Yorker who has been affected by any of these events, the city is asking you to either call 311 or add your complaint to the pile here.
Verizon has issued a robust response, and the company told Ars Technica that it disputes all of the findings from the Mayor’s report. As far as it’s concerned, it has met its obligations, but cannot wire up buildings it does not have access to, which is the only challenge it faces. Instead, it believes that the timing of the release is part of a co-ordinated attempt to exert pressure on the company by its labor union, which it goes into negotiations with on Monday. That’s not even a hinted barb, either, since the published quote reads “it’s well known the union has ties to the city administration, and things like this are a familiar union tactic we have seen before.”
[Image Credit: Bloomberg/Getty]
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Mobile, Verizon
Via: Ars Technica
Source: NYC, Agreement (.PDF), Audit (.PDF)
Apple Removes Original iPad Mini From Apple Online Store
Apple has quietly pulled the original iPad mini from the Apple Online Store this week and removed other references of the tablet from its website, as noted by 9to5Mac. The nearly three-year-old iPad mini was announced in October 2012 as a smaller 7.9-inch version of the iPad, but the tablet has since been succeeded by the iPad mini 2 and iPad mini 3, the latter featuring a Retina display, Touch ID and 64-bit A7 processor.
Apple dropped the price of the first-gen A5-based iPad mini to $299 in October 2013 and further discounted the tablet to $249 in October 2014, but the device was a hard sell given the iPad mini 2 starts at $299 with newer features. The original iPad mini remains available in the refurbished section of the Apple Online Store for between $209 and $409 depending on the specific model and storage capacity.
The original iPad mini remains available in limited quantities through authorized third-party resellers such as Amazon, although likely only until leftover stock is depleted. Apple’s remaining tablet lineup for sale includes the iPad Air 2, iPad Air, iPad mini 3 and iPad mini 2, and the company is widely rumored to introduce a larger 12.9-inch “iPad Pro” targeted at professional users later this year.
OnePlus One heading to India’s Flipkart
Flipkart has been teasing that a new handset is on its way to the popular Indian e-commerce retailer and it’s pretty hard to mistake the silhouette for anything other than the OnePlus One. We don’t have a sale date yet, but it could be right around the corner.
Currently, the OnePlus One is only officially available in India through an exclusive deal with Amazon. The 16GB handset arrived in the country back in February, following the launch of the 64GB model back in December 2014. A separate report citing industry sources suggests that the 64GB Sandstone Black model will be available through Flipkart first, which could go on sale as early as June 22nd.
The #One Wish Flipkart hasn’t fulfilled yet… is about to come true soon. pic.twitter.com/OYAkGfa3uC
— Flipkart (@Flipkart) June 18, 2015
Given the teaser, see above, we can probably expect the handset to arrive at Flipkart in the coming days. Expanding to include Flipkart in OnePlus’ distribution network has probably come about due to increased pressure from competing low-cost smartphone manufacturers in India, which are continuing to drive prices down in the country. Many of these competing handsets are already on sale through Flipkart, so it seems sensible that OnePlus wants to maximize its exposure across a number of retailers.
The news comes just one day after OnePlus confirmed that its upcoming OnePlus Two handset would be more expensive than the previous model. This means that we’re looking at more than $322 for the second generation handset, but the smartphone will be packing a high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, which is apparently fine-tuned to avoid any overheating problems.
We’ll keep our eyes open for more details from Flipkart in the coming days.
AIVAnet 