Sit back and relax with these sunset wallpapers
Today we are bringing you some wallpapers for your devices that should help you sit back and relax. Maybe if you close your eyes, you’ll picture yourself sitting on the beach watching the day wind to a close. Alright, maybe not, but these wallpapers will definitely help de-stress you and help you think of an upcoming vacation.
If you see a wallpaper that belongs to you and you would like to receive credit, I would love to give it to you! Just drop a comment in the section provided below with some proof (You know, just so we don’t have people claiming things that are not theirs…) So, please choose those that you like and enjoy!
The post Sit back and relax with these sunset wallpapers appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Select Final Fantasy games are on sale right now for $7.99
If you’re looking for high-quality RPGs on Android, you won’t find much better than the games offered by Square Enix. While most of these games are just ports of pre-existing games, they are fairly faithful ports that provide endless hours of enjoyment. One downside is the pricing.
While most of us are accustomed to paying anywhere from nothing to about $5 per game, Square tends to charge $10 to $20 for many of its titles. The good news is that right now select Final Fantasy games are now on sale for just $7.99. Even better, all the mentioned titles are also fully compatible with Android TV.
Here’s the games available in the sale:
The current sale pricing will stay in effect until August 13th, so if you’re at all interested, you better move quickly. What do you think, planning on picking any of these up? Let us know in the comments.
iPhone 6s Roundup Updated
Apple’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are coming next month, and we’ve updated our iPhone 6s and 6s Plus roundup with details on expected features, an extensive list of part leaks, and a fantastic new video that walks through all of the changes we’ll see in the new devices.
Make sure to check it out.
MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Pad & Quill Leather Backpack or Briefcase
For our next giveaway, we’ve partnered again with Pad & Quill, the maker of premium MacBook, iPhone, and iPad cases and other accessories. Pad & Quill is graciously offering three bags from the company’s new line-up of briefcases and backpacks, including the Leather Backpack (also available in a larger size), the Briefcase (also available in a larger size), and the Luxury Briefcase.
The Leather Backpack models are made of heavy waxed canvas and full-grain American steer leather. Each has a padded laptop sleeve, with the smaller model accommodating laptops up to 13 inches and the larger one accepting laptops up to 15 inches. The Leather Backpack will retail for $295 and the Large Leather Backpack will retail for $365. Both are available for pre-order now and will begin shipping later this month.
The Briefcase models are also made of heavy waxed canvas and full-grain leather. Both models will fit laptops up to 15 inches, with the Large Briefcase offering 25% more room compared to the Briefcase. Also scheduled to begin shipping later this month, the Briefcase will retail for $295 and the Large Briefcase will retail for $365.
The Luxury Briefcase is made entirely of leather, with a full-grain leather exterior and pigskin leather interior. It will fit laptops up to 15 inches and will begin shipping in early September with a retail price of $495.
All of these Pad & Quill bags feature leather hand-crafted by a leather artisan and have a 25-year warranty.
To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter your email address. Your email address will not be given to any third party and will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.
Three winners will be chosen for this giveaway. The first winner selected can choose one of the Leather Backpack models. The second winner selected can choose one of the Briefcase models. The third winner selected will receive the Luxury Briefcase.
a Rafflecopter giveawayThis contest will run from today (August 7) at 12:00 pm Pacific time through 12:00 pm Pacific time on August 14. The winners will be chosen randomly on August 14 and will be contacted by email. The winners have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address. The prizes will be shipped to the winners for free.
Verizon is getting rid of phone contracts and changing data plans on August 13th
Verizon is said to be making some huge changes to the way it operates. On August 13th they will be changing their data plans and smartphone plans. They will now be offering four data plans and will no longer offer separate single-line or family plan options.
Two-year contracts will also be gone as well as smartphone subsidies. They will be moving to a similar system that T-Mobile uses by letting customers buy a phone outright or allowing them to pay monthly instalments.
With the new plans each smartphone line will cost $20 a month, with tablet and Jetpack hotspot products costing $10 per month. Other devices such as smartwatches will cost $5 a month.
Here is the breakdown:
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Small: $30/month for 1GB of shareable data
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Medium: $45/month for 3GB of shareable data
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Large: $60/month for 6GB of shareable data
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X-Large: $80/month for 12GB of shareable data
Verizon does say on all new plans you can share their data with up to 10 devices.
“New Verizon customers who want to take advantage of the new plan may do so by buying a new smartphone using Verizon’s device payment option, formerly known as Verizon Edge, or by paying the retail price. Current customers can keep their existing plan or move to the new plan, with some restrictions.”
A final change Verizon will be making is having the monthly bill simpler to read so customers can understand their monthly chargers easier.
Source: Verizon
Via: Android Central
Come comment on this article: Verizon is getting rid of phone contracts and changing data plans on August 13th
‘World’s first’ solar hot air balloon takes flight in the UK
The UK’s International Balloon Fiesta in Bristol is a celebration of all things hot air ballooning, but this year it’s taken a big stride into the future. August 6th saw the maiden public flight of the world’s first hybrid hot air balloon, which flies by heating regular air from the sun alone. (Google’s Project Loon balloons are also solar-heated, but filled with helium.) Built by Cameron Balloons in the UK, the Bristol 2015 Solar Balloon sounds simple enough. The air inside the balloon is heated by the sun instead of a propane burner, causing it to rise — much like solar heated balloons for kids. But the company’s sales director, Nick Purvis, told Engadget that it took a lot of trial and error to make it work.
“We were constrained by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) as to what materials we could use,” he said. Since the demonstration was done in front of 100,000 people and around numerous other ballons, safety was paramount. The company tried several designs, including one with a clear window on the front for greenhouse heating, but it proved too heavy and fragile. It settled on a design with two materials on each hemisphere. The black side facing the sun would collect heat, while the shady side used a metalized, double-layer material to trap it inside.
Bristol 2015 Solar Balloon under construction at Cameron Balloons facility
The fabrics were thinner than usual, as the craft needed to be extra light. It creates less lift than usual, because the sun only heats the inside air to about 40 degrees Celcius (104 F) — half the temperature of a standard hot air balloon. The team also added vents to the fabric that acted as jets, allowing the pilot to turn the balloon into the sun for lift. It took 200 man-hours to and ten people to build it, including an adviser, designer and chief engineer. The final product was fully certified for regular flight by the UK CAA.
Luckily, the flying part worked out perfectly. The balloon has a standard propane heater for safety purposes, and they used it to inflate the craft prior to flight. From there, the sun heated it to the point of buoyancy, and the crew then held it down until it had sufficient lift. It soared a distance of around 3km, with “only several quick puffs (from the burner) to climb out of range of other balloons,” Purvis said. When it came time to land, pilot Pete Dalby maneuvered the metallic side toward the sun to gradually reduce lift.
Purvis added that that they were lucky the weather was ideal for demonstration flight, with heavy sun and light winds. He noted that the idea was to get people excited about the potential for solar heated balloons, rather than do anything complicated. We imagine they were suitably impressed, since the basic concept for hot air balloons hasn’t changed since the 1700s.
[Image Credit: Cameron Balloons]
Tags: Bristol, Cameron Balloons, Hot Air Balloon, hybrid balloon, International Balloon Fiesta, Solar-powered
LG commits to monthly Android security updates
In the wake of the Stagefright bug, LG has reportedly committed to posting monthly security updates to protect its Android smartphones. It’s the third company in two days to pledge to ensure that its devices aren’t left wide open for hackers, since Google and Samsung both said the same yesterday. The announcement was reported by Wired, who quotes an unnamed LG source as saying that it’ll provide the updates on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, these updates will still have to be passed fit for purpose by the carriers, who frequently drag their feet when it comes to getting them out to consumers.
The problem, as both Motherboard and MIT Technology Review have recently pointed out, is based around how Android works. Rather than being a product that’s worked on in a lab at Google and then pushed out to all users, the operating system is forked, tweaked and altered by every company, and carrier, that uses it. That means that, instead of one version of the software, there are hundreds of minor variations, which makes universal security patches all that more difficult to distribute. That’s why the Stagefright bug is so terrifying, since it threatens anything up to 950 million devices with little chance of a one-size-fits-all solution being created. We’ve reached out to LG so that we can confirm that it will commit to monthly security updates, but have not had a reply by the time of publication.
Filed under:
Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google, LG
Via:
Android Police
Source:
Wired
Tags: Android, Bug, google, lg, mobilepostcross, Patch, Security, Stagefright
Verizon nixes phone subsidies and simplifies its data plans
Following the lead of alternative carriers like T-Mobile and Google Fi, Verizon announced today that it will be doing away with phone subsidies (the precise opposite of what it said last October) and rejiggering its data plans beginning August 13th. Don’t get excited just yet, there’s no guarantee that your revamped service charges will be any less than what they are now.
Basically, every month you’re going to pay $20 for each phone, $10 for each tablet and jetpack, and $5 for every smartwatch on your plan as well as one of Verizon’s four data buckets — 1GB for $30, 3GB for $45, 6GB for $60 and 12GB for $80. Any data usage over your bucket limit will cost $15 per gigabyte, though you will be able to share the contents of your data bucket amongst 10 devices. The company is also doing away with offering discounted phones with a two-year service agreement, a la T-Mobile. Instead, customers will be expected to either pay for the new device up front or have that cost amortized over a set period and be tacked onto the monthly bill, which was formerly known as Verizon Edge.
[Image Credit: Invision for Verizon Wireless]
Filed under:
Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Apple, Google, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, Blackberry, T-Mobile
Via:
RE/Code
Source:
Verizon
Tags: apple, att, blackberry, buckets, data, dataplan, google, mobilepostcross, phones, sprint, subsidies, t-mobile, verizon
Blocky Cars Online: a blocky good time (app review)
Imagine Minecraft. Add a dash of racing, a dash of combat, and viola, you have Blocky Cars Online.
Blocky Cars Online overview
The first thing you do in Blocky Cars Online is build your car. They do give you a prebuilt starter car to use, but you can build and modify your car anyway that you see fit. There are various materials that you can use to build and modify your car and each material has its own properties. The reasons for using different materials will vary depending on the mode of game play that you are choosing. For example. you wouldn’t want to weigh you car down with weapons if you are racing and you wouldn’t want to use lighter materials in a battle.
Every time you increase a level, new items are unlocked for you to use in modifying your car. In order to use the new materials, you must purchase them using the in-game coins. You earn coins by participating in battles and races. You’ll also get bonus coins every day that you log in and of course you can purchase coins via in-app purchases. You’ll need to constantly update your vehicle(s) if you want to stay competitive when you change levels.
One of the things that annoyed me a little is that you can’t see the item stats when you’re building or modifying your vehicle. If you want to see the stats you’ll need to go to the store and look at the item(s) in question.
Once you are satisfied with your car you can choose from various game modes. As inferred by the title of the game, all modes are online. There are not really any single player modes. You can test your vehicles without other players, but that’s about it.
The first game mode is racing. It’s pretty simple. race through the checkpoints as fast as you can. The races as well as the battles allow you to join and or create races online. There are seven tracks to choose from. You can also name the track and limit the maximum players anywhere from 2-8 if you are the creator of the race. The race mechanics are hard. Your vehicle design will greatly impact the handling speed and other aspects. This will largely determine your success. I found that my vehicle was hard to handle, but then again, my impression was that everyone was having a hard time.
The second mode is team battle. Like the racing modes, you can either create your own game or join an existing game. You are automatically assigned to either the red or blue team. The object is simple. destroy the enemies vehicles with the turrets, rocket launchers, and other weapons available to purchase and equip. If your team wins, you’ll gain coins and experience. You’ll need experience to level up.
One of the nice things is that when you join a match in any mode you’ll be paired up with people that are on the same level that you are. There is a checkbox that will allow you to play with the big boys of you choose.
The third mode is a deathmatch. The object of this mode is to be the last one standing.
Like many online games, this game features an online chat system. In the game, there is a microphone icon that will allow you to speak and out of the game there are chat boxes on almost every screen to allow you to chat with other players. Parents should be aware that the language gets a little crass and raunchy at times.
The music in the game is nice, but there is only one track and it gets old and repetitive pretty quick. A few more tracks would do wonders for this game.
One of the nice features of the app is that they have integrated Unity’s Everyplay. Everyplay is a Twitch like game recording service for your mobile. You can upload the videos to Everyplay’s servers and share it to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Here is an example of a video I recorded in game.
https://everyplay.com/player?id=19401366&autoplay=false
Blocky Cars Online setup
This game is initially fairly easy to setup. Just download it from Google Play. After that, you can start playing, but if you want to use the Everyplay recording you’ll need to set up an account or sign in if you already have one. Another thing I would recommend is to go to the store and look at the materials so that you’ll have an idea of what properties the various items will have when your’e working on your car.
Who will enjoy Blocky Cars Online
If you enjoy online games and competition, then you’ll like this game. If you like Minecraft, then you may also enjoy this game. If you like racing or shooting games then you may enjoy this game as well. If you like all of the above, then you’ll probably love this game.
What we liked
- Online gameplay
- Vehicle customization
- Everyplay integration
What could have been better
- At times, the game was pretty laggy
- Foul language in chat
Blocky Cars Online summary
I think if I could change anything about this game I would add parental controls over the chat. I wouldn’t allow my children to play the game as it is. However, if I could turn the chat off and protect it with a pin, I would have no problems letting my kids play this game.
Overall I enjoyed this game. Is it perfect? No. Is it fun? Yes.
The post Blocky Cars Online: a blocky good time (app review) appeared first on AndroidGuys.
PornHub aims to be Netflix for porn with new subscription service and upcoming app
Back in June we reported on PornTime, an Android app that was essentially Popcorn Time for pornos. At the time, many of our readers commented that it didn’t make as much sense as Popcorn Time, as there is plenty of free pornographic content on the web already and few people actually watch full-length porn movies these days.
Despite this, it seem that PornHub believes there really is a market for high-quality porn movies in 2015 and beyond, and has now announced a premium service that will charge $9.99 a month for access to over 13,000 full-length ad-free HD movies. In addition to the new service, PornHub is also launching an official Android app.
Not a lot of details have been released about the app, and it is unclear whether the app requires a subscription or will allow access to free content as well. Either way, it is pretty unlikely that the app will make its way to Google Play considering the content involved. That means it will have to be downloaded directly from PornHub, which could be seen as a security risk for those that prefer to get their apps solely from the Play Store.
With the push into app territory, and the accompanying premium service, PornHub is hoping to become the “Netflix of Porn”, but is there really a demand for such a service in a world where free porn is but a quick Google search away?
AIVAnet 