Gameloft updates Asphalt 8 Airborne with new cars and R&D feature
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Gameloft has released the 11th update to their 8th installment of their popular racing franchise game, Asphalt 8: Airborne. The update, which should be out now for iOS and Android, with Windows coming soon, brings in new content to keep you actively engaged. In the update you will find 6 new cars to tear across the street with. Among the new addition you will find the Lamborghini Huracan, Bentley EXP10 Speed 6, Cadillac 16 Concept, Kepler Motion, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X and McLaren 570s.
New vehicles is always a welcomed addition to a racing title, but Gameloft added other things to the update as well. There is now a new Research & Development feature. Here you can test drive the new Lamborghini Huracan and put it through its paces in an attempt to have the car added to your garage. I doubt it will be easy and you may find yourself rage quitting a time or two before you earn the car.
Along with the cars and R&D you will also find over 100 new Car Mastery Events and a slew of new decals to trick out the look of your ride. Bounce to the Play Store to check for the update and get to racing. If you haven’t given this free title a try, hit the link below to go grab it when you have some time. It is pretty decent and a little bit crazy.
http://playboard.me/widgets/pb-app-box/1/pb_load_app_box.js
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Boost Mobile rewards on-time paying customers with “Growing Data”
Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Corp., announced a new way to reward its customers who pay on-time. Customers who pay on time will be rewarded with free data upgrades without being charged a single penny more, an industry first for simply paying your bill on-time.
Every third on-time payment earns a customer 500MB of high-speed data on top of their current plan. After 18 on-time payments, customers can add up to 3GB of data which can more than double the base plan of 2GB per month.
“Boost Mobile is always rewarding customers for their loyalty, and the best way to say thank you is by offering plans with growing high-speed data. Our new $35 plan, or $30 with Auto Re-Boost, offers the best value now with 2GB of high-speed data and we’re offering our customers more value by slashing the prices on some of our latest smartphones to as low as $19.99. Now is the best time to be a Boost customer; you can get a premium smartphone at an affordable price and earn extra high-speed data just by paying on time.” Angela Rittgers, Vice President, Boost Mobile
Growing data is available on the $30 Unlimited with Auto-Re-Boost, $35 and $45 Unlimited plans. You can check out more details on their website.
As consumers become more educated on pricing models offered from big carriers, they are jumping over to plans like these. 5GB of data with unlimited texts and minutes for $30 dollars is cheaper than Google’s own Project Fi. Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon continue to battle it out on the postpaid front, but the prepaid wireless space is a battleground that is picking up intensity rather quickly and quietly. Lets hope this trend continues as these battles help lower prices across the board.
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Tribeca and Lionsgate’s video-streaming service is now available
It took almost a year to get here, but Tribeca and film distributor Lionsgate have finally launched their paid video-streaming service. Shortlist, as the on-demand product is called, will have a $5 monthly subscription fee and give users access to over 150 “critically acclaimed” movies. Among them are Crash, City of God, Chasing Amy, Fargo and The Producers, to mention a few. Right now, Tribeca Shortlist is only available on the web and for iPad, although we’re told it’ll be available on the iPhone, Fire TV and Roku later this year, as well as Apple TV and Android in 2016. Tribeca, which is the company behind the Tribeca Film Festival, says the $5 price is set to stay until the end of 2015, but then it plans to increase it to $6. Nevertheless, if you’re interested in seeing what it has to offer, you can sign up for a free trial.
Source: Tribeca Shortlist
IBM unlocks the secret to carbon nanotube transistors
Following Moore’s law is getting harder and harder, especially as existing components reach their physical size limitations. Parts like silicon transistor contacts — the “valves” within a transistor that allow electrons to flow — simply can’t be shrunken any further. However, IBM announced a major engineering achievement on Thursday that could revolutionize how computers operate: they’ve figured out how to swap out the silicon transistor contacts for smaller, more efficient, carbon nanotubes.
The problem engineers are facing is that the smaller silicon transistor contacts get, the higher their electrical resistance becomes. There comes a point where the components simply get too small to conduct electrons efficiently. Silicon has reached that point. But that’s where the carbon nanotubes come in. These structures measure less than 10 nanometers in diameter — that’s less than half the size of today’s smallest silicon transistor contact. IBM actually had to devise a new means of attaching these tiny components. Known as an “end-bonded contact scheme” the 10 nm electrical leads are chemically bonded to the metal substructure. Replacing these contacts with carbon nanotubes won’t just allow for computers to crunch more data, faster. This breakthrough ensures that they’ll continue to shrink, following Moore’s Law, for several iterations beyond what silicon components are capable of.
“These chip innovations are necessary to meet the emerging demands of cloud computing, Internet of Things and Big Data systems,” Dario Gil, vice president of Science & Technology at IBM Research, said in a statement. “As technology nears the physical limits of silicon, new materials and circuit architectures must be ready to deliver the advanced technologies that will drive the Cognitive Computing era. This breakthrough shows that computer chips made of carbon nanotubes will be able to power systems of the future sooner than the industry expected.” The study will be formally published October 2nd, in the journal Science. This breakthrough follows a number of other recent minimization milestones including transistors that are only 3-atoms thick or constructed from a single atom.
Amazon pulling Apple TV and Chromecast over Prime Video support
Say goodbye to Prime shipping of the Apple TV and Chromecast. In an email obtained by Bloomberg, Amazon informed marketplace sellers that it would no longer allow the sale of the two devices after October 29. The reason is that they don’t offer easy access Amazon Prime Video. An Amazon spokesperson told Engadget, “over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion. Roku, XBOX, PlayStation and Fire TV are excellent choices.” Apple TV has yet to add the service and to watch the Prime videos on the Chromecast is less than ideal. The company is keen on making sure its customers are completely intertwined in its services. Apparently the Apple TV and Chromecast didn’t offer the interoperability needed to stay in the store.
Source: Bloomberg
Stagefright bug now spreads through malicious audio files
Cripes, how many times is Google going to have to patch before the Stagefright exploit bug stays fixed? The company has already patched its code three times but on Thursday, security research firm Ziperium (the guys that initially discovered the flaw) announced that it had discovered yet another way hackers could bypass an Android handset’s security. This time, the malicious code can be delivered by an audio message.
Hackers can encode a piece of malware into an MP3 or Mp4 file and then disseminate it (worryingly, this sort of digital delivery vehicle works really well over public Wi-Fi connections). Any Android user who clicks on the downloaded file will prompt the OS to automatically preview the song, infecting the device. And since virtually every build of Android OS currently available shares this same auto-preview feature, the exploit works nearly universally. Google is reportedly already working to patch the vulnerability in Android’s core code, which should be ready by the October Monthly Security Update on the 5th.
Source: Motherboard
Google and Microsoft agree to end patent feud over smartphones and gaming systems
After a multi-year conflict in the courtroom, Google and Microsoft have finally agreed to end their big patent feud. No financial terms were disclosed, though the two companies have agreed to drop roughly 20 lawsuits in the United States and Germany.
The two companies have been in dispute since 2010, when Google’s former Motorola Mobility unit began demanding royalties on Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system. At the same time, Microsoft had sought to prevent Motorola’s mobile phones from using certain features that have been patented by Microsoft.
As GeekWire reports, here is the joint statement released by Google and Microsoft earlier this morning:
Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues. As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility. Separately, Google and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers.
Now the two companies have agreed to drop all patent litigations in question, and work together in areas that would more greatly benefit their customers. One way the companies are doing so is by focusing on the newly-formed Alliance for Open Media, of which both Google and Microsoft are members. The alliance, which is setting out to develop a royalty-free video compression technology for the web, includes key players in the tech world like Amazon, Cisco, Intel, Netflix, Google, Microsoft and more.
Samsung’s Galaxy View looks to be a myopic mid-range offering
Tablets. Perhaps as a direct result of the industry’s supposed slump, Apple and Google have taken to pushing productivity with their new entries. Whereas the Pixel C is but 10.2 inches however, the iPad Pro is a towering 12.9, a numeric ball-park Samsung is all too familiar with given the Galaxy Tab PRO 12.2 and Galaxy NotePRO 12.2 devices it released in 2014. Samsung also has teased an even more enormous upcoming product, the Galaxy View. For better or worse, the device looks to be a mid-range offering at best, at least according to GFXBench results:
Suffice to say the specs above – if legitimate – are a far cry from not only the new Galaxy Tab S2, but even last year’s Galaxy PRO series. The display, arguably the most important part of the tablet experience, is a positively grand 18.5 inches. The resolution however is listed at Full HD (1920 X 1080). This would give the Galaxy View a pixel density score of…124.73ppi. For reference, the Galaxy NotePRO 12.2 has a pixel density of about 247ppi, the Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 and iPad Pro have a pixel density of 264ppi, and even the low-end Galaxy Tab E has roughly 157ppi.
While nothing is mentioned about the screen itself, it would not be the least bit surprising to find it either an LCD panel or else a TFT offering. If the benchmarks are indeed real, then the device is going to be quite far from the Super AMOLED-packing, high pixel product that one might readily envision with a name like “View”.
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The remaining specs are of equally mid-range nature including an Exynos 7580 SoC and just 2GB of RAM. It will apparently have 32GB of on-board storage, a 2-megapixel front camera (as well as an 8-megapixel rear camera despite the benchmark noting it missing), a 5,700 mAh battery, and microSD support along with Android 5.1.1. The Galaxy View is expected to come in at 451.8 mm wide, 275.8 mm tall, and 11.9 mm thick.
The device already passed two certification inspections, thus Samsung may be prepping it for immediate launch.
If the benchmark specs are any indication, the giant Galaxy View will have ironically very little on the NotePRO 12.2 (pictured).
It will be interesting to see just where the View fits into the whole Galaxy product line. Given the large size it will inevitably be seen as a device meant to stay at home, but with the specs being reported above, it certainly doesn’t seem like the best option for a heavy gaming or media experience. With the lack of a “PRO” branding, the product is arguably going for a very different market altogether.
What are your thoughts on the device? Could Samsung have a real competitor on its hands here, or – again assuming these specs are legitimate – has it essentially killed the View before anyone got a peek?
[TA Deals] Grab a pair of KOAR Bluetooth Cloud Buds with a 77% discount
If you’ve been in the market for a new pair of headphones, KOAR is offering their Bluetooth Sound Buds for a whopping 77% off. This brings the completely wireless pair of headphones under 25 bucks.
The Cloud Buds are extremely lightweight and completely wireless, but they offer a sturdy, premium construction with a noise canceling outer shell. There’s a microphone and remote built-in too, which is great for those of you that use headphones to take phone calls.
$24.99 nets you the headphones that also include option ear hooks and a few different sizes of ear gel buds to make sure everything fits securely. It’s pretty hard to beat that deal for a pair of nice earbuds.
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Amazon reportedly banning sales of competitors’ streaming devices, including Chromecast
A new report coming by way of Bloomberg indicates that Amazon will banning the sale of its competitors streaming devices on its e-commerce website. If the report ends up being true, consumers will no longer be able to find video streaming devices from Google or Apple.
Bloomberg says:
No new listings for the products will be allowed and posting of existing inventory will be removed Oct. 29, Amazon said [in an email to marketplace sellers]. Amazon’s streaming video service, called Prime Video, doesn’t run easily on rival’s devices.”Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” Amazon said in the e-mail. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”
It makes a lot of sense for Amazon to ban the sale of its competitors’ video streaming devices, however, there’s not telling if it’ll actually boost sales. Streaming on Prime has always been frustrating, largely due to technical difficulties or not having the content consumers want.
Either way, if you want to pick up Google’s HDMI Chromecast dongle, you’ll have to do so from the Google Store or via some other retailer from now on.
source: Bloomberg
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