Here are your favorite Google Cardboard apps

Google’s Cardboard platform is really taking off this year. Here’s some apps you may not have seen.

It feels like new apps are being added to the Play Store every day that support Google Cardboard. Some are simple passive viewers, some are action-packed space shooters, and some are simple educational apps you can share with your kids. There’s no shortage of incredible ideas for this platform right now, and that’s why we decided to ask you which apps were your current favorites.

It turns out everyone is using VR in a slightly different way, and that’s fantastic. Here are some of your favorites that are worth checking out right now.

• YouTube (Free) — While it’s a little on the barebones side, the Cardboard mode on the YouTube app makes it easy to watch any video through Cardboard. It’s a whole lot more enjoyable when you watch videos that were recorded to take advantage of this particular feature, like 360 videos, but it works for anything and works with a simple button tap.

• Cmoar Roller Coaster VR ($1.99) — There are plenty of free roller coaster VR apps in the Play Store, but there aren’t a whole lot of good roller coaster VR apps in the Play Store. Cmoar has several tracks for you to check out, and each is impressively well assembled. This should absolutely be one of the first things you show someone new to Cardboard.

• End Space VR ($1.09) — Tilt your head around to control a space ship in the middle of a massive combat scenario. Fly around to grab power-ups and blow up everything to move on to the next level. Simple, straightforward, and remarkably addictive. Add this to your arsenal if you aren’t already playing it.

• Sea World VR2 (Free with ads) — Underwater experiences are some of the coolest things you can do with a child in VR, because it creates the illusion that you can reach out and touch a world these kids only see by going to large aquariums and theme parks. Sea World VR2 isn’t associated with the park in any way, but it gives you a cool way to share an underwater landscape and its inhabitants.

• Google Cardboard Camera (Free) — What better VR experience could there be than one you’ve created yourself? Google’s Cardboard Camera records a massive 360 panorama with audio and then lets you play it back in VR. The end result is an impressive still image that includes the audio from whatever you were doing at the time. It’s fun to take, and fun to share, so you should probably give it a shot.

There are hundreds more Cardboard apps out there for you to try, but these are the ones picked by the readers. If you’ve got a Cardboard app you love, toss it in the comments below!

Marshmallow soak test begins for Droid Turbo 2

Android 6.0 Marshmallow is now rolling out to at least some Droid Turbo 2 users as part of what appears to be a soak test. According to a screenshot posted by an Android Central forum user, the update looks to be composed of two parts, with the second moving the Turbo 2 up to Marshmallow and bumping the software version up to 24.14.10.

We’ve received a couple of tips from other users that have received the update as well, but it’s not entirely clear if this is part of a soak test or a full rollout at the moment. If you’ve received the update, be sure to chime in on our forums and in the comments below with your thoughts.

Thanks for the tips!

Google is reportedly working with Vizio on Cast-ready TVs

Google has tried reworking Google TV into Android TV, but we’re still not seeing the platform embedded in many more new TVs that were announced at launch. Now, according to a report from Variety, the company could try convincing manufacturers to build Chromecast-like receiving directly into TV sets. The first rumored partner is Vizio, which could be looking for a new edge in smart TVs with Yahoo shutting down its platform, and the possibility of an Android tablet remote. Vizio tried building its own Android tablet before, but packing one in with each new TV would be a step further.

Users have asked for a lighter (or non-existent) smart TV experience, and switching to casting with smarts offloaded to a tablet, or phone, might be the best way to do that. Android TVs already support casting, but including the functionality of the popular dongle in brand news TVs should get the tech in front of more people. As long as that means more WiFi-connected TVs, then for Vizio that means more opportunities to monitor viewing with its InScape technology.

Source: Variety

Apple might unveil 4-inch iPhone 5SE as iPhone SE instead in March

Contrary to multiple reports, the next iPhone won’t be called iPhone 5SE.

Apple is rumoured to unveil a new version of the iPhone 5S at a yet-to-be-confirmed March event. For the last several months, everyone has dubbed this upcoming device the iPhone 5SE, with the SE standing for “special edition” of the iPhone 5 (or some variation of that). Well, according to 9to5Mac, Apple has dropped the “5” from the name and will instead use letters entirely.

Apple apparently believes the number would make the name too complicated. Also, with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S now available, it likely thinks that a model with the number “5” will appear dated to consumers. Whatever the reason might be, you can expect this phone to arrive next month, looking and seeming much like the iPhone 5S but with improves specs, like an A9 chip.

The 4-inch iPhone is also thought to include a 8-megapixel camera, fingerprint scanner for Touch ID, NFC for using Apple Pay, and maybe even small physical changes to the body, including curved edges and a power button on the right. Apple’s March event will likely be scheduled for 15 March and will also see the introduction of new Apple Watch bands and a smaller iPad Pro.

Stay tuned to our Apple hub for all the latest developments.

Tim Cook on Apple Car: ‘It’s going to be Christmas Eve for a while’

Is Apple working on a vehicle? Who knows. But the company’s CEO has just majorly teased us about it.

Although Tim Cook hasn’t said much to date about Apple’s so-called “Apple Car”, for whatever reason he felt more loose-lipped during an annual shareholders meeting in Cupertino (via Business Insider), where he seemed to suggest Apple could be developing something big. When asked about the company’s electric car plans, he said the following:

“Do you remember when you were a kid, and Christmas Eve it was so exciting, you weren’t sure what was going to be downstairs? Well, it’s going to be Christmas Eve for a while.”

So, what does that mean? Well, if such a project does exist, Cook is saying that it won’t be publicly revealed for a while. Keep in mind that several reports have claimed Apple won’t begin producing its vehicle until 2019 or 2020, so his new tease definitely lines up with all that. Also, this isn’t the first time Cook has been questioned about an Apple Car.

In a recent interview, Cook avoided answering, but he described Apple engineers as curious people who “explore technologies”. Apple has recruited hundreds of engineers from car-manufacturers and elsewhere, including Tesla, Ford, GM, Samsung, A123 Systems, and Nvidia, to work on the a supposed car project (codenamed Project Titan, internally).

There’s additional evidence to suggest an Apple Car is in the works too, and you can read all about that here.

Watch Jason do what he does best in ‘Friday the 13th’ game

A slasher movie is only as good as its big bad, and that goes doubly so for interactive horror flicks. Take the upcoming Friday the 13th game, for example. To ensure that its Jason is as terrifying as possible, the team at Gun Media enlisted Kane Hodder, the man behind the hockey mask from the film franchise’s seventh through tenth installments to terrorize the forever-randy camp counselors. Even though everyone in the video below are wearing mo-cap suits on a sound stage, it’s hard to not cringe when Hodder tests the flexibility of the human leg, arm, neck, and, well, just about every appendage he lays hands on.

And if you’re a fan of Hodder’s infamous “sleeping bag kill” from part VII, you’re in for a treat, too.

When we spoke with the game’s creators last October, Gun’s Ronnie Hobbs said that the team wasn’t worried about going beyond the pale in their version of Camp Crystal Lake.

“Going too over-the-top in the gore department isn’t really a concern to us right now,” Hobbs said. “In fact, the slasher genre is more about creative kills and practical effects than all-out gore. We have Tom Savini leading this department, so expect to us to be very faithful to the slasher genre. In the end, I’m sure the ESRB will make sure we don’t go too far overboard.”

Friday the 13th is expected to launch, fittingly enough, this October after raising well over its $700,000 Kickstarter goal. If you need to play as a virtual Jason prior to that, give him a shot stab in Mortal Kombat X — another game that doesn’t take its violence too seriously.

Source: Gun Media (YouTube)

Hey, Google — how about some love for the Mac Android File Transfer app?

Transferring files between your Android and your Mac — there’s an app for that. And it sucks.

About a million years ago (2011 to be specific) Google changed the default USB transfer mode from mass storage to MTP in Android. By now, you’ll be hard pressed to find a phone that hasn’t switched over, and most of us are used to using MTP — that’s Media Transfer Protocol — to move files around while your phone is connected to your computer. Way back when Google first adopted MTP they also introduced an OS X app called Android File Transfer. MTP wasn’t supported natively on a Mac (it’s a standard, but based on some old Windows Media framework files) and they knew that people using Apple computers would need an easy way to transfer files. Then they stopped working on it.

There are good reasons to use MTP. It lets your phone and your computer access the storage at the same time, has safeguards in place so you can’t mess with necessary system files that might be stored in your user storage, and allows the people who make our phones to use a different (some say better) format for internal storage. Naturally, there was some resistance when Google first made the move, but by now most of us are used to it and don’t give it a second thought. Unless you use a Mac and AFT, that is.

Abandonware

If you download the very latest version of AFT from Google, you get an app that hasn’t been updated since October 2012. I get it — some utilities just work and don’t need to be updated. AFT is not one of them.

I’m sure the Android team has been working on MTP in Android versions since Honeycomb. Things that are designed to appear easy to the user are usually very complicated under the hood. It’s likely that some tweaks could be made to make the AFT app perform better or transfer faster or do something else that’s better. Three and a half years is a long time, and something has to be better. Maybe.

If nothing else, an overhaul to the UI is in order. How about the ability to plugin to Finder? Or at least a dialog box that has kept up with the rest of OS X. Looking like an Excel ’98 doc is kind of retro and cool, but I’d rather have a standard Apple dialog like everything else has.

Broken

I could live with the AFT app not being updated since October 2013 if not for one thing — Marshmallow doesn’t choose MTP by default when you plug a phone into a computer.

Google has the geeky way of transferring files sorted out pretty well. Install the SDK, turn on USB debugging, fire up your terminal and do everything you can do. I usually just do things this way, but I’m not a normal user. I like the command line, and the easy access it gives me to all sorts of things when I’m using a computer. Regular folks — the billion plus who are using Android — just want to plug a phone in and drag and drop like everything else does. With a Marshmallow phone and a Mac, that doesn’t happen.

When you plug your phone in, the AFT app on your Mac starts up, but your phone isn’t ready. All you get is an error in the middle of your desktop. Most of the time, you can change the USB mode to MTP on your phone, close the error dialog and AFT will start back up normally. But not every time. I’ve even had to reboot my computer to get it working a time or two. And I’m not alone. Our company Slack channel has more than a few instances of the words AFT and **** in the same sentence.

Yes, AFT is something. It sure is.

I’m not asking for much. Just fix the broken parts. We’ll all thank you for it.

UC Berkeley warns 80,000 people over potential data theft

The University of California, Berkeley is warning 80,000 people — including current and former students, faculty and vendors — that hackers have accessed a computer system that stored their Social Security and banking information. The university says it has not found evidence hackers “accessed, acquired or used any personal information.” Regardless, the school is warning people to keep an eye on their credit and is also offering free credit protection services for those impacted.

“The security and privacy of the personal information provided to the university is of great importance to us,” UC Berkeley CISO Paul Rivers said in a statement. “We regret that this occurred and have taken additional measures to better safeguard that information.”

Source: Yahoo! News

Sprint is reportedly bringing back two-year service plans

According to a report from FierceWireless, Sprint Wireless is reversing course and is once again offering two-year service contracts to its customers. The company stopped offering contracts just this January following similar moves by other tier-1 carriers over the last few years. However, as of Friday, the Sprint website now offers customers four options in total: leasing a handset, buying it outright, paying for it in installments or once again signing a 2-year deal.

“We listened to our customers and are giving them more choices to get their new device,” Sprint spokeswoman Michelle Leff Mermelstein told FierceWireless. “Sprint is the only carrier to offer the most choices to obtain a new device — lease, installment bill, two-year contract or pay full retail price.” The company’s rivals at AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have all largely eliminated their 2-year contract offerings.

Source: FierceWireless

How to Downgrade From an iOS Beta

If you’ve installed an iOS beta either through Apple’s developer program or the public beta testing website, you may find yourself wanting to downgrade if you’ve run into issues. iOS beta software can be notoriously buggy, especially during the first few betas of a major update.

Apps often don’t work, devices crash, battery life is poor, and entire features can be rendered non-functional. In some cases, these problems are a big enough deal that users will want to downgrade back to the more stable release version of iOS.

It’s possible to restore your iPhone or iPad to the release version of iOS, but you’re going to need an archived iTunes backup to restore your iPhone or iPad to its pre-beta state, so hopefully you have one on hand (this is the first step in any beta installation).

If not, downgrading will require wiping your device, so you’ll need to start from scratch with apps, accounts, and preferences. Here are the steps to downgrade:

Turn off Find My iPhone in the iCloud section of the Settings app.
Turn off the iPhone or the iPad.
Hold down the Home button while plugging the device into a PC or Mac running iTunes.
Continue to hold down the Home button until the iTunes logo pops up on the device display. This is called recovery mode.
If you don’t see the iTunes logo, entering recovery mode did not work. Repeat steps 2 to 4.
When recovery mode is successful, an iTunes popup will show up on your Mac or PC. Click on “Restore.” A warning will pop up letting you know the device will be erased.
Click on “Restore and Update” to bring up the iPhone Software Update menu, which will display details about the current publicly available version of iOS. Click “Next” and then “Agree” to agree to the terms and conditions and start the restoration process.
iTunes will download the current version of iOS and the restore will begin.
Restoring this way results in a clean installation of the current release version of iOS. All apps and data will be erased, which is why you want an archived iTunes backup to restore all of your information. It will take a several minutes for the recovery process to complete, but once it’s done, the next step is to restore from a backup.

Choose “Restore Backup” in iTunes.
Select the archived backup.
Click on “Restore” to confirm that you want to begin the backup restoration process.
When the install is complete, your iOS device will be restored to the condition that it was in prior to the beta. If you do not have an archived backup to work with, your device will need to be set up from scratch.

This how to is part of our iOS beta installation series. To see the rest of the steps involved with upgrading to a beta, make sure to check out our how tos on creating an archived iTunes backup and the steps to download the beta.
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