Super Phantom Cat (Review)

Super phantom cat is a Retro-platformer from Veewo games, joining a long list of games by the developer which can be seen here. It follows a cat (well, kinda. You’ll see) as you try to escape an alternate galaxy, and collecting various goods as you go. Download links, as well as a trailer, are available on their site.

Huh, Super Phantom Cat. As far as retro platformers go, You sure do play well. Game is simple – get to the end of the level, using left/right controls, a jump, and skills called “sprites” (more on them in a bit) It’s the usual drill. Of course, you can collect stars and coins, both for points. Coins can be replaced with data (More on that in a bit too) which does other things.

HOLD UP! What about Storage?

Do keep an eye on this one. At the time of writing, Super Phantom Cat (Or Super Cat, as its known as when installed) needs 132MB of space. Not horrifically big, but some people may have issues.

And Permissions….

Now, Super Phantom Cat is built for the Pre-Marshmallow era, meaning that it does not support run-time permissions. If you are on Marshmallow or later (or know how to get into AppOps on older versions – or you use Xprivacy, you clever little rooters) You may want to disable a few things:

A little worrying, but Contacts may have legitimate uses.

Contacts make sense since pre-marshmallow apps that don’t use the new SDK’s have to use said permission for Google Play Games sign-in. Telephone? No idea what’s going on there. Still turned contacts off because I can be a little bit of a hypochondriac like that.

*Coughs* Dan… the game?

Oh right! So, the story follows a cat (you) as you travel through the phantom world, trying to get home. On your way, you meet another cat who teaches you the ‘lay of the land,’ so to speak. This other cat rescues you then leaves you to do the tutorial before turning back up over the next few levels to teach you things. In fact…

I managed to grab tutorial footage! (Apologies for the volume bar at the start, and the sound. was not going to sacrifice quality for sound.)

After that, the game explains its ‘sprites.’ these plucky power-ups provide a variety of abilities like shooting, ground pounds, and short range teleporting.

OOO! A weapon sprite!

As you may guess, sprites make your life much, much easier.

Anyhow, you may not like cats. Well, don’t worry, there are multiple characters to unlock! As the story progresses, you can start unlocking more and more characters. Some have unique bonuses, like extra health, or starting a level with an upgraded bullet sprite. the characters range from cats to birds and even people.

Honestly, my only issue is spelling. It’s not horrific, but when you see a typo, it can drive you mad. For example, if you die, you’ll randomly be given the chance of a free revive- in exchange for watching an advert when you ‘exist’ the game. Yes, it’s meant to be ‘exit.’ Speaking of adverts, you will get them when you die. However, log in 5 days in a row, and you get an ad-free experience. That offer is pretty good.

In-App purchases

As far as in-app purchases go, Super Phantom Cat is not too bad. In fact, only 4 things can be brought:

• An alternative set of worlds, for £1.69
• Unlock all characters for £1.39
• 3 items that, when used, give 20 minutes unlimited stamina for £1.39
• Unlock a previously locked world early for £1.39

And you don’t feel you need to actually buy any of them, other than the alternative worlds. There’s no there way to get them.

Conclusion

Overall, Super Phantom Cat is a rather good platformer that rewards people that play it with the lack of adverts, as well as well-placed hints to let you know if you missed something – or to explain things. Personally, I will keep this installed for a while yet – may get some new features for all I know.

Motorola announces new TurboPower, GamePad, and SoundBoost 2 Moto Mods

Why it matters to you

Motorola’s Moto Mods are one of the Moto Z’s best attributes, and Motorola committed to them in a major way at Mobile World Congress.

Update: After previewing new modular peripherals for its Z series smartphones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Motorola has announced pricing and availability. By Kyle Wiggers. 

One of the most unique — and arguably best — features of Lenovo’s Moto Z series is Moto Mods, which include accessories like cameras, speakers, batteries, and more. Earlier this year at Mobile World Congress (MWC), Lenovo announced a slew of new Mods headed to market. And on June 1, it announced when they’d be available — and how much they’d cost.

The TurboPower Pack, GamePad, and SoundBoost 2 will retail for $80 later this year, and the Wireless Charging Shells are $40 apiece.

Here’s everything you need to know about Motorola’s new Moto Mods, which be fully compatible with the Moto Z2 Play.

Power accessories

TurboPower Pack

Motorola’s new TurboPower Pack snaps onto any Moto Z like an external battery, and gives any Moto Z up to 50 percent more power via a 3,490mAh battery. It can charge the phone at 15W speeds — up to 50 percent in just 20 minutes, Motorola claims — and it’s smart enough to detect the phone’s level of charge and replenishing the battery when it’s “most efficient.” It also charges in less than an hour.

Charging Adapter

Another charging accessory, the Charging Adapter, is designed to recharge any new and existing Moto Mod. It’s a tiny box that fits over the metal connector on the Mod to be charged and plugs into an outlet.

Style Shells with Wireless Charging

Motorla’s Style Shells stands now come in more colors, and support fast charging up to 10W.

GamePad

Motorola’s new GamePad Moto Mod, which was developed in partnership with the gaming division at Lenovo, adds console controls to Moto Z devices — specifically two joysticks, a directional pad, trigger buttons, and a lanyard loop. A dedicated 1,035mAh battery powers its LEDs without having to draw from the phone’s battery for power.

SoundBoost 2

JBL’s SoundBoost 2 Mod adds beefed-up audio to any Moto Z device. It works with a new JBL app that lets you adjust the sound coming from the speaker, and offers up to 10 hours of playback via a built-in battery. It’s also splash-resistant, comes in three colors, has a fabric covering, and automatically pairs to your phone when you flip open the kickstand.

Amazon Alexa

Those aren’t the only Mods Motorola committed to shipping this year.

Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service, the set of APIs that allow hardware makers to integrate the Alexa voice assistant into their products, will hit Moto Z devices in the form of a specially designed Mod. It features a glowing blue light that illuminates when Alexa is activated, and a pyramidal base that doubles as a desk stand.

More: Is a Hasselblad camera module coming to the Moto Z? Leak says it’s possible

Interestingly, the Alexa-equipped Moto Mod is akin to Amazon’s Echo Show. It pairs with a companion app that shows search results based on voice queries — if you ask about the weather in Barcelona, for example, it will show a three-day weather forecast.

Motorola said that later in the year, Moto Z would gain “deeper integration” with Alexa. It will respond to Alexa’s wake word from the lock screen, and show results in a companion app.

Concept Mods

Motorola showed off concept Mods, or ideas for Moto Mods that might (or might not) make it to market, at Mobile World Congress in March.

One of the most impressive adds wireless charging to any Moto Z on the market. Another includes four SIM slots.

A Polaroid-like printer for Moto Z devices spits out photos on compact sheets of paper, and a robotics module adds motors and connectors that transform any Moto Z into the brains of a Lego remote-controlled car or automaton. Another Mod, a mutlilevel docking station, serves as a charger for multiple Mods.

Two other concept Mods skewed a bit more practical. One, a giant, tablet-like stand with a docking station that fits a Moto Z Force, is more than a little reminiscent of Motorola’s Atrix laptop dock and Lenovo’s PadFone. And a virtual reality headset Mod uses a Moto Z handset’s screen as a VR display, much like Samsung’s Galaxy Gear.

More Mods on the horizon

Mods are the number one reason people are buying Moto Zs, Motorola said, and they’re putting them to use. The average Moto Z user swaps Mods an average of 14 hours a week.

To help spur third-party Mod development, Motorola has teamed up with manufacturers to engineer a development platform. It will continue to design Mods itself, but it’ll also co-design Mods with partners, and let approved third-parties make, sell, and market Mods entirely by themselves.

In many cases, it’s jump-starting the development efforts itself. In India, Motorola hosted more than 100 developers, engineers, students, and partners to discuss new Moto Mod concepts. And it’s spearheaded hackathons in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and San Francisco.

The pop-up events dovetail with Motorola’s Transform the Smartphone Challenge, a competition that saw enterprising hardware developers pitch ideas for Moto Mods at events in New York and San Francisco. They subsequently launched crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo, and had a shot at meeting with Verizon and Motorola representatives to get their Moto Mods featured in Motorola’s online store.

Google uses ‘Wonder Woman’ to inspire next generation of female programmers

Why it matters to you

The tech industry still suffers from an overwhelming lack of diversity, and programs like this one could help change that in the future.

A recent study co-published by Google and Gallup states that just 48 percent of girls between seventh and 12th grade are “very confident” they could learn computer science, compared to 65 percent of boys. An International Game Developers Survey from 2014 estimated that although the percentage of female game developers had more than doubled since 2009, women still only represented less than a quarter of the industry.

Clearly there’s an imbalance that has pervaded the field. And although tech companies have made strides in terms of representation, there’s still much work ahead. Even Google, it must be said, has come under fire in recent years for failing to do enough to fix the lack of diversity within its walls — especially where equal pay is concerned. And that brings us to this week.

On Friday, Wonder Woman hits theaters, and Google is using the opportunity to take action. The company has developed an interactive coding project to introduce girls to the fundamentals of the trade. The experience will allow budding programmers to recreate three unique scenes from the movie.

Meanwhile, the DC Legends mobile RPG available through the Play Store has been updated with new missions where gamers can play as Wonder Woman.

The coding project is being headed up by Made With Code, Google’s initiative to empower young women to pursue careers in computer science — whether they have some tech know-how or none at all. It will be accompanied by an advance screening of the film, where 100 teen girls from the Los Angeles area will be invited to see Wonder Woman before getting the opportunity to try the programming experience for themselves.

Google is hoping that by helping girls become acquainted with the basics, it can chip away at societal norms and stereotypes that push women away from technical industries like computer science. A great deal of the pressure is exerted at home and in schooling — so much so that Made With Code concludes “encouragement from adults and peers is the No. 1 contributor to a teen girl’s decision to pursue computer science.”

Those interested can visit Made With Code to explore other projects similar to the Wonder Woman one. Additionally, parents and teachers can use the site’s resources to discover ways to introduce programming to the young women in their lives.

Curved sensors are getting closer to reality thanks to new Microsoft research

Why it matters to you

Curved camera sensors won’t be mass produced any time soon, but researchers are getting closer to bringing them to market.

Curved camera sensors are poised to offer better low-light performance and enhanced image quality — but manufacturing challenges have prevented the new tech from actually coming to market. A team of researchers from Microsoft, however, may have found a solution. The group recently published its work in the Optical Society of America Journal, detailing a new process for designing curved sensors that overcomes several obstacles, including expense and performance.

Earlier studies showed that using a curved sensor could reduce the weight of the camera and lens by 37 times, the researchers wrote, but in order to achieve a higher-quality image than current flat sensors, that curve had to match the field of view created by the lens. Creating a highly curved sensor, however, involved deforming the material into a curve, which stretches the pixels and doesn’t allow for a high resolution output — or breaks the sensor entirely.

The Microsoft team instead developed a silicon sensor with flexible die edges, allowing the sensor to curve more without the pixel stretch. By placing the sensor on custom molds and slowly stretching the sensor, the group’s attempts resulted in a larger curve without breaking the sensor during the bending process. The group tested the process on a number of different sensor sizes, including a camera with an f/1.2 lens that had twice the resolution of a traditional DSLR.

The research brings the idea of a curved sensor closer to reality by navigating through manufacturing pitfalls. The group says that the curved sensors are likely still a ways from mass production, but plans to continue the research already underway, including infrared variations.

The curved sensors could potentially be found inside future DSLRs, however, they require a completely different lens design, making it more likely that the tech will find its way inside cameras with fixed lenses first, such as in smartphone cameras.

Adobe’s new app makes mobile scans searchable with auto-recognized text

Why it matters to you

Adobe’s auto-text recongition technology is now available in smartphones, making it easy to turn physical documents into searchable PDFs.

Using a smartphone camera to scan a new document is not anything new, but Adobe’s attempt at a mobile scanner uses artificial intelligence to turn the image into an editable PDF.  Adobe Scan, announced on Wednesday, is a free app for iOS and Android.

Like other scan apps, Adobe Scan snaps a photo of a document to turn it into a digital file. But, thanks to Adobe’s AI programming inside Adobe Sensi, translating a physical document to a digital one is not the end. The program will auto-recognize text, making it possible to refine the document later in Adobe Acrobat or easily copy and paste. Since the text is auto-recognized, documents become searchable too.

Adobe Sensi also powers the app’s ability to auto-recognize the document’s boundaries for an accurate crop. The program will also automatically correct perspective errors and remove shadows. Users can also fine-tune the scan with a set of manual adjustment tools, including cropping, rotating and re-ordering pages for larger documents.

“When you think of it, documents are the lifeblood of society, communicating data and information that spans contracts, textbooks, financial statements and everything in between,” wrote Abhay Parasnis, Adobe executive vice president and chief technology officer. “The challenge is unlocking the intelligence that lives in those documents, and extracting meaning that can be searched, analyzed and incorporated into digital workflows. Adobe Scan represents a critical step toward our broader innovation imperative for Adobe Document Cloud, and there’s much more to come.”

The tradeoff for the smarter scans? The app is cloud-based. The documents are automatically uploaded to the free Adobe Document Cloud in-app for access across multiple devices while exporting options comes with the $10 a month PDF Pack. Subscribers also have access to extras like adding signatures and merging PDFs. Adobe Scan is available from both the App Store and Google Play.

Skype takes on Snapchat and Instagram with stories, chatbots, and more

Why it matters to you

A slew of new social features will bring the longtime video-calling app up to modern standards.

Skype, as you knew it, is no more. The once ubiquitous video-calling app that pioneered the category has pulled a page from Snapchat and Instagram with a complete redesign that puts your phone’s camera front and center.

What’s so different about it? Well, besides the new hip user interface, the Microsoft-owned app’s big new feature is Highlights — a play on Stories, as found in those other well-known social platforms. With Highlights you can take pictures and video, dress them up as you like with sketches, stickers, and text, and blast them out to your followers.

One of the main things that sets Highlights apart from competing features found in other apps is the length of time they’re made available — one week, versus 24 hours. You also have more granular control over who you can share your Highlights with, be it specific contacts or groups.

The changes don’t end there. Skype is also putting a greater emphasis on chat. The entire messaging experience has been given a fresh coat of paint, with lots of vibrant colors and gradients. Users can now react to individual messages with emojis — and those reactions extend to video calls as well.

Speaking of video calls, they haven’t been left behind. Callers can now participate with fun, real-time animations that take up their entire share of the user’s screen. And Microsoft has big plans for Skype’s signature feature going forward, too. In the future, callers will be able to play games and watch streaming services together, according to TechCrunch.

Finally, Skype hasn’t missed the craze surrounding bots, and much like Facebook Messenger, it’s adding its own AI-powered companions. Of course you can expect Cortana to play a big role, but down the line Skype should support a variety of services and brands through its Find panel.

Microsoft says Find makes Skype “infinitely searchable.” Users can access anything from GIFs to baseball tickets through the app’s search bar, and seamlessly integrate those results into their conversations.

The new Skype will launch first on Android, rolling out over the coming weeks, and then iOS support will follow. Finally, Windows and Mac PCs should receive an update in a few months’ time.

Massive telescope will let us gaze deeper into the galaxy than ever before

Why it matters to you

The Extremely Large Telescope will give scientists unprecedented data about outer space, and help them unravel the mysteries of the universe.

The first stone for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) was laid during an opening ceremony last week in Chile. Its name isn’t pure hyperbole — the ELT will boast a main mirror measuring 128 feet in diameter, which will make it the largest telescope on Earth once complete.

But size alone won’t make the ELT unique. The telescope will be unparalleled in clarity as well.

“It is an adaptive telescope,” Niranjan Thatte, an Oxford astrophysicist who will work with the telescope, told Digital Trends. “[This] means that it has built into it a mechanism … for compensating the effects of atmospheric turbulence, allowing the telescope to deliver much sharper images than typical ground-based telescopes.”

Thatte serves as principal investigator of HAROMNI, a visible and near-infrared instrument that will be designed to snap thousands of images at once, each in a different color.

“It is a workhorse instrument, designed to carry out a large variety of science observations, from observations of planets around nearby stars, and in our own solar system, to the most distant galaxies,” Thatte said. “It will improve our understanding of how galaxies formed and evolved.”

As an integral field spectrograph, HARMONI will be capable of capturing 4,000 images simultaneously. Thatte’s research team will use these images to study distant celestial structures, like galaxies and solar systems, to determine their mass, age, and chemical makeup.

ELT is scheduled for completion in 2024. Although Thatte expects to conduct great science once it’s launched, he acknowledges that many of our most pressing questions may change in the next seven years.

“Personally, I feel that the real groundbreaking discoveries from ELT will be those that we cannot plan today – the telescope and its instruments will allow new ‘parameter space’ to be explored – observations markedly different from any that we imagine today,” he said. “It will be these unforeseen uses that will likely yield truly remarkable physical insights into the way the universe works.”

Amazon’s Alexa can now keep track of upcoming tasks and countdown timers

Why it matters to you

If you’re the forgetful type, good news: Alexa can now remember some things for you.

Amazon’s Alexa, the artificially intelligent voice assistant with thousands of apps and skills, cannot do everything. It is not particularly good at understanding natural language — that is to say, commands that are not precise or specific. And until now, it has not been able to store reminders or label countdown timers. But in an update on Thursday, Alexa is getting better.

Alexa will now remind you of tasks at the time you specify. Saying, “Alexa, remind me to take out the trash at 6 p.m.” will schedule an alert for later in the day. Alternatively, you can set a reminder for a particular day (“Alexa, remind me to by toilet paper on June 15”) or day of the week (“Alexa, remind me to buy a Father’s Day gift on Friday”) — the choice is up to you.

Alexa’s reminders are not perfect. As The Verge points out, there is no context for a.m./p.m. reminders, so you have to include the abbreviation. Unlike Google’s Assistant, you can’t set a recurring reminder or specify a location in lieu of a time — Alexa does not understand commands like, “Remind me to buy groceries when I get home.” And reminders are not synced across Alexa-enabled devices — you will not hear a reminder set on one of Amazon’s Echo speakers come from another Echo speaker and there is no way to sync reminders with third-party services like Evernote and Todoist.

But otherwise, the reminder functionality’s roughly on par with competition like Apple’s Siri.

There is an easier way to distinguish between multiple timers now, too: Names. After the update hits your Echo, you will be able to say, “Alexa, set a chicken breast timer for 30 minutes” and, “Alexa, set a baked potato timer. The next time you ask, “Alexa, how much time is left on the chicken breast timer,” or cancel a timer by name (“Alexa, cancel the chicken breast timer,”) you will get the result you want.

The new reminder and timer features come after the announcement of iCloud support in Alexa — its first integration with an Apple service — and Alexa Calling, which lets you call and message any Alexa user in your phone’s contact list.

And it follows on the heels of new developer-centric improvements like Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tags that let app creators control Alexa’s intonations — including whispers, expletive bleeps, and emphasis — a bit better than before.

There is a good reason for all the improvements — Apple is expected to announce a Siri-powered smart speaker at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week. Amazon, no doubt, wants to make sure its upcoming Echo Show measures up to the competition.

The new reminder and timer features are rolling out to users in the U.K. and Germany this month.

Facebook Albums expands beyond photos with text, check-ins, and video

Why it matters to you

Albums will offer far more than photos in the future. Watch for the ability to add videos, text, and check-ins with the update that begins rolling out June 1.

Facebook is updating its photo albums — only the word “photo” is no longer quite the right one. Today, June 1, Facebook began rolling out updates to Albums that allows users to include videos, text and check-ins as well as the usual photos.

The update allows users to put more than just photos into one place, organizing a collection of memories around a certain topic. By moving beyond just photos, the platform makes it possible to share road-trip check-ins and text posts along with photos and videos from the same trip in one album.

Along with the expanded content types, users can now follow (and unfollow) albums. Unlike a single status update, albums are designed to gather related content over time into one central location, but album updates sometimes have a tendency to get overlooked in the news feed.  The new follow feature allows users to make sure they see everything added to that album. Notifications can be turned on and off, with the posts still popping up in the News Feed for any followed albums.

Albums also no longer need to be sourced just from one person. Users can invite collaborators to add their own content, so group trips, for example, can be shared by the entire group.

Favorite albums can also be highlighted inside users’ profiles by tagging albums as a favorite, which lists the collection directly on the profile. Favorite albums are required to use the public privacy setting.

The process for creating an album isn’t changing — users can still navigate to Photos from their page and click “create album.” Albums continue to maintain the long-term format, with the ability to add new content to the same album later on.

Facebook says the update is designed to give users more ways to share their memories on the social media platform.

Some Android and desktop users will already see the new additions as the rollout begins today, June 1. While iOS users will have to wait for the new Album features, Facebook says the update is coming soon.

Ooh, shiny! Sony may be launching a gold-colored PS4 Slim ahead of E3

Why it matters to you

If you still miss your gold N64 controller from the GoldenEye bundle, you can recapture that colorful magic with this upcoming PS4 release.

Sony may be set to launch a brand-new color scheme for the PS4 Slim a few days before E3, and it’s rather eye catching. An alleged Target employee claims to have snapped a picture of a gold-painted version of the console. It’s not been confirmed by Sony in any capacity, but we’re told that the systems are set to go on sale in just over a week.

Although most consoles from all the major manufacturers have almost always had a base color of either black or white, there have been many custom paint jobs and special editions of the different systems available over the years. Although gaudy to some, gold is one scheme that has come up time and again and it looks like Sony may be offering a special version of its system with that choice of aesthetic, too.

While this remains a rumor for now, a claimed employee of Target has posted an image of the gold console. They corroborate the story that this is indeed a PS4 Slim and not a PS4 Pro, and that it comes with a gold controller. Redditor Sliye claims that you will also be able to buy gold controllers separately.

The validity of the console’s existence was backed up by another Redditor who allegedly snapped a picture of the Gold PS4 Slim at a Walmart before the stock was rushed away behind closed doors. The price tag on the gold 1TB PS4 Slim was $250.

It’s not clear whether the new system will be launching worldwide or only in the United States, but we do know that it’s likely to hit store shelves in early June. The claimed date so far is June 9, which would be a pre-E3 launch and therefore not something that would likely be mentioned at the show.

That’s not wholly surprising though, as a custom color version of a pre-existing console is rather a small story for a big stage show like E3.

Sony previously made limited edition gold PS4 available in the U.S. as part of a campaign it ran with Taco Bell (as per Gamespot). If the Walmart image is as real as the Target one, this latest release appears not to be linked with a specific retailer.