Nintendo Celebrating Mario Day With 50% Price Drop on ‘Super Mario Run’ in iOS App Store

This Saturday, March 10 is “Mario Day,” a day when Nintendo celebrates its mascot Mario “and his many awesome fans” around the world. Although the full plan for the company’s celebrations on Saturday have not yet been revealed, one part has and it focuses on the iPhone and Android game Super Mario Run (via TouchArcade).

On March 10, Nintendo will discount Super Mario Run’s $9.99 in-app purchase that unlocks the full game down to $4.99, and that 50 percent discount will run for two weeks, through March 25. Nintendo has created a detailed table that shows the special discount price of Super Mario Run on the App Store and Google Play Store in every country of availability, which you can see on its website.

The last IAP discount for Super Mario Run came in September 2017, alongside what Nintendo called the “biggest update ever,” introducing a new gameplay mode called Remix 10, new character Princess Daisy, new world, and more. It’s unclear if the game will be getting more content this weekend, like it did last September, alongside the price drop.

For Mario Day last year, Nintendo celebrated in a variety of ways, including working with nonprofit Starlight Children’s Foundation to provide hospitalized children with brightly colored hospital gowns featuring the company’s well-known characters. There were also Mario-themed frames on Facebook, games on sale across Nintendo console platforms, and major events at PAX East in Boston and the Kids’ Choice Awards on Nickelodeon.

You can download and play the first few levels of Super Mario Run for free on the iOS App Store [Direct Link], and the discounted $4.99 in-app purchase should begin appearing on Saturday.

Tags: Nintendo, Super Mario Run
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Google is making it easier to download all your Chrome passwords

Chrome users will soon be able to export their saved passwords in a text file in just a couple of easy steps. It’s never been an impossible task to do this, but it’s been a more convoluted exercise than the long-awaited solution Google is planning. The news, revealed by Chrome evangelist Francois Beaufort on Google+, doesn’t stipulate a timeframe for the feature, which is currently being tested by developers. But if you want to try it out now, switch to dev mode, search for “passwords” in Chrome settings, look for the three dot menu named “saved passwords” and click “export passwords”. Everything saved in Chrome will be exported into a text (.csv) file which can then be imported easily into other password managers.

Source: Google

Netflix to Debut New Vertical Preview Feature on Mobile Next Month

Netflix is set to introduce a new movie and show preview mode to its iOS app next month (via Variety). Announced on Wednesday at the company’s Lab Days press event in California, the upcoming feature will mean Netflix subscribers can watch 30-second previews displayed as vertical video on mobile devices.

The previews will appear as round icons on the home screen below a carousel showcasing the latest Netflix content available. Users tap on the icons to watch the previews and can swipe across them to see more. Netflix will debut up to 75 of its custom-crop previews for both original and licensed content when the feature goes live in April.

A similar preview feature has been part of Netflix’s TV interface for a few years now, but this will be the first time the company has used a vertical viewing format within its mobile apps. Some subscribers who signed up to the “Test Participation” feature in their Netflix.com account settings may already see the previews in the iPhone app.

Netflix said approximately 20 percent of all viewing happens on a mobile device, which is why the company has been working on several improvements to its mobile offering, including the recent launch of mobile downloads and codec optimization to enable higher-resolution viewing over as little as 200kbps bandwidth.

Tag: Netflix
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Oculus Rift headsets should work as normal again

If you own an Oculus Rift, good news: It should work as normal again. The Facebook-owned division was caught off guard yesterday when a number of headsets suddenly stopped working. The problem — much to Oculus’ embarrassment — was an expired security certificate that checks whether the software you own has come directly from the Oculus Store. The company worked through the night on a fix and finally it’s ready as a downloadable patch from the Oculus website. It looks simple enough; just download the file, select Repair and then relaunch the Oculus app. That’s the promise, anyway — let’s hope the problem is finally sorted now.

Nate Mitchell, co-founder of Oculus and head of the Rift team, confirmed that the problem had been remedied by midnight pacific time. He also apologised on behalf of the company to affected Rift owners: “This was a mistake on our end,” he said in a tweet. “Folks impacted by today’s downtime will be provided with an Oculus store credit. More details to follow soon. Thanks again for everyone’s patience as we worked through this one.” How much credit is a mystery, but in the meantime you can start browsing the Oculus Store for potential gift ideas. Superhot VR, perhaps?

Hey all – thank for your patience. We now have an Oculus software update in place that fixes the issue where Rift may fail to start up. For more info and instructions, please go here: https://t.co/gYz2G4Fon7
Thank you once again for your patience.

— Oculus Rift (@OculusRift) March 8, 2018

Source: Oculus (Twitter)

Microsoft explains how it will sell Windows 10 ‘S mode’ now

Following up on an earlier tweet, Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore followed up with more details about the demise of Windows 10 S as a standalone product. Going forward, he explained, you’ll see PCs with either Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro PC or Windows 10 Enterprise with S mode enabled. Additionally, he said if users want to switch out of S mode, they will be able to do so for free, regardless of edition. It should make for a simpler experience than selling the limited version with time-locked upgrade possibilities, and it will start with the next upgrade for Windows 10.

Brandon is so much faster off the line than I am! 🙂 What he said… Got Q’s about 10S? Click the link. https://t.co/rRekNYhzNr

— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) March 8, 2018

Source: Windows Blog

Sky VR’s interactive museum visit deserves a bigger audience

Sir David Attenborough first lent his silky narrator’s voice to the medium of VR when he teamed up with London’s Natural History Museum for a special exhibit on the earth’s prehistoric oceans. And now, several years later, the institution and Sir Dave have collaborated once again on a VR experience commissioned by European media-and-telecommunications company Sky. Hold the World offers an interactive look at a few of the museum’s more interesting specimens, from the huge blue whale skeleton that hangs in the building’s main entrance hall down to a tiny rat flea. Naturally, there’s an educational aspect, with a lifelike hologram of Attenborough telling you all about the artifact as if he were sitting right there. But there’s a catch: You’ll have to be a Sky customer to try it out when it launches this spring.

A ton of tech went into developing all the different parts of the experience. The nine specimens featured in Hold the World were scanned to create the high-fidelity 3D models you interact with. Using whatever VR controllers you have at hand, you can pick them up, enlarge and shrink them with the equivalent of a pinch-to-zoom gesture, and move them around to get at the focal points that trigger classic Attenborough explanations of what you’re looking at. You can also bang them on the table in front of you for a satisfying crack if you’re childish like me. When you’ve finished the lesson portion, the skeletons and fossils come alive in a sort of finale, where they appear as animated, life-size versions of what you had in your hand a second ago.

During these sessions, Sir Dave sits across from you in hologram form, talking you through the specimens in his usual energetic style. He looks almost human. In order to be inserted into the experience, Attenborough traveled to one of Microsoft’s mixed reality studios in the States to be filmed from every conceivable angle in a green-screen bubble. What I found most interesting about the whole thing, though, was the scene setting. You find different artifacts in different areas of the museum: the labs, libraries and archives inside the huge museum building that are reserved for research and not accessible to the visiting public. These are re-created in extremely fine, fascinating detail, thanks to photogrammetry. A team came in and took hundreds upon hundred of photos of the spaces, which software subsequently stitched together to create the virtual 3D space.

You can theoretically spend as much time as you want in these hidden parts of the museum, but rush through it and you can see all there is to see in about 20 minutes. That’s not to say those 20 minutes aren’t engaging and informative, with Hold the World certainly offering some educational-meets-entertainment value. But that wasn’t my final thought on the whole experience. Instead, I came away feeling that something of this nature should be accessible, which it isn’t.

To promote the Hold the World experience, Sky and the Natural History Museum put on a big evening event after public visiting hours were over, featuring demo stations, general introductions and a Q&A with Sir Dave himself, as well as people from the various teams that pulled it all together. There was plenty of talk of democratizing the museum, letting people “touch” specimens usually buried in the archives or safe behind glass cases. The educational value of Hold the World and VR as a medium was discussed, but I felt the whole PR program danced around the fact that this is a commercial endeavor for a limited audience.

When Hold the World launches, sometime in the next few months, it’ll be available only to Sky’s pay-TV, broadband and mobile customers (at last count, that’s 23 million across five European countries). The list of supported hardware is relatively long — Google’s Daydream View, Samsung’s Gear VR, the Oculus Rift and Microsoft’s Mixed Reality headsets — but it’s not as if the entirety of Sky’s subscriber base are going to have a compatible device in their homes.

Sky is shouting about Hold the World because it’s the new, flagship experience that’ll mark the “relaunch” of Sky VR. In one of its roles as a broadcaster, Sky’s been making VR content for a while now; primarily 360-degree videos in the realms of news, sports, the arts and cultural events. This secondary push includes a new Sky VR app — which you can log in to only if you’ve signed up to Sky’s VIP loyalty program, by the way — including more diverse material and a commitment to one new VR release each month.

Sky is perfectly within its rights to commission exclusive VR experiences for its existing customers (and to entice new ones), of course. But when you see, for example, what Google’s Arts and Culture division is doing — working with institutions all over the world, including the Natural History Museum, to create VR and other digital resources — it seems a shame that something as educational, engaging and lovingly developed as Hold the World should be reduced to a Sky subscriber perk.

Source: Sky, Natural History Museum

How to Control and Tweak a True Tone Display on iPhone and iPad

Last year, Apple brought a display feature called True Tone to its flagship iPhone line-up for the first time, following the technology’s debut in 2016 with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

True Tone works by adjusting the color temperature of a device’s screen to match the surrounding ambient light, so that images on the display appear more natural and are less apt to contribute to eyestrain.

If you stand in a dimly lit room illuminated by a table lamp, for instance, a True Tone display appears warmer and yellower, much like a piece of paper would in the same light. Stand outside on an overcast day, however, and the same display looks cooler and bluer, as would the same piece of paper.

In this article, we’ll run through how to quickly enable or disable True Tone from within Control Center as well as via the Settings app. We’ll also explain how to tweak your device’s color settings to help acclimatize you to True Tone’s warmer extremes, which some users find too intense under certain conditions.

Apple Devices With True Tone Displays

• iPhone X
• iPhone 8
• iPhone 8 Plus
• iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation)
• iPad Pro 10.5-inch
• iPad Pro (9.7-inch)

How to Control True Tone From iOS Settings

Launch the Settings app on your iOS device.
Tap Display & Brightness.
Toggle the True Tone switch on or off.

How to Control True Tone From Control Center

Launch the Control Center on your iOS device in the following manner: On iPad, double-tap the Home button; on iPhone 8 or earlier, swipe up from the bottom of the screen; or on iPhone X, swipe down from the upper right “ear”.

Depending on your device, either firmly press (for 3D Touch) or long press on the Brightness slider.

Tap the True Tone button to turn it on or off.

How to Cool the Warm End of the True Tone Spectrum

Some users dislike True Tone because under certain conditions it can make the screen seem too warm or yellow to them. If that sounds like your experience, it’s probably worth trying Night Shift set at a low color temperature level instead (Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Night Shift). But if you want to give True Tone one more go, this time try adjusting the display tint to make it look more natural under low light conditions. Enable True Tone on your iOS device using one of the methods described above.
Launch the Settings app.
Tap General.
Tap Accessibility.
Tap Display Accommodations.
Switch on the Color Filters toggle.

Tap Color Tint to check it.
Drag the Intensity and Hue sliders all the way to the right.
Now, gradually drag the Hue slider leftwards so that the display turns a purplish color (just past red and towards blue).
Now drag the Intensity slider all the way to the left again. With a little luck, you have reduced the warmer screen tone with a more natural look that’s to your liking. If it still doesn’t look right, carry out the previous two steps and try leaving the Hue slider at a slightly deeper purple tint (closer to blue than red).Some will argue that messing with Color Filters defeats the purpose of True Tone. But tweaking the screen tint in this way can help accustom you to True Tone’s warmer cast if you gradually dial down the color adjustment over time.

Just bear in mind that it may cause your True Tone display to look overly blue in an environment that normally elicits a bluish cast. Also, remember that you’ll need to turn off Color Filters separately if you end up disabling True Tone, otherwise your screen will almost certainly look off color.

Related Roundups: iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iOS 11, iPhone XTag: True Tone displayBuyer’s Guide: 10.5″ iPad Pro (Neutral), 12.9″ iPad Pro (Neutral), iPhone 8 (Neutral), iPhone X (Buy Now)
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Honor 7X vs. Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro: What’s the best budget phone available today?

Both the Honor 7X and the Redmi Note 5 Pro are similar in many areas, but there are a few marked differences.

Xiaomi consolidated its position in India over the course of the last 12 months, becoming the largest phone manufacturer in the country. It did so by launching a new budget phone every month for the last four months of 2017, and boosting its efforts in the offline space.

Meanwhile, Huawei sub-brand Honor has continued its focus on the online segment, introducing devices with great specs at affordable prices. In fact, both the Honor 7X and the Redmi Note 5 Pro are very similar when it comes to the hardware on offer — both sport 18:9 panels, aluminum chassis, and dual cameras at the back.

They’re also targeted at the same audience: the kind of customer who’s primarily looking for all-day battery life and a dependable camera. However, there are a few intrinsic differences in day-to-day usage that sets these two phones apart.

Honor 7X vs. Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro: Specs

What the Honor 7X does better

The Honor 7X looks like a premium device, particularly in the blue hue. That’s down to the fact that the overall aesthetic is a mix between the Honor 8 Pro and the Mate 10 Pro, which makes the device stand out in this segment.

The Honor 7X comes with a premium design, and you can purchase it right now.

The phone has antenna bands at the top and bottom, and while there’s a slight bump for the camera module, it doesn’t quite jut out the same way as the sensor on the Redmi Note 5 Pro. Then there’s the issue of availability — the Redmi Note 5 Pro is limited to flash sales, so you can’t actually pink it up whenever you want.

On the other hand, the Honor 7X is up for sale on Amazon India as well as Amazon.com, and is available in the UK and most European markets.

See at Amazon

What the Redmi Note 5 Pro does better

The Redmi Note 5 Pro sets a new standard for the budget segment. That’s usually the case for a new device in the Redmi Note series every year, but Xiaomi’s latest device is particularly alluring. The phone is the first in the world to be powered by the Snapdragon 636, and as we’ve seen from the benchmarks, it offers the same level of performance as flagships from just a few years ago.

The 18:9 panel on the Redmi Note 5 Pro has a slight edge over the one on the Honor 7X when it comes to readability under harsh sunlight, but otherwise both displays offer decent colors and the ability to adjust the settings to your liking.

The Redmi Note 5 Pro has better performance, battery life, and costs less.

There’s also the fact that the phone has much better battery life. The 3340mAh battery on the Honor 7X lasts a day on a full charge, but on the Redmi Note 5 Pro you routinely get two days’ worth of usage without breaking a sweat.

The Redmi Note 5 Pro runs rings around the Honor 7X when it comes to the cameras — right now, the phone has the best camera in the budget segment. The front camera in particular is astonishingly good, offering a software-driven portrait mode much like the rear camera on the Pixel 2. Xiaomi is leveraging AI-based edge detection for the front camera, which gives the device a distinct edge in this category.

The Redmi Note 5 Pro also wins out when it comes to connectivity, with the device offering Wi-Fi ac and Bluetooth 5.0. The Honor 7X is still limited to Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, so you won’t be able to connect to 5GHz networks from the device. Like most Xiaomi phones, the Redmi Note 5 Pro comes with an IR blaster as well, allowing you to control your air conditioner or TV with your phone.

Then there’s the pricing — the Redmi Note 5 Pro costs ₹13,999 ($215) in India for the variant with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The same variant of the Honor 7X costs ₹15,999 ($254) on Amazon India, ₹2,000 ($30) more than Xiaomi’s device.

See at Flipkart

Which should you buy?

At the end of the day, the Redmi Note 5 Pro is the clear favorite. The phone offers significantly better battery life, is faster than the Honor 7X, and has better cameras.

Sure, the design is starting to look stale, but that should be mitigated by the new color options on offer. The main problem with the Redmi Note 5 Pro is that it is limited to the Indian market and doesn’t offer LTE bands for Western countries, so you won’t be able to use the phone on T-Mobile or AT&T even if you import it.

But if you’re living in India and are in the market for a new budget phone, there’s no other device that comes close to the Redmi Note 5 Pro.

See at Flipkart

MoviePass pulls ‘unused app location’ features from its iOS app

Two days after we started reporting on comments by MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe about his company tracking users after they leave the theater, there’s an update for its iOS app. According to the notes, it contains “Theater & Movie Search performance improvements. Removed unused app location capability.” The company hasn’t provided a firm denial about whether tracking of regular customers extends beyond what’s described by the privacy policy, but something has changed.

We checked with MoviePass and received this statement from a spokesperson.

Today, MoviePass released a new app update, including the removal of some unused app location capabilities. While part of our vision includes using location-based marketing to enhance the movie-going experience for our members, we aren’t using some of that functionality today. Our members will always have the option to choose the location-based services that are right for them today and in the future.

So, MoviePass users, are you satisfied?

Source: iTunes

Watch ‘Stargate Origins’ for free in VR starting March 8th

Want to (legally) watch Stargate Origins for free? If you splurged on a virtual reality headset, you can. MGM and Bigscreen have teamed up to screen the first two episodes of the sci-fi TV show for free in VR between March 8th at 6PM Eastern and March 11th at 3AM Eastern. The virtual ‘showtimes’ will start every 30 minutes and will be available in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany. Naturally, Bigscreen is hoping you’ll sign up for Stargate Command to watch the rest of the series when all is said and done.

Importantly, you don’t have to be finicky about your choice of headset. While you’ll need a Windows 10 PC, the viewings will work with any SteamVR-compatible headset (including HTC Vive and Oculus Rift) as well as Windows Mixed Reality gear.

This isn’t strictly a one-off event. Bigscreen is working on a weekly schedule for the year that will offer free movies, TV and other videos. There’s no doubt that this is a publicity grab, but it could mark the start of regular VR movie nights where you get a social viewing experience without the hassle of traveling to the theater.

Source: Bigscreen (Medium)