Google Maps update lets you know when your destination will close
Not everybody has a great sense of direction or knows all the ways. Google Maps help save the day by taking you to your preferred destinations without any hassle. But every once in a while, it so happens that we have to go to our favorite restaurant or any other place and imagine the dilemma when you reach there and find out that the place is closed.
Well, Google has addressed to this issue in their latest Google Maps update. From now on, whenever one asks for directions in the Google Maps, it shows if the place will be closed before your estimated arrival time. A simple pop-up notification informs you about the operational hours of the destination along with the estimated time of your arrival.
There is also an option to cancel the navigation in the notification or you can go ahead with it if you really want to be speed racer.
Another feature of this new update brings the ability for Google Maps to be able to use the data from car rental-related emails. It can be accessed under the “my events” section. And definitely, there the usual bug fixes.
Over the last few years navigation has become an important part of our travelling itinerary. Google has brought forth a lot of improvement to their maps app with the inclusion of features such as navigation sharing, real-time transit information and the upcoming offline maps features.
Check out the Play Store link below, and update your Google Maps right now! Share your experiences with us in the comments section below.
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SteelSeries announces The Stratus XL Wireless Gaming Controller for Windows and Android
SteelSeries announced the Stratus XL Wireless Gaming Controller at E3. The Stratus XL is Stratus’s bigger brother.
“Gamers now have the option to control their games effortlessly and wireless via Bluetooth® on PC, Android devices, Amazon Fire TV, Ouya and other micro-console systems. “
The controller is designed to connect via Bluetooth to a bunch of different devices. It is powered by AA batteries allowing for up to 40 hours of game play.
The Stratus XL Wireless Gaming Controller is equipped with Microsft’s XInput game controller API. XInput allows the Stratus XL to function perfectly as a console-like gaming controller on a PC. With the help of SteelSeries Engine software suite, users can tweak the controller’s joystick settings, sensitivity levels and even invert the axis.
In a physical aspect, the Stratus XL is styled to look like a regular console controller unlike the Stratus controller. Except, the D-pad is placed in the top left and the joysticks are both on the bottom. Other wise, you have a D-pad, two joysticks, four buttons (X, Y, A and B), and three menu type buttons on the front. Finally, two triggers and two shoulder buttons are placed on the back.
Priced at a hefty $59.99, SteelSeries hopes that the Stratus XL will create easy-to-use experiences and allows multi-screen experiences to actually happen.
Press Release
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Samsung Galaxy Young 3 leaks online
Many smartphone leaks have been piling up in recent months. All have been pretty high spec’d phones coming from famous brands. Well, today comes a brand new leak, this one courtesy of Samsung. An entry-level Samsung smartphone, the SM-G150 (this is the model number, not the actual name of the device) has started popping up in various places.
Samsung’s SM-G150 has shown up in IMEI listings, Bluetooth certifications and recently it was seen on Zauba import/export tracking site as being sent to India for testing. We know that the Samsung Galaxy Young 2 carried the model number SM-G130, and considering the model number of this leak is SM-G150, it can be safe to assume that this phone will be called the Samsung Galaxy Young 3.
The Samsung Galaxy Young 2 was released in October of last year and featured a 3.5-inch 320×480 display, 512MB of RAM with a 1Ghz single-core CPU. While not much can be expected from the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Young 3, it will mostly feature some upgraded specs like a bigger display, more processing power and RAM, a better camera all running on Android Lollipop hopefully.
Source
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Google’s rewards program tackles Android security flaws
The folks in Mountain View have been paying security researchers who find flaws in Google’s software for years. After announcing a program that specifically targeted Chrome, the company is looking to find vulnerabilities in its mobile OS. The Android Security Rewards program will pay researchers who “find, fix and prevent vulnerabilities” that exist inside the operating system. When it comes to issues affecting Nexus devices sold through Google Play, Google will pay per step that’s needed to fix the problem — including patches and testing. Just finding a critical bug will earn you $2,000, for example. The largest rewards are available to those who figure out how to go around Android’s security features like ASLR, NX and sandboxing. In 2015, Google shelled out over $1.5 million to researchers who found bugs, with the largest individual reward totaling $150,000. If you’re looking to join the hunt, you can browse all the detailed info right here.
Source: Google
Google paying out cash bounties for identifying and solving Android vulnerabilities
Google takes security very seriously, and now that’s more true than ever. The company has offered bounties for anyone that could find or solve vulnerabilities in Chrome and their websites with their Security Rewards program, and today they’re extending that to cover Android, too.
Just how it works with other apps and services, if you find or fix a vulnerability in Android Google will pay out a bounty depending on how severe the bug or vulnerability is. Identifying a bug nets you anywhere from $500 to $2000 based on how severe the issue is. Providing test cases or patches for those bugs drastically increases the payout, topping out at around $8k for very critical vulnerabilities. If you can find a functional exploit via a third-party app installed on a device, Google will shell out upwards of $20k. Those are some pretty high rewards if you think you can slip through Android’s current state of security.
The only conditions to these bounties are that it must apply to the Nexus 6 or Nexus 9 AOSP or OEM code. They’ll also only be rewarding the first instance of a bug being disclosed. There are a handful of other rules and exceptions to read up on if you’re interested in taking a crack at snagging one of these bounties.
source: Android Security Rewards
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The Farting Pig: farm animals gone wild (review)
Do you remember Mario? The awesome hero plumber that burst onto the game scene and took it by storm? Ever since the success of The Super Mario franchise there have been copycats after copycats trying to replicate Marios recipe for success. Hundreds of platform games have tried to emulate Mario although they have always been disappointing.
Well, The Farting Pig may have broken that chain of disappointment. In the slide scrolling 2d platform adventure, The Farting Pig tasks you to play as a cute pink pig and save him from an angry mob of crazy farm animals. Run piggy run! The unnamed pig runs, jumps and farts his way through 3 different locations: Barnyard, Grand Canyon, and Cornfield.
As the piggy runs through each location, he has to head-butt haystacks to collect coins to unlock or buy new special items. Some of the haystacks once hit, give you a pink pig nose that gives you an extra life, which you will need since you are basically a defenseless pig throughout the entirety of the game.
Some foes that you will encounter as you run for you little piggy life are: Boxing Rooster, an evil rooster who throws some mean combinations anytime you get to close that kill you instantly. Suie-the-Racoon, a suicidal bomber who tries to blow herself up anytime you get within 4 or 5 feet. You also have Porcupine, and the Seed-Shooting duck, who we will let you figure out what they are capable of doing… With so many foes, you are going to have to try to run and jump your way through their clever traps, avoid the electric zappy fence and not get horned by the mad bull!
The Farting Pig immerses itself with colorful visuals and interesting characters. In many modern mobile games, you are able to fly effortlessly through levels, well in this game that is not the case.
This game starts off difficult with the awkward controls, the placement is way too close for having you to press them at a moment’s reflex. Many times I observed myself pressing the wrong direction or just my devices screen instead of pressing that needed button to complete my killer combination of moves. Also, the pig is huge and is expected to jump and double jump to grab coins avoiding chickens, flying seeds, and bombs.
If the pig is punched, a seed hits him, or a bomb explodes on him, he dies instantly, which slows down the flow of the game. The frustrating part is the pig dies often due to the fact that the game makes it way to easy for him to die. While we all love difficult games, (I am talking about you Dark Souls), after a while you begin to lose your will to play.
After dying a couple of times, I closed out the game and came back to it the following morning. I felt the same nonfulfillment as I had the day before, thinking, this pig is outnumbered, out manned and it is not worth continuing. I understand making a game difficult but making it so difficult your audience is unfulfilled and unengaged is senseless.
With all that being said, as I was about to close the game out again, I decided no, let me keep playing a little longer. The longer I played, the longer I died, the more coins I accrued. Eventually, I was able to stack up some coins and get some cool weapons. The arsenal consisted of weapons such as Shrink Gun, Hoverboard, and Flower-Power to calm down the farm. Want to get all of those cool gadgets from the beginning, good luck. It took me countless times of dying before I was able to accrue enough coins to get them all.
One thing that I noticed when playing the game was that The Farting Pig fails to inform you why this cute little pig is being attacked by a mob of angry farm animals in the first place. While a storyline is not needed to play this platformer, it still would have been nice to know the backstory behind all of this chaos.
The difficult gameplay is not for the casual gamer looking to pass time and to achieve rewards quickly. More hardcore gamers or those looking to laugh at a pig farting and flying through the air might be interested in giving The Farting Pig a farting chance.
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Have you played The Farting Pig? Tell us what you thought in the comments below!
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Sony’s tweaked Xperia Z4v has a better screen, wider waistline
Remember when Sony cooked up a new flagship smartphone for Japan called the Z4, then renamed it the Z3+ when it came time to take it overseas? Yeah, well, it’s finally coming to the United States with a little help from Verizon, and it has another name for us to try and keep straight. Meet the Xperia Z4v. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a straight-up rebrand of an existing phone, but that’s not quite true — it’s a chubbier version of a phone we’ve already met with a better screen, to boot.
All of the really important bits — by which we mean the Snapdragon 810 chipset with 3GB of RAM, the 20.7-megapixel camera and all that wonderful waterproofing — remain intact. So what’s new? Well, the 5.2-inch screen has been bumped up to Quad HD (or 2560 x1440 if you haven’t committed it to memory yet) from the Z4’s 1080p resolution, and the battery has swelled ever so slightly up to a full 3,000mAh. Thing is, Sony squeezed all of that into a body that’s just a touch heavier and fatter than the lithe, streamlined Z4, so the company have might have kissed whatever style advantage they had goodbye. We can’t say we’re surprised to see Sony cozy up to a carrier like Verizon so closely. After all, last year saw a similar tie-up in the Xperia Z3v and Sony’s phone business is clearly hurting for some strong supporters. For a company that’s spent decades stirring the pot of innovation, it just can’t seem to convince the average consumer to buy their phones — we’ll just have to see if the Z4v manages to move the needle at all.
Filed under: Mobile
Ouya has reportedly been acquired by Razer
Ouya, the company behind the $99 Android gaming console has reportedly been acquired by gaming hardware maker Razer. As there were rumors that Ouya has been looking for a buyer, apparently they had done enough to attract interest and that company was Razer. There is no official word on the deal yet, but the investment bank Mesa Global has accidentally confirmed that the deal is done, with the bank acting as the advisor to Ouya during the sale.
Since confirmation of this report, Mesa Global has taken down their confirmation, but not before it was spotted by our source. Ouya was launched as a startup company on Kickstarter back in 2012, and managed to raise more than $9 million in funding for its Android based gaming console. Ouya was the one of the first companies that made an Android gaming console, even before the Android TV was released, which also brought Android gaming to your TV. Since being released on Kickstarter, Ouya had high hopes for success with the massive amount of early adopters, but it just never gained a foothold in the market due to a lack in gaming titles.
Ouya has really focused on its software department making its game store available to the third-party gaming consoles. Despite the effort to fix their software, Ouya still struggled. The company was also reportedly dealing with a lot of debt and was unable to raise funding for further expansion of their product.
Razer has also released their own gaming console running Android, but isn’t doing any better. This step of Razer may explain that the company wants to try its hand in the console industry and isn’t ready to give up anytime soon.
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Samsung Galaxy J5 leaks specs and photos
Another day, another Samsung Galaxy. A few days ago we reported the confirmed specifications about the Galaxy J7. This time the leaks are about its younger sibling called the Samsung Galaxy J5.
From the looks of the images, the Galaxy J5 has a similar design to the Galaxy J1 and the Galaxy J7, with a common plastic body and removable back panel. The removable back panel allows for a swappable battery which is always a useful feature if you are constantly on the go and have no where to sit down to charge your phone. There are very few differences between the Galaxy J5 and the Galaxy J7 with exception to the screen size.
The phone is confirmed to have a 5-inch 720p display resulting in pixel density of 293ppi. For RAM and storage, the phone consists of 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage which can be further expanded by using the micro-SD card slot. The whole package is driven by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 processor and is powered by a decently sized 2600mAh battery. In the optics department, there is a 13-megapixel rear facing camera and a 5-megapixel front facing camera for selfie lovers. From the looks of it, the phone appears to be running the same version of Touchwiz as the Samsung Galaxy S6.
There is no official word on release date and pricing. Overall, I would say that the phone has decent spec’s to compete in the mid-range segment.
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Google Maps will tell you if your destination will be closed upon arrival
We have all been there. You hop on your car without a worry and tell Google Maps to take you to one of your favorite restaurants… only to get there and find out the darn place is closed! This is frustrating, especially knowing Google Maps has hours and other information on hand. But worry not, for the latest Google Maps will help you avoid those disappointing and pointless trips.
The latest update to Google Maps includes a feature that makes total sense. Upon asking for directions, Maps will check your destination’s hours (if available) and let you know if the place will be closed by your estimated arrival time. A simple and clean notification will also present you with the hours of operations for that day, as well as the estimated time of arrival. You can easily cancel navigation after receiving this message.
Pretty convenient, right? Don’t go testing it just yet, though. Google seems to be feeling very generous today, as there is another significant feature added to Maps. In addition to pulling information from Gmail about flights and hotels, Google Maps will now also uses data from car rental-related emails. All the user needs to do is access the “my events” section. Oh, and if you want the full rundown of this update, we should add that there was also the usual round of bug fixes.
Google Maps is one of the most important services for Android users (or anyone, really), so we are glad to see the recent onslaught of improvements the service has received lately. From the recent inclusion of real-time transit information to Navigation sharing and upcoming offline features, these are all updates that will surely make our trips much more pleasant.
Head over to the Google Play Store to test out this new update. And don’t forget to hit the comments section and tell us how well these new features are treating you.
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