Microsoft Releases Office Diagramming App ‘Visio Viewer’ for iPad

Microsoft yesterday released an iPad version of popular Office diagramming and graphic app Visio. The iOS incarnation is limited to viewing Visio documents, leaving the editing of files to the desktop application, and instead focuses on bringing a touch-based browsing experience with intuitive pan and zoom features to users on the go.

Visio diagrams often comprise details that customers could miss on smaller screens. Built for iPad Retina display, Visio Viewer for iPad brings high-fidelity viewing of real-world processes and plans on the go. With the new exploration experience, plant managers can zoom in to production line issues from remote facilities, financial advisors can examine detailed workflows of a loan approval process while visiting clients around the world, retail district managers can conduct store management trainings with associates using detailed CAD-based store layouts and much more.

Visio Viewer for iPad can import documents from OneDrive, SharePoint, and email, with a search functionality built in to the interface for finding shape names, text, or data. Users are also granted the ability to adjust the visibility of different layers to reveal more structure in plans and diagrams.

Visio is a free download for iPad available on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Tag: Office 365
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The Last Guardian review: Well worth the wait

There are few games that have been as hyped as The Last Guardian over the years. The spiritual follow-up to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus has been in development for almost 10 years and made its debut at the E3 games show way back in 2009.

But issues along the way forced the game’s release further and further back to the point it looked like it would never materialise. Finally, however, Sony confirmed it at E3 2015.

Originally destined for the PlayStation 3, given the time-frame, The Last Guardian is now a firm a PlayStation 4 exclusive, with some enhancements if you play on PS4 Pro.

So what has designer/director Fumito Ueda been doing in all that time, and was The Last Guardian worth the wait?

The Last Guardian review: Puzzlingly brilliant

Thankfully, the answer is yes.

Like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian is a puzzle adventure. It has platform elements, but relies heavily on problem solving to get from one location and set-piece to another.

These invariably involve encouraging a massive cat-dog-bird-thing you’ve befriended to leap chasms or stand in the right place so you can climb him to get to otherwise impossible ledges. And that’s mainly it. The gameplay mechanics are pretty straight-forward and basic, but extremely involving. And the story and emotive ride you’re taken on more than makes up for complexity.

You play a small child, who wakes in a strange place near a giant, hurt beast. After calming him through the removal of mysterious broken spears, freeing him from his shackles and naming him Trico, you embark on a journey of discovery – presumably to get back to wherever it is you came from in the first place.

Sony Computer Entertainment

By being suitably vague to begin with the narrative unravels along the way, feeding nuggets and clues to what the heck is going on. In many respects it echoes Ueda’s back catalogue and more recent hits, such as Journey, and it falls slap bang in the middle of baffling and whimsical, which is not a bad place to be.

The Last Guardian review: Measured storytelling

You care enough to keep going but the story never gets in the way of the majesty of the game. In essence, it is a sequence of massive, puzzle-oriented set pieces, with few requiring speedy action so you get plenty of time to take in the scenery.

It reminds us of Tomb Raider played through the eyes of a contemporary dance outfit. Most puzzles follow similar themes – pull this lever to do such and such – but the inclusion of Trico makes it altogether more heartwarming. This is a tale of friendship between one boy and his giant, dog-bird-cat beast rather than a pair of hotpants, couple of pistols or a sidekick called Sully.

Sony Computer Entertainment

One of the reasons that The Last Guardian couldn’t have been made for PS3 lies in Trico himself. The enormous beast has great AI and movement, acting like a real animal. It gets scared, curious and angry – often elements of puzzles or their solutions. And it moves beautifully. As do all the feathers on its back, which you can climb.

The Last Guardian review: Graphical marvel

To have such an enormous character on screen with so many nuances in behaviour and motion takes a lot of computing power and the PS4 copes wonderfully.

The game is graphically impressive as a whole, with outdoor locations seeming vast in their detail and scale. Indoors it’s all a bit murky, but that’s down to the art style rather than limitations. And if you’re playing the game on a 4K TV through PS4 Pro, you get extra resolution to play with and HDR (high dynamic range) pictures.

Sony Computer Entertainment

Some have bemoaned the frame-rate trade-off for higher resolution, but we didn’t notice too many dropped frames or stutter. We were too busy marvelling as our feathered chum leapt across chasms.

There are points in the game where it isn’t quite as perfect as we’d like, with climbing Trico sometimes a little clumsy, but the spirit and beauty more than make up for them. It truly is a wonderful example of measured storytelling.

Verdict

The Last Guardian has old school roots but is a very modern game. In an age where the top titles are effectively action movies you control, this is an indie classic that you’d happily sit in a trendy London cinema to see.

The 12-hours of play time are fraught with frustrations and head-scratching puzzles, but you never feel that the game is halting your progress, just your own inadequacies in not being able to solve each puzzle. Those 12-hours, therefore, could easily be extended.

It is also magically presented, with a main character in Trico that you will long remember after the final scenes play out.

Some things are indeed worth the wait.

Microsoft Cortana finally comes to Android in the UK, iPhone within weeks

Microsoft’s virtual assistant Cortana is finally ready to make her bow in the UK.

As well as a major update to the existing Android app in the US, Microsoft has made it available to UK Android device owners for the first time. It is available to download from the Google Play store now.

An iPhone version of the updated application will also be available in a few weeks, to US and UK iPhone owners – again a first this side of the pond.

In many ways Brits get a more rounded app. Instead of being a voice assistant primarily, the new Cortana software offers enhanced reasons to use it over Google Assistant or Siri.

• Cortana will soon be better at understanding English than you
• What is Google Assistant, how does it work, and when can you use it?
• 63 ways to get a giggle out of Siri

Version 2.0.1 has an improved look, which is more simple and, well, purple. It also brings the non-voice functionality to the fore, with quick actions popping up to give you immediate access to your most used functions without having to bark vocal commands at your phone. It will also now connect to your device’s calendar to sync reminders and meetings.

Answers will now appear full-page and the overall performance of the app will be faster and smoother.

Cortana is a free download and if you already use it on your PC or Xbox One, it’s a no-brainer as it syncs all of your information between devices.

Spotify isn’t acquiring SoundCloud after all

Just a couple of months ago, rumors indicated Spotify was negotiating to acquire fellow music streamer SoundCloud. Now, TechCrunch reports hearing from a source that those talks have ended and Spotify is walking away. According to the Financial Times, Spotify has considered this deal twice before and ended negotiations because it couldn’t agree on a price.

This time, however, TechCrunch says the sticking point is due to Spotify’s potential IPO plans and the licensing headache that could arise from acquiring SoundCloud’s remix-heavy catalog. Of course, if Spotify does go public this year, it’s possible the deal could be on the table again afterward.

Source: TechCrunch, Financial Times

EU is suing member states over Volkswagen diesel scandal

The European Union isn’t happy some of its member countries still haven’t punished Volkswagen for cheating on emission tests. According to several sources, it has began taking legal action against seven nations, starting with the UK, Germany, Luxembourg and Spain for approving the carmaker’s vehicles to be sold in their countries but failing to haul it to court like the US did. Further, UK and Germany refused to share what they discovered from their own investigations. The EU is also suing the Czech Republic, Greece and Lithuania for not even having laws that can penalize the company.

To recap: researchers found something amiss with Volkswagen cars in 2014 and tipped off the US Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA then discovered the sneaky software that lurked in the cars, which switches on during emissions tests to dupe authorities. One of the software’s developers pled guilty in federal court a few months ago, while Volkswagen agreed to settle with the US and owners of the fraudulent vehicles in the country for a whopping $15 billion.

The European Union has a law prohibiting carmarkers from installing cheating devices like the US does. However, its still up to member states to enforce it — it’s apparently getting frustrated that the countries we mentioned earlier are still allowing VW to operate within their territories without repercussions. The scandal had a huge impact on Volkswagen despite EU nations’ lack of action, though: it vowed to build more electric vehicles in an effort to reinvent itself as an EV maker.

Source: BBC, The New York Times, Independent

First feathered dinosaur tail found encased in amber

Scientists have found dinosaur-era feathers and evidence of them in fossil impressions before. But this is the first time they’ve discovered a full-feathered tail section preserved in amber, ripe for forensic analysis and Spielbergian dreams.

Paleontologist Lida Xing of the China University of Geosciences led the research, as detailed in a report that came out today in the journal Current Biology. The sample itself, known as DIP-V-15103 and unofficially as “Eva” after the wife of the report’s co-author, came from a mine in Kachin, a state in northern Myanmar. Based on the structure of the tail, it likely came from a Cretaceous-era young coelurasaur, a subgroup of therapods that includes everything from tyrannosauruses to birds, points out National Geographic.

While you should check your excitement for the possibilities of dino DNA, the preserved feathers gave the scientists forensic insight into their role. The encased plumage seems to be ornamental rather than functional: Previous research by the same team found that birds from this sample’s era had similar feathers to those of birds today. In short, if the rest of the tail looked like Eva, this dino likely wouldn’t have been able to fly.

Xing and his team didn’t dig the sample up, however — they collected it from an amber market in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin. Burmese amber is often used as jewelry, and Eva had already been shaped by the time it was collected with other samples in 2015.

Via: CNN

Source: National Geographic