Assassin’s Creed Pirates goes free along with new Cold Blood update
Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Pirates isn’t what some might think. The first time I heard the title I was expecting a companion app to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Instead, the title is a standalone game that puts you in the middle of the ocean battling ships and making a name for yourself. You also have various side missions where you go fishing, whaling and rescue people from the depth of Davy Jones locker. Sadly, I have let many floating sailor die.
Ubisoft has released a new update to the game today called Cold Blood. The expansion gives you access to new chapters in your story in the Arctic Seas. They have also tossed in a new crew member that is supposed to help you out with your plaguing resource problems. Ubisoft also makes mention that the update is ‘introducing legendary customization.’ Basically you can give your ship some upgrades.
The updated scenery is nice, so is the customization abilities. Interestingly enough the title has dropped its price tag too. In a blog post on Ubisofts website they announced, quietly, that the pirate title is now free-to-play on all platforms. Android isn’t the only OS getting special treatment. I am sure they didn’t want to raise to big of a stink since the title sat at $4.99 for so long. Many of you will be plenty upset about it and if it ruffles your feathers enough you may want to just request a refund through your Play Store order page. You may also want to be wary of updating too. Seems a few reports from the Play Store review section seem to have people losing their ships, saved progress and resources.
For everyone else that didn’t drop $5 on the title, or $0.10, now is your chance to give the high-seas battle game a chance.
Source: Ubisoft | AndroidPolice
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Love emoji-only messaging? Try logging activities with the tiny pictures
Hey you guys, I love messaging with just emojis. It’s the best. They let people know how I really feel when tone is so hard to convey in a text or email. Those quick notes are great, but I really want the cute pics to be in my life more, so I’ve started logging my location and activities with Steven. It’s a new app built by former Twitter Chief Scientist Abdur Chowdhury that tracks where I go in the background on my iPhone and records the appropriate icon. Don’t worry, it’s not creepy or anything — it’s totally cool. Coffee shops get a coffee cup, drowning my sorrows gets a beer mug, etc… It’s pretty great. I can also assign my smartphone snapshots to those places and all my pals can give emjoi-based comments on the burrito I had for lunch. I mean, it’s named after a cat. What’s not to love?
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Steven (iTunes)
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Pinterest Chrome extension brings inspiration to freshly-opened tabs
When you open a new tab in Google’s Chrome browser, you’re greeted with a search box, rows of recently-visited sites and a tucked-in menu for individual apps. It’s really not very inspiring, is it? Pinterest doesn’t think so, and thanks to an internal make-a-thon, there’s a new Chrome extension that aims to remedy the gray box blues. Once you’ve installed the add-on, you’ll be prompted to select what you’re interested in for the day amongst sports, food, photography and several others. When you open a new tab, you’ll be greeted with a full-bleed image populated from Artsy, 500px or National Geographic. I’m told these are the libraries for now due to the “good spectrum” of options they house, but more could be on the way later. On top of the visual stimulus, Google Calendar info is situated at the bottom left while weather details for your current location is pulled in from Yahoo. And of course, info for the displayed photo and the ability to pin it is down on the right. The digital repository already has an extension for adding to boards from websites, and that’s included here too, but the original will still be available for those who don’t want to spice up their tabs.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Pinterest, Chrome Web Store
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Barclays wants you to give it the finger instead of a PIN
PINs, passwords and authentication codes: they’re a troublesome security solution that we’d love to see the back of. The bankers at Barclays know this, so they’ve looked to biometrics in a bid to banish them forever. Today, the company announced that it’s teaming up with Hitachi to launch a new fingerprint reader capable of scanning and recognising the unique vein patterns a customer’s hand. It’ll let you scan your finger to quickly access your online bank accounts and authorise payments, reducing fraud in the process. Hitachi’s Finger Vein Authentication Technology does the hard work and is said to be significantly harder to spoof because it’ll only work if the scanned finger is “attached to a live human body” (no finger-lopping movie plotlines happening here). Barclays’ Biometric Reader will roll out first to business account holders from next year, but staff at UK branches may ask you to put your best finger forward in the very near future.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Barclays
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Hello Moto: when are Motorola’s new products coming to the UK?
Like many other phone makers at IFA this week, Motorola has shown its hand, introducing a new flagship and a revamped version of its highly-rated budget smartphone. It’s even told us when its circular smartwatch will go on sale. It’s unleashed the Moto X, Moto G and Moto 360 on the world, but when are they coming to the UK and how much will they cost? Let us explain.
Moto X
Yup, the Moto X is back. It has the same name, but don’t worry, things have upscaled quite a bit. With a 1080p 5.2-inch AMOLED display, it’s ever-so-slightly bigger than its predecessor, and it’s a little weightier too. Inside you’ll find Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801 processor with a 2.5GHz quad-core CPU, an Adreno 330 578MHz GPU and 2GB of RAM. There’s also a 13-megapixel camera (up from the 10-megapixel sensor in the older model) and it’s powered by a 2,300 mAh battery. While it runs Android 4.4 KitKat now, expect an Android L upgrade in the very near future.
Although Motorola is now owned by Lenovo, the popular Moto Maker customization service is important to its new owner as it was to Google. It’s back and there’s an added bonus: it’s also coming to the UK. That’s right, you’ll now be able personalise your Moto X with a bespoke design and even deck it out in leather (if that’s what excites you).
Whether you buy a ready-made 16GB Moto X from Amazon or design your own using Moto Maker, the phone will cost £419.99 when it goes on sale at the end of September. If you’re looking to ramp up the quality, however, both the wood and leather options will set you back a little extra, meaning you’ll pay £439.99 for your unlocked handset. The same can be said of the 32GB model, which starts at £459.99 and rises to £479.99 if you want that premium feel.
Moto G
Like the X, Motorola has also decided to stick to what it knows with the new Moto G. Given that it’s Motorola’s best-selling smartphone of all time, there’s no reason to mess with success. Again, the company has decided to improve things a little, first by equipping the G with a bigger 5-inch 720 HD IPS display. That helps make it a touch bigger and heavier than its older sibling.
While it features the same 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor, Motorola has upgraded the G’s sound output by including two front stereo speakers (up from the one rear-mounted speaker on the original) and enhanced it’s photo-taking abilities with an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-facer. As before, it’ll come with 8GB or 16GB of internal storage and let you add more with its expandable memory slot.
With more new than old, it’s reassuring to see that the new Moto G isn’t going to cost much more than the original. Amazon will sell it to you for a tenner extra from today (although we’re not seeing it yet), pricing it at £144.99. While you won’t enjoy the delights of Moto Maker with the G, Motorola’s coloured shells will be available and go on sale from October.
Moto 360
While we’ve got our hands on the Moto 360 before, Motorola kept specifics like release dates and pricing under wraps. We now know that the circular smartwatch will go on sale at O2, Tesco, Amazon and John Lewis from “early October,” starting at £199. It’ll ship with grey leather and black leather straps initially, but Motorola has said it will offer sleeker silver and black metallic options later this autumn.
Moto Hint
Motorola’s new stylish Bluetooth headset is designed to be discrete as possible. It’s so discrete that it’s not even got a UK release date or price yet. While we hunt for more details, here’s a photo of the Moto Hint to keep you entertained.
Steve Dent contributed to this article.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Software, Mobile
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Angry Birds Stella finally gets released to the Play Store
Rovio set the date and stuck to it, that is pretty nice to see. Back at the first part of August Rovio announced that the next variant of the Angry Birds franchise would be headed to the public on September 4th. Prior to that, we saw that it was in the works, that was back in February. Today is September 4th and here is Angry Birds Stella.
Stella is the pink bird that you might remember from Angry Birds Star Wars. Her power then was a bit annoying to me. The new iteration from Rovio brings you to Golden Island where you, as Stella, go on an adventure with your girls and beat down the bad pig princess. Angry Birds Stella delivers 120 new levels for you to battle your way through with various power-up options and abilities. Much like the last few titles though, it does offer in-app purchases. Mostly directed at buying coins to purchase more power-ups.
It also seems to offer no way to buy your way free of ads. Expect to see some pop-ups and banner ads along with a few video ads that you have nearly watch all of before you can move on. Stella will connect you to Google Play Games for leader boards and such, but if you want cloud save abilities, expect to sign in with Facebook as well.
While the game is more or less a new themed version, the graphics, new birds and abilities do make it a different experience. It is free, so you may as well give it a run if you are looking for something to take your mind of it being Thursday.
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Twitter helps you keep track of NFL action with curated timelines
While you’re sitting on the sofa watching your NFL team of choice take the field, you’re likely peeking at a mobile device for updates, too. If that’s the case, Twitter is looking to lend a hand this season with curated timelines for action around the league and game-specific options. In the #NFL timeline, you can see what the folks you follow are saying with “relevant tweets” from teams, players, coaches, media and celebrities peppered in to keep you in the know. For the game-focused feed (#SeahawksvsPackers or #SEAvsGB for example), everything is distilled down to what you need to watch that particular matchup. If that sounds a bit familiar it’s because the social network did the same thing during the World Cup, and now it’s looking to keep American football fans well-informed. For now, the timelines are only available on iOS and the web, so Android users will have to sit tight for the time being.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Mobile
Source: Twitter
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Google and EA animate trash talk with the Madden ‘GIFERATOR’
The NFL regular season kicks off tonight, and to make sure you’re properly amped for the week’s action, EA has teamed up with Google for some GIF-based smack talk. The Madden GIFERATOR allows you to pick your favorite team, a star player, their environment, add some text and the software does the rest. From there, sharing is a breeze, and you can peruse creations for any franchise or by schedule from week to week. If you’re itchin’ to give it a go, you can do just that right here.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Google
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Rdio update expands its free radio offerings with more music than the rest
Rdio has offered radio-like shuffle listening for quite sometime, but with its latest update, the service looks to be tops in free internet streaming. Across Android, iOS and desktop apps, the tune-minded outfit packs in new features that will help do just that, and it’ll lend subscribers a hand with easily tracking down what they’re after — whether it’s Stations, playlists, full albums or a single song. The free “Stations-first” option claims to offer a library that’s 15 times larger than others with channels for selections based on genres and artists. What’s more, there are also streams based on emotion or activity curated by folks at Rdio, and some handpicked by “tastemakers” (Snoop Dogg was offered as an example). There’s a station that’s unique to each user, too — Billy FM is mine, for example — learning from your listening habits to provide a mix to suit your favorites and yet another that’s populated with tracks from your Collection.
Once you pick a station, you can adjust a slider at points between popular, familiar or favorites on one end and adventurous on the other to further tweak what Rdio will send your way. As you’ve probably guessed by now, Rdio is working alongside Cumulus to provide the free listening via advertising on both mobile and the web. There will also be branded stations where promotional partners control the playlist and the ad content. Macy’s and Home Depot have already signed on, so you can look forward to those two, with many more to come, we’d surmise. Both the curated playlists and an app that continually learns from your habits may sound familiar. Beats Music has collections that are compiled by the likes of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and others, asking about your music tastes along the way to fill out its Just For You listings.
In addition to the big push for its free streaming option, there’s a revamped Home section that constantly updates with new “stories” based on listening preferences, activity from those tastemakers, what your friends are up to and recommendations from Rdio experts. You can think of “stories” as the “what’s happening” feed that allows you to pick up right where you left off, see what’s trending amongst your mates, peruse comments and more. In the side menu, Trending replaces Heavy Rotation and Top Charts for what’s getting most of the plays across all of Rdio or within your circle of pals. There’s a new Browse option as well, providing easy access to those genre, mood and other themed stations. All of the new features and expanded free radio are rolling out to Android, iOS and web users right now, so you should be able to try for yourself shortly.
Filed under: Software
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PS4 Remote Play coming to Sony Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact and Z3 Tablet Compact
I think I need some more coffee. Boy has it been a big day of news. Sony put out quite a large chunk with a new SmartWatch 3 and SmartBand Talk, not to mention a plethora of devices that we have yet to get to. Mixed in the blizzard of information circling the web is some news about PS4 Remote Play.
As you might expect, this is Sony’s way to bring your Playstation 4 games from the TV in the living room to your Sony device in the back bedroom. Sony will be offering up a simple game control mount accessory that will let you attach your Xperia Z3 to your current DUALSHOCK 4 controller for a pop up playing experience. Much like the Moga controllers do. Sony is quick to mention that this function is available on the new Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact and Z3 Tablet Compact and that you will need a Playstation 4, DUALSHOCK 4 controller, a Sony Entertainment Network account and high-speed internet. If you have a PS4 then you should have everything except the newly announced devices that aren’t available yet anyways.
Sony may bring this functionality to previous Xperia devices, which would be nice since the U.S. doesn’t have a very big saturation of Xperia devices to begin with. Game streaming isn’t all that new, NVIDIA has been doing it with PC games to the Shield for some time. AP points out that the Wii U does this through their tablet remote thingy they have. While I haven’t given it much time yet, Limelight offers game streaming from your PC to a plethora of Android devices, while not perfect, it works. The PS Vita has had this ability for quite sometime.
There doesn’t seem to be a price tag for the controller adapter for your phone. That information should come out closer to the launch of the new Xperia Z3 line in a few months.
Via Android Police
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AIVAnet 