On Xbox One, game broadcasters are quickly catching up to PlayStation 4
Though Xbox One sales may be slightly behind that of the PlayStation 4, it looks like game broadcasting is taking off at a much quicker pace on Microsoft’s new console. In the first week of availability, 108K Xbox One owners took to Twitch to broadcast games; the same number was reached on the PlayStation 4 after 25 days of availability. This is largely due to Twitch broadcasting launching alongside the PS4, whereas broadcasting didn’t function on the Xbox One until early last month — resultantly, millions of Xbox One consoles were already out in the wild, whereas the PS4 had to be physically purchased and brought home before users discovered the glory of … mostly safe for work broadcasts. It also didn’t hurt that the Xbox One had its first major exclusive game, Titanfall, launching alongside game broadcasting (we even got in on the fun ourselves). Regardless, it looks like game broadcasting is proving more than just a passing fad.
Google to focus on portrait shots and effects with improved camera app
We know that Google has been looking to bring more advanced photo features to Android for a while, but it may soon be ready to show off what it’s been working on. Sources aware of Google’s plans have confirmed to us that the search giant is currently testing a new version of its camera app that will sport a refreshed UI, a background-blurring effect for portrait shots, and improved panorama and Photo Sphere modes. As part of its overhaul, we’re told that Google has finally fixed issues with the default camera’s photo framing, allowing users to snap images with a new 100-percent no-crop viewfinder. That means you’ll see exactly what your Android device will capture before you hit the shutter button, with no unwanted objects creeping in at the edges.
The company is also said to be making the camera app more extensible, by opening support for third-party filters. This will allow developers (and Android enthusiasts) to create and import custom effects inside the stock camera app. The camera app’s portrait skills may see some improvements too, with the addition a new lens blur mode that will take photos with a shallower depth of field, mimicking the effects you’d typically see in Nokia’s Refocus app and HTC’s new One. New high-resolution panorama and Photo Sphere modes have also been added, improving the quality of your sweeping shots.
While many are awaiting the release of Android 4.4.3, the latest version of KitKat, Google is set to make these camera improvements available to users by way of a standalone update. Our sources indicate that the app will exist separately so that non-Nexus owners running Android 4.4 and above will be able to take advantage of the improvements, without having to wait for an OTA update from their device maker or carrier.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google
New Xbox head Phil Spencer promises renewed focus on gaming across all Microsoft platforms
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the new head of its Xbox division this morning: Phil Spencer, longtime Microsoft Studios leader and Xbox game dude. In Spencer’s initial letter to the legions of Xbox owners the world over, his approach comes across as scattershot. See for yourself:
“This past year has been a growth experience both for me and for the entire Xbox team. We’ve taken feedback, made our products better and renewed our focus on what is most important, our customer. Our mission is to build a world-class team, work hard to meet the high expectations of a passionate fan base, create the best games and entertainment and drive technical innovation. As we continue forward, this renewed focus and mission will be a foundational part of how I lead the Xbox program.”
Given that, our first question to Spencer in a short phone interview this afternoon was one of clarification. With so many aspects of Xbox to oversee, where will he begin? “I’m gonna lead with a gaming focus and making sure that’s where we’re led. That’s the North Star for the organization,” he told us.
Beyond coming from a background at Microsoft Studios — the name for a group of internal game development groups at Microsoft — Spencer’s known for being game-focused. He reaffirmed this approach to us. “Winning with the gamer first is gonna be something that drives the organization,” Spencer said. That’s at the heart of his boss Satya Nadella’s Xbox reorganization.
With Spencer’s title change comes a heap of new responsibility (due to an internal reorg). He’s not just overseeing the Xbox One and Xbox 360, but the entire ecosystem around the greater Xbox brand. That includes the following departments: Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox Music, Xbox Video and Microsoft Studios.
Spencer actually fought for all this oversight. In a discussion with Nadella, as well as Windows boss Terry Myerson and devices lead (former Nokia head) Stephen Elop, he had two stipulations. The first was the unification of Xbox under one umbrella; the second was a seat at the table with the likes of Myerson and Elop. “The Xbox team, the Xbox leader (me) sitting at the same leadership table as Terry (the Windows team leader, the Windows Phone OS team leader) really helps us look at gaming as that first-class citizen across all Microsoft platforms,” he said.
More tightly, intelligently integrated Xbox services across more Windows platforms is something Redmond’s struggled with for years. With Spencer, there’s hope that someone with a real sense of the game industry can bridge the longstanding divide.
The next major beat for Spencer’s Xbox will, naturally, be E3. He said we’ll hear dribs and drabs before then — some games will get launch dates, the first ID@Xbox games will arrive on the Xbox One — but expect Xbox to once again lean on the all important holiday sales season for its major game releases.
The Free Movie and TV App, Crackle, Now Supports Chromecast
If you need more reasons other than Plex, Vudu, YouTube, AllCast, Netflix and Hulu to spend $35 on a Chromecast device, how about Crackle. Crackle has been around for quite some time. It is an app that offers movies and tv shows of varying variety for you to stream and watch legally. Legally being the key word. You won’t find the latest and greatest flicks out, but you will find a movie list that is always changing. Often times you will even find flicks that aren’t available through Netflix to stream. For instance, Crackle has the Johnny Depp flick ‘The Rum Diary’ available to stream, where as Netflix only has it available on DVD.
There is a price to pay for free service though. You will have to deal with a couple commercials throughout your viewing experience. There are usually one or two before the movie starts and then a number of them throughout the movie.
You can see where the breaks are in the bar there at the bottom, looks like 8 commercial breaks on this 1 hour and 36 minute movie. I have been personally using Crackle for a number of years on my Google TV boxes and phones. I am happy to see it updated with Chromecast support.
If you have never used Crackle, or have a Chromecast and want to give it a looksy, then click down below and head tot he Play Store and pick it up. You can also just go to Crackle.com and watch right from your browser.
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Rdio Has Updated with Chromecast Support Today
Today is sure shaping up to be a good day for current and future owners of Chromecast devices. Another music service app has just updated today that now adds in Chromecast supports. The fairly popular Rdio app is available for free and does offer a $9.99 a month subscription option as well. In a nutshell, the app offers up over 20 millions tracks to choose from. Listen to individual tracks, curated stations or create your own. You can sync your favorite playlist for offline listening anytime. Rdio also offers up a social side that allows you to follow friends, artists and other music lovers to see what they are playing and help you discover new tunes.
Give Rdio a shot for free by simply installing the app. A small disappointment is that you either need to login with Facebook or create a new account with your email address.
Via AndroidPolice
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Xbox gets a new leader at Microsoft: Phil Spencer
When longtime Xbox lead Marc Whitten left for Sonos recently, Microsoft was left without an exec to lead up one of its most powerful divisions. Today, Phil Spencer is stepping in to fill that spot — not exactly a surprise given Spencer’s past role leading up the Xbox software side (specifically games). Beyond just Microsoft Studios and Xbox, Spencer says he’s, “leading the Xbox, Xbox Live, and creative teams including Xbox Music, Xbox Video and Microsoft Studios.” It also stands to reason that we’ll see a lot more of Spencer during Microsoft’s annual E3 briefing and in press interviews; what we’re trying to say is “expect to hear from him a lot more going forward.”
Not sure who Phil Spencer is? Rest assured, we’ve got more on his background below.
Phil Spencer is a longtime vet at Microsoft, with previous work going back as far as the Encarta Encyclopedia CD-ROMs. He’s been with the Xbox division in various capacities for over a decade; Spencer originally worked with the EMEA region, and eventually rose to corporate VP at Microsoft Studios. Along with Marc Whitten, Yusuf Mehdi and Phil Harrison, Spencer led the charge on launching Microsoft’s latest game console, the Xbox One. Spencer and his European counterpart, Phil Harrison, have headed up the games side of the Xbox One’s launch, though after today’s news it looks like Spencer will have a much broader spectrum of oversight.
Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft (1), Microsoft (2)
Google wants you to become a Pokémon master on April Fools
Google’s known for its weird and wonderful April fools jokes, but this year’s edition might be the best we’ve seen to date. Because it’s already April 1st in Australia and Japan, Google has introduced its “latest” build of Google Maps, laying down a “Pokémon Challenge” that requires you, a budding Pokémon Master, to discover and capture all of manner of creatures to fill up your Pokédex, simply by navigating around your local area. To start playing, make sure you have the latest version of Google Maps for iPhone or Android, hit the search bar and select “Press start.” You’ll have to be quick though, you’ve got until 2am on April 2nd to catch ‘em all.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile, Google
Square makes accounting easier for merchants by integrating with Xero
Square can make accepting credit cards easy for small businesses. Things get less simple, however, when it comes time to do the books for those businesses — something that often involves painstakingly inputting Square transactions into accounting software manually. To lessen that misery, last November Square launched a partnership with QuickBooks, and today the company announced another integration, this time with accounting program Xero.
Starting today, Xero customers can connect their Square account and automatically import daily sales data into the program. We chatted with one of the merchants who has been beta testing the integration, Andy Ciordia from The Secret Chocolatier in Charlotte NC, who told us that “anyone who has been doing this manually has a bit of grey hair” because of it. He says that while the partnership just brings in the first level of integration his business needs (later on he hopes they’ll add support for individual inventory items). In its current form it’s already saving him four hours a week in accounting time. That’s time we hope he spends creating more wild chocolate concoctions, like this Midnight Delight cake in a jar.
Ultrakam lets your iPhone capture higher resolution film-like video clips
While Sony and Samsung are busy making phones with 4K recording capabilities, one developer has worked its pixel magic to get more from iPhone cameras. Ultrakam is the first iOS app capable of recording “2K” resolution with a film-like 24p frame rate, letting iPhone 5s owners shoot 2240 x 1672 pixel video (around 75 percent more pixels than regular HD) to output higher-quality footage than the default camera app. There’s support for the iPhone 5 and 5c, as well as the the iPad mini, iPad Air and iPad with Retina display, but the app is limited to high-definition and “2K” at 20fps on “older” devices.
Including an array of settings and various shooting modes that allow you to record higher bit-rate video and audio, with a minute of footage consuming up to 3GB of storage on max settings (expect that 64GB iPhone 5s to fill up fast), Ultrakam is primarily aimed at filmmakers. However, there’s plenty of neat features for regular users to show off their talent. It offers slow motion video, but again the iPhone 5s has all the fun, as it supports slow motion capture at 120fps over the iPhone 5′s 60fps. You can slow down your recordings by up to 10x if you choose the lowest preset. The app also supports timelapse shooting, offering custom configurations that will snap high resolution photos at set intervals, combining them to output a high-quality landscape. Once you’ve shot your footage, Ultrakam’s built-in player and editing tools let you play video, generate stills, color correct and share them with ease. Ultrakam is available on the App Store for $6.99 — a little more costly than your regular camera app, but the extra quality and advanced features may justify the price.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Via: The Next Web
Source: Ultrakam, (App Store)
Partial Android 4.4.3 changelog revealed, will bring in countless Fixes
Over the last few weeks, the evidence for Android 4.4.3′s inevitable release has been building, and the latest information to support these theories includes a screenshot of a Nexus 5‘s device details featuring the new software build and a partial Android 4.4.3 changelog.
Apart from the Nexus 5 camera bug fix that was suggested before, the changelog appears to detail a whole number of fixes that will make some users very happy; see below for the partial changelog:
- frequent data connection dropout fix
- mm-qcamera-daemon crash and optimization fixes
- camera focus in regular and HDR modes fixes
- Power Manager display wakelock fix
- multiple Bluetooth fixes
- fix for a random reboot
- app shortcuts sometimes got removed from launcher after update
- USB debugging security fix
- app shortcuts security fix
- Wi-Fi auto-connect fix
- other camera fixes
- MMS, Email/Exchange, Calendar, People/Dialer/Contacts, DSP, IPv6, VPN fixes
- stuck in activation screen fix
- missed call LED fix
- subtitle fixes
- data usage graph fix
- Internet telephony fix
- FCC compliance fix
- miscellaneous fixes
I’m surprised not to see any fixes for the dropped call issues that have been seen on the Moto G with Android 4.4.2, but this is only a partial list and the official changelog will no doubt have plenty more to offer. There’s still no word on when this software update will go live to the public, but with the suggestion that it will be releasing in Q1 2014, we should be seeing more news about it very soon.
When do you think Android 4.4.3 will be released? Are you suffering from some of the issues that have a fix incoming? Let us know your story in the comments.
Source: Android Police via TalkAndroid
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AIVAnet 