Nuance,
the developer behind Dragon Naturally Speaking and many other voice
operated technologies in consumer electronics, has created a
voice-activated personal assistant which uses biometrics to uniquely
identify a specific user.
This means that you’ll be able to tell your phone to do all sorts of
things requiring secure identification by simply talking to your phone.
Unlike OS and device specific solutions such as Siri and S Voice,
Nuance is launching a mobile SDK for Android and iOS, which developers
can use to make their third party applications voice-operated.
Check out the video of Nina in action:
Those who downloaded the latest iOS 6 beta 4
yesterday were in for a bit of a surprise when they found out the
YouTube app was no longer part of the OS.
Turns out, Apple will no longer be including
the YouTube player app in iOS 6 because their license has expired.
However, those using iOS 5 and older versions can continue to use this
application as long as they don't upgrade to iOS 6.
Apple has also revealed that Google is working on its own separate
YouTube app for iOS, which will be released on the App Store some time
in future, hopefully by the time iOS 6 is released to the public.
In case you are wondering how you will watch YouTube videos without
the player, there is no need to worry as the videos can easily be played
within Safari. You can also access your subscriptions and favorites by
logging into the YouTube mobile website from your iOS device, which
works similarly to the iOS app.
This is a ROM created to give the Xperia Arc S a nice Jelly Bean feel to it. It is extremely fast and has a very smooth UI
Although this ROM isn't a Jelly Bean ROM, there are many ported mods and apps that are fully functional on it. They include,
Google now
Jelly Bean Launcher
Jelly Bean Wallpapers
Boot Animations
Search Bar etc.
The developer was also kind enough to port mods from the Sony Xperia S
as well add lots of tweaks and mods to make this ROM very fast and
almost completely bug free.
The developer of Ice Bean also advises that this ROM works best on unlocked bootloaders.
The other good news is that the developer plans to bring in new updates very soon.
This ROM works on almost all ICS kernels.
For Mods/ Downloads/FAQs/Video Reviews/and many more
Just when you thought the guys at Rovio maybe just maybe are running
out of ideas on how to get those Angry Birds to smash those pigs here
comes another one. It seems that there is a "Red Planet update coming
this fall."
It is unclear if this will be a true update or a whole new Angry
Birds game at this point. Most of what we do know about this "update"
comes from the trailer below .
That's right you read that right out of the 650,000 Apps in the Apple's App store more than 400,000 have ZERO downloads. The App Store has about 400,000 dead apps.
Everybody’s favorite endless running game Temple Run has completed one
year since its launch on iOS. In this time, the game has been downloaded
over 100 million times, including downloads on Android. People have
played over 10 billion sessions so far and spent close to 54,000 years
combined running from evil monkeys.
The game has also received an update on iOS, which brings the version
number to 1.5. In this update, the game adds Retina display support for
the iPad, along with 22 new objectives and a new powerup called
PermaWings that can be enabled at the start of the level and stays on
permanently until you die, at which point it automatically resurrects
you.
Other additions include ability to disable and enable individual
powerups and some bug fixes. Unfortunately, this update is not yet
available on Android.
As before, the game is free of charge, so you can download and try it out right now.
Ever heard a great song on the radio, and didn't know the song's name? Well, those days are over, now you have Shazam.
Many people listen to the radio, in the
car, at home, etc, and as soon a they hear a song they like, they have
to remember the lyrics and maybe do a Google search to find out the name
of the song. This could sometimes be really irritating, especially
when Google can't pin point the song out, with the bit of lyrics you
provided.
But that doesn't have to be a problem
anymore, because Shazam can help you. What Shazam does is, listen to the
song on the radio and matches it with the correct name through an
online database in a matter of seconds. Once you have the name of the
song, you are free to download it later.
You can even go back to Shazam and check
the name of the song, because it stores the song it heard. It is very
easy to use and is freely available on the play store.
Once you have downloaded Shazam, all you
have to do is tap the big black logo on the center of the page. It is
also helpful if you can place the mic of your phone closer to the radio,
so that Shazam has no problem in picking up the sound waves.
If you did it correctly, you should see the
above picture, where it will say listening. Once the program matches
your song with the name, it will appear on the screen.
The information of the song will be
displayed for you, and you are free to download the song via a website
or buy it off Amazon, which is given in the application itself.
There is also the Shazam widget, which
is extremely useful because you don't have to go into the application to
make the phone start listening to the song.
All you have to do is, go download it from
the Play store. There are two versions, the free and paid ones. If you
really love the free version, you can download the paid version later.
you won’t find many people that will argue with the statement that Nokia makes some really great hardware. What some may not know is that Nokia can also develop some pretty nice software, too! Meego was proof of that, before the project was killed off.
Today Nokia and Microsoft are buddies. An advantage Nokia phones had
over other Windows Phones was the inclusion of their own location-based
apps, most notably Drive. Nokia Drive
is an intelligent GPS-based navigation app with some logic built in to
help monitor traffic and dynamically re-route based on conditions.
Sounds familiar, right? Android and iOS devices have Waze and each OS
has navigation solutions from their respective backers, but a lot has
been said about Nokia Drive and some of its features that are reportedly
superior to other solutions on the market.
Not long ago, Nokia announced their decision to make Nokia Drive available to all Windows Phone 8 partners.
At first glance this sounds like a great idea, but looking deeper, one
has to ask why. Nokia Drive was one feature that differentiated
Nokia-built Windows Phones from those made by other manufacturers.
Perhaps that was the problem: Microsoft likes uniformity — at least when
it comes to software.
With this move — and Nokia’s previous experience with Linux-based
environments — Nokia has the potential to offer their location-based
apps not only to Windows Phone 8, but to Android as well. If they do
that, how long until they’d expand to iOS. Why might they want to do
that?
Offering Nokia Drive on other devices provides a chance for Nokia to
advertise their brand, something that’s losing popularity in the States.
It would be an opportunity to show off what Nokia software can do. The
next time a buyer goes to get a phone and sees “Includes Nokia Drive!”
featured prominently next to some devices those buyers may be more
likely to consider them because they include something familiar.
Nokia got rid of most of their Linux developers when they dropped
Meego. That having been said, do you think Nokia could consider
releasing their apps on other platforms to help woo potential customers
back to the Nokia brand? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
We are no strangers to seeing movie tie-in games that come out shortly
after the release of a big budget movie. But recently, these games have
started appearing on mobile devices as well. We saw Temple Run: Brave,
The Amazing Spider-man and now The Dark Knight Rises, releasing just
weeks apart from each other.
Today we will be taking a look at The Dark Knight Rises, a game based
on one of the biggest and arguably the best movie that has come out
this year so far. The movie had raised everyone’s expectations sky high
and managed to meet and exceed most of them. No one is really expecting
anything from this game and with the history of movie tie-in games it
would be a surprise if it is any good. We decided to find out if that is
the case.
The Premise
The Dark Knight Rises’ story is based roughly on the events that
happen in the movie. It goes without saying then that you should have
watched the movie in advance or this game will spoil some key events for
you. However, the game takes some liberties with the story, by adding
several extra events that never take place in the movie, which is
understandable because this is a game after all and there should be
something for you to do.
So you find yourself jumping from roof tops, punching the living
daylights out of the bad guys, using some cool gadgets, and generally
running around taking care of things in Gotham. The game rushes through
the story of the movie in the first couple of chapters and then
stretches out the last section of the movie over several chapters. This
is understandable as very little actually happens in the first half of
the movie that could have been adapted for the game.
Gameplay
The Dark Knight Rises is split up in several chapters and in each
chapter you have multiple missions. You will get the objective on the
screen and then you have to reach there and do whatever it is you have
to do in that mission. In the early missions you will find yourself
freeing hostages, disarming bombs and hacking into switches. The hacking
involves solving a puzzle, where you have to align all pieces before
the timer runs out, although there is no real penalty for missing the
mark and you just have to start again.
You get a major sense of déjà vu while playing this game, mostly
because it’s so similar to the two Batman games that came out on the PC
and consoles in recent times. To move around the city, you can just run
around or do the sensible thing, use your grapple. Areas where you can
grapple have a small circle and you have to press a button on the screen
for Batman to just swoop over. Jumping down from rooftops is also easy.
Just press a button and Batman uses his cape to gradually glide down.
It’s all very similar to the previous Batman games.
The combat is also the same. You keep mashing a button on screen to
punch your enemies and Batman keeps rotating between various attacks
until the enemy is down. After that you switch over to the next enemy,
rinse and repeat. This game also borrows the block mechanism from the
other Batman games, whereby you will get an indicator on the screen when
an enemy is trying to attack you while you are engaging another enemy.
Pressing the button causes Batman to switch focus and block as well as
attack the other guy who tried to hit you. You even get the same slow
motion finishing moves, but this time it’s for every enemy instead of
for just the last one in the group.
There are some stealth mechanics as well. You can stand on a platform
above an enemy and take him down with one key. Similarly, you can sneak
up behind enemies and take them down. This rarely works, however, as
somehow the enemies telepathically become aware of your presence around
them and make stealth take-down impossible, with you eventually having
to resort to good ol’ fashioned punching to take care of things.
Taking down enemies gives you credits, which can then be used to
purchase additional gadgets. One would wonder why someone like Batman
would need to earn credit to be able to afford anything, but then, if
you followed the events in the movie and the game, Batman is not exactly
flush with cash at the moment.
You also get to briefly control vehicles like the Batpod and the Bat, which is fun while it lasts.
Despite the obvious attempt to ape the other Batman games, one area
where The Dark Knight Rises does not match them is in the quality of
missions. They are mostly quite boring and just seem to be there to add
length to the game. I personally found myself stopping after the first
couple of chapters because the game couldn’t hold my interest any
longer.
Graphics and Sound
Visually, the best thing about The Dark Knight Rises is the enormous
city Gameloft has created for the game. Gotham in this game feels like a
real, believable place and you can just roam around and be amazed at
how detailed this place is for a mobile game. And there are no loading
times as you move around between the city.
Other than that, though, the game looks fairly average. Batman and
particularly his suit is very detailed but everywhere else, the details
and texture range from acceptable to ugly. Even characters other than
Batman use far few polygons than they deserve, making them resemble
something straight out of the PSOne. Overall the visuals are no match
for recent games such as Madfinger’s excellent Shadowgun and Dead
Trigger and EA’s Dead Space.
For the new iPad, Gameloft promises Retina graphics and the game
mostly delivers. But it’s still sad to see that while the 3D elements
are in high resolution, the 2D elements such as the buttons and loading
animation are at non-Retina resolution. It also makes the low quality
textures look especially bad when stretched out on the new iPad’s
display.
On the audio front, The Dark Knight Rises tries to emulate the voices
of the actors in the movie. Voices for Batman, Alfred, Lucius Fox And
Jim Gordon sound the closest to their movie counterparts. Voices for
Selina Kyle, Bane and John Blake sound nowhere close, though. One issue
with the dialogues is that the lips of the characters don’t move when
they talk, so they just stand there stupidly staring at each other while
voices seemingly come out from their face from somewhere.
One thing I would like to note here is the massive size of the
Android version of The Dark Knight Rises. Initially the game was an
insane 3.6GB in size but Gameloft has managed to whittle it down to
1.8GB, which is much better but still a bit too much. The iOS version,
in comparison, is just 819MB. Fortunately, Gameloft is now making use of
the increased APK size limit on the Play Store, which means now you
will download the entire game through the Play Store, instead just
downloading an installer first and then downloading the rest of the
files from within the app. The advantage of this is that the 15 minute
refund period starts only after the entire game finishes downloading
unlike before, where the 15 minute period would start with the installer
and would likely end before you finished downloading the additional
files from within the game.
Conclusion
The Dark Knight Rises is not a bad game per se. Those interested in
the Batman universe, particularly the latest movie or loved the two
Batman games that came out on the consoles and the PC and want something
similar on their mobile devices might find it interesting. Those who
have played other recent games on their phones, however, won’t be
impressed. The bar has been raised quite high even in mobile games these
days and unfortunately, The Dark Knight Rises does not manage to
impress in any particular area, being just an average game as a whole
and not something you’d remember or would suggest others to download and
play. At $6.99, the game is also well above the impulse purchase
territory and people would expect it to be really great to justify that
price, something it isn’t.
So although The Dark Knight Rises is a decent game overall, a price drop would make it something we would want to recommend.
Rating: 3/5 Pros: Lengthy campaign, Gotham city is vast and well detailed for a mobile game Cons: Most of the missions aren’t very exciting,
graphics are a mixed bag, large download size on Android, bit expensive
for what it offers Developer: Gameloft Content Rating: 9+ | Medium Maturity Size: 819MB | 1.8GB Price: $6.99 Download:iOS | Android
By now we’re all familiar with the PlayBook’s ability to run Android
apps, but a video has surfaced allegedly showing iOS running on the RIM
tablet.
Codenamed ‘Brine’, the emulator is shown running a plethora of iOS games, as well as the TomTom navigation system.
Skeptics abound as to whether or not the emulator is legitimate, but
there’s a fair amount of people in the BlackBerry community that support
its authenticity. Either way, a public build has not been released, and
we can only hope that one day it will be.
As improbable as it may sound, if RIM can figure out a way to make
iOS and Android emulation an officially supported feature on the
PlayBook, it may just be enough to get them out of the hole they’ve dug
themselves into.
Many people were unhappy with the Windows Phone 7 lack of native
screenshot capture support. It wasn’t the WP7’s deal breaker, but still
it was a feature the competition was offering for quite some time.
It seems Microsoft took the complaints seriously and Windows Phone 8 has native support for taking screenshots.
The Windows Phone 8 emulator confirmed we will be able to take
screenshots on the new Window Phones. It’s done by pressing the Start
and the Camera keys, just as rumored (F2 and F7 in the emulator).
The shots are saved in a dedicated Screenshots folder in the Picture Hub.
We, as reviewers, are really happy to see this feature implemented
into the WP8. We are sure developers would also appreciate it. But what
about you, the regular users?
This means that you’ll be able to tell your phone to do all sorts of
things requiring secure identification by simply talking to your phone.
