If you leave your phone in your pocket for hours without checking it, then you have better self-control than me. Or maybe you’re just watching a movie. The point is, you probably have lots of notifications waiting for you. These notifications are bundled up, jammed together, and generally quite messy. That’s why Echo wants to help. Echo is a new Android lockscreen app that offers a clean, minimalistic design. That design is meant to organize your life and help you avoid…
Microsoft has opened up its Office apps to iOS and Android users in an effort to win people back. Now, it may be doing the same with Cortana, its Windows Phone virtual assistant app. Cortana is based on the character of the same name from Halo. It’s available in the developer preview for Windows Phone 8.1 but hasn’t yet been released to the general public. Microsoft reportedly wants to blend the information gathering functionalities of Google Now with the personal interactions of…
Today’s RPG games tend to be open-world with beautiful graphics, sprawling storylines, and professional voice acting. But a few decades ago, RPGs had none of those things. Nevertheless, RPGs still managed to attract thousands of fans. Text-based RPGs arrived on PCs in the 1980s and remained popular even as graphic-based games rose to prominence. A new Android RPG called A Silent Wood wants to hearken back to a time when we didn’t have fancy graphics or multimillion dollar game…
April Fool’s Day 2014 introduced one of my favorite Google “pranks” ever. Google added a new layer to Google Maps called “Pokemon”. That layer added 150 Pokemon around the world. You clicked on a Pokemon to capture it with a Pokeball. Pokemon were hidden in downtown San Francisco, the tops of the Himalayas, and all across the world. I spent a lot of time on my Google Maps app that day trying to catch them all but never succeeded. It was a lot of fun to play and some people…
The iPhone 6 is coming in September. Apple hasn’t announced it or acknowledged its presence in any way, shape, or form, but it’s definitely coming. Now, the man who became famous for leaking the iPhone 5s before its announcement has apparently leaked the iPhone 6. That man is Sonny Dickson, who recently tweeted pictures of two iPhone 6 models. One iPhone 6 model is 4.7 inches while the other is 5.5 inches. Side by side, it’s difficult to gauge the size of the smartphones.…
The next time you post a status update, you should probably keep your mouth shut. Facebook recently updated its mobile apps to include a frighteningly invasive feature. Facebook apps for iOS and Android will now activate your microphone whenever you post a status update. But don’t worry! Facebook is doing this for the greater good. It doesn’t save your audio recordings. Instead, it simply listens to them and uses audio matching technology to figure out what you’re listening to or…
As you probably already know, Microsoft makes a lot of money from Android. Specifically, Microsoft owns many patents used by Android devices. A few years ago, Google and Microsoft came to a patent licensing agreement: Microsoft agreed not to sue Android for patent infringement and Google agreed to pay Microsoft a lot of money for each Android handset sold. How much money? $3.4 billion per year. Without those licensing fees, Microsoft’s mobile and Xbox divisions would be in the red –…
You’ve probably never heard of a guy named George Hotz. If you have heard of him, then you know he’s one of the legends of the exploit world. In 2007, Hotz – age 17 at the time – was the first person in the world to jailbreak an iPhone. A few years later, He rose to fame after hacking into Sony’s PlayStation 3 and then reverse engineering the device. George Hotz was sued by Sony back in 2011 in a major case (SCEA v. Hotz). Sony claimed Hotz violated copyright laws and the…
Firefox is a web browser first and foremost. However, Firefox also recently released an operating system called Firefox OS. Firefox OS is based on a platform called Gecko – which is the same platform used by Firefox browsers on desktop and mobile devices. Firefox OS is a broad attempt to unify apps and browsing – two things that Mozilla feels will be connected in the future. Although there are only six apps for Firefox OS, Mozilla has now made them available for Android…
Full HD, we hardly knew ye. Today’s flagship smartphones are moving from full HD to QHD – also known as quad HD. Most people in the smartphone world thought that QHD wouldn’t really become popular until 2015, but several major smartphones have bucked the trend and implemented QHD screens in 2014. Those phones so far include the LG G3 and the upcoming Note 4. What is QHD and why do you need it? Why is it possibly a bad thing? Today, we’re explaining why the QHD revolution has…
