BlackBerry App World 3.0 Beta – searching for apps at its best!

Aug 072011
 

Team App World at RIM have been working extremely hard over the last couple of weeks trying to come up with some improvements to their App World. Having said this, BlackBerry Beta Zone users will be able to enjoy an insight into the App World 3.0 which at first sight does seem to have some awesome features.

blackberry app world 3 beta

As you may observe from the screenshot above, the home screen has been redesigned completely and has made app browsing not only far interesting but much efficient as well. The addition of the search bar at the top makes app browsing a lot easier, allowing the user to sort by App Name, Price, Rating, Newest, Best Match, and Popular.

I’m sure all BB users will agree with me when I say that the featured carousel has always been the first place to look for awesome new apps, – the staff at RIM have expanded this in BlackBerry App World 3.0, making it easier to find what’s new and what’s hot. The list of best BlackBerry apps, games and themes will be updated on a monthly basis according to various sources.

The developers have kindly tweaked the app detail look and feel to give us the top selection criteria at a glance. They have made it possible for us to quickly swipe between app summaries, screenshots, and reviews – all in one screen, what else could we ask for? To top it all off, if we find an app we really like and want to tell our friends or loved ones, we can instantly share the app either on our Twitter® timeline, Facebook® wall, email, SMS, or a BBM™ Contact or Group.

Nevertheless, this is just a sneak peak to what one can expect in 3.0 – not to worry, subscribe at MWD and receive news on the features as soon as we review them!

So head over to the BlackBerry Beta Zone and sign up today to enjoy the new app world. Searching and downloading apps has never been so fun on a BlackBerry!

The moment you have been waiting for is finally here – Skype has been launched for Apple iPad

Aug 032011
 

Best thing for Apple iPad users just happened. Skype has finally made its way to the Apple iPad. This announcement was made using twitter and also via a blog posting on the official company blog. Skype can now be downloaded from Apple’s app store.

Skype’s functioning on the iPad will be similar to Apple’s Face Time app. Skype will use iPad’s front camera for video calls. Though for the first generation of iPad, users can only receive calls and not make any but for one’s with the latest iPad you can do both.

Skype for the iPad sends and receives calls (including video calls) over either a Wi-Fi or 3G data connection which is a huge advantage over FaceTime which currently allows video chat via Wi-Fi only. Another major advantage of Skype over Face Time is that people from using other devices can now call people using the iPad whereas Face Time only allows calling between two iPad users.

Skype consists of two windows, a big one for looking at the person you’re chatting with and a smaller one for viewing yourself. Other standard features included are standard phone dialling and also an integrated text chat which can be used during a video chat and even otherwise.

The release has made yet another connection of Apple with Microsoft. Recently during a press conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer promised after the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft, Skype will continue to work on Non Windows applications. Also 3G is expected to launch in Apple soon. There are reports which claim that along with the iOS 5 which will ship this September (presumably along with the new iPhone) 3G calling will be enabled.

Rumours for the application launch were on for quite a while now. Skype also ‘accidentally’ released a video on YouTube which was turned into private soon after its release. Even the application was launched on the Apple site on Monday night but then later on removed, citing the release to be a premature release.

Android 3.2 a.k.a. Honeycomb SDK released by Google

Jul 182011
 

Google has finally released its Android 3.2 Honeycomb SDK. This is the same mobile operating system which is being used by Motorola Xoom and Huawei’s Media Pad. Now developers will enjoy support and optimization for more tablets, with the help of Honeycomb. As of now, only the SDK is launched but the tools for the SDK will be released later.

The release includes many subtle but useful changes. In the 3.2 version better customization as well as optimization of applications is available for various screen sizes and not just the 10.1 inch one. The new Android has a new ‘zoom to fill’ feature which will render the user interface of a fixed-size app on a smaller screen area, and then scale the pixels up to fill space available on current screen area.

With the help of this recent update, users will be able to load media files directly from an SD card (but off course the tablet should facilitate one), and load it straight to applications that use them. All the tablets running on Android will now support extended screen support API, which will provide the developers with even more precise control over the interface. This will also enable targeting of screens using their dimensions. With all these enhancements, the new API is rated ‘13’ which is one higher than the Android 3.1 version.

A month ago, Huawei launched its Media Pad and claimed it to be the first tablet with Android 3.2 Honeycomb and a dual core processor. Motorola also has started to deliver the Android 3.2 Honeycomb system in its tablet Xoom. Other candidates running on Android which are likely to follow are the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Acer’s Iconia Tab 500 and Toshiba’s Thrive.

Spotify finally arrives in the US

Jul 152011
 

The service touted to be the future YouTube, amidst all the rumours of it coming to the US, has finally arrived. Spotify, the Swedish based music streaming site has 10 million European users as of now, majority of them being paid customers. “Spotify AB” launched the service in October 2008 and since then it was available in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and as of today United States.

Today, in its beta form the service was launched in the US. Spotify is available both as a mobile application and a PC application. This means you can access your music, download your music and have your own playlist on all your devices, all the time. The beta version is just for giving you a taste of the full version and is presently ‘invite only’.

Spotify gives you an on-demand access to a boastful library exceeding 15 million songs. You can buy songs from the website and the songs that you already own can be imported by the touch of a click. You can create your own proper playlist. After the playlist is created, you can listen to all your songs sans any buffering.

The whole aim of Spotify is that music should be available for sharing and they have made every attempt to stay true. Spotify has a downloadable client for Mac and Windows users, the service allows you to search, browse and download from a deep collection of music. The music can be dragged and dropped to your Spotify friends, share with them via Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS. Top tracks and playlists of your friends and even in general can also be viewed.

Spotify has three categories available in the beta version, “The Land of the Free, the Unlimited and the Premium”. Free is as the word goes Free; Unlimited is available at US $4.99 per month and Premium for US $9.99 per month.

Applying Multiple Instagram Filters Is Easy – How To

Jul 072011
 

I just got involved with Instagram app recently and since day one I must say that I am addicted to it. Well first thing I wanted to know is how to apply multiple filters to pictures on Instagram, and since I learned how to, now its time for me to share it!

Applying Instagram Filters

First open up Instagram App and click on the Share Button.You have two options , either take a picture or chose one from the photo library.

Either way it you chose…follow these steps:

Apply first filter to the picture you chose… in this case I chose X-Pro II, click next!

instagram picture filter

Now that you are on the page like showing in picture below, you see that circle at the top? Wait until its gone, and then click back button!

instagram pictures applied multiple filters

Click on the button to chose pictures from the gallery, and chose same picture you applied filter too:

And then apply 2nd filter, as you can see I used poprocket as my 2nd filter, you can chose as many filters you want. just remember to go back and forth and wait until that circle is done processing.

 

Don’t see any pictures you saved? For this type of trick you have to go to Settings>>Instagram and enable “Save filtered photo”

Well done!

If you are curious what I share on Instagram lookup for username joehobot.

Google+ iOS Edition

Jul 072011
 

Ever since Facebook became a deca-billion dollar construct, spawning companies which are worth billions of dollars in their own right (Zynga), there have been many attempts to dethrone this almighty social networking juggernaut. As we all know by now, Google+ is the Californian based company’s social network foray into the basically monopolized market. I’m not going into specifics here, but it basically looks like… Facebook, except, it’s not Facebook.

That’s not the point though. Currently, Google has just posted a Google+ application to the app store. It’s pending approval currently, while no approval process was necessary for the Android marketplace, for obvious reasons. Other information confirmed by Google, is that the application is not only for iPhones, iPod and iPad users can rejoice that they haven’t been forgotten by the search engine superpower.

Google is also releasing an Application Programming Interface for Google+, which will allow developers to create applications for Google+. Allowing software to interact with the service, as well as people, this API will certainly provide a greater amount of flexibility for users to exploit.

A couple of screenshots exhibit the features of Google+, including the much touted ‘Circles’ feature, where you can direct messages, and view messages only from particular social groups. There is also integration with Gmail, and GoogleTalk- perhaps a nice selling point about the social network in general.

In other news, remember that old site Myspace? The decaying site was just sold by its parent company for $35 million, a pittance compared to what it was originally worth. Even online newshub, ‘Huffington Post’ was sold for much much more. It serves as a reminder that perhaps, even Facebook might lose its grip on the Social Networking market.

Check out Google+ here

 

Skype comes to Facebook – group chat, video chat and many more goodies to come!

Jul 072011
 

Finally, the moment some Facebook users were anxiously waiting for, the announcement of the “awesome” feature that the social network was going to make available to it’s over 750 million users.
If you haven’t yet noticed, log on to your Facebook account, click on one of your contact’s names’ on Facebook chat and you will notice that you are now able to start video calls straight from the comfort of your browser. If you want to know how this works, click here to visit Facebook’s video calling portal and click on the “Get started” button to find out more.

 Skype for Facebook

 

It all started as rumors

At first it was nothing more than rumors, the fact that Skype the world’s most notable VOIP client was going to become integrated with the world’s most notable social network. As with all rumors, the more they’re repeated they end up becoming true. We shouldn’t forget the fact that Google+ also made this possible (Thanks Google!), forcing Facebook to step up their game to be able to compete with Google’s social network, which is proving to be quite popular.

Furthermore, apart from the introduction of Skype-enabled video chat, Zuckerberg also unveiled “group chat”, which is a cool add-on that allows users to hold conversation with multiple users on one window instead of having to open many chats, goodbye long status/comments!

There have been some talks by both Facebook and Skype on introducing “paid products” but no further information has been leaked on this matter. We can safely say that this partnership between the two companies is not likely to fade away anytime soon.

Some of you may be wondering whether video chat is available on mobile devices. Unfortunately, it isn’t…at least for the moment. When asked during the press conference, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t spill out any details to when this might become available but personally I predict it could take a while since the technology behind this is pretty “tough” to figure out and manage. It will happen but we it’s difficult to say when.

What’s next Zuckerberg? That’s a question many web gurus and “geeks” have been trying to find or work out but there are endless possibilities, we never know what the geniuses behind Facebook could come up with. Nevertheless, we can say that they’re doing a hell of a job and 1 billion users isn’t that far away now, Mark!

In-depth review of Firefox 5.0

Jun 282011
 

So let’s start off with the basics…

What’s new in Firefox 5.0?

At first glance, the GUI seems a little brushed up but no significant differences from the previous version of Firefox.

Firefox 5 review
Mozilla have added a new button that when clicked on will “tells” websites not to track the user which isn’t really a big deal. Firefox 5 now supports CSS animations, which is good progress since it had to match up to Chrome, which already had this feature from a while back. Apart from these two features, there haven’t really been any other major changes. However, under the surface WebGL security has been tightened up, some tweaking has taken place to improve JavaScript performance and memory usage, consequently making life much easier for extension developers and. HTLM5 Standards support has been improved as well.

User Interface

Just like its predecessor, the Firefox 5 user interface doesn’t quite work on the Mac – in simple terms – it doesn’t really look nice compared to Chrome or Safari. Even applying themes won’t make a difference. On the other hand, on Windows-based PC’s it looks magnificent!

Nevertheless, whichever version you use, the user is provided with the ability to turn open tabs or “pin them” into App Tabs, which keeps key web-based services such as Gmail or Twitter visible without taking up too much space. The user can also organize app tabs into groups, which comes in very useful when carrying out research on multiple topics.
Mozilla had to mess this up by only allowing the user to save his/her Tab Groups by shutting down Firefox. Personally, I feel it would not only be more logical but provide a better browsing experience if one could save groups as with bookmarks.

As with its previous versions, Firefox has an address bar and a search box, although if you don’t type a URL the address bar takes you to a web search anyway – we’re already quite familiar with this though and it can’t really be improved.

The “Do not Track” button

I must admit that the guys at Mozilla have outdone themselves with this so kudos for them. By integrating this feature into their browser, Firefox is the first multi-platform to support this “Do not Track” system, which basically tells websites not to snoop on the user. When this feature is enabled, the browser sends messages in the form of an HTTP header to advertisers and other firms notifying them that they shouldn’t follow you when you are surfing on the Internet. The advantage of this is less behavioral targeting and a less likelihood of indirectly giving away your personal details. It is the perfect alternative to having to set “opt-out” cookies for every online snooper which as many of you are aware of would take a lot of time, something we lack of nowadays.

It’s so easy; it’s just a matter of ticking/unticking a box

 

 

Performance

SunSpider Javascript

The only way to determine how good a browser is, is to compare it against others and that’s what I did. I put 3 browsers to the test: Firefox 5, Chrome (latest version/build) and Safari 5 on a Sandy Bridge Apple iMac. When the results came up on the screen, the first thing that caught my attention was the fact that Firefox literally “zoomed” through the benchmarks in an incredible 200ms, faster than the 210ms for Chrome which was quite surprising. I had predicted Safari to end up in last place, and it did with 270ms. Conclusion: Apple still has a lot of work to do to match up to the other web browsers or even better, just forget about Safari and continue making iPhone’s, iPad’s and iMac’s.

The Acid3 Test

For those who don’t know what it is, it is basically a page from the Web Standards Project that checks the performance of a web browser regarding the issue of following certain selected elements from web standards, especially those associated to the Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript.

If the test is successful, the results of the Acid3 test will display a gradually increasing fraction counter with colored rectangles in the background. The number of subtests passed will indicate the percentage that will be displayed on the screen. I put Mozilla Firefox 5 through the test and the results are displayed below:
Firefox 5 Acid 3

Even though the score stopped at 94 (on an iMac) or 97 (on a Windows PC), it proved to be stable and fast unlike Chrome 11 which clearly seemed to be “bugged” at least on OS X and displayed 100/100 solely to validate the test – nice try Google but you aren’t fooling me!

Acid 3 testing firefox 5

Internet Explorer 9 didn’t seem pretty bad either scoring 95/100 and Safari 5.0.5 which proved me wrong as I expected it to perform the worst out of the 4 web browsers with a surprising 100/100 (on an iMac – maybe that’s why!).

Firefox 5 extensions

Despite the soaring number of users who have switched to Chrome in the last months, Firefox still remains the best browser for geeks, control freaks and virtually anybody who wants their browser to be more than “just a browser”, more like a whole new browsing experience where almost anything can be done with the never-ending list of extensions that it has to offer. You heard me right, “never-ending”, the list goes on with all kinds of add-ins and tools that allow the user to customize their browser, i.e. web development tools, scripts to change the way sites look and behave, tools for online services and plugins for every imaginable task. No browser will be able to match Firefox in this aspect anytime soon, guaranteed! So rest assured, staff at Mozilla!

firefox 5 extensions

Believe it or not, Firefox still is the most expandable browser around, with add-ons and plugins for anything you can think of.

The Conclusion: “to download or not to download, that is the question?”

After a thorough analysis, it’s time I come clean and be honest: most of the improvements in this new browser are for add-on creators and web developers and there’s nothing really that would get end-users excited so let me put it to you this way: if you didn’t like Firefox 4, you will certainly NOT like Firefox 5. Whether you like it or not, it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s one of the fastest browsers currently available and no other browser (maybe Chrome up to some extent) can be a match for it in terms of expandability and freedom of customization.

Team Fortress 2: Free

Jun 242011
 

 

Somewhere in the future, construction is overseen by two superpowers; the Reliable Excavation, Demolition incorporated, and the Builders League United. After United Nations legislation passed a bill where reconstruction contracts abandoned areas would only be awarded to the company that achieved its mandate, from capturing the opposing company’s flag, or taking ‘control points’ scattered around the map. In what began as a gentlemanly affair, with Engineers trying to go about their business, escalated into an all out war between Snipers, Scouts, Soldiers, Pyromaniacs, Demolitions Specialists, and ‘Heavies’.

Team Fortress 2 is one of Valve’s most renowned First Person Shooters, often praised for its humor, art style, and gameplay. In fact, it is likely even if Valve didn’t update Team Fortress 2, it would still be played by tens of thousands of gamers, all gunning for the next control point, domination, or revenge kill. But Valve is a clever company, suckering gamers into spending more and more time on Team Fortress, through innocuous additions such as hats that each character can equip, to new weapons, abilities, and other ‘items’ to turn the tide on the battlefield. On top of this, Valve introduced RPG elements into the game, allowing players to craft items, and even name them. Humorous weapons include ‘The Benedict Arnold’ for the Spies knife, to the ‘Malpractice’ Medic’s bone-saw.

From its original incarnation, these updates have swelled Team Fortress 2 into a 12 GB package, nearly more than double its original size when it was first released. But the game is still Team Fortress 2, in all of it’s rocket-jumping, minigun spooling, ubercharging glory. And with the release of Valve’s Uber update of Team Fortress 2, the long awaited ‘Meet the Medic’ trailer has been released by Valve. If you haven’t seen the other class videos released by Valve, I highly recommend watching them, they set the tone for Team Fortress 2.

But of course, the long awaited ‘Meet the Medic’ trailer seems almost insignificant to Valve’s announcement after its release. Yes, as you’ve guessed from the title, Team Fortress 2 is free, forever. Backed by a micro transaction system now, Valve’s Team Fortress 2 still lives on, half a decade from the Orange Box’s original release.

To download Team Fortress 2, make a Steam account, and… download the game. Considering 12 Gigabytes will take a while to get from the now overcrowded Steam servers, watch the Meet the Medic trailer while you wait.

 

 

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X: A Story of Mixed Reviews

Jun 232011
 

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X has arrived and it went live in Apple’s Mac App Store yesterday. This has officially replaced previous versions of Final Cut Pro: both the Studio suite and Apple’s pro-summer Express product. The software is available for $300 at the Apple’s Mac App Store and weighs 1.33GB.

Features worth mentioning are as follows:

Magnetic Timeline: This offers an exceptionally fluid and flexible way to edit. Whenever you drag a clip or item nearby a neighbouring counterpart, the software binds them.  This automatically keeps you from de-synchronizing parts of a project due to user error and is a big plus but when manoeuvring intricate sequences with carefully placed audio and video, this can act as a hassle.

Progress bar: The loop style progress bar placed in the middle of the screen provides you a breakdown of exactly what it’s doing to each clip including rendering, transcoding and analyzing clips. This is a background activity viewer and helps in keeping an eye on what’s going on behind the scenes.

Auto-analysis features: This is able to analyze your footage and determine if there are people in the shot, how many they are, and how close is the camera. The accuracy is a little dicey though, and it can miscount the number of people.

Auditioning: With this you can collect multiple alternative shots at a single location in the timeline and quickly cycle through them in context. You can also use this to create multiple versions of your project for different deliverables and venues.

Export feature: There’s an Apple device-specific export option to send it to an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. You can also preview what it looks like on each device. You can also jump to an individual scene to make sure it is scaled right.

Despite all the new features added, there are still a few glitches. Users are posting threads up on the Mac App Store, complaining about the software not opening up projects made with older versions of Final Cut Pro. Some are unimpressed by the fact that the software is not supporting numerous legacy Final Cut Pro features like multi-cam editing, and external production monitors. Also Apple seems to have removed stuff, moved stuff, and hidden other stuff from a well-established pro tool.

$1 Billion+ Acquisition of Popcap Games?

Jun 232011
 

 

Once, there was a backyard lawn that grew a multitude of plants including, sweet peas, corn, walnuts and sunflowers. However, after an arcane ritual went wrong, causing a devastating plague to sweep over humanity, causing zombification, your plants mutated somehow providing you with a cure against the undead disease as well as becoming your first line of defense against your brain hungry neighbors. In other words, Plants vs Zombies.

The company behind Plants vs Zombies, Popcap Games has been reported by TechCrunch as being under an acquisition process, with offers reportedly reaching over a billion dollars, unfortunately, the possible buyer has not been named yet. Possible suitors by TechCrunch comment that Zynga could have been a possible buyer, but with the Facebook game company’s comparatively low market capitalization, it would certainly be a colossal purchase for them. EA has been hinted at as a possible suitor too, and with its recent purchase of Playfish, EA does seem to be a contender in the acquisition of Popcap Games.

But, with comparatively small market capitalization versus the asking price of $1 billion, it also seems unlikely that EA will pick up the company. That leaves the ‘big 3′ so to say, Microsoft, Google and Apple. Microsoft seems like the most likely purchaser, after all, the massive company already does own an entire console, and the operating system that most games run on. Purchasing Popcap would allow the company to take another step in its plan of gaming domination.

Apple certainly does have the money to purchase Popcap, but it seems slightly unlikely that they would have reason to purchase Popcap Games. Some of the companies products have been released in the App Store anyway, such as Plants vs Zombies anyway. Purchasing Popcap to use as an exclusive application developer seems excessive, considering the huge numbers of willing developers to contribute to the App Store.

And then there’s Google, with their Android devices. Like the other two big companies, money really isn’t an issue here. However, they could use Popcap games to create a ‘killer app’ of sorts, to attract more users to Android phones in general, and embrace the market place. But with the market share of Android phones growing rapidly, it seems that Google won’t feel the need to purchase Popcap games to bolster their already accessible lineup.

Popcap games has refused to comment on these ‘rumors’ at this point in time. But expect a big announcement from the indie games developer soon.

Steelseries – Diablo 3 Headset

Jun 222011
 

 

Normally, licensed products don’t really work out. By licensed, I mean that a company is ordered by another company to make products based on their companies products. An example of such would be those crappy movie games that always accompany the latest kids movie/TV show such as Avatar, Transformers, and so on.

This disdain of licensed products usually causes me to sneer at the general range of licensed products, the ‘Tron’ and ‘Starcraft II’ accessories released by Razer are some that immediately come to mind. Quoted by many as being overpriced for what they can achieve, usually people give them a wide berth when purchasing professional gaming grade products. And that leads onto the second problem, they usually aren’t as good as the standard products the outsourced company makes. So, after being referred to a ‘sick looking Diablo 3 headset’ by a friend, I opened it like a good cynic, expecting to smirk and laugh at them the next day, pointing out the flaws in their product.

And then, that pent up supremacy never came. Based on the Steelseries Siberia V2, these Diablo 3 issue cans look awesome. The little features really do add to the aesthetic appeal of this headset, from the sinister looking obsidian edges, to the red grilles on the outside of the speakers. There are eighteen LED’s incorporated into the device, seven of which can be seen in the picture above. The stylized ‘III’ lights up, as well as the four curved lines that form an incomplete circle around the speaker.

As you can see, the suspension on the headphones is exactly the same as the Steelseries Siberia V2′s. As I’ve been meaning to buy Siberia V2′s for quite a while now, they were recommended to me by quite a few friends as they are extremely comfortable to wear for long periods of time. After trying on a friend’s V2, he wasn’t kidding, it really does feel weightless on your head. The headset also features a retractable microphone that is on the Siberia V2′s, hopefully the microphone quality will be better than it’s cousins one.

Compared with the Siberia V2, the biggest differences between the two headphones, apart from their aesthetics, are the cables that connect the devices to your computer or otherwise. These new headphones feature braided cables, ala Razer Carachias. The cable is significantly stronger compared to the Siberia V2′s, and a lot less likely to break under stress. The integrated controls in the cable feature your standard volume control, as well as the ability to change the pulsation and brightness of the LED’s on the headset.

The Siberia V2′s also have the older 3.5mm jacks that plug into your computer, to provide audio input/output. Using an adapter, it can be connected to an iDevice, such as your iPhone/iPad. Otherwise, when you use it for gaming, you can connect your headset to a provided USB soundcard, which will dramatically increase your devices performance. These new headphones connect directly through USB, so it isn’t possible to connect it with an iDevice… yet. Fingers crossed perhaps.

Otherwise, these headphones are released in October, during Blizzard’s annual… Blizzcon. They are expected to cost around $119, and the only thing lacking is a name at this point. ‘Mephisto’ has a nice ring to it, no?

Terraria on Mac

Jun 222011
 

 

Ever played Minecraft? If not, I really really really do recommend checking that out. But anyway, imagine Minecraft, an epic tale of constructing an invincible fortress against the hordes of zombies, skeletons, and those damn exploder things, and putting it into 2D. Yes, this includes mining… digging an obnoxiously deep hole, before harvesting gold, iron, and diamonds. Now, I want you to imagine Worms, the classic game of using weapons of mass destruction to brutally annihilate other worms, but instead, it moves in real-time, so a bit more like Liero. Lets say that these games were magically fused together. On top of this, add Multiplayer, a deep RPG system, and of course, NPCs that try to sell you obnoxiously overpriced items, while buying your items at obnoxiously low prices, and the game constantly evolves due to frequent updates.

Independent game studio ‘Re-Logic’ has made this awesome sounding daydream a reality with Terraria, an action packed struggle against the evil that plagues your land. Well, sort of. It’s more of a quest to build the biggest castle, and the greatest dictatorship that the world has ever seen, so powerful, that even the monsters that once walked the surface shiver and creep away from your mere presence. Afterwards, throw dynamite, and use star cannons to cleave rival dictators that intrude upon your kingdom. Terraria supports more than eight dictators in a single stretch of land, battling it out to claim that map as their own. Gone is the camaraderie of Minecraft, where users helped each other to make exquisite creations, in the world of Terraria, there is only war.

Currently, Terraria is on Steam, where you can purchase it for around $9.99 for the full game. Unfortunately, due to Terraria being coded in XNA, it is extremely unlikely that it’ll be on Apple computers any time soon. Supposedly, Crossover doesn’t work for the Mac, and more libraries are needed before it’ll even run. Being coded in XNA could possibly result in Terraria appearing on the Xbox Live Marketplace though…

Call of Duty: Black Ops Demo

Jun 222011
 

 

In the depths of the Cold War, caused by the bitter rivalry between the United States, and the Soviet Union, both sides, aware that they were unable to outright destroy the other, without being annihilated themselves, launched proxy wars to weaken the other side. These brutal conflicts include the 1980′s invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet Russia, the Vietnam War in the 1970′s, and of course, the Six Day War in the late 1960′s. Experimental research of questionable ethics, and practices of an even more dubious nature were rife, with programs such as the CIA’s ‘MKULTRA’ a project supposedly designed to discover mind control, only making the light of day many decades later.

In addition to this, spying and assassinations were rife, with some suspecting President Kennedy’s assassination being due to Soviet or Cuban links, while Fidel Castro, president of Cuba, was ordered to be assassinated by CIA operatives a countless number of times. These operations, if conducted publicly, would almost have lead to nuclear war, as well as the mutually assured destruction of both sides. So of course, these rival governments never did tell anyone where these assassins, spies, and other shadowy characters appeared and disappeared. Classified as ‘Black Operations’, the sensitive nature of these missions, is so extensive, that even some members of the CIA that were killed in action, have not had their nature of death, nor their names disclosed after their deaths.

Call of Duty Black Ops explores the brutality of the Cold War, taking a whirlwind tour through the siege of Khe Sanh in Vietnam, fighting off a brutal NVA advance, to the lavish palace of Fidel Castro. Assisted with devestating weapons such as a minigun, crossbows, as well as the modern weapons of the time, your campaign against Communism will be an arduous one, with attack dogs, helicopter gunships, and the odd tank standing in your way.

In addition to this, after finishing the Single Player, Black Ops features a balanced multiplayer, unlike certain other games in the Call of Duty series. This means, no nuclear weapons, no ridiculous perks allowing you to have infinite ammo, no fifty meter knife lunge perk, and certainly no shotguns that have perfect accuracy, and dual wielding.

Interested? Treyarch  have finally released a demo for Black Ops, set in a secret chemical weapons laboratory. Unfortunately, as it is a secret weapons laboratory, a horde of soldiers prowl the premises, and as a result, an American SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest military spy plane in the world, is sent to assist you in this endeavor. With 24 styled countdowns, BASE jumping, and a lot of sneaking around, some players have commented that this level, ‘WMD’ is the best of the single player campaign.

Currently, the demo is only available on the PS3, and the Xbox 360. Check the PSN store, or Xbox Live marketplace to find the demo. For PC users, unfortunately, there have been no details released yet about a PC demo.

 

Firefox 5 – Final release scheduled for 21st June 2011

Jun 202011
 

Firefox 5Gone are the times when we had to wait 2 years or more for a new version of Firefox. While you are still getting acquainted to Firefox 4, Firefox5 is up for its final release. This change in trend is to compete with its rival Chrome which recently released version 12 and that too in no time. With the present strategy, Mozilla is expected to launch Firefox 5 by the end of 2011. The beta version of Firefox 5 is already available at its ftp server and the final release is scheduled for 21st June 2011.

What can you expect from Firefox 5?

Various additions have been made to bring forward a more attractive and useful interface. These include CSS animations, improved canvas, Java script memory and networking performance improvement. Firefox is built on top of the new Gecko platform which makes it much safer and easy to use.

On the GUI front, the home bar has been removed and is replaced by an icon. In addition to that an “awesomeness bar” is added which is a smart location bar that learns as the user uses it. Firefox has also picked a useful feature from browsers like IE9 that will give users the ability to pin site-specific browsers to the taskbar.

The latest Firefox 5 will have a built-in PDF viewer and will be able to play files like MP3s and other popular formats, which are welcome add-ons. Firefox 5 will also include an identity manager that will track login information for websites and even allow you to login to one site with two different accounts at the same time.

In the already available beta version which is a feature freeze release, you will have to part ways with some of your old add-ons. The compatibility issues with the add-ons of Firefox 3.6 which existed in Firefox 4 still persist in Firefox 5.

Though Firefox has made a decent leap but still it has some way to go for attracting a response similar to the pre-chrome era.

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