holidays
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Google Maps will help you avoid Black Friday hordes
For over a year now, Google Maps and Search have been telling people when stores, bars and restaurants are likely to be busy. Now, it's going one step further. From today, searching for a business via Google will not only show you when it's typically crowded, but also an estimation of how busy it is right now. So if you see that a particular store is very full you can plan to head somewhere else. It's hoped that the feature will help users avoid the worst of the crowds over Thanksgiving long weekend, and beyond. There are a couple of other additions rolling out today. Place listings in Search and Maps will now tell you how long the typical stay is at a location, so if you people usually spend two hours at a restaurant, you can plan the rest of your day accordingly. Finally, Maps will now list more complex opening hours. "You'll know what time to pop by the pharmacy at your local drugstore or supermarket, when food delivery begins at a nearby restaurant and what the service hours are at the auto dealership," said Google.
Plan your entire vacation with a single Google search
Google Search's latest feature makes it possible to arrange your entire holiday (flights, accommodation, itinerary) from a single search. It's the company's first foray into travel on mobile, mimicking the move that most of us are making with our browsing habits -- off PCs and onto our phones. You can start with a seriously broad outset (Google's video demo suggests Europe), and then you can dig down into cities and places, pricing on hotel rooms and flights are simplified for broad dates which you can specify further if needed. That name's a little familiar though...
Sound Off! What are some games and gadgets that are fun for the whole family?
The holidays are here and many of us are traveling to visit families located far and wide. While it's always good to see our relatives, it's not as enjoyable to talk politics with Grandpa all day. We really need some entertaining ways to keep everyone sane. Fortunately there's a variety of games available on our tablets, phones, computers, and digital media streamers that are perfect for groups. What are your favorite standbys? Head over to the Engadget forums and share the games and gadgets you play with your family in order to keep things relaxing and fun. [Image credit: Amit Gupta / Flickr]
Wowcraft presents "Rudolph the DC'd Tauren"
If you're sick of hearing Christmas carols playing by now, you might want to skip over episode 17 of Carbot Animations' Wowcraft series, which brings the joy of caroling to WoW. Like the rest of the series, this video picks out the in-game hassles we all face and portrays them in Carbot's signature animation style and, this time, a song. "Rudolph the DC'd Tauren" is a play off "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and the end result is about as silly as you'd expect. Still, if you're looking for some Warcraft-themed holiday cheer and you've already exhausted your Winter Veil options, this particular brand of adorable is as good as it gets.
Shroud of the Avatar drops Release 13 for the holidays
The team behind Shroud of the Avatar has headed home for the holidays until December 28th, but a little present has been left behind for fans just the same. The latest update for the game is live on the servers, and it allows you to pick up a seasonal Yule Hat just for stopping in and checking out the new content. Also there is a whole lot of new stuff to play through, so a hat is probably not your primary incentive here, but the point is that the hat exists just the same. To be fair, stopping in and checking out the content requires going through the game's Grand Tour quest, which will lead players through all of the new bits added in this update. That includes new crafting, new creatures, new skills, and new areas. Check out the full update for patch notes, details on how to clear out the Grand Tour, and upcoming community events.
Don't like what Santa gave you? Destroy it
'Tis the season to, you know, get a lot of gifts you don't necessarily want. We at Engadget know how it goes, and we also know how badly you'd like to burn, break and bash those bunk presents. So we did the dirty work for you -- literally. If you like watching gadgets get mercilessly destroyed while being serenaded by an angelic choir, then consider this our very special holiday gift to you. (Special thanks to our friends at TechShop San Francisco!)
SwiftKey gets into the holiday spirit with a free new theme
By now you should have completely abandoned the iOS default keyboard in favor of one of the many fantastic third-party options available -- if you haven't, what is wrong with you? -- and if SwiftKey is your weapon of choice you'll find that an app update today has added a good bit of holiday cheer. Getting into the spirit of the season, a new Christmas-y style keyboard has been added for free, complete with a dusting of snow and candy cane key accents. SwiftKey snatched headlines back in September when it scored over one million downloads in less than a day following the iOS update that added third party keyboard compatibility. But despite early popularity, the app holds just a 2.5/5 rating on the App Store thanks largely to reviews that demand additional languages beyond the 24 it already supports.
Store It is a wishlist app that falls short of its potential
Store It, free in the App Store, has the potential to be more powerful than other wishlist and gift apps on the market. It has a great concept, but isn't so great in execution. You add items to your list by searching websites with the in-app browser, scanning a barcode or uploading a photo. This is in stark contrast with Instalist, an app I reviewed a few weeks ago, which only gives you a non-searchable selection of items from Amazon. With the free version, you can create two lists with up to eight items each. For US$0.99, you can build 50 lists with a maximum of 150 items per list. Search for items on the web via Google or go directly to your preferred sites by adding them to the "favorite retailers" section. You select your item by clicking on the "add new item" button at the bottom of the screen. Store It only pulls the image from the website. You have to add the name and price of the item. It would be nice if this information was automatic, the way that it is with Amazon's wishlist button. If the image doesn't show up for some reason, the app lets you take a screenshot of the product that you want. You can include notes with each item on your list for things like the size and color of the item or whether it's a must-have gift. You can also create lists for other people. I used Store It to keep track of the gift ideas I had for people on my holiday shopping list. Store-It connects with Pricegrabber to give you price comparisons. This is a cool idea, but you don't always get targeted results. For instance, I received price comparisons on iPad Mini cases alongside actual iPad Minis. There are a few quirks to the app. There are default websites included in the "favorite retailers" section, like Apple, Amazon and Pricegrabber. Even though I'm in the US, they are all UK sites. Likewise, the price on each item in your wishlist is in euros. Oddly, you can set the currency for the comparisons on Pricegrabber, but that has zero impact everything else. Store-It also has one big limitation: You cannot email a full list to anyone, however you can share individual items via social media. The point of a wishlist is to keep everything that you want in one place to make it easy for the people who are shopping for you. Why create a wishlist app that doesn't let you share your entire list? This feature is supposedly forthcoming, but I question why the developer released this app with such a critical piece missing. The option to build your lists online or offline make Store It a strong app conceptually, but until the developer adds more sharing features and cleans up some of the quirks, it's not going to live up to its potential.
Bringing holiday cheer, Blizzard-style
We know that Blizzard celebrates the holiday season in-game with plenty of decorations and tacky sweaters, and as it turns out their real-world celebrations aren't that different. For this holiday season, the famed orc statue in front of Blizzard HQ has gotten its own special holiday makeover -- and, yes, it now sports its very own tacky sweater. On the plus side, the orc and his wolf mount both look like they're better suited to brave the cold months of (California) winter... and they've managed to be festive while still supporting their faction with horde-logo holiday gear. Of course, this begs the question: what can we do to get our own tasteful winter gear? (And does it involve learning to crochet?)
Tell everyone what you want for Christmas with Instalist
Without wishlists, your holidays will be full of gifts that you don't like but are forced to say that you love so that you don't offend your loved ones. Instalist, free in the App Store, attempts to avoid holiday gift-giving debacles. You pick the items you want and then send the list to your friends and family via SMS, email, Twitter or Facebook. The app is fun to use, but not very practical. It's based on Tinder's concept of swiping right to like and left to dislike. This makes it easy to use, but creates several drawbacks. There were a few times where I had gotten into the habit of swiping left and accidentally disliked an item that I wanted to put on my list. While you can remove items from your list, you cannot undo a dislike. Another negative is that you cannot search for subcategories. Everything is a random mashup of items. If you know you want a pair of jeans, you may have to swipe through dozens of items before even one pair shows up, and it probably won't be a pair that you like. This makes the app a bit of a waste of time. Then again, if you're bored and feel like doing something mindless, Instalist isn't a bad way to kill some time and possibly find some interesting gift ideas. All of Instalist's items come from Amazon. There are the standard categories of toys, clothes and gadgets, but it also has a large selection of books, both Kindle and paper. Books often get left off of lists like these. As an avid reader, I was glad to see so many of them pop up in my recommendations. There were some movie selections, but they did not show up often. Unfortunately, no home décor items popped up, neither did any shoes. I'd like to see the developer add those. There were a few kitchen items, like coffee makers and other small appliances, but not much else. There are some customization options. You can view gender specific gifts, or view gifts for both men and women. You can also omit all toys from your search, shop only for toys or include them along with the rest of your items. I first tried out the app with both genders and all toys selected. Then I switched to only women and toys. I wanted to see if Instalist would still give me the same tech and toy recommendations as it would if I included men. It did. If you're like me, you know how frustrating it is to click on "gifts for women" and discover that there is zero tech, comic book or gaming related merchandise. Major kudos goes to the developer for giving me tons of tech items and accessories, plus plenty of dresses and the like. Special thanks for giving young girls a range of toy options from Barbie to LEGOs and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Of course, some of the LEGOs went on my list, too.) I am so happy to see an app avoid gender gift-giving stereotypes. Instalist is worth downloading for that reason alone. But, if you're looking to create a comprehensive wishlist to send to your friends and family, you would be better off creating a regular Amazon wishlist.
Monitor Santa's pre-flight prep with a little help from Google
If you're looking to keep an eye on ol' St. Nick ahead of his annual journey, Google can lend a hand. This year's version of Mountain View's Santa Tracker is live and ready to help keep tabs on all the prep work. Up until the red-clad fellow departs later this month, games and scenes will be added to his village regularly -- including location-specific bits so you can read up on traditions in other places. Of course, on December 24th, you'll be able to follow Mr. Kringle's globetrotting in real time. If you happen to be away from a computer, monitor the latest happenings via Android app, mobile site or on your Chromecast-equipped TV.
Amazon shows off the robots handling your holiday orders
Amazon gets a lot of orders during the holidays -- enough that shipping companies sometimes buckle under the load. How's it supposed to cope this year? With robots, apparently. The online shopping giant has revealed that its newest wave of US fulfillment centers make heavy use of automatons to ship your order on time. Kiva robots (the little machines you see above) are around to shuttle smaller goods around the warehouse, while Robo-Stow arms move the larger volumes. There are also shiny new vision-based systems that help workers unload a trailer's worth of stock in 30 minutes, rather than hours. While humans will still play an important role (Amazon will need 80,000 of them this season), they'll hopefully have an easier time dealing with the crushing demand.
The worst iPhone stocking stuffer
Plenty of cheap, strange smartphone accessories pop up around this time of the year in the hopes that you'll pick them up as a last-second gift, but this little doohickey Walgreens dreamed up is something special. It's a pill case that, for whatever reason, plugs into your smartphone's audio jack. Amazing. To be clear: The case itself doesn't actually require power or need to be stuck into your iPhone for any reason, it just happens to have a plastic shaft that fits into an audio jack. For convenience.
The Think Tank: Giving thanks for MMOs
Indulge us a little today, won't you? In our Think Tank today, we the Massively writers gather 'round the virtual feasting table on our virtual golden yacht to express thanks for those MMO-related things we're grateful for. Won't you share yours down in the comments also? We can get back to arguing over raidmills and gankboxes tomorrow -- I promise.
My favorite "on the road" picks
It's another holiday, and for many of us that means driving, gas and food stops, and kids who need to be entertained. I've been thinking about the most useful travel-related apps and hardware I use, so before you head out onto the road, check out my list of favorites and see if any of them can help you during your holiday road trips: Navigation Apple and Google Maps are fine in their place, but if that Thanksgiving dinner is out of cellular range those apps will fall flat. If you want built-in maps with turn-by-turn directions, I've always liked Navigon's iOS apps. The maps are embedded in the apps, so there's no need for a data connection and you won't waste those valuable megabytes of data. There is a large points of interest (POI) database that's well augmented by online info. I also like Navigon's free Scout app, which uses cellular data for the maps. There's a self-contained version of Scout with downloadable maps that is quite good, with a rich database of places to stop for rest or nourishment. That version of Scout requires an in-app purchase, which can be done monthly if you only need it for a specific trip. POI apps If you are happy with your map options, or perhaps have a built-in navigation system in your car, you'll be well served by some of the Points of Interest apps that focus on things that are near you like restaurants, hotels, gas stations and even emergency services. I especially like iExit, which shows you what is located near upcoming highway exits, and Around Me which has similar info. Both apps send locations to your nav app or Apple Maps, and you are on your way. Around Me even supplies gas prices so you can find the best deal for filling your tank. Location Sharing Grandma and Grandpa want to know when you will arrive after your trip "over the river and through the wood". Apple has location sharing built into iOS 8; send a text message and click on 'details' and your location will be updated for anxious relatives. I really like Glympse (free) which is the premier app for letting people know where you are and your ETA. If you send a Glympse, the person you've sent it to can be on any phone with a browser, or even a PC or Mac. Glympse sends a real time moving map, so the relatives can even get an idea of exactly when you're pulling into the driveway. Radar Detectors If you're going to drive for the holidays, you don't want to get a ticket. iRadar from Cobra is a hardware/software combo that lets an app control a full-featured radar detector. The system alerts you if you are speeding, lets you know where the speed traps and cameras are, and lets you report police activity to other users. Other Car Hardware You don't want that iPhone slipping between the seats where you have to scramble for it and create an unsafe situation. There are a variety of hardware options for keeping your iPhone in sight and not flying around in the car. Popular choices are the iOttie One Touch Car Mount ($19.99) and Mpow Grip Pro at $13.99. Odds and Ends Games are great for quieting the kids, and of course that iPad can play recent or favorite movies to keep the kids occupied. I'm sure the kids will have plenty of favorites already loaded onto the iPad, right? That's my little travel bag of tricks. Have a good holiday, and drive safely! Look at the road and not your gadgets.
Global Chat: Gamers Secret Santa
One of the yearly traditions in the blogosphere that I always look forward to is Stargrace's Annual Gamers Secret Santa. Currently in its sixth year, Gamers Secret Santa accepts any and all who want to sign up to be a part of a gift exchange. You'll end up sending a gift ($20 maximum) to someone and will receive a gift from another person during the month of December. There's even a digital exchange for more remote locations. It's always a blast to see what gifts I end up getting (and they are always geeky), and I wanted to encourage others to be a part of this. You'll need to sign up by December 1st if you do, however! It's grown every year, but this year I'm giving a bit of Massively publicity, so let's see if we can make this the biggest year ever! Another blogger-driven Christmas initiative is Syl's Blogosphere Xmas Countdown, during which she's assigning various blogs a day to write about the theme of positive gaming and community. Keep an eye on MMO Gypsy to see this advent countdown progress!
This is what happens when a drone interrupts your Christmas date
You're on a date at TGI Friday's, casually sipping your discount cocktail, trying to ignore the disappointed look on your partner's face as they attempt to cut into their overcooked steak. As if this situation wasn't awkward enough, the smooth sounds of the Billboard 100 playlist are interrupted by a high-pitched whining. A lone quadrocopter hovers above, dangling a collection of stale mistletoe leaves. Looking to make the best of a bad situation, you lean in for a kiss. Before you know it, it's profiteroles for one.
Check out the first holiday widget for iOS
I guess it had to happen -- a widget with a holiday theme, and one that gives you some useful information. I'm talking about SNOWidget, from developer Johnny Ixe who gave us the handy and useful DataMan app. Download the free SNOWidget app, and then load it from your pull-down Today notifications. You'll see a nice animated snowfall, and a quick reminder of how many days are remaining until Christmas. The app allows you to set the size of the widget, the font, and it can measure days or hours until Christmas. What more could you want? SNOWidget requires iOS 8 or later. It's optimized for both the iPhone 5 and 6 series. It's whimsical. It's free. Go get it.
Talking Holidays Wheel is decent kids app, but limited
Talking Holidays Wheel: Christmas Halloween Summer is an interesting combination of a children's game and an educational app with a title that can't possibly get anymore self-explanatory. The app includes three wheels for Christmas, Halloween and the season of summer, each with their own symbols for that occasion. When a child lands on a symbol on the wheel, the app announces it out loud in an attempt to teach the child the connection between the word and image. It's a free, universal app available on iOS. I downloaded both the iPhone version and iPad version and immediately gravitated toward the latter. The larger iPad was far more immersive and most likely more enticing to children. It's also easier to play with because the targets like the button to spin the wheel is larger. The app starts up by greeting you with all three holiday wheels where you pick one to start spinning. Each wheel has eight colorful symbols. Christmas features a gift, wreath and Santa Claus among other things. Halloween has a pumpkin and ghost while summer has items like sunglasses and a beach ball. When you decide on a wheel, it enlarges with a shiny red button next to it begging for the child to push it. This sends the wheel spinning until the arrow lands on one of the symbols. When it does, the wheel fades out and the winning symbol bounces in. The app pronounces it in conjunction with displaying a banner naming it at the bottom. Then confetti flies and options to share it via mail, Facebook and Twitter prominently appear. This doesn't seem like the best UI decision, given that if children are playing unsupervised they could easily send unwanted emails or post unwanted images. However, I couldn't get Facebook or Twitter sharing to work at all so I suppose here that's a positive. That's really all there is to the Talking Holidays Wheel app. The educational factor is decent because pairing a visual component with an audible component could help children better identify objects related to these holidays. However, compared to apps that teach the toddler essentials like ABCs, this one doesn't quite feel like something a child (or parent) needs. Most children do just fine learning about holidays on their own because they're inherently fun and exciting already. Speaking of fun, that too is just decent here. While I see young kids enjoying spinning the wheels and getting a small yet delightful treat each time, since there are only eight symbols per wheel, the entertainment factor is bound to run out pretty quickly. Despite some drawbacks, you can't go wrong with free - and that just so happens to be Talking Holidays Wheel's price. An in-app purchase of US$1.99 will remove the ads, but they aren't too obtrusive and the free version is likely more than adequate. If you want to keep your child entertained for a little bit while simultaneously providing some education, give Talking Holidays Wheel a try. Just bear in mind its inability to impress for long hinders its value.
Celebrate the 4th with slow motion fireworks captured by an iPhone 5s
On July 4th the United States celebrates Independence Day, and there isn't much news to report. Hot dogs are cooking, families are gathering, and people are watching Netflix. It's a party! So, in keeping with the spirit of the holiday, we present you with this happy video of fireworks, shot in slow motion, with an iPhone 5s. The fireworks were shot over Lake Michigan on September 26th, 2013 by YouTube user john m foley. For those readers seeking a more traditional fireworks display we present with you this footage from the July 4th 2010 Macy's fireworks in NYC. It was shot on an iPhone 4 by YouTube user Manny M., and still looks incredible.
