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ROTO: Simply Addictive
Guiding a ball to a finish flag by timing jumps from one rotating circle to another is the core gameplay feature of ROTO. While navigating a maze of rotatory platforms filled with hazards, such as spiky saw blades, players have to collect stars which will unlock levels. ROTO is compatible with iOS devices running iOS 6.0. ROTO features simple mechanics set in a very minimalistic environment. Players tap to jump from platform to platform in an attempt to collect all of the stars in each level. The circular platforms have different speeds and this requires players to adjust their timing. Because of this, the difficulty level increases fairly rapidly, adding challenge to every level. In addition to different platform speeds, the platforms themselves have other attributes. This encourages players to plan out there moves more carefully. There are grey ghost balls that slowly disappear when players land on them, which players have to keep in mind or they will plummet to the ground. Orange balls that cause the player's ball to bounce off of are available after an in-app purchase. There is a demo level in the game for players to check out this challenge. Another challenge that is unlocked are portals, which test players' ability to choose the correct pathway of portals to get all of the stars in the level. The sound effects in the game add interest to the gameplay and make it easy to tell what type of ball a player is currently on its attributes are. For instance, when players land on a ghost ball, there is a sound effect that gives an urgent feeling referencing the impending disappearance of the platform. A downside to ROTO is that the pause button is too small, which leads to difficulty tapping the button. However, the fun addictive nature of the gameplay overshadows this minor setback. Players will be too interested in trying to collect all of the stars, and won't want to pause. ROTO is free on the App Store and recommended for players who enjoy puzzle-platformers with easy to use controls and addictive challenges.
Play 2048 in your iPhone Today view with new iOS app
Some things exist solely because they can. The new 2048 game (US$0.99) for your iOS Today view isn't a particularly impressive implementation of the game or a great step forward in technology, but darned if we weren't excited to see someone do something novel and fun with widgets. Apple introduced application extensions in iOS 8. These are bundles of code you can add to run in the Today center, as activities in other apps, or as photo editing tools. Developer Minghui Li decided to implement 2048 as a widget. Is this a particularly good implementation? Well, no. Playing directly in the app is far more fun -- and yes, you must install the standalone app to get access to the widget, and then use the Extensions editor in the Today view to install it. Having to use the arrow buttons you see in the widget screenshot are a pain. In the app, you can use standard drag gestures for much better interaction. But hell, if we wanted a good 2048 game, there are lots of other choices on the market. "2048 in Widget!" (exclamation point in original title) really is one of those things you install on your iPhone so you can show it off to other Apple fans and earn the disdain of Android users. We're still having fun with it, but it's probably leaving our TUAW phone in a week or two.
Slacker Radio hits select Toyota and Lexus models with voice control
Toyota's Entune and Lexus' Enform infotainment systems already have access to several music streaming services like Pandora and iheartradio. But if Slacker remains your internet radio of choice and you drive a 2011 to 2015 model from either automaker, look out for software updates, because the app is coming to select vehicles from within that timeframe. Even better: since both these systems have voice recognition tech, this new app will have voice-enabled song and station search, as well. Plus, it will let you create personal stations, browse other people's, and play music that matches your mood.
BSkyB is dead, long live Sky
Following the merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990, BSkyB grew to become the biggest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK. Domestic success was fine, but in July, the company decided it was time to cast its net wider, so it agreed a deal with 21st Century Fox to snap up Sky Italia and buy a 57-percent majority share of Sky Deutschland. That transaction has now been approved, creating what Sky says is now "Europe's leading entertainment company." While much will stay the same, some things inevitably must change. You see, now Sky has divisions in Italy and Germany (and 20 million total customers), the British Sky Broadcasting Group name befit a company embarking on an expansion across Europe. As a result, it's changing its name to Sky and listing itself on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol SKY. Shareholders will need to approve the name change first, but we're sure that's just a formality.
Updated: Nest pulls iOS app update after many crash reports
Tuesday we told you that a Nest update was on the way, but today ... not so fast. The company has yanked the app that controls Nest Thermostats and Smoke Detectors after several reports of crashes, mainly on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices. Nest acknowledged the issue on its Twitter feed. saying "We're currently investigating an issue causing the Nest iOS app version 4.4.0 to quit unexpectedly. We'll provide a status update shortly." Google purchased Nest for US$3.2 billion in February to enhance its smart home offerings. There is no timetable for an update. If you downloaded the app before it was pulled, don't install it until the fix becomes available. If you already have it, and it's working on your i-Device, don't sweat it at this point as your hardware may not be among those that had problems with the app. Note: Nest has issued an updated version of the app.
The science of language, community, and MMORPGs
Back in August, Massively wrote a little post about Swedish research on MMOs and language learning. That article provoked me, a gamer and teacher of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), to hunt down the original research and talk directly to the researchers, Dr. Liss Kerstin Sylvén from the University of Gothenburg and Dr. Pia Sundqvist from Karlstad University, to better understand their research and findings. Note that we'll be talking here about games and language learning specifically, not other forms of game-related education. Also, Sylvén and Sundqvist don't consider themselves "gamers." Sundqvist remembers Pac-Man as her first game, both admit to playing Angry Birds on their cell phones, and Sundqvist is "allowed" to sometimes watch her 17-year-old son play League of Legends. I find this interesting because they are non-gamers who seriously consider games capable of being educational without specifically being developed to do so. This isn't a simple merger of a hobby with work; this is work in a field of interest that's still being explored.
iOS 8 app switcher good. Recent contacts bad.
While many people may love the "recent contacts" feature in the iOS 8 app switching jump screen, I personally don't. Showing a bunch of names and faces each time I want to move from app-to-app isn't my cup of tea as I find it visually distracting. Fortunately, there is a way to disable this new feature if you're so inclined. Hop into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and scroll down to the Contacts section. Toggle the Show In App Switcher setting to off, as in the screen shot at the top of this post. Doing so removes the "quick access" icons from the top of your app switcher window. Once disabled, those icons will no longer appear, simplifying your switcher to a more iOS-7-like appearance.
Hands on with Voice Dream's ebook narration
As the school year heads back into session, many students have a lot of new reading on their plate. Parents whose children struggle with assigned books might be considering ways to augment that material. Over the summer, Amazon regularly offered to add Audible narrations to assigned reading titles for my kids. For example, I purchased E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime for US$9.99 (pre-tax) and picked up its companion audio track for just $4.99. The normal price is $9.95 on iTunes. The audio cassettes, incidentally, sell from $138.45, not including shipping. I needed to lend her my iPad 2 to access the Kindle app/voice integration (it is not available for releases that run on the original iPad), but on the whole it was a successful experiment. With that experience in mind, I decided to investigate more automated solutions. Voice Dream Reader ($9.99, additional voices available with in-app purchases) represents one of the better-reviewed text-to-speech apps currently available in the App Store. I obtained a promo copy and tested out excerpts from several books. At the suggestion of the developer, I tried both the default built-in voice and a purchased upgrade, the $4.99 Salli voice from Ivona. The upgraded voice was clearly superior to the default, with better intonation and inflection. And yet, despite that, each of the testers had difficulty listening to long-form reading material. No matter how excellent the synthesis, a lack of human performance really impacted the comprehension and enjoyment of text. I suspect this is a learning process, and one that our short testing framework could not accommodate, as visually impaired readers do quite well with synthesized material. However, for augmenting reading for learning, my real-world trials had me more focused on the synthesis of the speech than its content. My testers agreed. For them, the mechanical dictation became a distraction rather than a supplement. I found the app very well made. It easily imported the non-DRM ebooks I downloaded from Safari and added through Dropbox integration. Support for each book's table of contents made it simple to navigate to the portion I wanted to read, and word-by-word highlighting helped reinforce the content / audio integration. I suspect Voice Dream would work best for short material and for those who have trained themselves to efficiently process automated speech. As for my commute and my children's reading, the Audible tracks remain the winners, but I'm glad I was able to give the app a good try. For those who can best take advantage of automated text-to-voice, it seems to offer a solid choice.
Monitor your Twitter mojo with Merlo
Can you tweet more effectively? Merlo, a new iOS app, might help you to do just that (but only if you can make out the tiny graphic displays-more on that below). Merlo requires iOS 7.1 or later, is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and is priced at $1.99. The majority of Twitter users, like me, tweet about things that interest us and move on to the next thing. Businesses and organizations use Twitter differently. More and more businesses and organizations are coming to understand just how important Twitter can be, especially as a part of PR and communications. Organizations need to know a lot about the effect of their efforts online. And there are big, complex and expensive social media management tools available that can help with this gargantuan task. The idea of having a social media analysis tool right there in the palm of your hand is intriguing. That's where Merlo comes in. Merlo is a iOS app designed to provide basic info to Twitter users about the effect of their tweets. In particular it displays information about gained and lost followers, the number of retweets and favorites, historical tweets and other basic trends. Setup is easy, but does require a 24 hour wait for a full report display. You can also import Twitter backups, but the process is cumbersome. The app can only track a single Twitter ID. I'm not sure who this app is really for. Organizational users need more robust tools, tools that can handle multiple Twitter IDs and sophisticated message tracking. Casual Twitter users don't need any tracking or analysis at all. For someone like me the data and reports that Merlo provides is mildly interesting at best. The one piece of information that I did gain from the Merlo reports is that I might improve retweets by releasing the daily post on my own site at 9 AM Eastern time rather than 8 AM as I currently do. It's worth experimenting with. That alone might have been worth the $1.99 app price. The real bone to pick with this app is its design. The designer aspires to "beautiful infographics," but what he ended up with is an app that is very hard to read. The report displays don't look too bad as screen shots as you'll see displayed here, but viewing them on a iPhone makes my aging eyes tear up. There's just too much data to display in such tiny charts. The choice of that particular shade of blue increases the difficulty in reading (Note: I did not test on an iPad). I also found some odd navigation in selecting "View More Stats" from the Statistics display. This selection forced a change in orientation, from portrait to landscape (the app's main displays are only portrait). These additional reports are larger and easier to read, but require you to close the view to return to the regular app display. I was also a bit chagrined that one of the four main displays in the app was primarily taken up with pleas to follow, rate, or promote the app (along with a short tutorial on how to import Twitter backups). This section might have been better used for the oddly placed "View More Stats" display. There was nothing about Merlo that really excited me. And the design of the app made it difficult to use and view. Merlo strives for "beautiful minimalistic design," but it ends up being very difficult to read and does not provide much info of value. Save your two bucks.
Instagram quietly (and slowly) launches Snapchat rival, Bolt
We knew Instagram's effort to nab a bit of Snapchat's thunder was imminent thanks to leaked promo banners, and now, the app has officially arrived... for some. Bolt, the filter-driven photo app's own ephemeral messenger has hit iTunes and Google Play for folks in Singapore, South Africa and New Zealand. The software's claim to fame is speed: instead of having to fiddle through a series of options, tapping a contact's picture both captures and sends a photo -- no further swiping required (tap and hold records video). So long as they're in your favorites list, of course. There's also an undo feature that allows you to retrieve a message in the first few seconds by shaking your phone. While Bolt doesn't require a Facebook or Instagram account, you will have to sign up with your phone number for sorting through your contacts. For now though, most of us have to find solace in just reading about it, since a select few locales are privy to the initial rollout. Instagram's word on that particular strategy is situated after the break.
Apple's iPhone business is as big as McDonald's and Coke combined
It's no secret that the bulk of Apple's revenue comes from the iPhone. During the company's most recent quarter, for example, 53% of its $37.4 billion in quarterly revenue came from its iconic smartphone. For as much as people like to talk about Apple having peaked, the company has a penchant for printing out boatloads of money quarter after quarter. While companies like Amazon can generate nearly $20 billion in quarterly revenue and still lose money, Apple's margins and overall profits remain extremely healthy. Critics have long demanded Apple lower prices to increase market share, but Apple has stayed the course, realizing that market share for the sake of market share alone is a fool's errand. Although the iPhone doesn't account for the majority of smartphone sales total, it can generate cold hard cash like nothing else. Providing some further context as to just how important and profitable the iPhone is to Apple, Jordan Weissmann of Slate put together this handy chart which compares how the iPhone, as its own business, compares to a number of blue chip companies. Revenue wise, we see that Apple's iPhone business makes as much money as McDonalds and Coca-Cola combined. All the more impressive is that Apple's margins over the last 10 years have remained relatively and incredibly steady. Very stable long-term gross margins. Painful contrast to rest of the industry. pic.twitter.com/XMNu7sM9xI - Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) July 22, 2014
Pulling the trigger on Kindle Unlimited
After Kindle Unlimited launched today, we entered a lively debate in the TUAW backchannels about this new service. Nearly everyone agreed that Amazon had once again set a high bar for Apple to respond to, but not everyone was immediately ready to sign up for this monthly product that offers unlimited text and audio lending for US$10/month. For the parents among us, our initial reaction was "Whoa! Let us go forth and save money!" Kelly Hodgkins, mother of many, became one of the earliest TUAW adopters of the service. Mike Rose, whose daughter has already spent $170 of gift cards on Summer reading, could immediately see the appeal. Your $120 yearly membership (30 days free, cancel at any time) offers access to a library of 600,000+ titles, which sounds like a lot but may not include the books you specifically need to read. Of my children's Summer reading lists, not a single title was available through Unlimited. I went through our purchases for the last 60 days and could not find any item we had bought included in the Unlimited library. These included EL Doctorow's "Ragtime", Sonia Nazario's "Enrique's Journey", Kazuhiro Fujitaki's "The Manga Guide to Electricity", Charbonneau's "Graduation Day", Kiera Cass's "The One", Tom Doyle's "American Craftsman", Robert Galbraith's "The Silkworm", among others -- a mix of required reading and fun. After searching my recent transactions, it became clear to me how limited the library really is. I'm letting my credit card stay cool for now. And, of course, you don't get to "keep" any books you borrow -- even for DRM-values of "keep" in today's digital market. For those with flexible reading tastes, the Kindle library has a lot going for it. You don't have to wait for ebooks the way you do at your local library. You can borrow more than one title a month, unlike the standard Prime benefit. Kindle Unlimited includes unlimited audio from "thousands of audiobooks", which is a godsend for commuters. What do you think about Kindle Unlimited? Are you going to jump aboard? Or are you waiting for the library to expand to include more desirable reading material? Drop a comment and share. %Poll-88856%
Revolution 60: All-female action adventure
What happens when a mostly female development team comes together to create an action-adventure game staffed entirely by female characters? Revolution 60 by Giant Spacekat (US$5.99/try-then-IAP-buy) happens. It's a touch-based iPad story-driven take on Heavy Rain and Mass Effect. You play Holiday, an assassin faced with a more morally complex landscape than you normally encounter in gaming titles. Should Holiday support her friends or fix her attention on the mission? It's a little bit transgressive, a little bit feminist. The stakes are high. I was particularly drawn to this title based on its feminine novelty. A mom to girls, I found the notion of a female actioner exciting. Although the reality was a little more boobs-and-bullets than can-do girl-power, I found Revolution 60 entertaining and well made. The acoustics of the game are superb. iOS has a bit of a bad rep for users switching off sounds. Do that in Revolution 60 and you'll be missing out on one of the game's highlights -- a well designed audio system that really brings the game to life. It helps you feel the experience as well as see it. The character graphics are really well done, built with full facial animation using the Unreal engine. Holiday's hair swings around as she walks, and her interaction with her world feels solid and multi-dimensional. The sets are nicely detailed, if a bit generically textured, and you feel immersed in an exciting drama. Where the game fell flat for me was its combat system. Admittedly, I played on the easiest level in order to progress as quickly as possible. The touch-based fighting felt tedious and I never really enjoyed those moments. However, the strength of the story outside of the combat kept me invested in following through with the adventure. The novelty of building emotional connections with characters provided the best part of the experience. The game offers excellent replay as your choices drive the story. Revolution 60 (iTunes link is not yet live) will be released on July 24th. You can try the basic game for free. A single in-app purchase of $5.99 unlocks the the full title. Giant Spacekat will also sell a companion book, "Revolution 60: The Chessboard Lethologica" in the iBooks store (iTunes link, not yet live, $3.99).
Avatron's Air Stylus shows promise for artists
Avatron's new Air Stylus (US$19.99) app transforms third generation or newer iPads into pressure-sensitive drawing surfaces compatible with desktop graphic design apps. The app is an outgrowth of Avatron's Air Display app. Air Display extends your computer's desktop to your iPad or iPhone to provide an extra screen. Air Stylus layers pressure-sensitive drawing on top of that display functionality. Not only can you view items on the secondary screen, you can draw on them too and in a meaningful way. Think of a Wacom tablet that you can place in your lap and draw onto, but one that shows the image you're drawing and not just a blank surface. There were a few gotchas. First, for an app to work with Air Stylus, it must be pressure-ready. On the Mac, that means working with apps like Acorn, Pixelmator, Manga Studio 5, Art Range, Intensify Pro, Mischief, and Photoshop Elements. Acorn is a terrific app that I happened to have on my system available for testing. Avatron has posted Photoshop how-to for those who wish to follow through with frame buffers and GPU settings, but don't think that the app will produce out-of-the-box pressure input for all drawing apps. Second, there is lag. Although a slight lag usually isn't a problem with Air Display -- especially when you're using the extra screen space for something not time critical such as Twitter -- when drawing, even a half-second of lag can really throw a wrench in things. This does not appear to be a problem for the artists highlighted in Avatron's shiny video and there were times in testing when reaction time was excellent, but at others I experienced a noticeable, albeit slight lag between drawing and the app responding. It was irritating. Third, there is sensitivity. I encountered difficulty when trying to consistently draw a line that changed pressure. You can see a subset of my attempts recorded here. The video shows the Reflector capture session of my iPad Air as I used both the brush and pencil tools. Eventually, I learned to put a bit of pressure onto the stylus to get the sensitivity going and then back off or press harder. I am never going to be a calligrapher and the process of learning to draw with pressure using the stylus was harder than I expected. I tested Air Stylus using a Wacom stylus, a Pogo Connect, and a cheap no-pressure stylus from the dollar store. The app worked well with all three. For pressure testing, I stuck with the Wacom as it was the only one that worked for those tests (Avatron plans to update its support for Pogo Connect soon). While I personally found Air Stylus difficult to use gracefully, I did love how well I could zoom and pan to focus my drawing space exactly where and how I wanted it. I suspect many of my difficulties stem from my ham handed lack of any sophisticated drawing abilities. I also liked how the desktop client offered to save my extra window state until I was ready to pick up and draw again. Unlike other screen extension apps, Air Stylus didn't revert my window configuration until I told it to. That's a great feature. At US$20, Air Stylus isn't going to be an impulse buy for most people -- especially when you take the stylus and drawing app prerequisites into account. However, if you're a serious artist and have mad pressure-sensitive skills, I think the app has the potential to really grab you. Be aware that the app is new and growing. Reaction on the App Store has been mixed. From an admittedly small sample, it's currently middling in ratings and has at least two very unhappy customers. I was more apparently impressed then they were, and I look forward to seeing how this app evolves.
AMC's plans for an internet TV service leak out, but don't expect 'Mad Men'
AMC's cable TV channel has evolved from the home of old movies to hosting TV series, topped by Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Now, the infamous "people with knowledge of the situation" have revealed that it's working on a new subscription internet service. First reported in The Information, the rumors suggest AMC will launch websites focused on specific categories, like documentaries or horror, possibly with the help of a web video startup it's invested in called DramaFever. That's one way to go of course, instead of the "some of everything" route currently dominated by Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. A Bloomberg report says it won't host licensed shows like Mad Men (already tied up in licenses to the other services) so it's unclear exactly what content they might have to start. AMC has two video on-demand channels already, and its cable experience should serve it well in the suddenly crowded internet market. If this is as good as it gets for the traditional cable bundle -- and AMC can't increase rates for its channel -- trying its hand on the internet could be a way to grow. Update: These sites probably won't have Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul either, but AMC just announced that while the series' premiere is delayed until 2015, it has already picked the show up for a second season. [Image credit: Jordin Althaus/AP Photo/AMC]
Trials of Ascension pushing to fund playable dragons
Trials of Ascension has launched a "Release the Dragons" campaign to encourage backers to chip in a little extra so that playable dragons will be added to the game. The game just crossed the $50,000 crowdfunding barrier, and the team promises that if it reaches $60,000, it will add in the draconic characters. By donating funds during this campaign, players can recieve extra goodies such as a high-rez dragon poster and special dragon tail designs. According to the official disclaimer, playable dragons will be a truly hardcore choice: "There will be no harder race to play in ToA than the dragon. You will be challenged at every turn. You will die. A lot. Seriously. Chances of your dragon character making it to adulthood will be near zero. This is by design so don't bother whining about it. If after reading this warning, you still want to try, by all means read on but understand we cannot be held responsible for broken keyboards or debts payable to your swear jar." [Thanks to Android for the tip!]
NYC's Met museum is offering 400,000 works of art as free downloads
The NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art is making some of its gigantic collection of masterpieces available for you to use in your next project. The Met just marked almost 400,000 digital images of its works as Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC), which is bringing some pieces to the web for the first time and making them all available for non-commercial use. What that means is that now you can use Rembrandt's epic Toilet of Bathsheba in your thesis (because, why not?), or bring some bling to your next documentary with a photo of an Aztec necklace for free. The collection includes all of the images the museum feels are in the public domain and aren't subject to any other copyright restrictions. You can tell a photo is up for grabs by looking for the OASC label and download button below each pic.
Apple's iWork for iCloud now lets you collaborate on projects with 100 friends
If you're using Apple's iWork for iCloud to get stuff done, now you can collaborate on projects with even more people. Before if you wanted to get your co-workers input on your big plans for the company retreat (Laser Tag definitely promotes synergy) you could only have 50 contributors. Now 100 people can work on the same Keynote, Numbers or Pages file at once, and those projects can also be a lot larger. Previously you were limited to 200MB per file, with a 5MB cap for included images. Now there's 1GB of space to fill with details about your group-cooking class plans, complete with images of up to 10MB each -- that's a lot more fancy dessert photos
Oculus Rift is coming to... Chuck E. Cheese's?
Sure, a spin in the ol' ticket grabber machine on your birthday can be fun, but trying to capture the small pieces of paper as they whiz by your head? That's a lot of work. Luckily, Chuck E. Cheese's is offering a new, less physical way to reach prize station glory using Oculus Rift. The pizza party giant is offering a "Virtual Ticket Blaster Experience" at parties for the guest of honor that uses the VR headset to simulate the high-speed grabbing experience.
Scientists make deep-brain implants possible through wireless charging
Stanford researchers have figured out a way to wirelessly charge electronic devices that are deep inside your body. Currently pacemakers and nerve transmitters need to have large receiving coils near the top of your skin to charge up (limiting where you can put them), or periodically have their battery replaced through surgery. This new method, however, would allow devices to be much smaller because they don't have to tote around such a huge battery. Also since they're not reliant on charging coils they could live much deeper in the body and brain.
