SOS
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Google Pixel 9 phones might have emergency satellite messaging
Rumor has it that Google's Pixel 9 and next-gen Fold are getting emergency satellite messaging.
Google SOS Alerts can guide you during a crisis
When you're in the midst of a crisis, your internet search priorities are clearly different than usual: am I in danger? Where can I go for safety? And who do I talk to for help? Google clearly recognizes this, as it's rolling out SOS Alerts in both its web search results and in Maps. Look for a relevant search term or location and you'll get official updates, contact information, a map of the affected area, top stories and translations for useful phrases. If you're browsing the Maps app, you'll see an icon on the map that you can tap to get vital info. And if you're in a perilous location, you may get a notification pointing you to this help.
Uber's panic button can let cops in India know where you are
Earlier this year, Uber launched an in-app panic button for people in India, which lets any user easily alert local police in case of an emergency. And now this safety feature is getting improved. The ride-sharing service announced today that the real-time SOS alert can start being accessed by law enforcement officials, allowing them to track the exact location of a passenger who may require assistance during a trip. Previously, the panic button would only connect Uber users with the cops over a phone call, so this is designed to save time for potential victims -- and that could turn out to be life-saving.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection running into matchmaking problems
Dealing with the Covenant isn't the only problem players are facing in Halo: The Master Chief Collection today. The huge collection of Halo goodness launched today, and some serious multiplayer matchmaking issues launched right along with it. As we noted in our review, matchmaking can take up to several minutes and it may not be full. That's assuming a match is found at all. We've also encountered infinite loading screens following a match, requiring a reboot of the game. Furthermore, we were unable even to arrange a custom game outside of matchmaking between two Joystiq editors. When and if a match is found, performance seems to be stable, at least. Developer 343 Industries is aware of the problems, and notes that it is working "around the clock" to resolve them. A server side update has been issued, which 343 says has shown "some improvement," though we haven't noticed any significant changes. Updates on the current status of matchmaking will be made here, on the Halo Waypoint forums.
Destiny State of Service: Week Two
This is State of Service, an ongoing review of the online service of a recently launched game. You can read our scored review of Destiny here. Tuesday, September 23 | T-minus 16 days until final verdict Current State of Service: Moderate Summary: Destiny servers experienced brief downtime over the weekend, but have otherwise been stable. A new in-game event has been added and high-level players are taking advantage of a loot exploit. Bungie has issued a patch to solve a problem with the Vault of Glass raid mission.
Titanfall State of Service: Final Verdict
This is State of Service, an ongoing review of the online service of a recently launched game. See our scored review of Titanfall here. Friday, April 11 | Final Verdict Overall State of Service: Good Summary: Stable server performance. Isolated issues on PC. In its first month of availability, neither the Xbox One or PC versions of Titanfall have run into debilitating or pervasive problems. Apart from a few brief outages, Titanfall's performance has been stable, with developer Respawn deploying a handful of updates, including a special matchmaking pool for cheaters and improved matchmaking in general. Yesterday, Respawn also added the ability to play private matches and issued a number of balance tweaks and bug fixes. Joystiq staffers have encountered no serious problems with either the PC or Xbox One versions during Titanfall's launch month. Some users have reported technical problems on PC, though these seem to be isolated and most have workaround solutions. We've spent some time with the Xbox 360 version since its launch on Tuesday and, while it's visually less impressive and its frame rate isn't as solid, online play appears on par with what we've experienced on PC and Xbox One. In short, the online-only warfare of Titanfall seems to be running as intended, and we're comfortable declaring that its overall State of Service is Good. The quality of online play has been consistent, and Respawn seems committed to delivering updates and listening to its community.
Titanfall State of Service: Week Four
This is State of Service, an ongoing review of the online service of a recently launched game. See our scored review of Titanfall here. Tuesday, April 8 | T-minus 2 days until final verdict Current State of Service: Moderate Summary: Matchmaking update deployed. Some users experiencing longer than usual matchmaking times and connection issues. On the whole, Titanfall's online service appears to be running just fine after four weeks on PC and Xbox One, though some Titanfall players have been running into problems. Since the recent matchmaking update to Hardpoint and Attrition modes, some users have reported very long matchmaking times – anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes – or connection issues. Respawn itself has noted that matchmaking will take longer as a result of the more selective system, but enough users have encountered issues that the developer has lessened the effectiveness of the update in order to speed up matchmaking while it irons out the kinks. Respawn is also taking feedback on the matchmaking update in the Titanfall forums. For its part, Joystiq staff members haven't encountered any noteworthy issues since the matchmaking update was released. We'll be monitoring matchmaking performance over the next two days. Finally, after a recent delay, the Xbox 360 version of Titanfall has arrived as well. We'll be spending some time with it this week, and will incorporate some impressions into Titanfall's final State of Service update this Thursday. If you encounter any problems with Titanfall, let us know in the comments or on Joystiq's Twitter or Facebook accounts (use the hashtag #sos and don't forget to specify your platform!).
Titanfall State of Service: Week Three
This is State of Service, an ongoing review of the online service of a recently launched game. See our scored review of Titanfall here. Tuesday, April 1 | T-minus 9 days until final verdict Current State of Service: Good Summary: PC version experiencing limited issues. Matchmaking update in the works. Anti-cheating system enabled on PC. Apart from a brief server outage last Tuesday, and an issue with Australian servers in particular, Titanfall appears to be humming along on both PC and Xbox One. Servers for both versions went down during the afternoon on March 25, apparently as the result of broader problems with Xbox Live. Servers were back online that evening. Meanwhile, Australian players encountered an issue in which servers would return a ping of -1, making them unusable. The problem was "sporadic," and it was corrected as of March 31, according to official Titanfall Twitter account. Joystiq staff members have been playing both versions with no significant problems to report. In other service news, Respawn is working on an update to Titanfall's matchmaking to keep weaker teams from being consistently dominated by stronger teams. Furthermore, the PC version has been updated to combat cheating. Cheaters detected by the game are subsequently only allowed to play with other cheaters, where they will enjoy what Respawn calls "the Wimbledon of aimbot contests." If you encounter any problems with Titanfall, let us know in the comments or on Joystiq's Twitter or Facebook accounts (use the hashtag #sos and don't forget to specify your platform!).
Australia gets dedicated Titanfall servers
Good news for Titanfall fans living Down Under: EA has announced that Australia now has dedicated servers for Respawn's robot-infused first-person shooter. According to EA's help site, that applies to all platforms, so both Xbox One and PC players should be able to take advantage of the new, local servers. Respawn engineer Jon Shiring stated on Twitter that Australia's new servers were "tapped pretty quickly," and that more servers are already being added. [Image: EA]
Introducing State of Service reviews on Joystiq
Online experiences are one of the most rewarding and entertaining aspects of video games. Who doesn't love teaming up with friends to blast the opposition? What's more thrilling than proving your skill against another human being, or joining them on a meaningful journey? Online play is a joy uniquely tied to video games, and in the age of always-on, persistent experiences, it's becoming more crucial each year. The growing proliferation and complexity of online components, however, has given rise to a similarly unique frustration. When these connected components fail, you're left with a tantalizing but only semi-functional heap of code. You know there's a good game in there, it's just buried under the debris of unchecked latency, overloaded servers and random disconnects. Call it the Battlefield 4 effect, if you want. As we've learned over the last year, quality service is now just as important as quality gameplay. To that end, we've created State of Service, a new supplement to Joystiq's review process. Moving forward, for many games that rely heavily on online components, Joystiq will post regular updates on the quality of the online experience. These updates will be provided over a period of 30 days after a game's launch. After those 30 days are up, we'll post a final verdict. Of course, it's possible that a game's service will improve after 30 days – again, see Battlefield 4 – but we feel that a month is a reasonable amount of time for us to evaluate the service and for developers and publishers to correct any outstanding problems. In fact, given that players are paying for a potentially broken product, it's more than reasonable. Titanfall will be the first game to get the State of Service treatment (hence the image). Read on to see exactly how it's going to work.
Your smartphone's WiFi hotspot might double as a disaster rescue beacon
When disasters strike, communication services tend to go down; you can't simply call for help or share your location online. However, engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology have found a way to use a smartphone as a rescue beacon when there aren't any available networks. The researchers have written a victim app that inserts an SOS alert into the name of the phone's WiFi hotspot. Emergency crews just have to use a companion app to find you up to 330 feet away. It's a simple trick, to be sure. The big challenge is getting people to use the software in the first place -- the team would like its code built into your phone's interface, but they might have to find a way to distribute their apps in the field. If Fraunhofer's staff succeed in making the tools commonplace, though, you may soon find a ready-made distress signal in your pocket. [Image credit: United Nations Photo, Flickr]
A spy and an alien walk into a Kickstarter
We know you're used to one game for one Kickstarter campaign, but NYC-based developer duo "ATKMTN" is upping the ante with one pledge drive dedicated to two games. The Attack Pack includes SOS, an episodic spy thriller, and The Grey Man, a sci-fi tale revolving around an extra-terrestrial with trans-dimensional powers. SOS will ship with two episodes, "both of which feature a tightly knit story with linear, hand-designed levels," the Kickstarter post promises. Perhaps the most exciting part of SOS is how it promises a fluid balance between accomplishing your goals using stealth or full-on action. The Grey Man, meanwhile, emphasizes dual concepts of exploration and human capture, with players traversing a national park and bringing back unsuspecting folks to the alien's spacecraft. The two games have been in development for nine months already, with the ATKMTN duo tackling just about every facet of development themselves – save for sound. The Attack Pack, if funded, will land on PC in May, 2014. The duo has also expressed interest in pursuing other platforms "down the line."
McPixel is the first Greenlight game available on Steam
As a pioneer of the Steam Greenlight program, there couldn't have been a more random choice than McPixel. The hilarious, absurd adventure game-meets-WarioWare exercise in preventing explosions is the first Greenlight game to make it to Steam, where it's available now for $4.99.McPixel is a series of 100 scenarios in which the player has 20 seconds to "prevent stuff from blowing up using available tools." It was recently featured in one of the custom arcade cabinets at Fantastic Arcade, where it benefited from an even more context-free presentation and could thus confuse people who didn't know what they were playing at all.
Tonino Lamborghini L2800 tablet and TL700 phone rumble in Hong Kong, we go hands-on (video)
Looks like Russia isn't the only place with an appetite for overly expensive gadgets. Following the original launch last month, two of the four latest Tonino Lamborghini devices have made their way over to Hong Kong. Pictured above is the L2800 tablet which has since been upgraded from Android 2.3 to 4.0.3, but the hardware remains the same: a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm chip, 9.7-inch 1,024 x 768 display, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and microSD expansion, along with 3G connectivity, two- and five-megapixel cameras front and back, four obviously redundant capacitive buttons, 7,500mAh battery and, sadly, a proprietary dock connector. All of this plus the nicely crafted titanium chassis weigh 850g, and it'll cost you just HK$13,800 or about US$1,780. Hey, quit moaning -- it's a massive reduction from the US$2,320 price tag in Russia. %Gallery-164340%
Samsung files for patent on safe taxi service, we hope we never fully test it
Anyone who often relies on taxi service to get around, as good as it can be, has likely had a driver who was less than courteous -- and in the worst cases, outright scary. Samsung wants to keep passengers safe, and drivers honest, through a just-published patent application for an end-to-end taxi service. On a basic level, it's a taxi finder with a rating system: the mobile app in the patent can hail a nearby cab based on the driver's "kindness" rating and verify that it's the right vehicle with a short-range wireless link, not unlike an even more genteel version of Uber. It's when passengers hop inside that Samsung's implementation takes on a more distinct shape. If the driver puts customers or the whole cab in danger, a passenger-activated SOS mode flags the car's location to get the police on the scene before it's too late. We don't know how likely Samsung is to implement such a system, although it has been actively developing more advanced backseat technology and filed the US patent in February, a year after its Korean equivalent. We do know this is one of the few patents we'd rather not completely experience first-hand -- the only crazy taxis we're comfortable with sit inside game consoles.
Delorme's inReach two-way satellite communicator gets iOS support, sends iPhone texts from Timbuktu (video)
If you're an iPhone or iPad owner, you might have been disappointed that the Delorme inReach two-way GPS communicator launched with app support only for Android users. That's fine if you're trekking with a Casio G'zOne Commando, but not so hot if you're of the Apple mindset and get stranded canoeing down the Amazon. Thankfully, Delorme just posted an iOS version of its Earthmate app that will let your Cupertino-designed gear send either text messages or SOS beacons through a paired-up inReach unit. As before, the handheld relies on its own GPS positioning and embedded locations in messages to keep friends and rescue crews updated anywhere the device can get an Iridium satellite lock-in. It'll still cost you $250 for the device and $10 per month to stay linked up; even so, there's a real chance you'll be texting your friends from your iPhone in Mali, assuming you haven't had to call a rescue helicopter first.
Samsung SPH-W7100 with 100 decibel siren: proof the terrorists have won
Scared? So scared that you need to carry a 100dB alarm with a direct link to local emergency services? Good, the SPH-W7100 is for you and your milquetoastian kin. In addition to emitting an alarm blast equivalent to your MP3 player's earbuds set at full volume, the SPH-W7100 features an SOS function that alerts local authorities to your position via GPS. The phone is being marketed at women and children in Korea for its launch next month. And having gained FCC approval back in December, Samsung might be prepared to prey upon your fears Stateside in time. Too bad you've lost all ability to hope.
"Undercover" software helps recover your stolen MacBook
So you coughed up some dough for that iAlertU program to protect your MacBook, but wouldn't you know it, your laptop got jacked anyway by a clever thief who simply removed the battery before taking off. Luckily for you, all is not lost, at least not if you'd installed another program called Undercover on your machine, which not only sends out an IP-address-containing SOS if it's reported stolen, but actually uses your machine's built-in iSight to snap a photo of the perp before simulating a screen failure that makes the Mac unusable. Every six minutes, Undercover pings a database maintained by developer Orbicule to check if the machine it's installed on has been stolen; a positive reply from the server initiates a sequence of events that hopefully ends with law enforcement officials breaking down the door of the nefarious Macjacker's pad and recovering your beloved notebook. In case the crook was smart enough to never reconnect to the Internet after the heist, however, you'll still need to file an insurance claim and head down to the old Apple store -- looks like they still haven't found a software solution that beats the trusty Kensington Lock.
