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Flappy Bird dev accused of ripping off idea for Swing Copters

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Swing Copters, the latest title from Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen, is in the limelight yet again this week following claims it plagiarizes another mobile game.

Development studio Open Name says the super-addictive title is a ripoff of Bog Racer, a game they released on Android back in July that was recently pulled from the Play Store after Google decided it was a Swing Copters clone.

Android’s fragmented hell stew is only getting worse for app makers

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Now that Samsung is pretty much the only Android handset manufacturer making any money, you’d think that Android’s fragmentation problem would start to get better, but the latest Android fragmentation report from OpenSignal reveals the madness of developing for multiple screen sizes, hardware specs, and various versions of Android, has only gotten worse over the last year.

LG’s new G Watch 2 will be designed with the iWatch in mind

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The LG G Watch has been on sale for less than two months, but according to a new report from Korea, an LG executive has confirmed the company is already working on its second Android Wear device. Expected to launch this fall at IFA, the G Watch 2 is being labeled a “serious game changer,” and it’s being designed with Apple’s iWatch in mind.

Samsung buys home automation startup SmartThings for $200 million

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Google has Nest. Apple has HomeKit. And now Samsung is buying into the future of home automation too, with the $200 million purchase of SmartThings – a hardware startup that makes it easier for all your smart appliances to talk to each other.

SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson announced today that after starting from the bottom of KickStarter, his two year old home automation company has been bought by Samsung and is moving to Silicon Valley.

Google and Barnes & Noble team up to beat Amazon at book delivery

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Barnes & Noble has decided to team up Google in an effort to reclaim its King of Book Retail title from their mutual rival Amazon.

Starting today, the two companies are partnering up to bring same-day delivery of books from local Barnes and Noble to customers in Manhattan, West Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area, giving both companies an answer to Amazon’s same-day offerings.

Zillow’s new mortgage feature lets you show sellers the money

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Buying a home can be seriously stressful, but mobile app Zillow has been providing folks with great real estate information on local homes for a while now. I’ve used it several times to compare prices across homes I was interested in buying, as well and to just check out the kind of home my friends can buy, because I’m pretty nosy like that.

The Zillow app just updated with a fantastic new feature, too: instant mortgage pre-approval. This is a huge deal, as being pre-approved can make sure that your offers on homes, especially in hot markets like San Francisco and New York, are taken seriously. Pre-approved home loans are a great way to make that happen.

Twitch cracks down on copyrighted music after Google takeover

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Having shut down Justin.tv on the back of a reported $1 billion Google acquisition, live video game streaming service Twitch is now blocking copyrighted music.

Twitch uses software called Audible Magic which scans videos for music that is owned or controlled by Audible Magic clients. This could take the form of either in-game or background music. Live broadcasts will not be scanned.

“The Audible Magic technology will scan for third party music in 30 minute blocks,” reads a blog post from Twitch. “[I]f Audible Magic does not detect its clients’ music, that portion of the VOD will not be muted. If third party audio is detected anywhere in the 30-minute scanned block, the entire 30 minutes will be muted.”

Gmail finally made it easy to unsubscribe from spammers

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Scrolling to the bottom of every spam email in search of that tiny “unsubscribe” link is among my least favorite Internet chores, but Google is finally making it a lot easier to never receive spammy emails from all the brands, social networks, and Nigerian princes you’ve courted over the years.

To bring you one step closer to a clutter free inbox, the company announced on its blog this morning that Gmail users will now see a new “unsubscribe” link anytime they receive a bulk email.

Explore Mars and the moon with this awesome Google Maps Easter Egg

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As revealed by Steven Levy in his great book In The Plex, in the early days of Google one of the founders’ ideas for advertising the new search engine was to project a lazer image of the Google logo on the moon.

That idea obviously didn’t happen, but a new Easter Egg for Google Maps on PC does at least let users explore the surface of the moon, alongside that of Mars, to celebrate the second anniversary of the Curiosity rover touching down on the Red Planet’s surface.

Google Chrome beta finally goes 64-bit for OS X

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Google today rolled out a new Chrome beta for OS X — officially dubbed Chrome Canary — which finally takes advantage of the 64-bit processors built into the latest Macs. The change should mean better performance when browsing the web, but it isn’t quite ready to become your daily driver just yet.