The “Netflix For Games” giant, GameFLy, has decided to test its controllers at mobile gaming. Announced today, GameFLy plans to become a mobile game publisher for both Android and iOS games. GameFLy has set aside a stockpile of cash to help financially burdened mobile developers fund their next great project. GameFLy expects to publish its first game this summer and encourages developers to submit their application to GameDev@GameFly.com.
Let’s be honest, at some point we’ve all dreamt about dusting off our funeral suit and fighting aliens with Will Smith as a Men in Black agent. Thanks to Gameloft, that dream is now a reality… on your Android or iOS device.
Men in Black 3, the official game of one of this year’s biggest action blockbusters, is now available from the App Store and Google Play, giving you the opportunity to create and manage your own MiB agency and protect New York from the scum of the universe — for free.
Sprint has nixed its 5GB/$29.99 mobile hotspot add-on for mobile phones and tablets in favor of a two-tier system. Sprint customers will now have a choice between a 2GB/$19.99 a month plan or 6GB/$49.99 a month plan. These new offerings should give customers more choice to better fit their mobile hotspot needs. Customers can also enroll in Sprint’s MHS notification program to be notified when they reach 75, 90 and 100 percent of their on-network monthly data limit.
FarSight Studios, creators of Pinball Arcade, is looking for your help to digitize one of the greatest pinball machines of all time: The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone table was released by Midway under the Bally label and is currently number one in user rankings on the Internet Pinball Database. Many pinball experts consider it to be the most complex pinball machine ever created, and being able to preserve it in digital form is a dream of FarSight Studios.
Are you a fan of plain-text files? Are you nerdy enough to stuff your todo lists into a todo.txt file? What if I told you that you could bring a lick of modernity to the your old-fashioned, candlelit ways? It’s called TaskBadges, and it adds a numbered badge to any plain-text list telling you how many uncompleted tasks are left inside.
If you own an iPad and like to get out of bed on time, then you probably own a copy of Due, the super-simple alarm and timer app for iOS. It’s probably the easiest and best designed alarm app around, and now it is available on the Mac.
After a brief beta, Steam has made the ability to remotely manage your library of games as well as initiate a download via the web or mobile app a reality for all. Steam users who download the latest client for their PC or Mac will be able to log into the Steam web site or mobile app to access and manage their downloading pre-loads, new releases, or latest purchases.
The unfortunate reality of trying to replace cable with video subscription services such as Netflix or Hulu is that, well… they kind of suck. Okay, so that’s my opinion and it’s completely possible that you’re happy with the Walmart bargain bin selection of movies Netflix has to offer, or being last to find out that The Island was just purgatory and the whole point of LOST was, well… pointless. There’s many reasons why I’ve been unable to cut cable out of my life, and if I’m going to be paying for it every month — I might as well get my money’s worth. That’s where the Slingbox SOLO comes in.
Google’s latest Stable release of Chrome now includes the ability to sync tabs across multiple devices. As long as you are signed into Chrome, you’ll now have the ability to take your tabs with you when switching between work, home, mobile (with Chrome for Android beta), etc. Accessing them is quick and easy thanks to the new “Other devices” menu located on the New Tab page, and even the back and forward buttons will work, allowing you to pick up browsing right where you left off.
Perian, the six-year old play-anything video package for the Mac, is about to be retired. It won’t be taken out round the back of the farm, forced to stand by an old bathtub and then shot in the back of the head and sprinkled with lime, but it’s close — the project will be donated to the open-source community.
The federal government along with U.S. wireless providers will be rolling out a new Emergency Text Alert System this month. The service will be free and will provide geographically targeted wireless emergency alerts for life-threatening events such as: tornadoes, flash floods, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, dust storms, extreme winds, blizzards and ice storms. The text alerts will be brief and will inform consumers to seek additional information or immediately seek shelter if necessary. You may have experienced such alerts via third party weather application or private services but this will be the first national service by the federal government and the wireless industry.
We have some great news for those of you who aren’t ashamed of purchasing digital comics. Marvel has signed a multi-year deal with comiXology, the largest digital comics platform, to exclusively distribute single issue English-language digital comics worldwide. Marvel fans will have a plethora of sources to obtain these digital comics, including the Marvel apps available for Android and iOS .
TeleCommunication Systems continues to provide the best solutions for reliable emergency communication in the wireless industry. They recently paired up with Verizon to work on bringing SMS-To-911 to the U.S., and if that wasn’t enough, they’ve gone ahead and announced the availability of TCS VoLTE (Voice Over LTE) 9-1-1.
I’m expecting some really cool iOS/Android stuff to pop out of indy dev First Post. The year-and-a-half-old startup is run by Jacob Robinson, the former art director at Sony Online Entertainment (who had a hand in forming legendary titles like the EverQuest series, DC Universe, Star Wars Galaxies and Unreal Tournament). It’s also completely self-funded, “which is not an easy thing to do at all,” says Robinson.
First Post’s debut game, Snacksss, may not exactly be the stellar breakthrough title one might have hoped for; the cartoony, Sonoran Desert-themed iPhone game has lots of pretty artwork but needs help in the gameplay department, which has the player listlessly flicking a hungry snake at rabbits ad nauseam.
It looks like Square has yet another competitor in the mobile payments arena. Global payment leader VeriFone has announced SAIL, a credit card reader much like Square’s, that will attach to a number of mobile devices. While VeriFone may have a little catching up to do, they have the advantage of an extensive network with a commanding percentage of retail transactions passing through their service.
comScore’s new mobile behavioral measurement service, Mobile Metrix 2.0, has revealed that the lion’s share of media engagement comes from apps. I don’t find this to be surprising, as apps are usually much easier to use versus most mobile site counterparts. However, I was a bit surprised to learn that as much as 82 percent of time spent with mobile media happens via apps. That’s a pretty high percentage and makes having a mobile app for your media almost a necessity.
Not many surprises here. According to the latest research from the NPD Group, Android and iOS continue to dominate the OS arms race. Combined, these two powerhouse operating systems account for 90% of smartphone sales. Report after report, we continue to see the same thing: Android an iOS on top.
Verizon has announced its plans to lead the text-to-911 initiative here in the US. Starting early 2013, Verizon customers will be able to send 911 SMS texts to emergency call centers. This new way of communicating with 911 call centers is a great step forward in public safety and allows for those in need to relay information in cases when calling or talking are difficult.
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The brand-new version of AirServer is being billed as “The Game Console For Mac.” Like previous versions of the software, AirServer runs on you Mac and turns it into an AirPlay receiver, allowing you to stream music, video, photos and even games to the Mac’s big screen, just as if it was an Apple TV. What’s new, though, is the ability to stream games from two players simultaneously for big-screen head-to-head action.
If you want a great Simplenote-compatible, note taking app for your Mac, then you should download the free and excellent Notational Velocity. If you want a harder to use, bigger and — some might say — uglier app to do the same thing, then Metanota is just the thing for you.
If you’re a fan of first-person shooters and gaming on your mobile devices, then you should be looking forward to N.O.V.A. 3 from Gameloft. The company’s first N.O.V.A. titles have been two of the best smartphone shooters available — particularly on iOS — and the latest promises to be even better.
In its latest trailer, Gameloft teases N.O.V.A. 3’s incredible multiplayer mode, and damn… it looks good.
When it comes to our mobile devices and the operating systems we use, we can sometimes be a bit defensive and downright vile. We’re usually quick to make a joke or two at the expense of one another, but in the end, we’re all human, and most of us are surprisingly close friends who frequently kick back and enjoy a cold beer together (even if some of us accidentally leave our prototypes behind). That’s why this next invention will have tech-loving beer connoisseurs foaming at the mouth (literally).
Alternative desktop browser fans(*), your attention please. Opera’s released its next thing, and it’s a feature-packed beta of Opera 12.
Earlier in the year, Apple acquired app discovery engine Chomp in an effort to improve app discoverability in their App Store. As we all know, discovering apps among the hundreds of thousands that populate popular app stores can sometimes be a chore, so it would make sense for Apple to acquire such a company as Chomp. However, Chomp also improved app discoverability of Android apps and since Apple’s acquisition we’ve wondered if this would one day change. Well, guess what? That day has come and it looks like Apple has chomped out Android app discoverability completely.
A new music service by Microsoft is expected to rear its face at E3 and should give us a better look into the “Spotify-like” Zune replacement code named “Woodstock.” While we generally wouldn’t be too interested in Microsoft news, the new service is reportedly going to be cross-platform and will indeed be available for Android and iOS.
