There have been many suggestions over the past few months that Facebook would be coming through with its own newsy magazine-type application similar to the ever-popular Flipboard, and now, the details of the iOS app have been unveiled. It's called Paper, and will aggregate various stories and tidbits from around the Web based on the settings applied by the user. It will launch next week on February 3rd, although it will only be available to users within the United States initially. Further details can be seen after the break.
It’s news that seems to have come completely out of the blue. Google is selling Motorola’s mobile division to Lenovo for just $2.91 billion less than three years after picking it up.
The guys over at VideoLAN, developers of the iconic VLC media player, have once again teased the Windows 8 / RT version of the app, providing eager video enthusiasts with a glimpse of the Snap View. VLC for Windows 8 has certainly been a long time in coming, but if these new screenshots are anything to go by, then the wait will have been worth it. Check it out after the fold!
Moments ago, it emerged that Apple had released a minor update for iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c users in the form of iOS 7.0.5. In the release notes, Apple made note of the point that the update amended some issues affecting folks in China, but it wasn't immediately apparent whether the jailbreak had been patched or not. Now, seasoned jailbreaker MuscleNerd has taken to Twitter and urged those eligible for the iOS 7.0.5 update to refrain from doing so.
In this day and age, we're always connected. If we're not using our smartphones to communicate with each other, then we're using our tablets. If it's not our tablets, then it's our computers. One byproduct of all this is that we need ubiquitous messaging. We want our messages, our conversations and settings to move between devices seamlessly, meaning we can start a conversation on our iPhones and finish it on our computers.
Google has pushed out an in-app notice to users of its iOS Gmail app stressing that a bug may have caused them to accidentally delete emails received between the 12th and 21nd of January. Furthermore, the bug - which is also said to have affected the mobile browser and the offline version of the popular email client - may also have led users to inadvertently mark the wrong emails as spam.
As much as some of us really enjoy using iOS, those amongst us that are realists surely have to admit that it has its little foibles. Apple has gradually ironed some of them out over the years and, unfortunately, baked new ones into subsequent versions of iOS as well. You don't build something as complicated as a mobile operating system without having quirks.
Backward compatibility is a big deal in the gaming world, and when Sony announced its PS4 console, much of the talk was about the lack of any ability to play those back catalogues of games that everyone had spent the last few years accumulating. Sony has since sought to rectify that by announcing PlayStation Now, the game streaming service that will see PS3 games streamed over the Internet, but there is no local support being added to consoles.
Sometimes an accessory pops up that has us all scratching our heads. We've no arguments that accessories have their place, taking existing hardware and either enhancing existing features or creating new ones. Accessories are just fine, but sometimes they fall wide off the mark. Sometimes we just can't quite get our heads around who thought they were a good idea, let alone who actually signed off on making them into a real, shipping product.
Google has teamed up with Lego in its latest Chrome experiment, which allows users to create their own buildings using virtual Lego bricks. Yes, it is quite a flagrant copycat of Minecraft et al, but Lego is something that most of us share in common to varying degrees, and this WebGL-based environment makes construction as fun as when we were five years old. Not only can you let your imagination run wild and build castles, mansions and so on, but you can also select the plot of land you wish to build upon using the Google Maps utility. Luckily, though, there's no planning permission involved, enabling you to get straight to work!
