Posts Tagged ‘culture’

Barnes & Noble’s E Ink e-readers are getting an update next month that will add a web browser and email client, reports TechCrunch . Citing an unnamed source, it writes that the Nook Simple Touch and Simple Touch with GlowLight will start receiving the updates on June 1st. The Nook Simple Touch shipped with a limited, hidden web browser when it was first released in 2011, but Barnes & Noble removed the function in a software update a few months later. The ability to check news headlines and do some light email work should give the $79 Nook platform some extra value, although slow-refreshing E Ink doesn’t really provide the best browsing experience. The low-priced Nooks aren’t the only ones to be getting extra attention from home…

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Nook Simple Touch e-readers reportedly adding web browser and email client next week

Sometimes the simplest games are the most difficult. That’s certainly the case in Rebound , a game in which the only goal is to get a pole as far to the right as possible, but where actually getting very far is incredibly challenging. The trick is that the pole’s only means of propulsion is bouncing off of the ground, and your only way to control it is by rotating it left or right. Grappling with the physics is hard enough, but then the game throws barriers in your way and slowly the ground will literally disappear beneath you. It only takes a few seconds to play, but actually making progress in Rebound will take a whole lot longer — check out the Windows, Mac, and web versions at the source link below.

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‘Rebound’ is a maddeningly simple physics game

We all know the feeling. You’re sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn’t cutting it. Why not take a break from the fire hose of Twitter and RSS and check out our weekly roundup of essential writing from around the web about technology, culture, media, and the future?

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The best writing of the week, May 19

Earlier this year, Verizon announced some new 3G prepaid plans for $60 and $70 dollars that offered 500MB and 2GB of data, respectively. Now, it looks like the company has silently bumped those allotments up to 2GB and 4GB without touching the price. Android Central reports that the changes go into effect immediately for those with existing plans, but new customers won’t get hold of the new rates until June 6th. It’s a nice bump, but you can probably find lower prices and higher caps elsewhere , although your best option will depend on the coverage in your area

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Verizon extends $60 and $70 prepaid plans to 2GB and 4GB of data

Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE and Huawei are set to face an EU investigation for anti-competitive behavior. Although the pair have both seen moderate success marketing their consumer devices in the region, the investigation is regarding the companies’ infrastructure equipment, which provides the backbone for the industry. In recent years Chinese companies have taken around a quarter of of the EU market, with sales of around €1 billion (roughly $1.3 billion). But according to European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, the success has been due to anti-competitive predatory pricing.

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ZTE and Huawei face EU investigation over predatory pricing

Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we’ll bring you important articles from the previous weeks’ original reports, features, and reviews on The Verge. Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you might want to read again. Continue reading…

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The Weekender: a new ‘Star Trek’, Google’s big event, and government and science as games

It appears that Canada will become the latest country to look into the business practices of search giant Google. The Financial Post reports that Canada’s Competition Bureau — a law-enforcement agency focused on ensuring competitive conditions in the marketplace — has notified Google that it will be investigating the company’s Canadian operations. It’s not clear at this time what the scope of the investigation will be, or what specific Google products and services will be targeted. The investigation will follow a series of other Google investigations, including ones launched by the Federal Trade Commission and EU regulators. Google reached a settlement with the FTC earlier this year; the company offered to make changes to address EU..

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Google’s business practices to be investigated by Canadian Competition Bureau

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Danny. Happy birthday to you

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90 Seconds on The Verge: Yahoo, Wii U, and iTunes

NASA’s Curiosity rover has stolen much of the spotlight on Mars lately with its discoveries of once-watery environments and strange, door-handle shaped rocks . But this week, NASA’s older rover Opportunity drove into the history books , becoming the furthest NASA object to travel on the surface of another body in the solar system. Opportunity’s total 22.22 miles driven on Mars since landing there January 2004 is still short of the all-time record for interplanetary driving, the 23 miles that the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 rover drove over the surface of the Moon in 1973. But Opportunity’s long journey beats NASA’s previous record, the 19.3 miles that NASA astronauts traveled in the Apollo 17 lunar rover in 1972.

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Mars rover Opportunity breaks record for longest NASA drive off Earth

After four years in office, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski is stepping down today. Genachowski pioneered an ambitious plan for rural broadband and a shift towards net neutrality, but his leadership was also seen by some as plodding and ineffective. Regardless, in a candid interview with The New Yorker, Genachowski says he remains an optimist, though he acknowledges limits to how far he was able to change national policy during his tenure.

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FCC Chair Julius Genachowski steps down today, but what will he leave behind?

Video game publisher Electronic Arts had already suggested that its upcoming Star Wars games might not be coming to the Nintendo Wii U , but it looks like the situation is more dire than that. EA tells Kotaku that the company is not currently making any games for the Wii U, period. “We have no games in development for the Wii U currently,” spokesman Jeff Brown told the publication.

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Electronic Arts is no longer developing games for Nintendo’s Wii U

Remember Delicious Library ? The app is a digital pack rat’s best friend, a beautiful way to organize and collect movies you’ve seen, albums you own, and books you’ve read. In its heyday the app inspired a generation of design-obsessed Mac developers , but it never found a home on iPhone, so various apps have sprouted up to fill the gap. Limelight for iPhone is the latest example, created by Everyme co-founder Oliver Cameron

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Limelight: an app to catalog your favorite movies, inspired by Delicious Library

Until now only two third-party apps have been available for Google Glass: The New York Times and Path. Thankfully that’s about to change. Today at Google I/O we learned that several new apps are coming to Google’s headset including Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Tumblr, CNN, and Elle.

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Upcoming Google Glass apps include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and CNN

The Oscar-winning animated movie Brave is a tale of a young princess refusing to obey stereotypes by rebelling against an arranged marriage. When Disney decided to give the movie’s heroine, Merida, a makeover that brings her in line with Disney princesses of the past, the masses rebelled. As Jezebel reports , a Change.org petition against the attempt to sexualize the character reached more than 200,000 signatures, leading Disney to quietly remove the new image from its Disney Princess website. Continue reading…

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Disney abandons sexualization of ‘Brave’ heroine after public backlash

Microsoft previously promised Surface Pro availability in the UK this month, but it’s revealing an exact date and pricing today. Brits will be able to purchase Microsoft’s Windows 8 tablet on May 23rd, priced at £719 for the 64GB model and £799 for the 128GB version. The usual Surface accessories will also be available, including the Touch and Type Covers. Expansion to other European markets will take place on May 30th, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland

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Surface Pro available in the UK on May 23rd, other European countries on May 30th

Following Outlook.com’s recent Skype integration , Microsoft is turning its integration focus to Google services today. Google Talk, an instant messaging service for text and audio, is being integrated directly into Outlook.com, Microsoft’s refreshed webmail service. The surprising move comes just days before Google is rumored to be rounding up its Google Talk and Hangouts services into a unified “Babel” service . Google Talk support just ahead of rumored Babel service Microsoft heard from Outlook.com users that they wanted to chat to their contacts using Google Talk, so the company utilized Google’s APIs to build the support.

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Outlook.com gets Google Talk support, rolling out worldwide this week

Relations between those who build mobile apps and their customers are getting a leg up today with Google’s announcement that all developers will now be able to reply to user reviews in the Play store. The company made the announcement on the Android Developers blog , discussing best practices like identifying and prioritizing bugs based on user impact and getting ideas for new improvements and features. The ability to respond to user reviews first started rolling out nearly a year ago, but now appears to finally be complete, following a false start in January . Continue reading…

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Google Play now lets all developers respond to user reviews

A reboot of astrophysicist Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Journey hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson is finally on its way to television. On Monday, Fox made an official announcement during its advertising upfront presentation at New York’s Beacon Theatre, reports The Los Angeles Times . The series has been in the works for years , and will be making its long-awaited premiere sometime in 2014. Continue reading…

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Neil deGrasse Tyson’s remake of Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ headed to Fox in 2014

Aereo has just announced that it is cutting back on the number of plans it offers by eliminating its $1 per day plan it introduced last summer as well as the option to have a cheaper annual subscription. Now, Aereo will only offer its its $8 monthly plan (which includes 20 hours of DVR storage) or a $12 monthly plan that triples DVR storage to 60 hours. Unfortunately for those who knew they were in for the long haul with Aereo, the $80 annual subscription will no longer be an option, which means customers will definitely be paying more over the course of a year, regardless of how much storage they need. Aereo says that its data showed that customers wanted a “simple” approach to pricing, but it’s a shame that simple approach eliminates… Continue reading…

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Aereo streamlines its plans, eliminates daily and annual subscription options

Google Maps is usually for helping you navigate, but a new game based on Street View is about being almost hopelessly lost. GeoGuessr drops you at a random Street View location across the earth, leaving you to move around the map as much as you’d like before ultimately taking a guess at where you’re actually standing. Though you’ll occasionally get lucky and start off right in front of a hotel billboard printed with a city’s name on it, for the most part you’ll be wandering around country roads, scrounging hints off of signs and license plates, and trying to make it back to civilization.

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Helplessness, despair, and Street View come together in ‘GeoGuessr’ Google Maps game

The New York Times reports that ABC will become the first network to live stream its local programming to users of its Watch ABC app starting this week. Beginning in New York and Philadelphia, the apps will receive a “live” button that allows viewers to tune in to live programming on their mobile devices. ABC’s move to live mobile TV follows an ongoing row between broadcasters TV companies and streaming startup Aereo, after it received a court victory allowing it to connect viewers to over-the-air broadcasts on web-connected devices. In response to Aereo, CBS invested in a streaming company called Syncbak, but ABC will be the first to strike with live service to mobile devices. As Variety reports , the live streaming service will only be..

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ABC will bring live television to mobile devices starting this week

Examining encrypted iPhones and iPads as evidence in police investigations has become so common that Apple has created a waiting list to handle the inundation of help requests that it receives, reports CNET . Though it’s been known that Apple is willing to assist government agencies in opening up inaccessible iOS devices, the extent to which the company helps law enforcement hasn’t been detailed before. Court documents seen by CNET reveal that an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was told that there would be a 7-week wait before Apple would be able to handle a case that he had submitted for assistance. CNET reports that after Apple completes its examination of a device, it provides the investigating..

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Apple reportedly inundated with police requests to decrypt iPhones

One of Iron Man 3′ s defining action scenes is the so-called “barrel of monkeys” scene ( minor spoilers ahead ), in which Tony Stark saves the passengers of Air Force One after a hole is blown in it at 30,000 feet. While it’s a scene that may stretch the laws of physics , it’s also one of the film’s high points — two minutes of edge-of-the-seat drama and visual effects spender. The Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex blog breaks the whole scene down , covering both VFX needed to pull it off as well as the stunts that made it look so convincing. For starters, those falling passengers were skydivers from Red Bull’s skydiving team, with their gear and parachutes removed in post-production. “It’s something that’s incredibly difficult to fake —..

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Behind the VFX and stuntmen who created ‘Iron Man 3′s’ Air Force One rescue scene

Apple’s Find My Friends, a mostly-unrelated concept. Perhaps you’ve heard of Bang With Friends . It’s a rather controversial thing. Simply put, it’s a Facebook and mobile app that lets you pick which of your friends you’d like to “bang.” Oh, but it’s more clever than that: the app won’t reveal your intentions until that friend picks you back. Then, theoretically, you can clandestinely meet for a night of sex without any fear of rejection, or the need for awkward dates, and none of your other friends will be the wiser.

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Forget sex: how the idea behind Bang with Friends could revolutionize social interaction

Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we’ll bring you important articles from the previous weeks’ original reports, features, and reviews on The Verge. Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you might want to read again. Continue reading…

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The Weekender: an entrepreneurial monk, fires in space, and GI Joe