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Google Fiber coming to your city, with its promise of gigabit Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than what most of us currently put up with, is about as awesome as winning the lottery often enough to buy Time Warner Cable yourself and using all of the company's resources to funnel a connection to your house and yours only. Thus far the service has only appeared in a few parts of the country, namely Kansas City, Austin, and Provo. Today Google has announced that Fiber may be heading to 34 additional cities spread across nine metropolitan areas.
In between those countless hours spent cutting fruit, flinging birds, and laughing at cats, it might be beneficial to put your mind up to something more productive. Lynda.com already provides a way to learn new skills from the comfort of your desk, but its pre-existing Android app could use some tender loving care. Today, it has received it. Lots of it.
Pathogen is a turn-based strategy game, but it doesn't involve armor-clad warriors waging war against hordes of miscellaneous fiends. Instead, it tasks shapes of one color with overcoming similar shapes of another hue. It's the kind of simplistic, easy-to-grasp, abstract experience that tends to be very successful on mobile platforms. Now, after having made itself cozy in a competing app store a couple months ago, Pathogen has found its way onto Google Play.
LG teased the G2 Mini a week ago, announcing that more information would come on February 24th at Mobile World Congress. Well, the company has gotten ahead of itself, pre-announcing the device and confirming a few specs. The "small" version of LG's flagship, unfortunately, won't match its power, screen quality, or camera. The G2 Mini will ship with either a Snapdragon 400 or Nvidia Tegra 4i chip, a 4-7-inch 540x960 display, an 8MP camera, a 2440mAh battery, and just 8GB of internal memory (alleviated somewhat by a microSD card slot).
Frat boys who have graduated into post-campus life know that there's nothing worse for someone accustomed to being the life of the party than having a keg run out of beer. It's the kind of social embarrassment that few reputations can bounce back from. That (I imagine) is why nearly 300 people have contributed over $30,000 to the Kegbot Kickstarter project, which promises a tablet-powered beer kegerator. Its $15,000 funding goal stands broken with several days remaining before the campaign ends.
Free-to-play Android games aren't difficult to come by, but this one has a little more going for it than mere affordability and simple play mechanics. CastleStorm made quite the name for itself on consoles this past fall, and now a touch-friendly adaptation is hitting Android as a private beta. The game combines tower defense with destructive physics, crisp graphics, fully voiced characters, and over 100 quests. The game isn't entirely free, as you need to spend money to get your hands on some in-game items, but with any luck, this won't hinder gameplay too much.
It turns out Spotify Connect has a very useful feature that the company hasn't done much to make immediately obvious. The service, which lets you stream music to WiFi-connected speakers from your smartphone or tablet, also lets you pump music to other Android devices. The devices don't even have to be on the same network, for that matter. You can connect from an LTE network, as you can see in the screenshots below.
Light Flow is the type of app that is distinctively Android. It's both basic and complex at the same time, choosing a single aspect of your phone to mess around with (in this case, its notification LED) and providing a bunch of options for doing so. The latest update brings along a bunch of features, but it's particularly interesting if you own a Sony smartwatch or Xperia phone with an illumination bar.
VH1 watchers, it's time to whip out those Android phones or tablets, type in those TV subscription credentials, and stream full episodes of your favorite (no? second? okay, third favorite) shows until that tiny battery icon starts blinking. Now that an Android app is available in the Play Store, that's all that's standing between you and hours of irresistible, overly dramatic, reality TV.
The leaks of the HTC M8 keep rolling in. The latest one comes to us courtesy of @evleaks, and it shows a possible black version of HTC's upcoming flagship with the new Sense 6. Oh, and it's in a case. Though it looks like there's nothing behind the cutout on the upper right side, so as usual, make of these leaks what you will.
Baby monitors are useful, but they're kind of dumb. Think walkie-talkie dumb. But we live in the world of smartphones now, and these nifty little things are capable of replacing just about anything. With the new Dormi Android app, you can take two Android devices and turn them into a baby monitor that won't weigh you down.
Samsung has been very cautious in rolling out its KitKat update thus far, with even most Galaxy S4 owners still waiting around on Jelly Bean. This doesn't even take into account all the millions of other Galaxy smartphones and tablets that often take a backseat to the company's flagship. Yet Samsung has now provided a list of all the devices it intends to bump up to Android 4.4.2 before it's all said and done.
HTC hasn't built up the best reputation when it comes to supporting its devices, but the company is working to change that. So far it has issued updates to the HTC One relatively quickly, getting KitKat out before Samsung. A few days ago, HTC took to Reddit to announce a new two year commitment to support new North American flagships with Android updates for two years. Now the company has made this promise official, enshrining it as part of its new HTC Advantage.
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon will never be the same. It can't be. Fallon has moved on to replace Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, and tonight's his first day on the job. If the final episode of Late Night wasn't enough to hype you up for the big event, NBC has now released a dedicated app into the Play Store. And with it, you can start to enjoy Fallon in the daytime, too.
Numerous Alleged Sony Xperia Tablet Z2 Press Renders Leak Onto Twitter
Numerous Alleged Sony Xperia Tablet Z2 Press Renders Leak Onto Twitter
Update: @evleaks may not have been the first one to get pictures of the Sony Xperia Tablet Z2 out, but better late than never (if you could even really call this late). Here he is with an image that looks to confirm what @gadgetleaks has shared.
The Neo is a more affordable version of the Galaxy Note 3 that comes with a few compromises, most notably regarding its screen and camera. Samsung officially announced the handset at the end of last month and eventually revealed that it would not come to the US or the UK, but it would still be available in many other markets across the globe. The Neo hasn't launched yet, but Samsung has now made the device's kernel source files available to all.
Samsung's HomeSync took a while to hit store shelves, and it isn't exactly the type of product people needed to hold their breath for. It primarily allows users to stream content from their Samsung Galaxy devices to their televisions, but it can also store music and games on its internal hard drive. It's cool, but there are already numerous ways of doing this, and judging from Amazon consumer reviews, this may not be one of the better ones. But if you want one, the Samsung HomeSync is currently available for off as a flash deal.
Do you have what it takes to be the king of 1930's Chicago? Probably not. This is a world filled to the brim with gambling, drive-by shootings, and political corruption. Okay, the pixelated visuals found in this old Amiga classic might be all that really separates this experience from the modern-day city, so if you know these streets or have the stones to step back in time and prove your mettle, a port of the King of Chicago is now available on Google Play.
Doomdark's Revenge is filled with large-scale, fantasy-based warfare, but don't expect much in the way of spectacle here. This is the sequel to The Lords of Midnight, a game originally released for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC (kudos if you can recall more than one of these products) in 1984. No, fans haven't had to wait thirty years for a sequel. Doomdark's Revenge first confronted players in 1985, but here it is again, updated for a new generation of mobile gamers.
Qualcomm has released the software development kit for its Toq smartwatch, which could be just the shot in the arm the limited product needs. The Toq's colorful Mirasol e-ink display, which is easily visible in sunlight, gives the smartwatch a real advantage over competitors. But without more compelling functionality, it struggles to justify its relatively expensive price point. Hopefully there's enough interest in the product for developers to flock to the SDK.