Eric Ravenscraft
Eric is a snarky technophile with a taste for the unusual. When he's not obsessing about Android, you can usually find him obsessing about movies, psychology, or the perfect energy drink. Eric weaves his own special blend of snark, satire, and comedy into all his articles.

05
Apr
evolutiontiny

[Updated: Here Are The Winners!] Giveaway: Reach The Next Step Of Your Wardrobe Evolution With One Of Ten Free Android Shirts, Or $5 Off ($7.99) If You're Impatient

Posted by in Contests / Giveaways
Last Updated: April 9th, 2012

Spring is coming. That means it's time to refresh your summer wardrobe. Get started with this shirt sporting a diagram of the scientific theory of Android evolution. We're giving away ten of these shirts to you, our lovely readers. If you've got a hot date this weekend, though, and you need to impress someone with your advanced techno-genetics in a hurry, you can use the coupon code "ANDROIDPOLICE" (no quotes) to get the shirt for $7.99.

This contest is now over. Here are our winners, selected at random:
  1. duplissi
  2. Jason Chapa
  3. Shane (lord)
  4. Zach B
  5. mr
  6. Dave (rock)
  7. Adam (webm)
  8. Andrew Simeroth
  9. IAmTheBatman
  10. Anthony Curreri

Congratulations, guys - all of you will be contacted for your information in the near future!

05
Apr
scrambledtiny

Zynga Releases Scramble With Friends Deluxe For $0.99, Removes Ads And Lets You Earn Tokens Twice As Fast

Posted by in Games, News

Your down time is Zynga's bread and butter. Between Words with, Hanging with, and Scramble with Friends, Zynga has a pretty big monopoly on your social gaming. Today, the casual gaming giant is building out new territory in your world with a paid version of Scramble with Friends. This version removes those pesky ads and also doubles your token-earning fun. These tokens, by the way, are not the worst thing in the world.

scrambled1 scrambled2 scrambled3

If you're unfamiliar with how tokens work in Scramble with Friends, you earn one token, required to play one game, every twenty minutes. While this is annoying, especially for a paid app, it does also kind of force users to take a break.

04
Apr
2012-04-04 13h54_45

Google Signs Deal With Paramount, Adds 500 Movies To The Play Store, Many Of Them Actually Good

Posted by in Google, News

In case you were wondering if a rebrand was the only thing Google was doing to set itself up as a content provider, rest easy. Google's still working at signing those content deals. Today's deal is with Paramount. You may remember Paramount as the company that likes to throw stars at you while you're flying over a mountain. This new content deal brings 500 movies to the Play Store, and surprise! They don't all suck!

2012-04-04 14h01_54

While today's Staff Picks may be a little biased towards today's deal, you can tell right from the main page that this is big for the Play Store's movie selection.

04
Apr
projectglasstiny

Google Outs "Project Glass" Google Glasses Prototypes, Wants Your Input On How Your Face Is Going To Look In The Future

Posted by in Google, News

They may not be available for sale yet, but Google would like you to know that the future is coming. Dubbed "Project Glass", Google has released some photos of what the now-confirmed Google Glasses might look like when released, alongside a video demonstrating how the UI might work. It's all just show and no tell right now, but it's enough to whet our appetite.

It's not quite enough, though, to allay our reservations. For starters, the glasses, while not particularly gaudy and actually somewhat stylish, seem to only have one tiny lens hovering over a small portion of the right eye.

04
Apr
nextissuetiny

"Netflix For Magazines" Is Finally Here, $10-15 A Month Nets You All The Magazines You Can Read From Next Issue

Posted by in Applications, News

We've heard whispers that the powers that be have been working on a bulk subscription service for magazines. Now, they're finally delivering it. Next Issue offers users a very Netflix-like subscription service that includes unlimited access to current and some older issues of a selection of magazines for $10 a month. Or, for $15 a month you can get a slightly bigger selection of magazines. Yes, it's tiered.

nextissuebig1

At the moment, the selection is particularly small, though it does offer quite a few big name magazines. In that way it's sort of the opposite of Netflix, which tends to have a wide selection of movies and TV shows you've never heard of.

03
Apr
2012-04-04 01h54_28

[Leak] Either Samsung Or AT&T Can't Keep A Secret: Ice Cream Sandwich For The Galaxy Note Leaks This Time

Posted by in Galaxy Note (GT-N7000), Leaks, News

As the old saying goes, "When it rains, it leaks ICS builds for a whole lot of Samsung devices on AT&T's network in a short time frame." At least that's how I learned the saying as a boy. While it didn't make sense then, now that Android 4.0.3 has been leaked for the Galaxy Note, rounding out the Samsung/AT&T trifecta of flagship devices, it all makes sense.

As with the previous leaks, also courtesy of RootzWiki, this build flashed its build.prop badge at the door to let us know it's the real deal:

ro.build.fingerprint=samsung/SGH-I717/SGH-I717:4.0.3/IML74K/144:user/release-keys

noteics1 noteics2

Indeed, it looks like Note users can now join the Samsung family at the dessert table.

02
Apr
onlivetiny

OnLive's Easter Sale Is Going On Right Now, Get Lifetime Passes To Many Games For Up To 75% Off

Posted by in Deals, News

I hope you weren't attached to all that money that you've got sitting around. OnLive is currently running a sale on a selection of its games library. The game streaming company is offering up to 75% of the cost of lifetime licenses for a variety of games including Arkham City, Borderlands, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! No, seriously.

2012-04-02 16h51_18

It appears as though the bulk, if not all, of the sale is being applied to full licenses, which, for those just joining us, means that as long as OnLive exists, you can stream the game to any device you own.

02
Apr
alienstiny

A Hundred 5-Star Reviews For $150 (Or: How Cheaters Game The Android Play Store Using Mechanical Turk)

Posted by in Apps/Games, News

Way back in the day, if you wanted to know if a piece of software was safe, reliable, or usable before you opened the package, you were out of luck. Once you rip that shrink wrap, you're stuck with it. The app markets of today are, by comparison, a breath of fresh air. A litany of user reviews let you know up front if a piece of software is crap or not before you download. Unfortunately, sometimes developers, like Noosoft Games, abuse this system by, as an example, using the Mechanical Turk system from Amazon to pay for 5-star reviews.

What Is Mechanical Turk

For the uninitiated, here's a little background: Amazon's Mechanical Turk system (named after an 18th century chess-playing automaton) is a platform for businesses to farm out minor, tedious tasks (called HITs) without hiring full-time employees, and lets users perform those small tasks for a pittance.

30
Mar
translatetiny

Google Launches Translator Toolkit, Makes It Easier To Bridge The Language Gap In Your Apps

Posted by in Google, News

Google must be trying to warm my heart lately. After a video circulated of a legally blind man behind the wheel of Google's self-driving car made its rounds recently, Google now announces its Translator Toolkit. The new toolkit offers developers a suite of services for localizing their apps. This is the future we all dreamed of.

translate1

The toolkit will allow developer to upload certain files from their apps to translate the text to another language. Of course, this will be about as good as Google's translations are already (read: okay, but not great). However, developers can then share their translations with local translators who can fine tune the results in the Translator Toolkit's WYSIWYG editor.

30
Mar
2012-03-30 12h50_27

HTC One X Handily Beats The Galaxy Nexus And Xperia S In Camera Speed Test Video, Shows Off Burst Mode Just To Brag

Posted by in HTC, News, One X (Endeavor)

Begun, the camera shutter wars have. Ever since Samsung and Google debuted the Galaxy Nexus' zero shutter lag feature, handset makers have been cranking up their camera apps. Sony's Xperia S is a 12MP monster camera with a fast shutter, but the real speed demon here is the HTC One X. In the video below, the only area the One X loses is in not having a dedicated camera button. As a side note, manufacturers, why don't your phones with amazing cameras have dedicated camera buttons?

As you can see in the first tests, the Xperia S beats the HTC One X in the sleep mode test because it can wake directly to the camera app via the dedicated camera button.

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