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One click; just one single well-aimed click. That's all you get in Boomshine. That single click triggers a chain reaction; circles start exploding, and other circles colliding with the shockwaves explode as well, creating their own shockwaves, which then catch other circles. It's been done before, yes, but this one is a great iteration. The soundtrack is mellow, with lots of piano and some nice percussion (not electronic - it sounds like drums). At each level you need to make a certain number of circles explode to go on to the next level. I got up to level 12, where you get 60 circles and need to make 55 of them explode. And then I kept trying and trying, but simply couldn't get it. I did get to 54 circles a couple of times, but as they say, you don't get points for trying. There's no time limit, so you can carefully study the pattern of motion and place your click at the exact right place to create the best chain reaction. I've found that clicking near the middle of the screen works quite well, especially if the balls are slowly moving in that direction. By the time the first shockwave dies off, the oncoming balls usually hit it and the chain reaction continues. What level did you reach? Screenshots please!
If you're lucky enough to own an Xperia Play -- Sony Ericsson's new Gingerbread-powered smartphone-cum-gamepad -- you can now buy PlayStation (PSX) titles from the Android Market. There are five titles currently available, all priced at £3.99: Syphon Filter, MediEvil, Cool Boarders 2, Destruction Derby, and Jumping Flash. They don't have an American price yet, but that will surely change once the Xperia Play launches in the States. Two important questions remain unanswered: How big are these games? The Market descriptions say the games are only 5MB, but that sounds incredibly unlikely -- and more importantly, will it be possible to 'spoof' the Xperia Play and download PSX games onto other Gingerbread-powered phones, like the Nexus S? In other news, the PlayStation emulator PSX4droid was recently removed from the Android Market. This obviously has nothing to do with today's release of first-party PlayStation games.
Recently, Google has been busy beefing up Latitude to make it more competitive with other location apps -- and more fun to use. Location history was added recently, iOS users can post check-ins via Latitude, and now Google has begun rolling out location-based deals which are tied to the service. If you're in the U.S., you can now score local savings at participating merchants by checking in with Latitude. Google will also be offering "status deals," which users can unlock by visiting a particular merchant on a regular basis. Mashable notes three status levels: regular, VIP, and guru -- though partners can apparently customize those titles if they choose. Right now deals are available from merchants like American Eagle Outfitters, Arby's, Finish Line, Macy's, Quiznos, and RadioShack.
We'll take a break from football -- true addicts can give the Pro Bowl and Senior Bowl a look -- for one weekend before the big game, but there are other options. That includes hockey now, of course, but also a few premiering and returning shows. Look below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames.
The Following If you need a few more connections in your next six degrees of Kevin Bacon game, tune in to The Following, which pits Bacon as an FBI agent chasing down serial killer (and leader of other killers) James Purefoy. It's been heavily promoted, but we'll find out tonight if the high profile cast and production add up to a show worth watching -- it didn't work so well for ABC's Last Resort, which is airing its series finale this week. (Fox, January 21st, 9PM)
Spartacus: War of the Damned The last season of Starz' hit Spartacus: War of the Damned kicks off Friday night, and should bring along all the associated violence we've come to expect from the series. As Marcus Crassus and Julius Caesar join the fight things are only going to get more interesting, if you've somehow missed out on the show till now you can check out a trailer embedded after the break. The special effects have never surpassed the level of most made-for-Syfy movies, but somehow it manages to become more than the sum of its parts. (Starz, January 25th, 9PM)
The Cave The next adventure game from Double Fine, The Cave hits a slew of platforms this week. Available for download on Steam, PSN, Xbox Live and Wii U eShop, it lets player's pick their own squad of adventures and explore -- what else -- a cave. Somehow that area will include an amusement park, castle and even a ready to launch nuke, but we're most interested to see how it integrates the Wii U GamePad for camera and character switching. ($14.99, multiple platforms / dates)
Blu-ray & Games
End of Watch
Death Race 3: Inferno
Searching for Sugar Man
The Paperboy
The Quiet Man
For A Good Time, Call...
Pina
The Cave (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, PC)
Monday
The Following (series premiere), Fox, 9PM
Spurs/76ers, TNT, 7PM
Lakers/Bulls, TNT, 9:30PM
The Bachelor, ABC, 8PM
Bones, Fox, 8PM
Continuum, Syfy, 8PM
The Carrie Diaries, CW, 8PM
How I Met Your Mother, CBS, 8PM
Switched at Birth, ABC Family, 8PM
WWE Raw, USA, 8PM
2 Broke Girls, CBS, 9PM
90210 (winter premiere), NBC, 9PM
Being Human, Syfy, 9PM
Bunheads, ABC Family, 9PM
Mike & Molly, CBS, 9:30PM
Hawaii Five-0, CBS, 10PM
Lost Girl, Syfy, 10PM
Deception, NBC, 10PM
Castle, ABC, 10PM
Catfish, MTV, 11PM
Tuesday
The Taste (series premiere), ABC, 8PM
The Ultimate Fighter (season premiere), FX, 8PM
White Collar (winter premiere), USA, 10PM
Raising Hope, Fox, 8PM
Betty White's Off Their Rockers, NBC, 8 & 8:30PM
Hart of Dixie, CW, 8PM
Pretty Little Liars, ABC Family, 8PM
Ben & Kate, Fox, 8:30PM
Go On, NBC, 9PM
The Lying Game, CW, 9PM
New Girl, Fox, 9PM
Happy Endings, ABC, 9PM
Emily Owens M.D., CW, 9PM
Dual Survival, Discovery, 9PM
The Mindy Project, Fox, 9:30PM
The New Normal , NBC, 9:30PM
Africa, Discovery, 10PM
Cougar Town, TBS, 10PM
Justified, FX, 10PM
Private Practice (series finale), ABC, 10PM
Parenthood (season finale), NBC, 10PM
The Burn with Jeff Ross, Comedy Central, 10:30PM
Flashpoint (series finale), Ion, 11PM
Wednesday
American Idol, Fox, 8PM
Arrow, CW, 8PM
The Middle, ABC, 8PM
Nuggets/Rockets, NBA TV, 8PM
The Neighbors, ABC, 8:30PM
WWE Main Event, Ion, 8PM
Criminal Minds, CBS, 9PM
Supernatural CW, 9PM
Modern Family, ABC, 9PM
Inside the NFL, Showtime, 9PM
Suburgatory, ABC, 9:30PM
Workaholics, Comedy Central, 10PM
CSI, CBS, 10PM
Necessary Roughness (winter premiere), USA, 10PM
American Horror Story (season finale), FX, 10PM
NFL Turning Point, NBC Sports Network, 10PM
Nashville, ABC, 10PM
Unsung: Isaac Hayes (season premiere), TV One, 10PM
The Kroll Show, Comedy Central, 10:30PM
Thursday
30 Rock, NBC, 8PM
Impact Wrestling, Spike TV, 8PM
The Vampire Diaries, CW, 8PM
Last Resort (series finale), ABC, 8PM
Knicks/Celtics TNT, 8PM
American Idol, Fox, 8PM
Parks & Recreation, NBC, 8:30PM
Beauty & the Beast (winter premiere), CW, 9PM
Glee (winter premiere), Fox, 9PM
Grey's Anatomy, ABC, 9PM
The Office, NBC, 9PM
1600 Penn, NBC, 9:30PM
Anger Management, FX, 9:30PM
King of the Nerds, TBS, 10PM
Archer, FX, 10PM
Bellator MMA Live, Spike TV, 10PM
Suits, USA, 10PM
Legit, FX, 10:30PM
Clippers/Suns, TNT, 10:30PM
Totally Biased with W Kamau Bell, FX, 11PM
Friday
Spartacus: War of the Damned (season premiere), Starz, 9PM
Spurs/Mavericks, ESPN, 8PM
Nikita, CW, 8PM
WWE SmackDown, Syfy, 8PM
Malibu Country, ABC, 8:30PM
CSI: NY, CBS, 9PM
Friday Night Fights, ESPN2, 9PM
Real time with Bill Maher, HBO, 10PM
Banshee, Cinemax, 10PM
Merlin, Syfy, 10PM
Portlandia, IFC, 10PM
Saturday
Senior Bowl, NFL Network, 4PM
UFC on Fox 6, Fox, 8PM
US Figure Skating Championships, NBC, 8PM
Abominable Snowman, Syfy, 9PM
Saturday Night Live: Adam Levine / Kendrick Lamar, 11:30PM
Opera, the company behind the Opera mini web browser for iPhone and iPad is now working on a new browser which it is calling “Ice”. The new browser will use WebKit and was shown off at an internal meeting just before Christmas. The guys from Pocket-lint managed to get a copy of a video from the meeting and some interesting information on this new browser.
In a video shown to us of an internal "all-hands" meeting held before Christmas, Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera, outlined the company's strategy for 2013. Afterwards, product managers took to the stage to demo the new browser, which will be run on the WebKit, not Presto, platform.
The new Opera Ice browser will be based around hiding the technology as much as possible and embracing rich applications. It will ditch all buttons and instead use gestures to control key elements like forwards and backwards. "This is a full touch and tablet-focused browser," said the product manager in the video we've seen. "Most are taking a PC browser and squishing [it] into a tablet, or they are taking a mobile browser and blowing it up to fill the space."
The new offering from Opera will not replace its existing Opera mini mobile browser. The company sees that as still having an important role to fill in bringing new customers to its browser platform and then hopefully moving up to the new “Ice” system.
The browser does look like a good option however for any alternative browser to be a permanent replacement for mobile Safari it needs to be able to be set as the default browser. Until Apple gives us that option it is always going to be hard to use it full time. Take a look at the Opera “Ice” browser in action in the video below and let us know what you think! It should be formally announced at Mobile World Congress in February.
Corel seems to be on a roll lately; after releasing WinZip System Utilities just last week, this morning the company announced VideoStudio Pro X4. VideoStudio Pro is aimed at home users and small business professionals who want to create professional-looking videos, but without the hassle, steep learning curve and price of Adobe Premiere Pro and the likes. This new version introduces several features:
Stop motion animation: You can now capture still frames using a webcam, camcorder or DSLR and use them to produce an animation. Tools such as "onion skin view" let you compare the previous image in the sequence with the current one and make the animation as smooth as possible.
Processor optimization: Corel says the app is optimized for Intel's new Sandy Bridge systems, and have shown us some graphs with very impressive numbers. We've been unable to test this particular point, but if you have a recent-generation Intel or AMD Fusion system, VideoStudio performance should be blazing. Even on our older test system performance was quite impressive.
Customizable workspace: You can drag the video preview window to your secondary monitor (if you have one) and tweak just about any other element in the window layout. Once done, you can save your ideal workspace in one of three slots.
Share-to-Web: VideoStudio Pro X4 hooks directly into YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and Flickr, so you don't even have to launch a browser to upload your final product. Edit, produce and share from within the app itself.
Smart Package: Video projects typically consist of many files; Smart Package lets you bundle all video assets for a given project into one ZIP file which you can password-protect and keep in a safe place once you're done editing.
I've had a chance to play around with a pre-release version for a few days, and have put it through its paces editing a short video for my day job. Overall, I've been impressed with how easy it was to create pro-looking results. If you do any sort of video editing but are leery of the investment other apps require (both in dollars and effort), VideoStudio Pro is well worth checking out. To see a bit of the interface itself and what the app can do, watch the video after the jump. Note: We'll be running a give-away of ten VideoStudio Pro X4 licenses later today, each worth $100 USD. Keep your eyes peeled for the giveaway post!
Right now, the Moon and Jupiter are close enough that they look more like next door neighbors of differing size than two planetary bodies vast distances away from each other. Look out of any window (assuming it's dark where you are) and you should be able to see the duo less than a pen length apart -- which is the last time we'll be able to see this conjunction until 2026. If you aren't in a position to watch the celestial event from the comfort of your hemisphere, the Slooh Space Camera is broadcasting the galactic happenings right now. If you'd like to watch, hit the source link to catch the live feed.
Slooh Space Camera to Broadcast Live Feeds of Super Close Moon / Jupiter Conjunction
On Monday, January 21st, the Moon will appear amazingly close in the sky to the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter. The Waxing Gibbous Moon - the lunar phase between first quarter Moon and a full Moon - will be approximately one degree south of Jupiter appearing to be only a pen width apart. This will be closest conjunction between the two celestial bodies until 2026.
Slooh Space Camera will cover the event live on Slooh.com, free to the public, Monday, January 21st at 6:00 PM PST / 9:00 PM EST / 02:00 UTC (1/22) - International times here: http://goo.gl/xySeo - accompanied by real-time discussions with Slooh President, Patrick Paolucci, Astronomy Magazine columnist, Bob Berman, and astro-imager Matt Francis of the Prescott Observatory. Viewers can watch live on their PC or IOS/Android mobile device at t-minus zero.
By good fortune, the Great Red Spot will be traveling across the middle of Jupiter's disk during Slooh's live broadcast.
If skies are clear, individuals can view the conjunction by looking at the Moon and finding the brightest star in the sky next to the Moon, which will be Jupiter. Individuals with binoculars or telescope may capture more detail of Jupiter, including some of the satellites.
The developer of iCab Mobile, a feature-rich alternative to the Safari Web browser on iPad and iPhone, has been ordered by Apple to remove its ability to download and install JavaScript modules. Presumably it's not the fact that iCab can execute JavaScript that's causing Apple to apoplectically puff and splutter, but rather its ability to download modules. Both Apple and Google frown upon apps that contain market-like functionality, and someone at Apple probably thought that iCab's JavaScript modules looked like a bit too much like discrete apps. Alexander Clauss, iCab's developer, has rather a lot to say on the matter. "Maybe if I would have called the modules 'smart bookmarks' and would have made installing them much more complicated, Apple would have never asked to remove the ability to download them from the internet. The great user experience of installing modules has probably created a suspicion that these modules are more than just a piece of JavaScript code. From a pure technical point of view, if Apple does not allow to download modules (JavaScript code), Apple would also have to disallow to load web pages in general, because these do also contain JavaScript code." In conclusion, to circumvent Apple's draconian decree, iCab Mobile now simply comes bundled with some 20 JavaScript modules. The ability to download modules made by third-party developers has been disabled, however -- but even then, Clauss says that you can simply contact him and ask for your module to be bundled with the next version of iCab. Download iCab Mobile for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch ($1.99)
What better time to announce a smartphone than in the lull between CES and MWC? Micromax is using the occasion to reveal another five-inch handset, the Canvas HD. The display packs a 1,280 x 720 resolution, and inside you'll find a MediaTek MT6589 1.2 GHz quad-core processor and a 2100mAh battery. The phone's also got an 8-megapixel rear camera and expandable storage up to 32GB. All of that's powered by Android 4.1. The Canvas HD is coming to India the first week of February, carrying a Rs. 15,000 ($279) price tag. Assorted additional information can be found in the press release after the break.
Show full PR text
Micromax launches Canvas HD to strengthen phablet leadership
Micromax, India's leading handset manufacture today announced its partnership with MediaTek, the leading chipset manufacturers for the launch of their first quad core processor phone -A116 Canvas HD.
Designed for comfort and convenience, the Canvas HD is powered by MediaTek's MT6589 1.2 GHz quad core processor and run on Android Jelly Bean. With an HD IPS screen with a HD resolution of 1280x720 and a color depth of 16.7 million, the phone comes with superb graphics and HD viewing experience. Supported by a 2100mAh battery, it is the ideal phone for the young generation who is always on the lookout for better, faster and savvier smart phones on the go!
Commenting on the launch and association with MediaTek, Mr. Deepak Mehrotra, Chief Executive Officer, Micromax said, "At Micromax, we constantly strive to innovate and develop great technological experiences for our consumers. Today's launch marks our association with MediaTek to bring forth our first quad core phone in this segment, offering consumers a great user experience with latest features and added functionality." He further added, "We are excited with the success of Canvas 2, which has clearly established Micromax as number one player in the new 5" phablet category in India. We are looking forward to similar success with the new phone being unveiled today."
The A116 Canvas HD promises superior quality graphics, multi-tasking and improved application performance. The phone sports an 8MP rear camera with LED flash and multiple camera settings such as night mode, 4X zoom - to further enhance the superiority of the memorable moments. 3G enabled A116 will help users in faster browsing, downloading attachments and watching streaming videos with excellent quality. The users can download HD quality videos and watch them on their phone without compromising with the quality. Users now can get to keep all their downloaded music by storing them in the phone's external memory which is expandable up to 32GB. Speaking at the occasion, Dr. Finbarr Moynihan, General Manager - Business Development at MediaTek, said, "In less than 2 years of launching our first smartphone chipset, MediaTek's shipments in this category have grown more than ten times, with 110 million units in 2012. As the world's first commercialized quad-core Cortex-A7 SoC, the MT6589 is an innovative solution that accelerates product development, simplifies differentiation, and offers the best possible experience that mid to high-end smart device owners desire. Micromax shares our core philosophy of pushing the bar on innovation and bringing it within the reach of the masses. We are delighted that India's leading youth mobile brand has chosen MediaTek to power its top-end mobile smartphones."