Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/v_FKQl_6Dxg/most-beautiful-items-march-23+29-2013
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Most Beautiful Items: March 23-29, 2013
Scrabble Helper helps you improve your Words With Friends gameplay
The site lets you select one of five dictionaries - Scrabble International/US, Lexulous International/US, and Words With Friends. Some people might say this constitutes cheating -- I think if the other side knows you're doing it, it's definitely not cheating. And it doesn't take the challenge out of the game, because implementing Scrabble Helper's suggestions and deciding which words you'd like to connect with still takes a fair bit of thought.
Very handy, though perhaps not one for the Scrabble puritans in the crowd.
Scrabble Helper helps you improve your Words With Friends gameplay originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Editor's Letter: A not-so simple choice
In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.
At a rather vitriolic (and frequently profane) presentation given to a small group of frequently bemused journalists (myself included), T-Mobile CEO John Legere laid out the company's reinvention. In the interest of keeping things PG I won't repeat the colorful language, but Legere accused the other major carriers of being not only confusing, but also misleading -- ignoring the fact that his own company has, for years, enacted the very same policies. No more. It's time for the UnCarrier to step up.
But, it's important to note that you'll be paying full price, or near to it, for your smartphone.
First is a series of contract-free Simple Choice plans, which are similar to those the company offered before. It's $50 for "unlimited talk + text + web" -- though the data use is indeed limited to 500MB. Stepping up to truly unlimited everything is $20 more, which is a fair bit cheaper than the biggest plans from competing carriers. But, it's important to note that you'll be paying full price, or near to it, for your smartphone.
Filed under: Misc, Apple, Blackberry
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/8r09pXBFfqY/
Apple updates Final Cut Pro, begins new campaign to bring editors back
Apple has updated its Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor applications, coinciding with the launch of a new campaign to bring former Final Cut Pro users back to the software. Final Cut Pro X now supports Sony?s XAVC codec up to 4K resolution, along with ProRes Logic C from ARRI ALEXA cameras. There have been a number of other tweaks and fixes. Motion and Compressor have also had numerous bugs fixed.
This update comes as Apple launches a campaign aimed at wooing back professional video editors that may have turned to other software solutions after the initial launch of Final Cut Pro X. The changes made between Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro X angered a great number of users, who were unable to do things like edit footage from multiple cameras or import their projects from Final Cut Pro 7. Apple?s competitors in the space, Avid and Adobe, successfully convinced many video editors to switch to their software.
Adobe and Avid reps say they've made big gains in the last two years, while Townhill of Apple says Pro X has become the most downloaded version of the software ever. All three competitors agree that it's hard to find independent, third-party market research to verify any claims
Over the past couple of years, Apple has steadily adding features back into Final Cut Pro X, including the aforementioned multi-camera editing, and they have been able to get some users back. Their new campaign to bring editors back to Final Cut Pro features stories from profession video editors that are well-known within their industry talking about how they benefit from Final Cut Pro X?s features, including its speed.
- $299 - Mac App Store
Source: The LA Times
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/45nkKbeyxXs/story01.htm
Friday, March 29, 2013
The Terrible Truth About Toddlers and Touchscreens
Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/03/the-terrible-truth-about-toddlers-and-touchscreens/
Google Voice Search learns Latin American Spanish, Indonesian, and Malaysian
Google's official blog post offers some interesting insights into the process of collecting and analyzing the speech data needed to expand support. Thousands of hours were spent gathering voice samples and choosing key regional accents to analyze, and International Program Manager Linne Ha is clearly very appreciative of the Google users who helped the company complete the expansion. Without an enthusiastic base of users to lend a hand, Google Voice Search's polyglot powers would have been nearly impossible to deliver.
Google Voice Search learns Latin American Spanish, Indonesian, and Malaysian originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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INTERNATIONAL RECTIFIER INTERNATIONAL GAME TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES (IBM) INTERDIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS
Ultima Forever for iOS gets previewed at GDC 2013
We got to play around a bit with Ultima Forever: Quest of the Avatar at GDC, and here's what it does -- it brings the classic hardcore MMO model to a more casual audience. Players party up in groups of four to delve into dungeon romps and dragon battles that last five minutes and up, depending on how much time you and your buddies have.
You've got all of the standard trappings of a classic RPG in Ultima Forever - slaying monsters, gaining experience points, leveling up, unlocking abilities, and amassing loot - but there's a ton of storyline to chew through here too. You've got to remember that Ultima has been around for ages, and so there's a lot of lore to pull on. There's a tie-in with Facebook so you can keep in touch with any players there and coordinate your next raid.
By far my favorite mechanic of the whole game is how they handle virtues. Making certain decisions in dialog and completing quests will have players gain different kinds of virtue points. Every city values a handful of virtues, so the more highly-ranked you are in one of its associated virtues, the more quests are available to you in that city. You even earn virtue points for helping out your underlevelled friends on quests.
I've poured more than a few hours into Ultima Online, so it's great to see the world coming to iOS in a social, bite-sized way. The only downer is that there's no crafting or housing systems as of yet, which were major staples in the older games. Fingers are crossed that they'll bring those options in through a future update.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/FRmf35SFsIs/story01.htm
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