Saturday, June 25, 2011

Ask DLS: Cross-platform multiplayer games that work on Android and iOS

askdls
Here's one for our knowledgeable commenters: I recently bought my girlfriend an iPad. I, on the other hand, own an Android device. And now we're looking for games we can play using both devices.

There's no dearth of multiplayer games either for Android or for iOS. But finding multiplayer games that can cross the platform boundary is an entirely different matter.

Jay recently posted Words with Friends which is one such game. It's actually an ideal example, because it's turn-based so you don't necessarily both have to be next to your device at the same time (great for long-distance gaming).

But what other examples are there? What multiplayer games are there that let iOS users play with Android users?

[Why am I now humming 'Ebony and Ivory'? -Ed]

Ask DLS: Cross-platform multiplayer games that work on Android and iOS originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to get a handle on mobile device management

It was only a few years ago that mobile device management was as simple as using Research in Motion's BlackBerry Enterprise Server as the hub for all your devices.

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Friday, June 24, 2011

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It's Back: The Apple Television Rumor

Apple TV could be a reality, and not the set-top box that is currently named Apple TV. Rumors of Apple entering the television business have been tossed about for years already, and the latest ones point to an iOS-powered HDTV, perhaps as early as late this year. The source is a former Apple executive, and his information is that Apple will...

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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Microsoft Adds Serious Improvements To SkyDrive Cloud Services

Ah, the cloud. The wonderful, wonderful cloud. It's so big, so mysterious. And these days, it's a bandwagon that's worth jumping on. Google Music, iCloud, and now, SkyDrive. Granted, SkyDrive as a name has been around longer than those other two, but Microsoft is clearly upping their game in order to keep up with the Joneses. The company's...

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CrunchGear Week in Review: Animal Shots Edition

Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: ?Rotary Mechanical? Cell Phone Concept Isn?t Practical, But It Looks Great Lomo?s New La Sardina Camera Is Cheap And Sardine-Can-Like Panda Itazura Bank: Super-Cute Piggy Bank (Video) Meet The Robostir, A Robotic Soup Stirrer SugarSync Adds Mobile Device Management To Send Files To Devices From [...]

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Ask DLS: Cross-platform multiplayer games that work on Android and iOS

askdls
Here's one for our knowledgeable commenters: I recently bought my girlfriend an iPad. I, on the other hand, own an Android device. And now we're looking for games we can play using both devices.

There's no dearth of multiplayer games either for Android or for iOS. But finding multiplayer games that can cross the platform boundary is an entirely different matter.

Jay recently posted Words with Friends which is one such game. It's actually an ideal example, because it's turn-based so you don't necessarily both have to be next to your device at the same time (great for long-distance gaming).

But what other examples are there? What multiplayer games are there that let iOS users play with Android users?

[Why am I now humming 'Ebony and Ivory'? -Ed]

Ask DLS: Cross-platform multiplayer games that work on Android and iOS originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, June 20, 2011

Sony Ericsson Selects NXP's NFC Solution For Future Android Handsets

Sony Ericsson and NFC in the same sentence? It's true! Only one major SE phone to date (the Xperia Arco in Japan) has been released with NFC, but that single handset will soon be joined by a number of others. The handset maker has just chosen NXP's NFC solution for future Android-based smartphones, paving the way for yet another handset maker...

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IBM's new future: Quantum computing

IBM is marking its 100th anniversary by celebrating its record in technology innovation. It created DRAM, the disk drive and the magnetic strips used on credit cards, among many other inventions. It is one of the most inventive companies in the world.

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Sunday, June 19, 2011

Samsung Chromebook: Hands-On Visual Tour

Finally, the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 surfaces. Early verdict: This beautiful, slightly pricey gadget adds elegance to Google's Mobile OS.

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Senators' Bill Would Muzzle the Tracker in Your Pocket

Federal legislation aimed at eliminating loopholes that allow companies like Google and Apple track users using GPS location-based technology was proposed by Senators Al Franken, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Wednesday. If signed into law, the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011 could force companies to obtain explicit consent from smartphone users before gathering their personal data.

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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Libra for Android helps you track your weight using The Hacker's Diet system

libra
I'm getting fat; that's what you see on the screenshot to the right -- my gradual move from chubby to portly. But never mind the numbers, look at the pretty graph!

If you've ever read The Hacker's Diet, this graph should be instantly recognizable. Each point shows the weight for a given day, while the trend line lets you see if you're gaining or losing weight.

When I use my "main" PC, I have a homebrew solution for creating and maintaining this graph. But I've had to find a temporary solution for Android, and Libra is it.

It's a beautifully simple app, very true to the spirit of The Hacker's Diet. You can create a shortcut on your homescreen that brings you right into the data entry screen, so you just tap the shortcut every morning, feed in your weight for the day and hit OK, and then you get to see your progress (or lack thereof) on the graph.

The app remembers the previous day's weigh-in, which makes it easy to enter today's weight (as they're usually not too different). The graph is zoomable and scrollable, and most importantly, you can export the data to CSV so you're not locked into the app.

If you ever need to track your weight using an Android device for any period of time, Libra is one excellent solution.

Libra for Android helps you track your weight using The Hacker's Diet system originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Senators' Bill Would Muzzle the Tracker in Your Pocket

Federal legislation aimed at eliminating loopholes that allow companies like Google and Apple track users using GPS location-based technology was proposed by Senators Al Franken, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Wednesday. If signed into law, the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011 could force companies to obtain explicit consent from smartphone users before gathering their personal data.

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Friday, June 17, 2011

Generations Later, Leica?s Iconic Shooter Keeps Clicking

Leica's MP is an all-mechanical version of its classic rangefinder camera that looks and feels like a perfectly preserved artifact from your father's shelf.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

HP sues Oracle over dropped Itanium support

Hewlett-Packard sued Oracle on Wednesday over Oracle's decision to stop developing software for Intel's Itanium processor, the chip used by HP in its high-end servers. HP said it believes Oracle's March 22 decision to discontinue all future software development for Itanium violates "legally binding commitments" that Oracle made to HP and the companies' 140,000 joint customers, HP said in a statement.

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Op-Ed: Why Science Drama Would Make Great TV

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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Inside Microsoft's high-performance NAS for small businesses

Earlier this month, I highlighted the Windows Home Server 2011 as a good option for the smallest of businesses, including home offices, mom-and-pop shops with fewer than 10 employees, and organizations that simply need a place for unified storage protection. I still believe it's a good option in those really small situations, but many organizations need to kick things up a notch.

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Kinect Star Wars: Watch the Train Wreck in Action

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Monday, June 13, 2011

The Power of Perception in the Technology Playground

Apple and Microsoft are competitors, and while both companies are clearly more concerned with Google than each other at the moment, they serve as a great example of why good, well-funded marketing is important. Apple leads the world in the art of crafting perceptions. The perception driving the two companies' stock valuations has Apple solidly in the lead and doing impressive damage.

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Chocomize personalized chocolate: giveaway and discount code

chocomize
Okay, I know what you're thinking: chocolate on Download Squad? That's right! That's because Chocomize is one of the nerdiest ways to get chocolate online: it's a website where you customize your own bar using a multi-step process.

We've covered Chocomize before in our holiday gift guide, so when they reached out to us offering to do a giveaway, we really couldn't resist.

Chocomize is giving away ten gift certificates, each worth $50, for you to create your own customized chocolate. They sent us some pictures of their recent creations, which you can find in the gallery below.

Regardless of the giveaway, you can use the discount code switched to get 10% off any Chocomize order. The code is valid through April 20th - just in time for Easter!

To participate, simply leave a comment. Fine print is after the jump.

Continue reading Chocomize personalized chocolate: giveaway and discount code

Chocomize personalized chocolate: giveaway and discount code originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saturday, June 11, 2011

InFocus Reveals 55-inch "Wall Tablet," Charges $6k For It

How small can a screen be before it's no longer a "big-screen TV?" And how large can a tablet be before it's no longer a "tablet?" Two questions that may never have definitive answers, but we're pretty confident that a 55" tablet...isn't actually a tablet. InFocus has just rolled out the first "all-in-one giant tablet," the Windows 7-based...

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Friday, June 10, 2011

Google, Facebook promise new IPv6 services after trial

The day after completing a successful 24-hour trial of IPv6, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo said at a joint press conference that they would begin permanently supporting this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol on some of their key websites.

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Windows forecast shows XP's one-of-a-kind dominance

Windows XP may be the last Microsoft operating system to hold a majority share, according to data from Web metrics company Net Applications.

At its peak, Windows XP powered more than eight out of every 10 computers worldwide. In November 2007, the earliest month for which Computerworld has Net Applications' data, XP accounted for 83.6 percent of all operating systems.

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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Fetish: Samsung?s Monitor-TV Hybrid Gives You 3-D Two Ways

The line between computer and TV continues to blur with the new Samsung 950 Series monitor-TV hybrids. The 27-inch model shown here boasts 1920 x 1080 resolution and an embedded tuner for HDTV content. Also hiding inside the 0.45-inch-thin display and asymmetrical chassis is an image processor for real-time 3-D conversion of 2-D content—sports, movies, [...]

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Spear Phishing Attacks On The Rise

Symantec warns that spear-phishing attack volume has hit a two-year high as attackers try to install botnet software, keylogging applications, or other malware.

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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Altaro Hyper-V Backup beta launched, only 250 places available

hyper-vbackupbeta
This one's for the sysadmins in the audience: Altaro, makers of our favorite "time machine for Windows" back solution, OopsBackup, have just announced a new product entering beta called Hyper-V Backup.

It's a backup solution for virtual machines running on Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization solution. If that sentence just seemed like a bunch of buzzwords crammed together, Hyper-V backup is not for you. But, if you actually use Hyper-V and are hankering for a good backup solution, Altaro might be worth checking out.

The beta run is limited - Altaro are looking for just 250 testers. All participants will get a free license key to the final, production version. So if you're interested in helping test Hyper-V Backup, get yourself over to Altaro now and join the beta.

Altaro Hyper-V Backup beta launched, only 250 places available originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dodge is a space-shooter in which you have no weapons

dodge
Space-shooters are usually a fairly fiery affair, with many types of guns, weapon upgrades, power-ups and more. Dodge does away with all of that, while keeping the very essence of a space shooter: Dark background, fast action, and stuff blowing up all over the place.

Your vector-looking spacecraft is the fastest thing on the screen, most of the time. And as the header implies, you have absolutely no weapons; you can't get any, either. All you have is agility and maneuverability.

Your opponents shoot heat-seeking missiles at you; the missiles lock on and start tracking you. The trick is to dodge the missiles while putting them in the path of one of your enemies, thus letting them have a taste of their own medicine.

There are three types of enemies, at least in the first few levels: "simple" spaceships which fire slow projectiles, "tanks" which seem to be more serious and take more hits to destroy, and "circles." The circles simply explode, spewing twenty or thirty very fast projectiles. This sounds dangerous, but is actually great once you learn to use them; they are very destructive for tanks, and can even blow up other circles.

The soundtrack is very techno, but it meshes very well with this type of game. Intense fun!

Dodge is a space-shooter in which you have no weapons originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, June 6, 2011

Microsoft to show off Windows for tablets next week

Microsoft may essentially have been first to the market with the modern tablet computer, but Redmond has seen any advantage there erased by a failure on the software side. Windows just isn't meant for the touchscreen world. No doubt the company is eager to change that, and is said to be set to debut its tablet operating system shortly, sources say.

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Honda Data Breach Triggers Lawsuit

The class action suit accuses Honda of putting 283,000 customers at risk, in part by waiting two months to inform them of the data exposure.

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Sunday, June 5, 2011

Amazing High-Speed Photos Use Lethal Home-Made Flash

Alan Sailer is a photographer. He fires things very fast at other things, and then uses a home-made high-speed flash to capture some quite stunning images. Here's how he got famous.


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Saturday, June 4, 2011

PBS Website Hacked With Fake News

Attackers exploit zero-day vulnerability in MoveableType in retaliation for a Frontline episode's portrayal of WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning.

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Balance is a challenging mouse-based physics game

balance
Years of computer use have taught us that the mouse cursor is "above" the windows. It doesn't push anything around; at least not without you clicking anything.

Balance takes that ingrained bit of knowledge and cancels it out. Suddenly your cursor (a blue dot) is solid - and if it touches the blue block, it pushes it around.

Your job is to use your cursor to nudge the blue block over to the orange block. You will have to push it, lift it and even flip it on its side, and then balance it. It's a very tricky game - one I wouldn't recommend tackling with a laptop trackpad.

Still, if you have a mouse and a hankering for a little physics gameplay, this is a cute little game. I like how the blue block never stops smiling, it makes me feel better about the world.

Balance is a challenging mouse-based physics game originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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