Industrial Toys Raises $5M From Accel To Build Tablet Games For Serious Players

Industrial Toys, the tablet and mobile gaming studio led by Alex Seropian (founder of Bungie Studios, creators of the enormously successful Halo franchise), is announcing that it has raised a $5 million Series A from Accel Partners. Accel's Vasant Natarajan, who's joining the Industrial Toys board, suggested that when there's "a big platform shift" in gaming, it creates new opportunities to build… Read More

Industrial Toys Raises $5M From Accel To Build Tablet Games For Serious Players

Industrial Toys, the tablet and mobile gaming studio led by Alex Seropian (founder of Bungie Studios, creators of the enormously successful Halo franchise), is announcing that it has raised a $5 million Series A from Accel Partners. Accel's Vasant Natarajan, who's joining the Industrial Toys board, suggested that when there's "a big platform shift" in gaming, it creates new opportunities to build… Read More

Roamer Makes It Easier To Make Calls From Foreign Climes

A month ago in Barcelona I met with one of the founders of Roamer, a clever SIM hack/app that allows you to bring your own phone number along with you around the world. The company raised £300,000 in December and is closing a £1 million with the Angel Co-fund and UK Angels. Read More

This Demake Of Legend Of Zelda Is Most Fun You Can Have With Colored Squares

It's dangerous to go alone! Go play The Legend Of Zelda, deconstructed and reduced to its component concepts! You are Link, a green square, and your mission is to kill Ganon (probably a dark block). Along the way you'll grab a sword (a brown block) and fight all sorts of monsters, from Octoroks to Moblins (represented by blinking colors). Read More

One Company Betting On Oculus Rift As The Platform For VR HR Training

The Oculus Rift and its creator Oculus VR have been purchased by Facebook, and that’s causing some including Minecraft developer Mojang to reconsider their projects for the platform. But others are doubling down on their Oculus investment, including Technology Transfer Services (TTS), a company that designs training software for workforce education. This is another story today where I had to… Read More

OkCupid Offers Firefox Visitors Links To Alternate Browsers To Protest New Mozilla CEO

Online dating site OkCupid is presenting Firefox visitors with something other than the standard home page you’d normally encounter – instead, there’s a lengthy message apologizing for the interruption and explaining that OkCupid opposes the political views of Mozilla’s new CEO Brendan Eich, who made donations to a campaign in support of California’s anti-LGBT… Read More

Google+ Adds Total Content View Counts To Profile Pages

Google made a small but interesting update to Google+ today. Every profile page now includes the total number of times the user's content has been seen by others. This new number is the sum of all of the views of the user's profile, posts and photos since October 2012. It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Google started highlighting these kinds of stats. Google also previously… Read More

HTC One (M8) Review: The New Best Android Smartphone

There’s a new contender for Android top dog on the market, and it’s the HTC One (M8), the latest from the Taiwanese firm. This metal-clad unibody slab inherits the good looks of its predecessor, last year’s HTC One (retroactively referred to as the M7), but refines the look and adds a lot of significant software changes, too. It makes the new One a great device, and well worth a… Read More

After Launching In 135 Markets, Word For iPad Is #1 In 120 Countries

Microsoft's Office suite for iPad continues to dominate the iOS app store days after its release, retaining the top three free slots in the U.S. App Store, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint retaining the top three free slots. Read More

HTC One (M8) Review: The New Best Android Smartphone

There’s a new contender for Android top dog on the market, and it’s the HTC One (M8), the latest from the Taiwanese firm. This metal-clad unibody slab inherits the good looks of its predecessor, last year’s HTC One (retroactively referred to as the M7), but refines the look and adds a lot of significant software changes, too. It makes the new One a great device, and well worth a… Read More

Blip: Google wants you to be a Pokemon Master

Frontback Update Adds Better User Profiles

Photo-sharing app Frontback just received an update in the App Store. The company revamped user profiles to make them a little more informative. Now, you can see an avatar, the nickname and full name, a user description and a location. You can also easily access followers and following lists. Finally, you can block someone if you don’t want this particular person to see your Frontbacks. As a… Read More

Major League Baseball’s “At Bat” App Gets Updated To Support Expanded Instant Replay

It's opening day for the first Major League Baseball season to feature "expanded instant replay," a system that allows reviews of umpires' calls through video footage. And today the MLB is also releasing an update to its official app, MLB.com At Bat, that supports the new system. The league added a limited form of instant replay in 2008, for reviewing home run calls, but this will be a major… Read More

Twitter Poaches Googler (And Son Of Viacom CEO) Philippe Dauman To Lead Commerce Partnerships

Twitter has not yet officially launched commerce services but it continues to build out the systems it will need to have in place when it does. The latest development on that front is that it has hired away Philippe Dauman Jr from Google to lead commerce partnerships. Dauman, who had been at Google for the last six and a half years, announced the news himself on Twitter and also on LinkedIn. Read More

Twitter Poaches Googler (And Son Of Viacom CEO) Philippe Dauman To Lead Commerce Partnerships

Twitter has not yet officially launched commerce services but it continues to build out the systems it will need to have in place when it does. The latest development on that front is that it has hired away Philippe Dauman Jr from Google to lead commerce partnerships. Dauman, who had been at Google for the last six and a half years, announced the news himself on Twitter and also on LinkedIn. Read More

How To Play Quake (Again) On Your Raspberry Pi

A month ago, the folks at Raspberry Pi announced that they now had access, thanks to Broadcomm, to an open driver for the BCM21553 cellphone processor chip. This meant that DIYers now had complete access to the board and would be able to access the onboard Raspberry BCM2835 chip (a similar chip to the BCM21553) with an open source driver - as long as someone ported it over from the BCM21553. Read More

Rdio Adds Chromecast Support For TV Music Streaming

Streaming music service Rdio has added support for Google’s Chromecast media accessory, the company announced today. What that means is that you’ll be able to send your Rdio music from your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Chrome for Mac and Chrome for Windows to your Chromecast-connected TV or HDMI display wirelessly. Using Rdio’s existing remote feature, you’ll also be able… Read More

Fly Or Die: Secret

With last week's episode focusing on Whisper, we thought it only fair to take a hard look at its biggest competitor, Secret. Welcome to another episode of Fly or Die. Read More

Fly Or Die: Secret

With last week's episode focusing on Whisper, we thought it only fair to take a hard look at its biggest competitor, Secret. Welcome to another episode of Fly or Die. Read More

iPhone 6 “Air” Concept Imagines A Return To The Glass Back Design

A new take on the yet-to-be-announced iPhone 6 from an independent designer provides a look at what we might expect from a thinner, larger-screened next-generation device. This latest one is just the most recent in a spate of design takes by Martin Hajek on potential future Apple products, and this one is commissioned by French blog NWE based on recently leaked sketches, which may or may not be… Read More

iPhone 6 “Air” Concept Imagines A Return To The Glass Back Design

A new take on the yet-to-be-announced iPhone 6 from an independent designer provides a look at what we might expect from a thinner, larger-screened next-generation device. This latest one is just the most recent in a spate of design takes by Martin Hajek on potential future Apple products, and this one is commissioned by French blog NWE based on recently leaked sketches, which may or may not be… Read More