Category:

iPhone

New iOS Game ‘Frost’ is Novel, Beautiful and Addictive

I’m a big fan of non-conventional games, i.e. games that don’t follow the same cookie cutter formula as so many do. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all sorts of games, but when I come across something that offers a novel approach to gaming, I’m more than a little curious. And Frost does just that, in a really good way.

The concept of the game is to guide swarms of light towards an orb of the same color using your finger. I have to say here that the first thing that caught my attention were the graphics. The background is pretty neutral, but it almost needs to be to allow those beautiful glimmering swarms of light to be displayed in all their glory (you can have a look for yourself here). Everything is light and smooth and somewhat appeasing and inviting at the same time, and I can easily imagine myself almost zoning out while the background music (a nice, soothing piano) drones on.

All right, so now on to why the game is different from countless others. First, it doesn’t tell you what you need to do, instead letting you figure it out for yourself. As far as puzzle games go, I feel like this is a very good thing. I like the challenge, but it doesn’t stop there. As games do, Frost gets progressively harder the more levels you beat, and the ‘rules’ change along the way. For example, in the first few levels, I was able to easily guide the light swarms right to their orbs. Later on, the swarms were actually scattering away from my finger until I realized that I had to use a different colored swarm to herd them and push them towards the orb. And then there are obstacles like light beams cutting you off, the need to mix two swarms to make the right color according to the orb, etc.

It’s a game I don’t mind spending a lot of time figuring out each level, simply because moving the swarms of light around is fun in of itself. If you enjoy puzzle games that keep on puzzling you, this one may just be what you’re looking for – but it’s currently only available for iOS devices. You can get it here for $4.99.

Dec 2, 2017 0 comment

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AR View is Amazon’s New Virtual Shopping Feature

written by Don Eminizer

Not to be left behind by the likes of IKEA and Target, Amazon is rolling out its new AR View feature today for iOS devices running Apple’s latest OS, iOS 11, and iPhones 6S or higher. The new feature will let customers choose from thousands of items available on Amazon’s web site and, using their smartphone’s camera, see how they would look in their own living space. It’s a neat feature and one that is becoming increasingly popular. What’s different in Amazon’s case is that it doesn’t limit product selection to bigger items like furniture – customer can visualize anything from ‘Toys and Games’ to ‘Electronics’. Other categories include ‘Home Décor’, ‘Living Room’, ‘Bedroom’ and ‘Kitchen’. I’m not sure that people really need to visualize a Tonka truck sitting in their living room though, but the ‘Toys and Games’ category could potentially be useful for larger items such as the Hot Wheels garage that I never should have bought my son last Christmas. Seriously, the thing is huge.

But back to Amazon. I like that the app offers categories because it makes it easier to navigate through relevant items. I can see myself visualizing how a large mixer will look on my kitchen counter and whether the beside lamps will match with my beside tables. This feature is most definitely better than what Amazon was offering before, namely its ‘AR Stickers’. They looked like a cartoon version of the items you selected and frankly, the white border around them made it almost impossible to get a really good idea of how the items would look in your home.

I am once again left with only one criticism regarding these blooming virtual shopping capabilities: when I buy furniture, especially whey I buy a couch I intend to sit on for long periods of time, I want to know whether or not it’s comfortable. A couch means nothing to me if it looks fantastic but isn’t a pleasure to sit on. In the case of retailers who have brick and mortar stores, one could argue that we could pay the store a visit to test the couch before buying it. In Amazon’s case, that could prove to be a little tricky.

Nov 22, 2017 0 comment

iPhone

You Can Teach Siri How to Pronounce Names Properly

written by Don Eminizer

We all have that one friend or family member with a name that sounds nothing like it’s spelled. The one for me that immediately comes to mind is my friend Jordonne – everyone thinks it should sound like JOR-DONE when in fact her parents were just spelling what they wanted to sound like JOR-DAN in a quirky way. Of course, I also have to contend with my own last name (which, by the way, is pronounced EM-EN-I-ZER), but I don’t often need to call myself from my iPhone, so in this case it’s a non-issue. But it can be a pain in the you know what when I want to ask Siri to call my friend Jordonne, because it never recognizes the contact – and so I have to go in manually and look her up in my directory. But now, I can teach Siri just how to pronounce – and recognize the name when I ask her to dial for me.

Here’s how you do it: First, ask Siri to bring up your contact’s information by spelling out their name (rather than just using the pronunciation you know to be correct). Siri will oblige, bringing up the contact information and saying the contact name (wrongly, for now). You then need to let her know that she’s not saying it right by saying “Siri, you pronounced it wrong”. Siri will ask you if you’re both talking about the same person, you will tap “yes”, and then she will ask you for the correct pronunciation. All you need to do from here is give her the appropriate pronunciation, and Siri will respond with a few variants of it (all similar sounding) so you can pick the closest one and voilà – Siri now knows that Jordonne is pronounced Jordan. From here on, whenever you ask Siri to perform a task involving that person, she will know who you’re talking about and pronounce it correctly as well.

Alternatively, you can also correct Siri’s understanding and pronunciation of a name via typing. Simply go into the appropriate contact sheet, down to the ‘add’ field, add the pronunciation option and type your contact’s name phonetically.Additionally, if Siri isn’t pronouncing your own name properly when addressing you, you can ask her “Siri, who am I?” and after she answers say “Siri, you pronounced that wrong” and then go about correcting the issue in one of the two ways explained above.

Nov 17, 2017 0 comment

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eBay Has A New “Find It On eBay” Function

written by Don Eminizer

It seems like no one wants to be left behind on image searches. In recent weeks, Target has both partnered with Pinterest to add their ‘Lens’ feature to Target’s app, letting customers look for items similar to what they want using pictures, and introduced its new AR tool that allows potential furniture buyers to take a picture of any room in their house and see how a certain piece of furniture fits it. Now, eBay has launched pretty much the same feature as Target and Instagram’s ‘Lens’, with an added feature that is pretty neat. Whenever a shopper goes on line and sees something they like, all they have to do is click “Find it on eBay” and the app will automatically look through its billions of listings to try and find the same item, or will offer items that are as close in similarity with the picture as possible.

It seems that retailers are catching on to the fact that potential customers can be frustrated by word searches; indeed, and I’ve been there myself, it can be difficult and awkward to accurately describe, say, the exact shape of a flower vase or to find any specific object without knowing its brand. When my wife saw the perfect red shoes being worn by a stranger at the mall, she came home to look for them on the great wide web…I can’t begin to tell you how many images Google spit out at her ‘red high heels’ search terms. She never did find the ones she oh so liked, and image search would have been a great help to her at the time – assuming she could have taken a discreet picture of the lucky lady’s pumps.

The feature’s deep learning model (which is called a convolutional neural network, for those who are interested) gets smarter the more image searches it goes through, which means that it gradually gets better at producing results that are close to the original image (assuming that it doesn’t have just the thing you’re looking for, that is).

‘Find it on eBay’ is now live only on eBay’s Android app, but the ‘Image Search’ feature can be used both on Android and iOS devices.

Oct 28, 2017 0 comment

Android iPad iPhone Mobile Apps Social Media

Twitter is Doubling Its Character Limit

written by Don Eminizer

We’re hearing a lot about Twitter lately. The social media platform is trying all kinds of things to try help its user growths and, unfortunately, most of its attempts don’t seem to be making much of a difference. The only update that seems somewhat promising is its testing of the new Twitter Lite, but we’ll need a little more time to see if it truly will have an effective impact on the recruitment of more members – or on keeping existing users happy and tweeting.

The latest idea Twitter has come up with is allowing users to post more characters per tweet – exactly twice as much, bringing the cap from 140 characters all the way up to 280 characters. To me, this seems to go against everything Twitter is (or was?) supposed to be about. The challenge (and purpose, in my honest opinion), is (was) to be able to express oneself clearly while remaining succinct. The reaction to the update has been mixed. Some Twitter users agree with me that increasing post length to 280 characters takes away the essence of what Twitter used to be. Others seem more than happy to test the new feature and argue that it makes it easier to express themselves without using shortcuts like ‘bc’, ‘imho’ and ‘u’, making posts easier to read and more accessible to everyone.

Aliza Rosen, product manager at Twitter, said “In all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people tweeting” in a rather long and not very informative blog post – and followed this statement with a rather contradictory “Twitter is about brevity. It’s what makes it such a great way to see what’s happening. Tweets get right to the point with the information or thoughts that matter. That is something we will never change”. Ok, so 280 characters might still be brief by some standards, but at this point I feel like Twitter would go up to novella-size tweets if it thought the update would keep them afloat for a few more weeks.

I’m not convinced that people will tweet more often now that they have the opportunity to post longer tweets. In fact, I think that Twitter may lose some of its most zealous members because of the change. But I could be wrong. Let’s wait and see.

Sep 28, 2017 0 comment

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You Can Now Control Your LG Smart Appliances Through Google Home

written by Don Eminizer

So, LG has taken a leap of faith and entrusted its impressive 87 WiFi enabled smart appliances to the Google Assistant. This allows users to not only control their LG smart appliances through Google Home, but also remotely through a mobile device, both iOS or Android. I can see where this would come in handy if I forget to turn the AC down when I leave the house. And if I had an LG smart washing machine, I would totally take advantage of the fact that I don’t have to get up to see if the load is done: all I’d have to do is ask my Google Assistant and it would tell me exactly how long is left on the load. Sweet.

Set up is simple and easy. Users will need to download LG’s SmartThinQ app (if they don’t already have it), then set voice controls and they’re good to go. They can then use their voice to order around their smart appliances. Think about it: tell your smart fridge to make more ice, start a pot of coffee from bed, get the dishwasher going – the possibilities seem endless! I’m the kind of person who’s always wondering, as I leave the house (especially when going on longer trips or vacations) if I’ve left the oven on. Well, if I had an LG smart oven, I could put all those doubts to rest with a simple command into my phone. Brilliant. Conversely, I’ve read somewhere that you could ask your Google Assistant to warm up the oven so it’s at the right temperature for that roast chilling in the fridge. I’m sure you could, but I’m not so sure I like the idea of my oven being on with no one in the house. But maybe that’s just me being paranoid.

Anyway, the really cool thing about this is that to help convince people to buy their smart appliances, LG will be giving away a Google Home device to everyone who buys a smart appliance between October 8th and October 25th. Don’t go crazy though, they will only give one device per household no matter how many appliances you buy. Still, it’s a pretty good deal, especially if you were already considering getting a smart appliance.

Sep 26, 2017 0 comment

Android iPad iPhone Mobile Apps

Snapchat Has Rolled Out New Sky Filters

written by Don Eminizer

Snapchat is quickly becoming a favorite, especially among teenagers and young adults. Its wide array of filters is ever changing, and users can even have special, customized filters created for much any occasions (as I recently wrote, even for funerals). Snapchat users have been enjoying morphing into each other, snapping cute pictures of them with a bunny face or flowers in their hair. Just a few days ago, it released its 3D Bitmojis, allowing users to add fun, interactive characters on their screen using the World Lens setting.

The latest filters, available as of today on both iOS and Android devices, aim to modify the look of the sky. In order for these sky filters to work, the picture needs to contain detectable sky – that is, Snapchat needs to be able to recognize part of your picture as sky to be able to apply the filter to it. In order to use these new filters, all users have to do is swipe through the filters as usual and select the one they want to use.

Much like the other filters, the sky filters will be rotated every day and will offer an array of different looks, including starry skies, colorful sunsets, virtual weather, rainbows, stormy weather and other effects. Along with the World Lenses added to the app earlier this year, these new filters are keeping users entertained and coming back for more. The sheer variety of filters and the fact that Snapchat keeps adding to them and rotating them certainly seems to be working in Snapchat’s favor.

Despite Facebook’s many attempts at copying its rival app’s features, and that across its many platforms (‘Status’ in WhatsApp, ‘Stories’ and ‘Geostickers’ in Instagram and ‘Messenger Day’ in Messenger), it has not yet been able to slow Snapchat’s growth and popularity. In fact, as of last spring, 39% of teens in the United States considered Snapchat their favorite network, compared to 23% for Instagram and %11 each for Twitter and Facebook. It’s clear, for now at least, that Snapchat isn’t merely a fad, and that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, whatever Facebook does.

Sep 25, 2017 0 comment

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Custom Funeral Snapchat Filters are Becoming a Thing

written by Don Eminizer

You’re attending a funeral. The mood is somber, everyone is sad and trying to pay their respects. Then someone pulls out their phone, loads Snapchat and takes a selfie. Looking over, you see that they’ve applied a special geofilter: one with the name of the deceased at the bottom, and RIP on top. Sound weird? Well, it’s really a thing. And if you read on, you might come to think that it’s really not all that disturbing.

According to Cnet, it all started a few months ago when Stephenie Buchanan ordered a special filter for her brother’s funeral. Her brother, she said, was an avid Snapchat user, and she felt that immortalizing him using the app and a geofilter that read “T’s World” on top and “We love you Tarrence, rest in Heaven” at the bottom. And while she reported that some people at the funeral were puzzled, most of them started taking selfies and thought that the idea was a good one. That these pictures somehow were an homage to the deceased and a new way to celebrate the way that he had lived.

When you think about it, it certainly is unconventional, but definitely not unheard of. A few centuries ago, when photography was still in its infancy, it wasn’t uncommon for families to pose deceased family members to look as if they were still alive and take a portrait – often featuring the deceased along with other family members. Most families had no picture of the deceased while they were alive, so this solution allowed them to keep a likeness of their loved ones after their death.

Technology is evolving, and most younger people have been growing up with it all their lives. It’s the way they communicate, the way they share news, the way they share pictures. All in all, it isn’t very surprising that this would apply to funerals as well as birthdays, weddings, and other events. We share sad news on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram all the time. Why not use Snapchat in the same way? Buchanan said all the selfies made her smile, and she’s considering putting together a photo album compiling them all. And why not? It would be a good reminder of how many friends her brother had, and of how much he was loved.

Sep 25, 2017 0 comment

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Preschoolers Can Now Play an Age-Appropriate Pokémon Game

written by Don Eminizer

Pokémon, and more recently Pokémon Go, are extremely popular, and this both with kids, teens and adults. But while the game is fun and can be quite addictive, in-game play isn’t exactly appropriate for younger children, what with the battles and all that. Not to mention that you don’t want your 3 year old wandering out of the house in hopes of finding a rare Pokémon in the park across the street.

That is why Nintendo and Niantic along with the Pokémon company, have created a new Pokémon game intended for children between the ages of 3 and 5. The new app is called Pokémon Playhouse and features age-appropriate activities like grooming, feeding, giving treats and even creating bands. Young trainers can also take their Pokémon to the park, and the app features an array of educational puzzles and activities that are sure to capture the interest of any preschooler. The game also features a human ‘guide’ that helps kids navigate the various activities and explains what is expected of them. There are also levels to the activities – in-game progress brings players closer to hatching an egg. The game currently features over 50 different Pokémons.

Parents will be delighted to learn that the app not only is free, it is also free of in-app purchase options, making it even more interesting because, let’s face it, a 4 year old throwing a tantrum over not being allowed to purchase a cute bow for her favorite Pokémon isn’t that appealing. Parents beware, however: while this app is a great learning tool for any preschooler, it’s clear that the goal here is not only to offer educational content – the goal is also to introduce Pokémon to a younger generation of fans, who will undoubtedly grow up wanting to move on to other Pokémon games. And we all know all of those games aren’t free, and most of them feature in-app purchase.

Still, I like the idea of a Pokémon world designed exclusively for the littlest fans. I also like that it isn’t a game without any other purpose than having fun, but one in which preschoolers will actually learn things, things that no doubt will get them ready for the big world of kindergarten.

The app is now available both for Android and iOS devices, here and here respectively.

Sep 22, 2017 0 comment

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Google Wants to Keep You Reading

written by Don Eminizer

If you’ve ever spent any amount of time on Wikipedia, you know how easy it is to lose yourself for hours clicking on embedded links that lead you to related articles. I once started reading up on my favorite cartoonist and found myself learning all about traditional Spanish meals three hours later. Well, if reading is your thing, you’re going to love the new Google Search app feature being released today, according to Google’s blog.

When you open the app and search for a topic, nothing changes. Google will take you to the link you’ve selected and allow you to read the entire article. But once you’re done reading and start scrolling back up, you will notice, at the bottom of your screen, a bar entitled “People also view” containing related articles, or articles that others have linked to based on the original article you landed on. The bar is interactive and you can first swipe up to display the articles, then horizontally, from right to left, to peruse the various articles offered. From there, you can select one of the articles and continue reading on the subject. I have no doubt that the longer you link to other articles, the farther from the original subject you will be.

Obviously, if your intent was merely to look for the answer to a specific question, you probably don’t need several articles to find the answer. Similarly, if you are interested in reading about, say, the cold war, you might not be interested in suggestions about the Vietnam war or other worldly conflicts. But if, like me, you enjoy expanding your knowledge base and have the time to do so, it’s a neat little feature. Unfortunately, it is currently only available for iOS devices, so if you’re an Android user, this update will not show up on your phone or tablet. There is currently no information as to whether the update will be made available to Android users. Additionally, the feature is only available in the United States (and only in English), but Google states that it “…looks forward to expanding to more languages and locales soon”.

If you don’t already have the Google Search app, you can download it for iOS here.

Sep 22, 2017 0 comment