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- Universal’s plot to transform park guests into wizards
- May NPD: PS4 On Top In Hardware, Watch Dogs & Mario Kart 8 Lead The Software Charts
- Strap a smartphone to your head: Samsung’s game-changing VR
- BlackBerry Strikes a Deal with Amazon, Gains Access to 200K Android Apps
- Infinite lives glitch discovered in Super Mario Bros: make the game a breeze
- Amazon Launches Fire Phone, Ignites the Smartphone Market
| Universal’s plot to transform park guests into wizards Posted: 19 Jun 2014 07:00 AM PDT  One of the most attractive parks in Orlando, Florida, Universal Studios, has a new gizmo guests can play with: interactive wands. As part of their Diagon Alley expansion, the Wizarding World at Universal in Orlando will allow guests to play with a little gadget out of the Harry Potter movies: interactive wands that will work all along the Hogsmeade area. Guests & wizards will be able to buy them in situ, and then take the wands to the shops which will have medallions on display that will let users interact with. These medallions will have the name of an incantation, which users must recite, and then fling the wand to make the very literal magic happen. See what we mean by checking the video below these lines, where the Weasleys have a go at it. Just keep in mind, “It’s Wingardium LeviOsa, not LevioSA!” Source: Nerd Approved Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Scientists Invent Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak, Use Batteries to Power It and 13 Essential Harry Potter Collectibles.         |
| May NPD: PS4 On Top In Hardware, Watch Dogs & Mario Kart 8 Lead The Software Charts Posted: 19 Jun 2014 06:00 AM PDT  The PlayStation 4, Watch Dogs, and Mario Kart 8 beat out all the rest in this month’s NPD sales numbers.
The NPD Group has come out with their monthly report on the financial state of the video game business, and Sony's PlayStation 4 – like it has for the previous five months – is at the top of hardware sales chart for May 2014. At last checked, the PS4 has sold 7 million units worldwide as of April according to Sony, a figure considerably more than what has been reported for both Microsoft’s Xbox One and Nintendo’s Wii U. In general though, May was a successful hull for every gaming platform with overall hardware sales up 95 percent from May 2013 by $187 million. A good sum of those sales were predictably from the PS4 and the Xbox One, but even the Nintendo Wii U and the PlayStation Vita saw boosts in their year-over-year performances, likely thanks to new hardware bundles (the Mario Kart 8 & Borderlands 2 bundles) being released in the same month. Meanwhile, software sales also had a nice uptick by ending a six month decline. Consumers bought $274 million’s worth of new games at retail in May, 57 percent up from the $175 million purchased last year. Ubisoft's Watch Dogs and Nintendo's Mario Kart 8 were to two biggest sellers – both certainly helping to drive hardware sales on their respective consoles – followed by MLB 14: The Show, Wolfenstein, and Minecraft. Here's the full list of the top-selling software for May 2014: 1. Watch Dogs (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PlayStation 3, PC) Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at https://www.facebook.com/Walyou and https://twitter.com/walyou.
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| Strap a smartphone to your head: Samsung’s game-changing VR Posted: 19 Jun 2014 05:00 AM PDT  Samsung are dead-set on not playing second fiddle to Apple any more, and in order to do that, experimentation is at order. This is what we know about Samsung’s VR sets. It took Facebook acquiring Occulus for everyone else to realize that, yes, people have a real interest in virtual reality technology, and not only for gaming. Eager to jump into the action, Samsung has decided to try their hand at it too. By partnering with Oculus VR, who had already acquired a bunch of technology from Samsung such as their fantastic OLED screens, Samsung is testing grounds for future headsets. Instead of working at their own headset or make their phones compatible with Occulus peripherals, Samsung intends to make smartphones the device itself. What this means is that Samsung intends for users to strap a phone to their heads. Current prototypes of what would be Samsung’s first headset are running on the Galaxy S4 hardware, but we’ll most likely see the finished version in the eventual S5, meant to have a screen that goes well beyond HD. It is unknown as of now which models exactly would be supported. The benefits this would provide, though, would be great when it comes to gaming, watching video, and getting inmersed inside pictures taken in many angles. Future, we’re getting there. Source: Versus Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Samsung Launches Simband, a Digital Health Platform and Samsung Targets Oculus Rift and Sony Morpheus with a VR Headset for Phones.    |
| BlackBerry Strikes a Deal with Amazon, Gains Access to 200K Android Apps Posted: 18 Jun 2014 01:49 PM PDT  On the principle “Can’t beat them? Join them!” BlackBerry announced today that it’s partnering with Amazon to provide BlackBerry 10 users access to the e-tailer’s AppStore. BlackBerry World won’t disappear as the result of this collaboration, even though this app ecosystem has been criticized for having only a few popular apps, while hosting a plethora of low-value ones. Instead, Amazon’s AppStore will merely be complementary. The Android compatibility layer has been rolled out in January, but until now, BlackBerry 10 users didn’t really have access to Android apps. Things will definitely get a different turn now that the AppStore opened its doors now, thus providing access to more than 200,000 Android apps. On its blog, BlackBerry pointed out that its customers will now have access to previously unavailable apps: “You will be able to access popular apps such as Groupon, Netflix, Pinterest, Candy Crush Saga and Minecraft. We’re excited to be working with Amazon to deliver the apps and content that you’ve been looking for. It’s an exciting new day for BlackBerry 10 device owners.” The Canadian company brought to public attention the fact that it will shut down the music and video sections of BlackBerry World on July 21. It may be too soon to tell, but BlackBerry might also be working on another deal regarding the streaming services of the Seattle-based e-tailer. For the time being, however, BlackBerry 10 users are offered the opportunity to access music and video services through third-party apps available on Amazon AppStore: “In addition to the greater selection of apps, you will be able to access video and music services through a number of popular third party services available through the Amazon Appstore and BlackBerry World.” Many regard BlackBerry’s partnership with Amazon as a safety net for the Canadian firm. After all, it did seem like BlackBerry will go bankrupt, and a poor app ecosystem could’ve only made things worse. Thankfully, the company realized that there’s an exit out of this situation, and turned its attention to Google’s mobile operating system. While using Android exclusively would’ve caused some BlackBerry users to look elsewhere for what they need (the Canadian company gained fame for its encrypted communication protocols), but providing some sort of emulation might be just enough for keeping everyone happy. This recent deal with Amazon will hopefully help BlackBerry to get on the right track, again. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Glance smartwatch transformer and the Earin wireless earphones.    |
| Infinite lives glitch discovered in Super Mario Bros: make the game a breeze Posted: 18 Jun 2014 01:25 PM PDT  Fans are still talking about Super Mario Bros 30 years after its original release, this time because of a game-changing glitch that grants infinite lives. Let’s agree on something: the original Super Mario Bros wasn’t all that hard, even when compared with other Nintendo classics such as Zelda, Ninja Gaiden, or the dreaded Silver Surfer. Regardless, this is such a cool oddity, useful or not, that we couldn’t help but share it with our readers. Turns out, there’s a new method to reach the max of 128 lives during the second quest (you know, when you replay the game after beating it) via a glitch executed by two players. So, how does this glitch work? Well, the game has to be played in 2-player mode, and one player has to be at the beginning of stage 2 (although there might be other spawn points that also work). The other player has to find a vine, and time his/her own death to the moment the vine is growing. This will cause the vine to spawn where the first player is, where they can just use it to endlessly bounce on enemies to get those infinite lives. Still need help with the concept? Just check the video below these lines. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at 10 Things You Didn't Know About Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros Made Out Of Cat Food: The Internet Is A Happy Place.    |
| Amazon Launches Fire Phone, Ignites the Smartphone Market Posted: 18 Jun 2014 01:20 PM PDT  Here are some of the things that make Amazon’s Fire Phone a unique beast among the thousands of smartphones available on today’s market. The Seattle-based e-tailer had to implement some unique features into the Fire Phone, in order to ensure its success and survival on the market. Below are some of the aspects that should increase people’s appeal for the Amazon Fire Phone over the competitors’ offers. At the event hosted by Amazon at Fremont Studios in Seattle, Jeff Bezos made sure that everyone understands that the Firefly app is the feature that’s placed center-stage. As always, it’s not the hardware that’s the most important for Amazon, but the software ecosystem that it creates, and the integration of Amazon services so that they perfectly complement the hardware. Firefly is the equivalent of Shazam for everything Amazon-related. It can identify songs, and then take you to the Amazon page belonging to the album, but it goes way beyond that. Once you point the camera at a phone number or a bar code, Firefly detects it and lets you interact with it accordingly. More than that, it can detect movies and TV shows, so if you like it, you could think of it as Shazam for video content. Luckily, if you happen to be in a hurry, you don’t need to unlock the screen and go through the app drawer to launch Firefly. Amazon gave that some thought and added a Firefly button to the Fire Phone. In other words, it takes just one second to access more than 100 million items from the e-tailer’s website. In case you need help while using the Fire Phone, you are encouraged to launch the Mayday app that will get you in touch with a customer support representative right away. Now that’s what I call a company that cares about its clients! Of course, the 3D effects are also important, as they’re done in a unique way. The four cameras that adorn the corners of the 4.7″ display detect the position of your head and eyes, and adjust the displayed content accordingly, so that it seems 3D at all times. Fire Phone users will also get one year of Amazon Prime at no additional cost. That means that they can access Prime Music, Prime Instant Video, and Kindle books a lot faster than typical Amazon customers. The e-tailer sweetened the deal even more by offering unlimited photo storage in the Amazon cloud drive. If you like shooting a lot of photos, this will definitely be up your alley. The Fire Phone will be available on July 25 on AT&T exclusively, at least for the time being. The 32GB version will cost $200, while the 64GB one will be $300, both of them with two-year contracts. That being said, would you consider buying one? Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the first rumors about Amazon’s phone and the six cameras that the Amazon phone comes with.    |
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