News

Google Maps updated to 6.0

Google Maps 6.0 for Android was released last Tuesday with several enhancements, the most notable, airports and other public places. Users are able to search throughout floor plans too, which means a traveller can search for a coffee shop or the nearest toilet in an airport. Google Maps floor plans will grow when a user is zoomed-in fully on a building where mapping data is available. The differences between indoor and outdoor maps can be seen in the image to the right.
Indoor maps are currently available in selected locations in the U.S. and Japan. Click here to see the current list.

Maps will contain labels with store names, bathroom locations, ATM icons and airport gates, among other items. Google collaborated with the owners of the mapped venues in this first iteration of indoor maps. However, Google is making available a tool that any venue owner can use to upload floorplans for inclusion in the application’s database at http://maps.google.com/floorplans.

Google Maps 6.0 for Android will work on devices with version 2.1 and higher of the mobile operating system. At launch, the application includes floorplans for Tokyo’s Narita and 17 U.S. airports, including Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and George Bush Houston International Airport; stores of the retail chains Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Home Depot and Ikea; and malls including Mall of America, Times Square Mall in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and Liberty Fair Mall in Martinsville, Virginia.

Posted by: Gareth

HTC Explorer coming soon to Orange

For those of you looking for a small entry-level Android phone there will soon be a new kid on the block from HTC that will slide in at the lower end of the market; The HTC Explorer comes in a bit under the HTC Wildfire in terms of specification, with just a 600MHz CPU and limited internal storage. However, the Explorer does have HTC’s latest Sense 3.5 user interface and Android OS 2.3 Gingerbread.

The HTC Explorer will be available soon on the Orange network and I suspect that this will be a free on contract handset and my guess would be around £150 mark on PAYG.

We’ll get one to review soon too!

LG & Sky Christmas Cashback Offer

This Christmas, LG will be helping even more people watch festive favourites in 3D. As part of its on-going partnership with Sky, LG is offering Sky TV customers up to £200 cashback when purchasing selected LG Cinema 3D TVs, with TVs starting at just £550.

From December 1^st to December 24^th Sky TV customers will be able to get the following cashback offer: 

LG CINEMA 3D TV Series:              Cashback

LW450U                                               £50/ ?55

LW540U                                               £50/ ?55

LW550T                                                £100/ ?115

LW650T                                                £100/ ?115

LW980T                                                £200/ ?225

For incredible savings, customers should visit www.sky.com/lgoffer for more information about the deal. 

Posted by: James

Infinity Blade II launches for iOS

Attention iOS gamers. You are going to love this one. The original Infinity Blade caused quite a stir when released and now the sequel looks to do the same. Priced at £4.99 Infinity Blade II is now available for download from the App Store. The application is universal and works on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad so you can use on more than one iOS device.

From Epic Games’ award-winning studio, ChAIR Entertainment, comes Infinity Blade II, the sequel to the best-selling sword fighting action game developed exclusively for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
Powered by Epic’s cutting-edge Unreal Engine 3 technology, Infinity Blade II takes handheld gaming to even greater heights with stunning visuals, new combat styles, and advanced character customization in a beautiful, fully 3D world.
The Award-Winning Infinity Blade Story Continues!
The God King has been defeated, an unlikely hero has emerged and now you must discover the truth behind the secrets of the Infinity Blade. The continuing journey of young Siris unfolds as you delve deeper into the world of the Deathless tyrants and their legion of Titans. Can you unlock all the mysteries and successfully wield the power of the Infinity Blade in this timeless sword fighting adventure of champions and villains?
A Robust & Dynamic 3D World:
Explore beautiful and immersive environments that dynamically change over time during your travels and venture to exotic locations such as the Asian themed Saydhi’s Estate or the medieval inspired Vault of Tears featuring multiple paths to explore.

Acer ICONIA TAB A200 video

This leaked video shows the A200 containing the Acer Ring, the company’s overlay software to the Android operating system which has a customisable virtual ring. This is along with USB 2.0 connectivity, a micro SD slot and the Acer Clear.fi feature offering DLNA for the connecting, sharing and watching of media.

The site also has it that the Acer Iconia Tab A200 will arrive with a 10.1-inch 1280×800 touch screen, with an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and 1GB of RAM, whilst running from the latest version of Android – Ice Cream Sandwich.

You can see the video below.

Everything Everywhere open new store in West London

Everything Everywhere will soft launch a new concept store in the White City Westfield shopping centre in west London this weekend before its official opening on Monday.

The store (pictured), is the 20^th EE branded store to be opened in the UK and a former T-Mobile store,  will be the first to offer a dedicated in-store service team to support customers needs and sports a new store design to support these needs face to face.

Like the other EE stores across the country it will sell both Orange and T-Mobile products.

All 18 staff at the new store, which is the second largest EE branded store in the operator’s estate, have been trained prior to the opening with a particular focus on the technology, service and product needs of customers.

This focus is further reflected through a dedicated “lounge zone” where customers are able to sit with store staff who can explain how products and services work.

BlackBerry 9790 launches in Indonesia and causes chaos

The BlackBerry is already massively popular in Indonesia (6 million users) and the launch of the latest Bold, the 9790 has proved this. With the first 1000 people being offered a 50% discount on the 9790 the people of Jakarta came in their thousands.

Police and officials were prepared but it apparently caused chaos and brought traffic to a stop. When rumors that the device had sold out spread the crowd went a little crazy and it is reported that several people fainted.

I cant see this happening here in the UK!

Posted by: James

SwiftKey X price drop

If you are an Android user chances are you may well have tried some alternative keyboards to the stock one. If you have not tried SwiftKey X before this may be a good time to do so as prices have been slashed for this weekend.

Starting Black Friday, you’ll be able to buy SwiftKey X for smartphones at $1.99 / £1.25 / ?1.49, and SwiftKey Tablet X for tablets at be $2.49 / £1.75 / ?1.99.

You can download the applications from Android Market and Amazon Android store in the US, and Android Market across Europe and the rest of the world. (http://www.swiftkey.net/download)

The offer is for this weekend only, starting Friday 25^th November 2011 and ending midnight Monday 28^th November.

Posted by: James

Vote in the BlackBerry EMEA Innovation Awards

As a part of the annual BlackBerry EMEA Alliance Summit, the event that RIM hold for Alliance Program members (developers and other partners that work with the BlackBerry platform) taking place on 30^th Nov – 1^st Dec, they will announce the winners of the BlackBerry EMEA Innovation Awards, taking the opportunity to celebrate the work done by RIM’s partner community and highlight innovative ways BlackBerry customers use their solutions.

The EMEA Innovation Awards 2011 consists of seven categories across both Consumer and Enterprise Solutions for BlackBerry. New for this year is the People’s Choice Award, a special category where the winner is chosen by BlackBerry fans across EMEA.

In support of recent launches, a shortlist of five apps has been chosen to highlight BBM Connected and BlackBerry OS 7 compatible features. In promoting these elements of the BlackBerry platform we hope to encourage our partner and developer community to find innovative ways to incorporate them in future apps.

Kasabian vs Darren Bent in real life Xperia PLAY football match

Sony Ericsson in partnership with culture brand Umbro and Kasabian bring together front-man Tom Meighan and England star Darren Bent to play against each other in the first ever, real life video game football match.

To celebrate Sony Ericsson’s ever-growing catalogue of football games, the new viral Kasabian Football Gaming Live sees the gaming world collide with reality.

Tom and Darren took two five-a-side football teams to a real life pitch, controlled by wireless headsets and specially programmed Xperia PLAY smartphones to move the players around.

Never before has a live match been played like this. Sony Ericsson transformed the smartphones to have the ability to command the players to strike, tackle, cross, dribble, slide, pass – just like in the video game, but with real-life footballers.

You can see a video of the match below: