Beaver’s Revenge

Beaver’s Revenge is played by launching all kinds of animals not only at the lumberjacks, but also at aliens, zombies and leprechauns!  Let’s say it was a fish you were launching.  You would use your finger to drag the fish backwards; then, let it go to launch it.  Tap the extra speed power up to increase the speed of the ammo.  Tap the extra damage power up to increase the damage of the ammo.  Tap the cloud of doom power up to spawn the cloud.  Then, tap and set the cloud’s position to rain down seagulls in that location!  You can use the gold coins you earn to buy new chapters, characters, enemies and ammos from the store!  The game offers a traditional one, two or three star scoring system.    

It’ll take you about five seconds to notice the animation.  It’s amazing, using bold and bright colors in simple, yet detailed animation!  For example, the whole scene is so simple; it could be drawn!  But then, it throws in details like giving a lumberjack a cast when you get close (but not quite close enough) to taking them out!  The gameplay is extremely similar to Angry Birds.  Which even thought it’s not “new”, it’s still a compliment!  If you’re tired of throwing pigs, why don’t you try out a fish or even a skunk in Beaver’s Revenge!

iTunes lists Beaver’s Revenge’s features as such:

• 4 different worlds
• 7 unique animals
• 90 levels
• 4 enemies
• 5 beavers
• Game Center integration
• Leaderboards
• Achievements

iTunes describes Beaver’s Revenge like so:

Don’t get angry! Get Revenge!  The lumberjacks have invaded the beaver’s home again. Now it is time to strike back and get … Revenge!!! The beavers and their forest friends are out to teach the lumberjacks a lesson. You can fling a fish, launch a skunk, toss a rabbit and more!  Beaver’s Revenge™ has hours of fun physics gameplay. Get ready to smash and destroy anything that gets in your way.  Now you can use awesome crush even more enemies. When you have taught the lumberjacks a lesson move on to these new enemies:

Leprechauns – Crush them and get their gold!
Zombies – Save your brains and crush theirs!
Aliens – Avoid abduction and smash the aliens!

New beavers to show your style while flinging ammo. Choose from grandpa, viking, football player and robot beavers.

Hardest Game Ever 2

Hardest Game Ever 2 gives you tricky tasks that sometimes seem like there’s no right way to complete them!  You’ll get confused and attempt to find loopholes that will allow you to complete the task without breaking any of the rules!  Hardest Game Ever 2 is a lot like Orangenose’s apps, What’s My IQ and Stupidness 3 – only with new challenges.  It’s a tough game!  There are cheats you can use to skip a stage or give you a hint to be able to complete it yourself, but you have to buy them through an in-app purchase.  You’re not given a single one to start with!  Even the very first stage is hard!  Your task is to tickle the foot on your screen as many times as you can in seven SECONDS using the three colored buttons at the bottom of your screen.  Now you won’t know this until you fail the stage, but you have to tickle the foot 20 times to be able to move on to the next stage!  I can’t even tap my finger 20 times in 7 seconds, let alone trying to follow an animated foot that keeps moving around!  It seems impossible!  After about 20 tries, I finally got did it!  I tried to use a cheat, and that’s when I found out that they don’t even give you one for free!  You’re on your own, unless you want to pay real money for help!  The stages only get harder and harder – making you think of every way it’s possible to complete the task at hand!  There are 24 total levels (otherwise known as stages).  That sounds like a small amount, and it is.  But, for me – it’s plenty, since I have to play them multiple times each, before I beat them!

iTunes lists Hardest Game Ever 2’s features as such:

• Simple 3 Button Game Play
• 24 Stages with 4 Challenging Levels
• Ranking with Facebook Pals
• Simple yet addictive gameplay
• Multi-language Instructions

iTunes describes Hardest Game Ever 2 like so:
From the developers that brought you the world #1 ranking games “What’s My IQ?”, “Stupidness 3″, “0.03 seconds”, you won’t want to miss its sequel ‘Hardest Game Ever 2′!
Hardest Game Ever 2 is a series of fun and exciting mini-game that measures your reaction time to the milliseconds and pixels! See how fast you can slap and how sharp is your reaction to catch the eggs before they touch the floor in milliseconds! Hardest Game Ever 2 promises to bring you hours of adrenaline drain! Challenge your family and friends and find out who’s got the fastest reaction on iPhone/iPod/iPad!

NOTE ON FB: If you have problem logging into Facebook from game:
1> Press device [Home] button.
2> Open Facebook App itself.
3> Wait till FB App’s content load completely.
4> Open game, go to [Settings], tap [Login to Facebook].

A Smarter Lock Screen

Android’s lock screen has evolved in many ways to include widgets and a Google Now shortcut, but it could use a bit more. We’ve wanted more shortcuts to our most-used apps, notifications, and extensions to add even more. Fortunately, a few apps can give you those features right now.

Dashclock (Free) supercharges your lock screen, and we’ve got a great guide to help you set it up. Not only does it look great, but it’ll provide notification via icons and/or text, useful information like weather and appointments, provide audio controls, and a lot more. Most importantly, you can extend Dashclock to do a number of things to make your lock screen incredibly useful.

For those who prefer a more iOS-like interface, try LockerPro ($4). Due to its higher price and fewer useful features it comes hard to recommend in comparison to Dashclock, but some may prefer its interface if they like the way iOS handles its lock screen.

If you want quick settings to your favorite apps, you can grab something like WidgetLocker or flash a ROM like CyanogenMod, which give you a more dynamic lock screen. Not only will you get your favorite widgets, but you can add buttons to your most used apps for quick access—no swipe-to-unlock required.

Profiles for Settings

Android does a great job of taking care of things for you so you don’t have to waste your time doing them yourself. One great example that just got a little bit greater? Google Now. But Android doesn’t manage your settings based on your location or needs right out of the box. When our sister site Gizmodo went through the 15 features they want from Android, this was one they mentioned, and we agree: the ability to create setting profiles and switch between them easily. Custom ROM Cyanogenmod adds this feature, but if it doesn’t support your phone you’ll want to check out Setting Profiles ($4, Lite).

Setting Profiles allows you to automatically activate different settings on your phone based on your location, battery condition, and other rules. For example, when your battery gets low you could have a profile that automatically disables power-hungry features like LTE, GPS, and high screen brightness.

A Unified Messaging System

Google Voice provides anyone with the ability to send/receive text messages and receive calls from their Android phone or computer. It’s a really great service, but it has yet to see a significant update in quite a long time. Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS offers a nice unified messaging system in the form of iMessage. While both have their faults, it would be nice to see Android take Google Voice a step further and support picture messaging and group messaging (MMS)—at the very least.

If you want an alternative to Google Voice that offers these additional features, try MightyText. It provides access to your text messages on any computer, via a web interface, and on tablets as well. This way you can not only keep all your messages in sync, but also receive MMS on every device. Future versions of MightyText will include photo sync, too, so you’ll get new features as development progresses.

Simpler App Management

Installing apps through Google Play works great, and organizing your home screen doesn’t take much effort either. When you want to remove an app, however, you can uninstall it from your home screen—you can only remove it. We’d like to see simpler app management with options. Custom launchers, such as NOVA Launcher, allow you to press and hold apps and decide whether you want to remove them from your home screen or uninstall them from your phone. You also get quick access to app info pages so you can clear their caches and manage their other settings with ease.

Alternative launchers provide a number of other great features that enhance your home screen’s abilities and its interface, so we highly recommend installing an alternative to the default if you haven’t already.

Also, check out Andmade Share if all of this isn’t enough. It’ll allow you to reorganize Android’s share menu and prioritize the apps you use most.

Other Features Google Needs to Improve

Unfortunately we can’t add every feature and fix we’d like to see in the next version of Android. Here are the major items on our wish list:

• A consistent back button: Android’s back button doesn’t always work quite the same way in every app, so it takes a little trial and error before you know where you’re going. We’d like to see Google set some guidelines for how the back button should be used so users always know what to expect.
• Clean up the notifications drawer: While we’ve always loved Android’s notification drawer, we’d like to see a little more organization. Even something as minor as notification categories or organization by app would make a big difference.
• More resizable widgets: We like the ability to resize widgets, but some can’t be resized at all. Custom launchers help a little bit in some cases, but not in all. Additionally, sometimes certain sizes of widgets leaves them feeling unevenly spaced on your home screen. We’d like to see a few updates to make everything fit better and look nicer.
• Social media integration in the notifications drawer: iOS offers the ability to tweet and post to Facebook from its Notification Center, so why shouldn’t Android? Also, if Google made notification drawer widgets an option we could do much more (like check weather or search the web).

All of this said, Google made Android pretty amazing since 4.1 and a lot of the features we want we can wait for. But part of what makes new versions of Android great is that we get a bunch of cool features we couldn’t have thought of ourselves. With Android 4.3 rumored for June 10th, we may see a decent update. Hopefully it’ll bring some excitement many felt was missing from this year’s I/O keynote.

Source: http://lifehacker.com/four-features-we-want-to-see-in-android-and-how-to-get-507701251

When it comes to mobile gaming, the vast majority of gamers aren’t choosing a dedicated mobile gaming console, they are using smartphones and tablets. It’s also no surprise when you step back and consider that the Android ecosystem is by far large the most popular out there that a huge number of mobile gamers are gaming on Android devices.

A new report has been published by App Annie that shows mobile devices such as Android and iOS gadgets are decimating traditional handheld gaming consoles when it comes to sales. The report shows that sales of iOS games have already passed sales of games on traditional portable consoles such as the Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita.

The report also shows that sales of games via Google Play are expected to surpass game sales on those portable consoles within the next few months. Spending on game software for traditional portable consoles has declined significantly between Q4 2012 and Q1 of 2013, the market is booming for mobile devices.

Another interesting tidbit about the figures when it comes to revenue generated is that ad revenue isn’t considered in the numbers. Considering how many games use the freemium model supporting in app purchases, the gap between money made on mobile platforms and on traditional handheld gaming platforms is likely even larger than it looks.

While neither the PS Vita or the Nintendo 3DS have proven as popular as their predecessors, the money made for Nintendo’s incredibly popular DS and DSi consoles is also on the decline. Not everything is rosy in the mobile gaming environment though, some developers are seeing piracy rates for Android games as high as 95%.

After costly courtroom battles over technology patents, the two gadget giants are now going head-to-head over securing the best supply of parts as they jostle to rule the $253 billion smartphone market. The two took 100 percent of the industry’s profit in January-March, Canaccord Genuity data show.

Trampling on Apple’s supply patch could make life tough for the U.S. firm as it prepares for its next product line-up including a cheaper iPhone for emerging markets such as China. Having Samsung muscle in on its suppliers could drive up costs and lead to component bottlenecks, disrupting product launches.

Samsung’s huge in-house supply chain – providing parts from displays and powerful processors to memory chips and batteries – has been a core strength in its war for smartphone supremacy. As it now looks to widen its lead with products spanning both the high and cheap-and-cheerful ends of the market, Samsung’s supplies have become stretched, prompting it to hunt elsewhere to ensure it isn’t caught short.

“The next round of the post-patent battle for them will be over component supplies,” said Lee Sun-tae, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities. “Who wins access to the best performing components in class in large quantity – that’s the key … and explains why Samsung is shopping for components more than ever.”

SHARP AND SOUR?

Samsung has made overtures to traditional Apple partners such as Japanese display maker Sharp Corp and South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix. Samsung, which buys most of its mobile screens from its Samsung Display unit, last year placed orders with Sharp for high-resolution LCD screens for its popular Galaxy range of products, though it later canceled the order, said two people familiar with the matter, asking not to be named as the negotiations were confidential.

Sharp, in which Samsung bought a 3 percent stake earlier this year for $110 million, said this week it was seeking to boost sales to the Korean firm, potentially souring the Japanese company’s ties with Cupertino, California-based Apple.

Samsung is also using more chips made by Qualcomm, another major Apple supplier, in its flagship Galaxy S, which went on sale late last month.

Some other suppliers who provide parts to both Apple and Samsung include Toshiba Corp in NAND memory chips, Sony Corp, in image sensors, and Corning Inc for its Gorilla Glass used in iPhones, iPads and Galaxy products, industry data show.

STMicroelectronics and Bosch, the only mass producers of pressure sensors used in navigation features, supply those parts for the Galaxy range, and could be tapped by Apple for future products, according to research firm iSuppli.

TINY OVERLAP, BIG IMPACT

For sure, Samsung still buys the majority of its components in-house, and the overlap with Apple on external suppliers is, so far, limited. BNP Paribas estimates that more than 80 percent of component profits generated by Galaxy S4 sales go to Samsung itself and its units.

But even a tiny overlap can be damaging as smartphones are constantly upgraded to more powerful computing and media devices – allowing users to take pictures, shoot video, play music, game online, watch TV and navigate – raising the need for more and smarter components.

“Any disruption in even small parts that you wouldn’t think are really core, say headphones, can affect product launches,” said Lee at NH Investment & Securities.

For example, Taiwan’s HTC Corp, which has slipped out of the top-10 smartphone makers, reported a record-low quarterly profit last month after delaying the full launch of its flagship model due to a shortage of cameras.

“Having a single supplier carries a lot of risk. Bearing that in mind, Samsung may even consider using LCD along with OLED in its signature Galaxy S range to reduce its total reliance on Samsung Display,” said Song Jong-ho, an analyst at KDB Daewoo Securities.

Samsung Display doesn’t produce LCDs for smartphones so as it boosts sales at the lower end of market it needs to outsource LCDs. The Korean firm uses the more expensive OLED display only on its high-end models.

NOT SO DIFFERENT

Outsourcing more components could mean Samsung will lose some of its hardware differentiation – a big selling point for the Galaxy range – and be seen as just selling generic phones, say some analysts.

The Exynos 5 Octa processor, which Samsung touted as having 8 brains designed to maximize energy efficiency while multi-tasking, is not used in the S4 models sold in the United States. Instead, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips will power the phone in that crucial market, with Exynos chips used in select markets such as South Korea and some European countries.

“Given that Qualcomm chips are also found in rival products, and the much-heralded launch of smartphones with flexible display appears to be delayed, I’m worried Samsung is losing its hardware differentiator,” said BNP Paribas analyst Peter Yu.

Samsung says both Qualcomm and its own chips have passed its rigorous quality standards and both will provide satisfactory user experience. “We’ll continue to resort to multi vendors to ensure smooth supply,” Kim Hyunjoon, vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, told analysts on a recent earnings call.

Samsung’s Exynos processors accounted for around 30 percent of the S3, but that is likely to fall to around 10 percent in the S4, analysts said.

“Qualcomm’s latest chips are getting good reviews from carriers, which I think forced Samsung to switch in favor of Qualcomm from Exynos in the S4,” said KDB Daewoo’s Song. “There’s even a possibility Apple may drop its own processor and go for Qualcomm chips in some future devices.”

FLEXI-TIME?

Losing some of its hardware appeal and taking longer than expected to come up with innovative products such as flexible or wearable devices are additional challenges for Samsung, which is getting only mixed reviews for its efforts to improve software capability to integrate better with hardware.

In a recent review of the S4, Walt Mossberg, a gadget expert for the Wall Street Journal, said Samsung’s software was “often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional.

Despite the lukewarm reviews, consumers keep snapping up the S4, according to carriers. For the first time in at least three years, Samsung last year spent more on marketing than on research and development, seeking to pick up market share in the absence of new, competing models from Apple. And Samsung’s operating profit is seen topping Apple’s this quarter for the first time in years, J.P. Morgan analysts predict.

“There’s not much left in terms of what you can do to really differentiate your product as everybody’s thinking something similar – flexible or wearable,” said NH Investment & Securities’ Lee.

In late 2011, Samsung told analysts it planned to introduce flexible displays on handsets “some time in 2012, hopefully the earlier part than later”, but a year later it said the technology was still “under development.” It again demonstrated prototypes of flexible phones earlier this year, but executives now say they can’t disclose the timing of flexible smartphones.

Rivals are also moving fast. LG Electronics Inc, the third-biggest smartphone maker in January-March on strong sales of its high-end Optimus G model, said last month it planned to introduce an unbreakable smartphone by the year-end.

(Additional reporting by Mari Saito and Reiji Murai in TOKYO; Graphic by Catherine Trevethan; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/17/us-supplies-samsung-apple-idUSBRE94F16W20130517?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

Cook’s proposals would aim to put more companies’ offshore money to use creating jobs and conducting research and development in the United States, he said in an interview with the Post.

Cook also told the Post that the 35 percent tax on cash brought back to the United States is a “very high number.”

“We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable,” he said.

Apple in a statement to Reuters acknowledged that Cook would be appearing before the congressional subcommittee but gave no information on the reported proposals.

Apple paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012, the company said.

Next Tuesday’s hearing is centered on possible changes to the tax code to ensure that more cash-rich companies bring their money back the United States.

Apple’s Cook joins the heads of technology titans Hewlett-Packard Co and Microsoft Corp who have also been questioned in U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings on companies keeping cash overseas to lower their tax payments.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/17/us-apple-cook-idUSBRE94G02S20130517?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

This is not the first time we have seen images of components that are supposedly destined to be coming inside Apple’s next smartphone, but the image you see on this page along with some others have been posted by the guys over at BGR.com.

It is believed that the iPhone 5S will have the same basic design from the outside with all the changes being made to the handsets internals, and now an unidentified source has provided images of a number of different internal components for the handset.

These include a new loud speaker bracket, vibrating motor assembly, SIM card tray, ear speaker bracket, and Wi-Fi flex cable ribbon. It seems that Apple will be making a number of changes to the vibrating motor that is found inside the iPhone, and the SIM trays appear to be even thinner to the components currently used on the iPhone 5.

They also have two different colours that may confirm earlier reports that Apple were going to offer more colour options with the iPhone 5S, but of course there is no guarantee these components are the real deal and we won’t know for sure until the company officially announces the next handset at some point this year.

Source: http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2013/05/17/new-iphone-5s-alleged-components-spotted/

That is one of several factors that seem to be motivating Apple’s vigorous defense against a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of conspiring with five of the largest publishing houses to fix prices on electronic books, according to people close to the case.

“Apple is under so much pressure in Washington over its offshore cash that it’s doing things it almost never does,” Anna Palmer and Tony Romm report for Politico. “CEO Tim Cook is coming to Washington to testify in front of a panel of senators about stashing more than $100 billion overseas, rather than sending a lower-level executive.”

“He will offer Congress Apple’s ideas for comprehensive tax reform — an unusual move for the company into the world of policy,” Palmer and Romm report. “And Cook is even talking with D.C. reporters ahead of his visit, including Politico in a rare interview. ‘We don’t have a large presence in Washington, as you probably know, but we care deeply about public policy and believe creative policy can be a huge catalyst for a better society and a stronger economy,’ Cook said in the interview. He also defended his company’s conduct. ‘I can tell you unequivocally Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas. We don’t do that. We pay taxes on all the products we sell in the U.S., and we pay every dollar that we owe. And so I’d like to be really clear on that,’ Cook said.”

“Tuesday’s hearing will be political theater at its finest — senior senators on their home turf looking to crucify a high-profile executive for the cameras, with little legislative action ever to result from it,” Palmer and Romm report. “Veteran tech lobbyist Bruce Mehlman said the entire system needs to be overhauled. ‘The tax system is broken; it’s not competitive,’ Mehlman said, noting that Apple faces far greater taxes than its tech competitors, like Korea-based Samsung. ‘The policymakers made the code, and it’s not nearly as flat, simple and logical as it should be, so companies across all sectors do what they can to minimize [their] tax burden and maximize research and product development. Tech is no different.’”

Source: http://macdailynews.com/2013/05/16/apple-ceo-tim-cook-goes-on-offense-in-washington-d-c-over-100-billion-offshore-cache/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wordpress%2FxhfA+%28MacDailyNews%29

“Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research today reiterates an Overweight rating on shares of Apple (AAPL) and a $650 price target, while opining that in India, the company’s products are ‘not very popular,’ based on his conversations with ‘about 30 – 35 people around Apple Reseller Stores’ in the subcontinent,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s. “Those resellers, dubbed ‘iWorld,’ are ‘very few in number and poorly located,’ he observes, adding to the fundamental obstacle that only about 60 million people in India can afford Apple’s products, he believes, out of a population of about a billion.”

“Apple is ‘outmarketed’ in India by BlackBerry (BBRY) and Samsung Electronics (005930KS), writes Chowdhry,” Ray reports. “Chowdhry notes Apple hasn’t garnered the “elite” brand that BlackBerry and Samsung have cultivated: ‘Samsung and Blackberry have constantly advertised themselves as the ‘elite’ ones. In this way, they create an environment where they tend to mentally enslave the consumer to buy their products. In terms of advertising, one is likely to see Samsung Ad in every 15 minutes on television, whereas Apple Ads are rarely there. Apple Ads are only flashed at the time when a new iPhone is being launched.’”

Ray reports, “Despite that elite branding, Chowdhry thinks consumers buy a Samsung phone thinking they’re getting a ‘cheaper iPhone,’ and basically have no knowledge of Apple features and services such as iCloud… Despite all of that, Chowdhry concludes that the 60 million who can buy an iPhone is ‘no chicken feed,’ as it is ‘the total population of the U.K.’”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: We meet a lot of misguided souls here in the U.S. who think their Android phones are “just like iPhone.” They’re just like the old Windows sufferers who thought they had a PC that was “just like a Mac.” They either wise up eventually or they suffer for life with frustration and lost time. Either way is quite fine with us; both outcomes make us exceedingly happy.

Do not reward thieves. Do not finance knockoffs. Do not proclaim inferior, insecure knockoffs to be as good as – or even more laughably, better than – the original, lest you be thought an idiot by those in the know.

 

Source: http://macdailynews.com/2013/05/16/analyst-samsung-blackberry-marketing-tends-to-mentally-enslave-the-indian-consumer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wordpress%2FxhfA+%28MacDailyNews%29
Read more at http://macdailynews.com/2013/05/16/analyst-samsung-blackberry-marketing-tends-to-mentally-enslave-the-indian-consumer/#MyUErsL4iIfoL0Fg.99