Google Chrome OS Book News & Reviews

‘Plants vs. Zombies Adventures’ is a Facebook game you’ll actually want to play

chrome — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:02:40 +0000

‘Plants vs. Zombies Adventures’ is a Facebook game you’ll actually want to play

Plants vs. Zombies Adventures combines a thing you like with a thing you don’t: it’s a spin-off of Popcap’s terrific strategy franchise, but it’s also a game that’s exclusively available on Facebook. Despite the social network’s best efforts, Facebook is still viewed as a home for spammy, sub-par games, not a platform for truly great titles. But games like Adventures could help change that. While it contains many of the same features and a similar structure to other games on Facebook (there’s even farming), Adventures still maintains that same addictive gameplay that made the original Plants vs. Zombies such a hit.

If, for some reason, you haven’t played PvZ, the basic structure is simple: Zombies come shambling in from one direction,…

Men diagnosed with ADHD as children have higher obesity rates, study finds

collus — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:59:58 +0000

Men diagnosed with ADHD as children have higher obesity rates, study finds

Men diagnosed with ADHD as children had higher rates of obesity and larger body-mass indices (BMI) than their peers not diagnosed with childhood ADHD, according to a study published online in the journal Pediatrics today. However, it’s important to keep in mind that correlation does not imply causation, and the findings of this study do not go so far as to say ADHD causes obesity, or vice versa. “We did not evaluate physical activity, sedentary time, or sleep problems, any of which might affect weight,” the researchers note in their paper. Nonetheless, the results indicate that for the children who were surveyed in this case, there was a statistically significant difference in the obesity rates between those diagnosed with childhood ADHD…

EA Sports to reveal next-gen ‘FIFA 14′ at Xbox event

usercol — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:58:27 +0000

EA Sports to reveal next-gen ‘FIFA 14′ at Xbox event

Microsoft is preparing to unveil its latest gaming console to the world, and we now know at least one of the titles it will be showcasing on stage in Redmond tomorrow: FIFA 14. EA Sports has announced (via Facebook) that a next-generation version of the enormously popular soccer franchise — which continues to regularly top Xbox Live’s activity charts — will be revealed during the Xbox event. On its last quarterly earnings call, Electronic Arts confirmed development of next-gen takes on Madden, FIFA, and its other sports properties, but stopped short of specifying when we’d see them firsthand. A teaser on Facebook leaves little doubt, however; we’re 24 hours away from seeing what a next-gen soccer game looks like on Microsoft’s latest…

Amazon kills ‘Zombieland’ series, picks ‘Betas’ and ‘Alpha House’ for original programming

chrome — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:38:06 +0000

Amazon kills ‘Zombieland’ series, picks ‘Betas’ and ‘Alpha House’ for original programming

After leveraging its customers as a test audience, Amazon has begun choosing which of the 14 pilots it will produce as part of the company’s first major foray into original programming. Viewer feedback and engagement have led to Alpha House (starring John Goodman) and Betas (centered around a Silicon Valley startup) being the final picks. The latter was easily our favorite among the potential candidates, though we found the field as a whole to be rather lacking. Amazon has said it aims to pick “somewhere between” zero and seven shows to produce for full-length seasons.

The company isn’t revealing its entire list of greenlit projects just yet (nor which children-oriented shows will make the cut), but we know that Zombieland won’t be…

Sony teases PlayStation 4 hardware ahead of Xbox event, says you’ll ‘see it first at E3′

collus — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:37:10 +0000

Sony teases PlayStation 4 hardware ahead of Xbox event, says you’ll ‘see it first at E3′

Sony has teased the hardware design for its upcoming PlayStation 4 for the first time, after a February reveal that kept the device completely under wraps and left fans guessing about how Sony’s next-generation console would look. In a new video, shown below, the company teases the PS4′s hardware with a blurry black rectangle and flashes of design details.

The timing of the tease is no surprise, with Microsoft set to reveal its own next-generation Xbox tomorrow at its campus in Redmond, Washington.

Based on the video’s title, we should expect to see the PlayStation 4 unveiled on June 10th at the company’s E3 presentation. The PS4 is expected to be available during the holiday season of 2013, but the company still hasn’t revealed any…

Fountain of youth: with Tumblr, can Yahoo buy a new generation of users?

gojason — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:36:04 +0000

Fountain of youth: with Tumblr, can Yahoo buy a new generation of users?

Marissa Mayer just made her biggest bet to date as Yahoo’s CEO — and if it goes badly, she may not get the chance to make another. A series of recent acquisitions culminated Monday with the announcement that Yahoo is spending roughly one sixth of its cash hoard to buy Tumblr, the popular but under-monetized blogging platform. The deal brings Yahoo the vibrant, youthful social network it has long lacked, but it also sticks the company with an expensive and unproven young business. Meanwhile, the authors of 100 million Tumblr blogs want to know: can this Yahoo acquisition succeed where so many others have failed?

Mayer has been looking to make a significant acquisition since August, when Yahoo reached a deal to sell its stake in…

‘The Pirate Cinema’ monitors popular torrents to create a video wall of piracy

chrome — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:33:34 +0000

‘The Pirate Cinema’ monitors popular torrents to create a video wall of piracy

The Pirate Cinema is a cinematic collage or sorts. Its creators took torrent database The Pirate Bay’s Top 100 video files and monitored each, creating small, fragmented clips based on traffic (torrents are transfered block-by-block in a somewhat random order). The resulting installation, which runs through to May 29th in Montreal’s Eastern Bloc gallery, is a mash of sights and sounds, revealing the extent of global file sharing. Head over to We Make Money Not Art for an interview with co-creator Nicolas Maigret.

Jolla prices first Sailfish OS smartphone at €399 for a 2013 launch

gojason — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:07 +0000

Jolla prices first Sailfish OS smartphone at €399 for a 2013 launch

Jolla has just unveiled its first smartphone, which will go on sale this year for €399 (roughly $510). Running the company’s MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS, it features a 4.5-inch display, a dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera, LTE (in selected markets), removable back covers, 16GB of onboard storage, and a microSD slot. According to Jolla, the handset will be “compliant” with Android apps, although it’s not sure how many apps will be supported, nor is it clear where users will download the apps from.

Samsung beats Chromebook Pixel and Retina MacBook with new high-res laptop display

usercol — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:28:25 +0000

Samsung is to unveil a new super-high resolution panel which could set the standard for notebook displays. This week, the company will launch a 13.3-inch QHD 3200 x 1800 panel with 276 pixels-per-inch (PPI), and offers greater pixel densities than Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro 13 (239 PPI) and Google’s Chromebook Pixel (227 PPI). Samsung has yet to confirm if its LCD panel will come to new ultrabooks, but if it does, Toshiba’s 13.3-inch Kirabook — with its impressive 2560 x 1440 display — could have some high-resolution competition in the near future.

‘Breaking Bad’ creator Vince Gilligan is ‘grateful as hell’ for Netflix binge-watching

collus — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:57:11 +0000

‘Breaking Bad’ creator Vince Gilligan is ‘grateful as hell’ for Netflix binge-watching

Breaking Bad is on a brief hiatus in the middle of its fifth, final season, with shooting already wrapped on what may be the most anticipated eight episodes in recent television history. But for all the show’s success, creator Vince Gilligan believes that things may have been very different if not for a shift in viewing habits enabled by the show’s availability on Netflix. In a lengthy interview with Vulture, Gilligan says that much of Breaking Bad‘s momentum can be put down to “binge-watching” on the streaming service.