GeekwithEnvy

Apps

Featured App: Smart Aliens

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Smart Aliens is a social hangman-like game that you can play with your friends via Facebook, or 3 random people from all over in real-time. At first you may think..”oh, hangman, okay whatever”, but this game is actually way better than I expected.

You first pick your alien avatar, then you choose to play the arena mode, or duel mode. In arena, you will be asked to make your bet amount, Rookie Arena-5 gold, Gamblers Arena-10 gold, and Psychopath Arena-15 gold. Inside you are joined with 3 other actual players, no CPU. The game will give you a category and letters to choose. You must choose carefully, once you lose all your lives you lose your bet twice! The game’s gold coins are used in the shop to buy bots, different avatars, traps and medikits. These things will help while in the arena with other players to make sure you win, by taking lives away from them, or refilling your lives.

ArenaMultiplayer SmartAliens
Arena Multiplayer, SmartAliens

 

The avatars are cute and funny looking, some come at a high price, and there is one that you must have the paid version to get. Although you don’t have to buy the app (since there is a free version) the paid version gives you some perks, like extra gold. I wanted a certain alien, but she was very expensive and the winnings for each round, really don’t add up very fast, so I feel like they know you will definitely buy the full version and more gold to get what you want, otherwise, you would be playing for a pretty long time before you got it. That is the only con that I believe this game has. Overall at $1.99, I think it was a good buy.

Available at the App Store and coming soon to Google Play. You can also check out their website at www.smartaliens.com

Features include:

DUEL mode: Challenge your friends in a turn-by-turn game.
ARENA mode: WARNING! ADDICTIVE GAME! Play against 3 other aliens in real-time!
FACEBOOK: Connect with Facebook, invite and challenge your friends.
TRAPS: Assured victory by trapping your opponents with the lightning, the psycho keyboard or the kidnapping.
SUPER POWERS: Upgrade your alien to reveal letters at the beginning of a round, block lightning or resurrect from death.

 

 

iTunes 11 Possibly Right Around the Corner

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iTunesScreenShot

According to MacRumors, iTunes 11 may be launching in the next few days. A German music distribution service Feiyr, sent out an email to artists asking them to prepare for the next release of iTunes. iTunes 11 will feature a new interface that relies heavily on graphics. In the email the artists are being asked to add more photos and to make sure they are of a high resolution.

iTunes 11 has undergone some delays and was supposed to have been released earlier but hopefully the extra time will make the new version that much more stable.  Hopefully, this new version will impress us as most iTunes releases don’t. This version will include integration with Facebook and Twitter. As always we will keep you up-to-date on the latest.

Featured App: Daily Wallpapers for Windows 8

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Customization has got to be one of our favorite features of anything and Windows 8 is no exception. As always, Microsoft has provided us with some pretty cool themes to choose from and all of them feature stunning photography but sometimes we can’t seem to find a picture that fits us best. Well, now theres an app for that!

Daily Wallpapers, as it’s name suggests, offers up new images everyday for you to use as wallpaper for your Windows lock screen. Check out the daily images, find something specific or check out images that are trending, all within an easy to navigate UI. The app also allows you to preview your lock screen before applying, which is a plus. You can also pull images from your camera or hard drive and now the app offers support for Facebook and SkyDrive.

This app is available through the Windows Store for Free here.

Daily Wallpaper Screen Shot

Do we Really Need Certain Apps for our PC?

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With both OSX and Windows now featuring an app store we can now get many of our favorite applications all in one place and with peace of mind when it comes to security. I have been using Windows 8 for some time now and one of the apps that I use is the Netflix app. The app has been somewhat buggy as of late, but over all it seems to get the job done. I finished watching an episode of Mythbusters and then went off to run some errands. I came home later and jumped onto my Macbook and started working. Square modern app icons.

A hour or so had passed and I decided that I wanted to watch another episode of Mythbusters. I started to head to my web browser when I suddenly stopped and wondered if there was a Netflix app for OSX, something similar to what Windows 8 has. I quickly opened the App Store and searched for Netflix, only to find that it doesn’t exist. I thought that it was kind of strange considering OSX has been around for a while and it seems like it would be useful.

I quickly began to realize that the lack of a OSX Netflix app isn’t actually that big of deal. I only need to click a bookmark in my web browser and I have access to all of the content and features that any app would have. Then I started to question the need for apps like these in the first place, at least for your laptop or desktop. What’s the difference between an app on my desktop vs a link on my desktop that takes me to Netflix? Where is the benefit? With new web browsers that harness the power of our machines more than ever by making use of our GPU and extra processing power, why bother with an app? I am looking for any opportunity that can save disk space and the lifespan of my SSD.

What makes the web based app more appealing is the fact that it’s often more reliable. I mentioned earlier that I have been dealing with quite a few bugs since I have started using the new Netflix app, but when it comes to the website, I have had virtually no issues. Some of this could be due to the website being around much longer than the app and therefore less buggy. Why bother with the app at all when we seem to be moving toward a cloud based world? If we are trying to create a much more seamless experience then why leave the browser that we spend so much time using, just to open an app? The answer isn’t so clear at this point, which is why the pros don’t seem to know either. This is basically the wild west era of the OS and everyone seems to be trying a little bit of everything and then waiting to see what consumers end up doing.

We can always look at things from the other prospective, which seems to be a movement away from the web as we know it today. Maybe we just make everything an app, including all our favorite websites and instead of downloading them, we just launch them from the cloud. Perhaps, we can just get rid of the web address altogether and then just use google to search for apps instead. Who knows how strange things will become and how practical any of this actually is.

One thing is for certain, we are in the middle of a long evolution that will leave us with a much different computer experience than currently we have today. We are stuck in a phase between old and new and it feels weird but I think were headed in the right direction, it’s just going to take another five years or more before we can fully adapt this new way of doing things. It is ultimately up to us, the consumers, to figure out what we want. If we don’t buy it, it won’t continue to exist and so we ultimately decide what works and what doesn’t. So what do you think?

 

Earthquake Tech

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Earthquake cracked ground floorThe latest earthquake ‘swarm’ in Southern California was comprised of more than 400 minor earthquakes in just a few days.  It leaves most of us to wonder if it is a sign of a larger earthquake to come. So who or what is keeping an eye on things for us? How far have we come in detecting and predicting earthquakes?

We have come along way in seismic research over the years and scientists and engineers at the California Institute of Technology, USGS Pasadena, UC Berkeley, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the University of Southern California have been hard at work on a Earthquake early warning system (EEW). This early warning system works by detecting the first bit of energy that radiates from a particular earthquake, known as P-wave energy. This P-wave energy is used to pinpoint the location and magnitude of the earthquake.

In demonstrations of the system, software sounds an alarm and then shows the center of the earthquake. Then a simulated wave of energy is displayed, indicated by a circle increasing in size to show where the energy is as it travels away from the epicenter. The software also displays the magnitude and indicates when shaking should end. This EEW system is still a prototype and would need greater funding in order to to be more accurate and reliable for use in California and the Pacific Coast. You can see this software demonstration in action at the bottom of this page.

You could use the information gathered by these systems to try to decipher patterns in the Earth’s seismic activity to determine where more earthquakes will occur but this system is mainly built around earthquakes that have already occurred. What scientists would really like to achieve is the abbillity to accurately predict seismic activity before it happens.

A publication in the Journal of Zoology indicated that the common toad known as (Bufo bufo), was able to predict seismic activity many days in advance of a an actual earthquake. The toads will abandon their breeding site before an earthquake occurs. Researchers believe that the toads are able to detect some subtle changes in their surrounding environment shortly before an earthquake occurs.

Some research has gone into detecting some of these changes including air ionization, magnetic pulsations, and infrared radiation emitted near the earthquake location, but it is difficult to gain accurate information from these potential warning signs as there are many factors involved that disrupt and interfere with readings.

Currently, scientists use educated guesses based on the history and current seismic activity of specific regions along with the general movement of tectonic plates. These predictions are not very precise and usually get compiled into probability percentages. It’s not to say we haven’t become better at predicting them, it’s just that we can do a lot better.

What is important to take away from this is that at this time we can not accurately predict earthquakes, so it is important to prepare for them. You should always keep an emergency kit in your home. Place your kit in a well known location thats easy to get to. Your emergency kit should contain food,water, first aid supplies, flashlights, a radio and spare batteries. These supplies should be able to sustain you and your family members for at least 72 hours.

Make sure shelves are secured and always place heavy objects on lower shelves. Do not place heavy objects like large mirrors above your bed or places people will sit. Remember that it’s not the earthquake itself as much as it is the objects around you that are a dangerous when an earthquake occurs.

Useful websites with more information on this subject:

For more information on what to do before, during and after an earthquake please visit the FEMA website here.

You also get the latest updates on seismic activity through the USGS website here.

Apps you can download to track seismic activity:

If you’re looking for good mobile app that will notify you of seismic activity you can download “EarthQuake Alert!” for Android. Information about this app can be found here.

For iOS devices you can try Earthquake! The description can be found here.