Alone is the new side scrolling endless ‘running’ game from developer Laser Dog, the people who brought us the simple yet excellent PUK.

As with PUK, the developers have kept things simple with Alone, with a single finger control for controlling your spacecraft through falling debris and rocks. Let’s take a closer look. Read more »

Nintendo has announced updates for its popular 3DS and 3DS XL portable consoles. The new versions feature significant improvements and will replace the current consoles.

One of the additions is a second joystick called C-stick on the right side above the action button. The C-stick is a tiny nub with questionable ergonomics but will help support games like Monster Hunter without having to use accessories like the Circle Pad Pro monstrosity. Read more »

Google has released an update to the Maps application on Android. v8.3 brings with it support for Hindi language. Along with extending to the UI of the app, the Hindi language will also be available for voice navigation. This should be beneficial to the vast number of Hindi speaking people in India and other countries.

Along with the language option, 8.3 also brings improved notifications support for Android Wear devices. Other than that there are the usual bug fixes. Read more »

NVIDIA is rolling out its first software update for the Shield Tablet, and it brings with it a lot of bug fixes and performance updates.

Version 1.1 will bring with it improvements to Wi-Fi stability, camera performance, ShadowPlay feature, audio optimizations, and a few other things. You can find the full changelog below. Read more »

Olympus has announced the newest member of its PEN series of compact mirrorless interchangeable lens micro four thirds camera. The E-PL7 has some feature, many of which have been optimized for taking self portraits.

The E-PL7 has a 16.05 megapixel Live MOS sensor with TruePic VII processor. The camera features in-body 3-axis image stabilization, 81 auto focus points, 8fps burst mode (up to 20 RAW and unlimited JPEG images). Read more »

Ricoh has announced a new DSLR in their Pentax range of cameras. Called the K-S1, the new camera seems like a straightforward DSLR on paper, until you see the flashing strip of LED on the front and back.

The K-S1 has a 20 megapixel APS-C sensor with an ISO rating that goes up to 51,200. The camera also has built-in shake reduction, AA filter simulator, 100% field of view pentaprism viewfinder. 5.4fps burst rate, and 1/6000 shutter speed. Read more »

Last week when I reviewed Swing Copters, I complained about the inane difficulty level that not just made the game challenging but simply unplayable. It seems I wasn’t the only one though, as a lot of people uninstalled the game minutes after installing it due to the difficulty level.

That seems to have been a good enough wake up call for the developer, who has released an update that makes the game easier and actually playable. Read more »

Google has released v37.0.2062.94 of the desktop version of Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it brings with it a highly requested feature on Windows: DirectWrite support.

DirectWrite is a set of API from Microsoft for rendering text and glyphs on screen. It allows higher quality rendering of fonts that look noticeably better than the standard GDI or Graphics Device Interface method of rendering. This is something Firefox and Internet Explorer have had for years on Windows but Chrome is just getting now. Read more »

Amazon has announced that it will be acquiring gaming video broadcasting service Twitch for $970 million in cash. This move comes somewhat out of the blue, especially since there were pretty strong rumors of Google/YouTube acquiring Twitch a couple of months ago.

For those not aware, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, Twitch is a popular online service for broadcasting gameplay video and for watching videos of other people playing games. Although it may not be as well known to the general public as something like YouTube or Vimeo, Twitch is extremely popular in the gaming community and is the fourth largest source of US traffic behind Netflix, Google and Apple. Read more »

Fujifilm has announced the new X30 camera, the successor to the X20. The X30 retains the classic, retro camera style but brings with it many improvements.

The X30 has a 12 megapixel, 2/3″ X-Trans CMOS II sensor with an EXR Processor II. The lens is a fixed FUJINON 28-112mm, F2.0-2.8. On the back is a new 2.36M dot electronic OLED viewfinder with 0.005 second lag time and a tilting 3.0-inch 920k dot LCD. Read more »

Popular mobile messaging service WhatsApp crossed another major milestone recently. The company CEO announced on Twitter that WhatsApp is now service over 600 million monthly active users.

The CEO was quick to point out that it’s active users, that is, people actually using the service everyday, and not just registered users, which would be a bigger number but a lot of those people won’t actually be using the service. Read more »

After all the drama that followed the launch and success of Flappy Bird, one would have assumed the developer would never make another game. Yet here we are, with what is called Swing Copters.

Swing Copters is yet another masocore game from the evil mind of Dong Nguyen. Except this time it’s supposedly even more difficult. Because that’s what was lacking last time. More difficulty. Anyway, let’s see what this one feels like (other than painful). Read more »

Swedish camera manufacturer Hasselblad, known for its high-end medium format cameras, has announced the new H5D-200c MS. The H5D-200c MS combines the best of H4D-200MS and H5D-50c, with the ability to capture 200 megapixel ultra high resolution images with a medium format CMOS sensor.

The H5D-200c MS has a 50 megapixel medium format CMOS sensor. This is only the second Hasselblad camera after the H5D-50c to have a CMOS sensor, as the company has so far only made CCD sensor digital cameras. The camera is able to shift the sensor to take 4 or 6 shots and then combine them into a high resolution image that goes as high as 200 megapixels. Read more »

Apple has released the first update to the public beta that was released last month. Unlike the developer version, the public beta is not regularly updated, so this should bring quite a few changes.

The Yosemite public beta 2 is essentially the same as the developer preview 6 that was released earlier this week. It has several design changes, including new iconography throughout the UI (nothing you saw until now was finalized and things keep changing in the betas), new wallpapers, and some other bug fixes and general improvements. Read more »

Developer of the infamous Flappy Bird game has released his second game. Called Swing Copters, the game is now available for download on iOS and Android for free.

One of the things that made Flappy Birds so popular was that it was infuriatingly difficult but still quite addictive. Well, if Flappy Bird was difficult, Swing Copters is nearly impossible. Read more »