Fans of Need for Speed, rejoice. EA has announced the next game in the long running series of arcade racers, Need for Speed Rivals. As with some of the previous games, Rivals will feature both street racers as well as the cops trying to catch them and as a player you will get to play on either side of the law.

So what’s new in this game, then? According to EA, Rivals features a new gameplay mode call AllDrive, which blurs the lines between single player and multiplayer mode. Read more »

When the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ were launched last year, they went on sale only in a handful of countries around the world. Now, almost eight months since the product was officially announced, Amazon has gone for a more global release.

The Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ are now available for pre-order in over 170 countries and will start shipping on June 13. Read more »

Google has updated the Google Drive app for Android with some sweet new features. First of all, there is a new UI for the app, with a convenient drawer on the side for some of the menus. The app also lets you set a thumbnail view for the documents instead of a simple list view.

One of the major additions in this update is the ability to scan receipts, letters and documents with the camera and then save them as PDF files on Google Drive. The app then OCRs these documents and lets you search for the text within the PDFs. You can now also download documents for offline viewing on your device. Read more »

Qualcomm showcased a couple of new implementations of its Mirasol display technology at the SID Display Week. One of them was a 1.5-inch panel used on a smartwatch and the second and more interesting one is a 5.1-inch panel with an astounding 2,560 x 1,440 resolution.

At 577 ppi, the latter easily has the highest pixel density of any smartphone display currently on the market. The image quality, however, was described as being inferior to current generation LCD or OLED panels and the display has a silvery tint to it. Read more »

Yesterday, we didn’t just get to see the unveiling of the Xbox One but also of the next game in the popular Call of Duty franchise: Call of Duty: Ghosts. Activision was present at the Microsoft event to provide a behind the scenes look at the new game as well as for the world premier of the Ghosts trailer.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is a departure from the previous Call of Duty games and features completely new characters and story. You play as a member of Ghosts, a super elite team of highly trained soldiers formed from the remnants of the US military forces. The country is in turmoil and you’re the only hope it has to fight back. Read more »

Back in March, Opera released a brand new version of the Opera browser for Android. Unlike the previous version that ran on the Presto engine, the new version was running on the more ubiquitous WebKit engine and also brought with it several new features and a new UI.

The browser is now finally out of beta stage and available for download on the Play Store. Read more »

We have talked about the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins game before. The third installment in the new Batman series of games, Arkham Origins takes place way before the events of the first two games and features a much younger Batman. The game is also made by Warner Bros. Games Montreal instead of Rocksteady Studios who made the first two games.

In this new game trailer, we see Batman getting up close and personal with one of the game’s antagonists, Deathstroke. Eventually, you also see the other two villains in the game, Deadshot and Black Mask. Black Mask is the main adversary in this game with the other two being hired assassins to take down Batman. Read more »

Flickr has gone through a major redesign that completely changes the look of the homepage and your photostream. Your homepage now has large photos from your friends as well as from other Flickr users that you can like and share without even having to open the image.

Your photostream also has received a major upgrade. You now have a large cover image up top and your photos span the entire width of the screen in a tiled pattern. Open an image and it takes up a major portion of the screen and the image information is placed below while giving more prominence to the image, the way it should be. There is also a beautiful new slideshow mode. Read more »

Last year we reviewed the new Karateka game on iOS. It was a remake of the 1984 game that was originally released for the Apple II. The original game has a cult following and although the 2012 remake was a decent effort it didn’t quite have the charm of the original.

Now Jordan Mechner, the developer who created the original game and worked on the remake, has released a port of the 1984 game for iOS and Android. Called Karateka Classic, the game is a blast from the past that lets you relive the classic gameplay on your modern smartphone or tablet. Let us take a closer look at it. Read more »

I’m sure most of you have already watched the Google I/O keynote as it was live streamed on the day of the event. However, if for some reason you couldn’t or if you want to watch it again, you can now do it on YouTube.

Google has uploaded the entire three and half hour long I/O keynote on YouTube, which includes all the announcement and the rather long Q&A session with Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page at the end. Read more »

Apple has released a new version of iTunes for OS X and Windows. Among the chief new features is an updated mini player. The mini player got a refresh in v11 but 11.0.3 makes it a bit more usable. There is now a progress bar so you don’t have to switch to the full mode to scroll through the track. Also, clicking on the album art thumbnail expands it.

Other changes include improved Songs view, where you can now view the album art even in the Songs view and multi-disc albums now show as one album in the Album view. There is also a new Update tab for the Apps section where you can view updates for your downloaded iOS apps. Lastly, there are some performance improvements while searching and sorting large libraries. Read more »

A few days ago we reported on the release of the brand new YouTube app for Windows Phone 8. Unlike the previous ‘app’ that was basically a link to the YouTube mobile site, the new app developed by Microsoft was a proper client that let you watch videos within the app itself.

It seems, however, Google isn’t particularly fond of this app and has asked Microsoft to take it down. The point of contention is the lack of ads in the app, which Microsoft has disabled. As you may know, Google earns its revenue from ads, as do some of the content creators who earn revenue from the YouTube videos through AdSense. Read more »

An updated version of Google Maps for desktop is in the works and it managed to leak out before its official release, most probably at the Google I/O keynote today. The updated Maps was live for a short time and was pulled down later.

Among the list of new features is a map that adapts to your searches. The map learns from your past searches and provides a custom map for you based on your search history, highlighting places you might be interested in. The more you use, the better the suggestions will be. Read more »

It seems Spotify is going to have some tough competition soon. According to The Verge, Google is all set to unveil its own music streaming service today at the Google I/O event.

According to their sources, Google has already signed deals with two of the biggest music labels in the industry, Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Google had also reportedly struck a deal with Warner Music Group earlier this year. This means that they have sizable content to kick off the service. Read more »

Nokia just announced the Lumia 925 in an event in London. The phone is basically a thinner, lighter version of the Lumia 920 with aluminum frame and some new software features.

Among the new software features are several new additions to the camera. Even though the hardware seems identical to the one on the Lumia 920, the new features do let you play around with it a bit more and get some interesting results. Read more »