Japanese robotics professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and a team of scientists have unveiled the world’s first android newsreaders.
On Tuesday this week, two lifelke robots, ‘kodomoroid®’ (resembling a multilingual human child) and ‘otonaroid®’ ((resembling an adult female, since hired as a communicator by the national museum of emerging science and communication) delivered a first report – the story of an earthquake and an FBI raid.
Originally released in 2010, VVVVVV from Terry Cavanagh is a classic of the simple play, fiendishly difficult to master genre.
This month saw the release of the game on both iOS and Android
The core conceit of the game is rather than being able to jump, you can flip the direction of gravity. And with that ability, you need to navigate through a space station and find the other members of your ‘crew’.
There’s a great sense of achievement when you manage to navigate past a set of spikes and aliens by deftly switching literally what way is up.
If you want to have a go without downloading anything, there’s an onliine demo here.
The game is available now on the Apple App Store for €2.69, on the Google Play Store for €2.45 and is currently at half price on Steam for Windows and Mac at €2.49.
Do you have an Irish app (especially an Android one)? Let us know: Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
H/T LonelyBeastApps
Shane Byrne of Showoff.ie writes:
Everyone heard about Catherine Noone with her ice cream van problems this morning so we said “Come on, like 99’s are what Irish Summer’s are all about!”
With that in mind, they’ve launched 99 – Ice Cream Finder. The app does one thing and does it well – it tells you on a hot day like today where the best 99 is available nearest to you.
The app is available now on the Apple App Store and an Android version is a possibility if there is demand foNOMNOMNOMNOM on the Google Play Store.
*slurp*
Do you have an Irish app (especially an Android one)? Let us know: Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
They’ve done nothing wrong.
Apart from some innocent gumming.
Dan Bergin writes:
“SixMinute studios are a gang of Irish developers who have ‘risen from the ashes’ of PopCap’s Dublin studio after its closure a year ago. With experience working on games like Plants vs Zombies and Bejwelled, we’re really excited to be releasing our newest game under our own banner to the iOS and Google Play app stores.
Pick A pet is a simple and addictive match-3 game, where the goal is to match up gummies to solve puzzles. Along the way you unlock special pets which you can power up and evolve to help you solve the levels…”
Reviews welcome.
Play for FREE here: IOS or Android
Irish Made Stuff to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marked ‘Irish Made Stuff’. No fee.
Or any sporting event?
Brian Brady writes:
“I’ve been developing the app SportBox to a stage ready for testing and now I’m looking for test groups to put it through its paces and give me much needed feedback.
It’s basically designed to take the hassle out of organising sporting events, like 5 aside or tag rugby etc. Some of the features include recurring events, automatic invitations, group messaging and so on. If any Broadsheet readers users would like to be involved, you can download here: iPhone and Android
At this stage is purely for collecting feedback in relation to bugs and what features people would like to see developed, please use the Feedback button as much as possible. Thank you.”
Bubble Your TV is a new second screen app from developer Padraig Hough.
The app not only acts as a TV guide but also lets you comment and rate the shows you are watching.
You can sort shows by ratings, popularity and time left (well there’s no point in switching to something that’s nearly over is there?).
It’s early days for the app and they are actively looking for feedback so why not give it a LOOKl and let them know what YOU think?
The app is available now on the Google Play Store and an iOS version is in the pipeline.
Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
Brought to you by siblings Cormac, Catriona and Colm Barry, trakAx MovieExpress is an impressively fully featured video mixer.
The app scans your device for photos, music and video and lets you edit and mix them together before exporting out as a whole new video.
I did find some of the controls were a bit fiddly to use on my Samsung S3 but I’m sure that’s not a problem on larger screened devices.
It’s available for €4 on the Google Play Store, which seems to me to be extremely cheap for what you get. There’s a free version in the pipeline with a somewhat reduced feature set.
Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
Dublin based developer Kevin Bergin has released this addictive little game for both iOS and Android.
Like the best casual games, the idea is simple. Move your Gooboid (the little greenblue guy) around to gather energy and advance the levels all the while staying as close to but not touching the other Gooboids to get points.
It was so addictive I started carrying my horrible Galaxy S3 again just to play it.
The iOS version (which I only discovered this morning) unfortunately has my absolute bugbear issue of not being sized for the 5/5s/5c sized screen, but plays the exact same as the Android version.
Gooboids is available for free on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
Bluebox Security, a stealth security startup claims to have discovered a flaw in Google’s Android operating system which can enable rogue apps to gain full access to the Android system, read all data, harvest passwords and create a botnet and also turn any legitimate application into a malicious Trojan, completely unnoticed by the app store, the phone, or the end user.
Potentially, this could affect any Android phone manufactured in the last 4 years, some 900 million devices.
The flaw enables a hacker to modify the Master Key or APK code without breaking the cryptographic signature. A hacker could have access to any or all permissions on a device.
Everyone stay cool.
Uncovering Android Master Key That Makes 99% of Devices Vulnerable (Bluebox Security blog)
What could that strange non-iPhone app be? vine.co/v/bEYvt2hYpdM
— Karl Monaghan (@karlmonaghan) May 18, 2013
What Karl was doing rather than playing in the sun over the weekend.
