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If you have a good knowledge on web technologies such as XML, HTML and HTML5, JavaScript, Flash and exceptional skills on scripting language knowledge such as Bash, Python and PHP here is your opportunity to work with Google in Nigeria.
The internet search engine giants are currently looking to fill the vacant position of Technical Account Manager, Publisher and Distributor in Nigeria. View the full job extract below.
Job Description
Our relationships with partners should run like well-oiled machines, and Google’s Publisher & Distribution Solutions ensures partners are empowered to grow their businesses by making the most of Google’s expanding suite of products. Technical Account Managers are advertising and technology consultants who serve as liaisons between our top partners and Google’s Engineering and Sales teams. You are a Google product expert who can nurture and deepen the partner relationship through successful multi-product integrations, providing day-to-day support with your extensive expertise in AdSense, AdMob, DoubleClick, Chrome and other Google products.
You flawlessly lead implementations and integrations for a variety of our product lines during the pre-sales and post-sales process. You provide end-to-end support to our publisher partners, from deployment to ongoing support of daily business. As the technical expert, you work closely with the partner sales teams to monitor our products’ performance for top clients, develop tools that address their technological and business needs and identify opportunities to grow Google’s partner business.
Responsibilities
Help partners resolve day-to-day challenges by delivering innovative and scalable solutions. Ensure the prompt and proper resolution of any technical challenges. Evangelize new product features and assist clients in the adoption of new products via upgrades and migrations to help them build long-term success. Provide documentation and technical guidance to ensure the technical success of clients’ integrations. Improve product offerings by providing client feedback on features to Google product managers and engineers. Perform implementation reviews, and analyze and optimize clients’ product mix to ensure their success.
Minimum Qualifications
BA/BS degree in software engineering or related field or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications
Strong troubleshooting skills in common web technologies, such as XML, HTML and HTML5, JavaScript, Flash. Good scripting language knowledge such as Bash, Python, PHP. Collaboration skills for working across geographically dispersed functions. Fluency in French and English and at least one another African language.
Area
The Google Technical Services (gTech) team serves as the primary point of contact for our global Sales, Business Development, and Partnerships teams to support our sales organization across all products. We provide tools so that our sales teams can focus on what they do best. Our team collaborates with many of Google’s engineering groups to create technical solutions that enable our sales organization to help grow our customers’ businesses.Apply Now or Read More About Google
Today Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio is expanding its availability in the automotive realm. The company, which offers streaming internet radio to over 40 million registered users, is pushing into new territories by integrating with Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, and Kia automobiles.
As it stands, iHeartRadio is already available in various Chrysler, Ford, GM, Lexus, Lincoln, Nissan and Toyota vehicles.
But that’s not all.
iHeartRadio has also announced a partnership with Bosch SoftTec, a platform provider for car OEMs building out infotainment systems. This way, iHeart will reach wherever Bosch SoftTec does.Here’s what Clear Channel President of Digital Brian Lakamp had to say about it:
Radio is the original mobile, in-car entertainment feature. With the new advancements in automotive infotainment systems, Clear Channel is able to extend the reach of our radio stations to even more listeners. We’re extremely pleased to work with Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo and Kia to bring iHeartRadio to their dashboards, as well as be available in BOSCH’s deeper extension into consumer-facing functionality — providing even more listeners with the products and services they expect no matter where they are – and no matter where they drive.
According to the release, the new iHeartRadio car apps are focused on minimalism, keeping the driver safely on the road and focused on driving while still enjoying all the music or talk radio they want.
Speaking of, iHeart recently introduced talk radio to iHeartRadio’s catalog, letting a number of big name brands host live radio shows which can be saved for later listening. The platform is also introducing a way for everyday users to record podcasts/radio shows.
There’s no clear word on availability when it comes to the new in-car apps, but the press release promises 2014.
Just pulled this one from Techcrunch – Google is hoping to do it again with Android — and cars. The 2007 Open Handset Alliance helped drive Google’s mobile OS from new-kid-on-the-block to dominant force in smartphones. Today, the company has announced the Open Automotive Alliance (OAA) to attempt the same trick but for cars — persuading a small coterie of car makers and others to join it as founder members of the OAA.
As well as Mountain View itself, Audi, GM, Honda, Hyundai and NVIDIA have put their names to the OAA, which is described as “a global alliance of technology and auto industry leaders committed to bringing the Android platform to cars starting in 2014″. The OAA will be focused on establishing a common platform for Android integration with connected cars.
Google notes:
We’re working with our partners to enable better integration between cars and Android devices in order to create a safer, car optimized experience. We’re also developing new Android platform features that will enable the car itself to become a connected Android device. Stay tuned for more details coming soon.
As with Android, Google is a little late to the party here: back in June Apple confirmed it is working with car makers on an initiative called ‘iOS in The Car’ to enable iDevice owners to use their gadgets to do stuff like play music, display maps, dictate messages in their cars, starting in 2014.
Car makers signed up to Apple’s earlier automotive initiative are a little more plentiful and include Honda, Mercedes Benz, Nissan, Ferrari, Chevy, Infiniti, Kia, Hyundai, Volvo, Jaguar, and Acura. (So Honda and Hyundai are playing in both camps.)
The first cars with “Android integration” are expected by the end of this year, according to the OAA’s inaugural release (it does not say which car maker is expected to be first).
A report on Techcrunch has confirmed that local search and advertising company YP has made an official announcement confirming it’s acquisition of mobile ad company, Sense Network. Find the extract below.
David Lebow, the senior vice president and general manager of YP’s national markets group, told me that this is the company’s first acquisition since it launched in May 2012, when it was formed from the merger of AT&T Advertising Solutions (publisher of the Yellow Pages) and AT&T Interactive, with Cerberus Capital Management holding a controlling stake.
Lebow added that YP’s mobile ad efforts have been focused on search until now, so acquiring Sense (a decade-old, venture-backed company) gives YP a foothold to expand into mobile display as well. The two companies already worked together, but he said that actually acquiring Sense’s technology, with its ability to create custom consumer profiles for use in mobile ad targeting, will give YP a real competitive advantage. (That’s a company illustration of Sense Networks’ technology above.)
In addition, all entire 10 Sense Networks team members will be joining YP, where they will continue to focus on mobile display ads and targeting. That team is going to grow, Lebow said: “We know it’s not a 10-person problem, it’s a 30-person problem.”
Sense Networks was founded in 2003 and backed by Intel Capital, Javelin Venture Partners, and others. In 2012, we reported that it was in acquisition talks with Twitter.
Lebow also argued that the deal shows YP’s shift away from traditional publishing and towards “placing a premium on technology.”
“Our transformation is well underway,” he said.
And in the acquisition release, CEO David Krantz suggested that YP is on the look for more deals like this: “We expect to continue to make technology acquisitions and plan to aggressively maintain and build on our mobile advertising leadership.”
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
When London-based Tribesports — a social network for people doing rather than watching various sports — rebooted its business model last year, kickstarting what it calls the world’s first “community-powered” sportswear brand, you’d be forgiven for thinking the young company had become less tech and more clothes-maker.
But, actually, Tribesports very much still sees itself as a creator of social web and mobile applications, which underpin its 200,000+ user base, and in turn enable those users to become co-creators and co-marketers of its new sportswear range. It’s a model that, perhaps, defies conventional corporate thinking whereby “we need an app” is often little more than a marketing afterthought.
Today Tribesports is launching a new iOS app dedicated to training. The app, which is completely free, shunning paid-for add-ons or other premium pricing, lets you track, analyse and review your training, and, unlike something like Runkeeper, has been designed to work across multiple sports — something the company thinks reflects how many of its users actually train.
Naturally, the app ties into the existing Tribesports community, allowing you to follow the training sessions/workouts of other users, as well as browse thousands of community uploaded workouts or share you own.
In some ways, the Tribesports Training app offers a subset of features found in the main Tribesports app but redesigned to focus on mobile training, including, of course, a heavy use of GPS. It’s also no doubt designed to appeal to users who may not want to join and participate in a dedicated sports social network.
The GPS tracking features enable you to track and analyse your running, cycling, walking and more, underpinned by weekly, monthly and all-time-best graphs. You can also take in-app photos, which are then uploaded as part of logging your training session. All in all, over 900 different sports and exercises are available to log in workouts and training sessions out of the box, and there’s the option to customise your own and share these templates.
Of course, if Tribesports can get a greater number of people engaging with its technology wares, it can also introduce those same users to its own big brand-busting sportswear.
It seems everyone is doling out $7.99 per month for the privilege of Netflix, that glimmering portal to instant TV marathons and endless movies. Everyone and their mother has written a list of the best titles streaming on Netflix right this very minute (and those that just got purged). But what if I told you there was a cheaper way?
Enter Amazon Prime. It’s primarily known for getting you free two-day shipping on Amazon.com for $79 per year. But it also comes with Prime Instant Video, a free streaming service for thousands of movies and TV shows that comes under the umbrella of its Video on Demand service: Amazon Instant Video. In other words, it’s Netflix but combined with a shipping service that is actually useful for life in the real world. And it’s cheaper than Netflix at a little less than $7 per month.
My family is obsessed with Amazon.com. I’ve been a Primer (™) for years now, and although it sometimes feels like I’m missing out on the Netflix party, Prime has some pretty great benefits. It’s also rapidly evolving to catch up with Netflix. I remember when it didn’t have a watchlist and I had to actually bookmark things I wanted to watch (gasp!). But those times are behind us. Amazon and I are growing every day.
I’ll weigh the pros and cons of Prime Instant Video versus Netflix. Perhaps it’ll convince you to switch over, or at least realize that Netflix is not the autocrat of the streaming world.
Pro: The rental option. If a movie is streaming, but not for free, you can just rent it for anywhere from $2.99 to $6.99 for some new releases. You can also buy a digital copy of movie or TV show. With Netflix, your only other option is to order the DVD — a non-option if you only have a streaming account. Having TV episodes for purchase also means Amazon gets recent TV seasons much quicker than Netflix. They already have the most recent seasons of “Breaking Bad” and “American Horror Story,” notably absent from Netflix.
Con: Not as user-friendly as Netflix. Amazon is a site on its own, and Prime Instant Video is a small, hidden part of it. Your watchlist (Amazon’s version of a queue) is tucked away behind two menus instead of waiting for you on the homepage for your scrolling convenience. There’s no way to reorder items in your queue. Basically, there’s a lot of room for improvement here.
Pro: While there isn’t much overlap between the two, Prime has a bunch of stuff that Netflix doesn’t. They had “Mean Girls” when Netflix didn’t deign to have it except on DVD (but who even has a DVD subscription?). They’re pretty good about new releases too: They already have “Spring Breakers,” whereas there’s no sign of it on Netflix. Prime is known for its particularly great free TV selection. They have exclusive rights to “Downton Abbey,” with the first season free. They have A LOT of BBC and Masterpiece Theatre series. On a separate note, they have a particularly vast treasure trove of old movie musicals and classics.
Con: The recommendations aren’t as good as Netflix. How are they ever going to compete with Netflix’s 76,897 genres and its crazy personalization? Right now the best they have is recommended Comedy, Drama, and Kids & Family. Three genres? Nice try.
Pro: The aforementioned free shipping. Useful for ordering textbooks and gifts at the last minute. Plus it’s cool to just buy something without worrying how much more expensive it’ll be with shipping.
In an ideal world you could just have both — Amazon Prime to pick up Netflix’s slack — but we’re not all millionaires, are we? Plus, it’s easier to justify spending money on Amazon Prime. After all, free shipping is a good adult thing that adults should have.
The tablet has had a remarkable run the past few years. But it is important to note that in the majority of use cases tablet are not replacing PCs but rather are extending the life of PCs.
We know from our data as well as a number of other firms’ research that over 90% of tablets sold today have been sold to existing PC owners. And in nearly every supporting data point I have, those tablets are being used to accompany the PC not to replace it. (By PC, I generally mean notebooks).
So it begs the question whether the PC-killing tablet is a valid narrative or not. I’d contend that this is not a valid narrative and, more importantly, it could affect tablet sales to a degree in 2014.
A key point about tablet sales is that the vast majority sold are 8″ or smaller. Which means that the vast number of tablets bought by consumers are not even contenders to replace the PC. In fact, when you look at tablet usage data you notice that they are used heavier during the evening hours while PCs are used heavier during the day time/work hours.
Think of it this way: PC by day, tablet by night. Oh sure, lots of people use their tablets during the day for both entertainment and business reasons (e.g. sales people and other road warriors), but I think this sums up the use case for most tablet owners.
Now, if we acknowledge the point that the vast majority of tablets on the market are used in conjunction with PCs, then we acknowledge that the PC is still used and valued by a large number of consumers. If this is true, those PCs will still need to replaced. So the question then becomes: When will this happen and could it have an effect on the tablet market?
The evidence is clear that 2013 was the lost year for the PC. One of the steepest declines on record, as it has been a stable growth market since the early 2000s. We believe that 2014 could mark a turnaround for the PC sector and catch many by surprise.
Part of the logic for this is the number of PCs in the market being used that are 4 years or older. Depending on whose estimates you use, the number is around 300-350 million. A good percentage of these customers got away with not refreshing their PCs due to their tablet purchases. Those who have not refreshed their PC for school, work, home, etc., simply can’t wait much longer. A PC refresh is coming and it could impact tablet sales.
The tablet/PC hybrid
A caveat to this thinking is that consumers will find the idea of a tablet and PC combined together as an attractive option. Perhaps when a consumer looks to replace their PC they will find something like Microsoft’s Surface an attractive offering. Many in the PC ecosystem are hoping this is the case but I am still skeptical.
I think what corporate employees, small business workers, and even consumers want is the best PC for their needs and the best tablet for their needs. This means they will continue to buy two separate devices that are each best for all the things they want.
While I applaud the efforts of Microsoft, Intel, and others in the PC ecosystem to work to build 2-in-1 PCs and tablets, I’m not optimistic that they will appeal to the masses. I believe some segments of both business and consumer customers will gravitate to these form factors but I don’t believe they will make up the majority of sales of either PCs or tablets.
I believe the market for PCs and tablets will swing like a pendulum. The years that PCs aren’t being refreshed as much tablets sales will boom higher and vice-versa. For everyone who cares about hardware, from IT to the OEMs who make the devices, managing refresh rates and building products that take advantage of refresh years will be critical.
But of course truly innovative products and lower price points could produce a hot seller in either camp regardless of refresh cycles. Given the product maturity on the PC side, I think another breakout tablet is far more likely.
This wrangle has been a real bone of contention in the past few years and will continue to rage inasmuch as newer generations are born and newer technologies are being introduced. However, while battling with this puzzle, EWT staff has listed some basic factors to aid you make a viable decision when choosing your first programming course.
Before we dismantle our enumeration it is exigent and imperative to note some of the common programming languages you are likely to choose from.
Some Common Programming Languages
Perl
Java
C++
C#
Python
Ruby
Eiffel
PHP
JavaScript
ABAP
Objective-C
Ajax
Clipper
Harbour
Gambas
ABL
OZ
Delphi
Now lets take a look at those crucial factors that will affect your decision while choosing your first programming language.
Career
Of course, this is the very first thing that should come into your mind. You need to consider which language will be the most valuable throughout a career or rather, which programming language will be feasible over a long-term career.
You need to consider your main field of specialization, which of the programming languages will aid you in that field and finally how much time do you have at your disposal.
Conceptual Foundation and Easy Transition
As a beginner the syntax of programming may appear a bit strange; some of the concepts may seem a hard nut to crack but a fastidious observation and implementation of that concept may lead to better understanding of similar concepts.
One of the easiest method of mastering various programming languages is by starting from the ones that allows you to transit gradually to another language. Languages such as Java, C# and C++ are the basics of programming. Mastering any of this three will enlighten your brain and lay a fundamental foundation for learning other programming skills. Starting with more advance languages such as Object-C, Ruby or Python which has a more crooked and complicated syntax structure will be a hectic experience when reverting to the basic ones.
Monetization and Marketability
Of course, after completing your programming course you might want to take a vacation in a luxurious environment, dry your toes and flaunt some cash. That is probably the easiest part of learning programming if you made the right choice. Ask me what I think: You want to work at Google? Best go Python. You want to work in the enterprise space, learn Java or C#. You want to build websites? Probably go PHP or Ruby. Pledged your soul to Apple? Just dive into Objective-C. Anything other this; you are out of employment.
For those Americans who are seriously considering going into coding I recommend you start with Java, gradually progress to C# then anything can follow. Intending web programmers can start with JavaScript, PHP and Ajax. W3schools offers free web base course on the major web programming languages including JavaScript and PHP. Moreover, several programming eBooks can as well be downloaded free or paid online: A little Google search will change everything.
Several thousands of Facebook users across the world are already in panic regarding the notion that the social network may be reading their unpublished thoughts. Facebook, however, has released a statement to annihilate such ideas.
An online petition on Care2, a social network for healthy living, boasts more than 27,000 “signatures” from people who want Facebook to “stop stalking our unposted thoughts!” The group is referring to posts, comments and status updates that people type out, then delete before they ever share.
The problem with the petition: Facebook says it isn’t collecting users’ unposted thoughts.
“Facebook does not collect or track any content that people have chosen not to post,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable on Friday.
It appears the petition’s creators are acting on a recent report written by a Facebook data scientist and former company intern. The report was the focus of an article from Slate in mid-December, and explored “self-censorship” among Facebook users. In other words, how often do users type out posts, status updates or comments, and then delete the text before publishing?
The study examined 3.9 million Facebook users over a 17-day period, and found that 71% of users “self-censored” at least once.
The study was meant to identify when people typed and then deleted, not what people typed and then deleted.
“To mitigate noise in our data, content was tracked only if at least five characters were entered into the composer or content box,” researchers wrote in the study. “Content was then marked as ‘censored’ if it was not shared within the subsequent ten minutes; using this threshold allowed us to record only the presence or absence of text entered, not the keystrokes or content.”
The study goes on to explain that users were anonymized, meaning no activity was tied back to any one individual’s identity. “Content of self-censored posts and comments was not sent back to Facebook’s servers: Only a binary value that content was entered at all,” according to the study.
Michael McTernan started the Care2 petition after reading the article published by Slate last month. McTernan says that he often thinks twice before posting to social sites like Facebook, asking himself “Who will see this, and what will they think of me if I post it?” he wrote in an email to Mashable.
McTernan is concerned with Facebook gathering metadata around user’s unpublished thoughts — even if they aren’t collecting the actual content, he says.
“I think the fact they released a study on user behavior that acknowledges people do this, and that Facebook sees this as a problem, is a huge red flag,” he wrote. “Also, the fact the study was released and they are being pedantic about whether or not the content is collected is indicative of a corporation with fast and loose ethics.”
The technology is still available, and could be activated at any time to gather info on whether users are self-censoring. (Again, Facebook says actual content would not be collected.)
This might be handy to Facebook if, for example, the company was testing out a new product or feature. The company could see if a new feature or policy change was causing users to self-censor more often, or if something as simple as a redesign of the text box led to increased self-censorship.
We all love to see live statistics; how much bandwidth was spent on upload and download, how much data was spent on each page you visit but unfortunately Android prefers to keep such information to itself.
Do you want to catch all the applications that is killing your bandwidth? In this list, we are going to look at some android apps that will help you monitor your network connection statistics on screen and find out exactly what app consume more bandwidth.
Today, Twitter’s Vine has announced full web profiles for all of its users, something it has lacked until this point. It has also introduced a new TV Mode that lets you watch videos in full screen on your computer.
You can view videos, browse users’ back catalogue and interact with them on the web. This includes viewing your home feed, liking, commenting and sharing videos.
The profiles are roughly similar to those offered by other social services like Instagram, and should offer easier browsing of multiple Vines on the web. Previously, you could look at one video at a time but there was no way to jump from that video directly to a user’s other work on the web — but you could on the mobile app. This strikes us as a move made to support Vine creators — the segment of the app’s users that have made a craft out of the six-second clips.
Vine had announced plans to create web profiles late last year, and offered reservations for custom URLs ahead of the launch. They’re now rolling out to all users.
This is not a full version of Vine for the web, as you can’t record videos with your webcam, but it does offer an easier way to give people access to all of your published Vines.
The new TV Mode is quite enjoyable, though it plays through your videos one after another, rather than looping. Given that loops are one of the core creative tools of Vine, I’d love to see a toggle that let you loop a video until you were done watching it. But there are ‘back and forward’ buttons and keyboard arrows work for this as well.
Obviously Vine profiles on the web have been in the works for a while, but the TV Mode feels a lot like a (well done) reading of the user attraction to compilations of Vines on YouTube and other video sites. People obviously want to watch a bunch of Vines in a row, and this offers a way to do that. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a rise in accounts created specifically to curate ‘best of’ compilations using the ‘re-Vine feature, for instance.
One way to encourage this could be to add a feature in the future that let users create ‘lists’ or collections of Vines separate from their home timeline. This could let them craft ‘compilation’ videos out of Vines in specific orders and around specific themes.
Football fans in the U.S. who can’t get in front of a television set this weekend will still be able to watch wildcard gridiron action online thanks to generous free Internet streaming plans from most of the stations carrying the NFL playoff games.
Here’s a rundown of what to expect this weekend—and beyond.
NBC Sports Live Extra
On Saturday, the Kansas City Chiefs and Indianapolis Colts face-off on NBC at 4:35 PM Eastern/1:35 PM Pacific, and NBC will also carry the New Orleans Saints vs. the Philadelphia Eagles at 8:10 PM Eastern the same day.
Both games will be live streamed on NBC Sports Live Extra, a streaming service for U.S. residents. Most of the time you need a cable subscription to access Live Extra, but Varietyreports that both games will be available for free rather than behind an indirect paywall—repeating NBC’s free playoff streaming of last year’s wild card games. We’re checking with NBC to verify this.
CBS Sports
On Sunday, at 1:05 PM Eastern/10:05 AM Pacific, CBS broadcasts the San Diego Chargers battling the Cincinnati Bengals, with a free live stream appearing at CBSSports.com. There don’t appear to be any restrictions.
Fox Sports
Sorry cord cutters: Fox will reportedly keep its live stream of the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers game behind an indirect paywall available only to cable subscribers with access to the broadcaster’s “TV Everywhere” initiative. Fox declined to comment on its streaming plans to Variety, however. The game starts at 4:40 PM Eastern/1:40 PM Pacific on Sunday.
Beyond the Wild Cards
Divisional playoff games the following weekends (January 11-12 and January 19) the divisional and championship playoffs will also be live streamed under the same plans as the wild card games above, according to Variety. In other words, AFC games will be freely streamed on CBSSports.com, while Fox-aried NFC games will only be available to cable subscribers.
Variety reports that Fox plans to live stream the Super Bowl for free on February 2, however. NBC and CBS live streamed the Superbowl in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
There’s a lot of playoff football coming up, and while it’s always great to see a major sport going online with live broadcasts, the NFL postseason still isn’t quite a cord-cutters dream. Oh well. If you’re in one of its supported markets and want to catch a game away from a big screen, there’s always the Aereo TV streaming service, which seems to have largely recovered from the hiccups it suffered on the NFL’s opening day.
BlackBerry has today filed a lawsuit against startup Typo Keyboards, which is backed by Ryan Seacrest. The company alleges that Typo copied BlackBerry’s patented and “iconic” keyboard design.
“We are flattered by the desire to graft our keyboard onto other smartphones, but we will not tolerate such activity without fair compensation for using our intellectual property and our technological innovations,” Steve Zipperstein, BlackBerry’s General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer, said in a statement today.
Seacrest invested $1M in the accessory, which encloses an iPhone in a case with a keyboard attached to the bottom half. The keyboard covers the iPhone’s home button but offers an alternate home button on the bottom right corner.
BlackBerry says that the Typo Keyboard violates its intellectual property rights, and that it will protect those rights from “blatant copying and infringement.”
“BlackBerry’s iconic physical keyboard designs have been recognized by the press and the public as a significant market differentiator for its mobile handheld devices,” the statement concludes.
The design certainly bears some resemblance a strong resemblance to BlackBerry’s signature rounded-corner keys and sloped corner design — right down to the placement of the back and return buttons. But one does have to wonder how many ways you can arrange keys on a keyboard.
Here’s the BlackBerry Q10 keyboard:
And here’s the Typo keyboard accessory:
Either way, BlackBerry’s death rattle is unlikely to be slowed by its new strategy of ‘get money from Seacrest‘.
Does the cluttered ribbon menu in windows 8 annoy you? Ian Paul – PC World will tell us exactly how to clean it up.
When it comes to Windows, there is nothing I love more than Microsoft’s infamous Ribbon interface—and nothing I hate more. Using it in Microsoft Office is great, but adding Ribbon to Windows 8’s file explorer was a bit much for me.
So I decided to pare File Explorer down a little and put the features I might need front and center, while banishing the rest of the Ribbon from my sight. If you’re tired of dealing with a Ribbon-loaded File Explorer, here’s a quick way to simplify your menu hopping.
The Home tab of Windows 8’s stock Ribbon interface.
But first…
Before we get going, let’s run down some basic anatomy of Windows Explorer. At the very top of the window you’ll see a file folder icon in the upper left corner. Next to that are a few icons and a downward facing arrow. That small set of icons is known as the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT).
Below that, where you see menu options for File, Home, Share, and View—each with their own mess of icons—is the infamous Ribbon we were talking about earlier.
And now, on with the show…
How to clean up the Ribbon interface
First, click on the QAT’s downward arrow to show the functions you can add to the Quick Access Toolbar, including undo, redo, delete, properties, new folder, and rename. Some of these should already be selected. Add the feaures you use on a regular basis; they should appear in the QAT immediately. Fear not if you don’t see a beloved function: The QAT can have any Ribbon UI feature you want. To add your favorites, just right-click the option in the Ribbon and select “Add to Quick Access Toolbar” in the pop-up menu that appears.
That’s it! Now that you’ve got your QAT fine-tuned, it’s time to give it a more prominent placement and banish the Ribbon UI. Right-click the Ribbon and select “Show Quick Access Toolbar below the Ribbon.” Next, right-click the Ribbon again and select “Minimize the Ribbon.”
Click “Minimize the Ribbon” to, well, you know.
Windows 8’s File Explorer should now look similar to what you see below, with the Ribbon pushed to the background as much as possible and the Quick Access Toolbar front and center with all your favorite menu options.
Well, that’s much less of an eyesore.
Forgotten, but never gone
The Ribbon may be banished, but it’s not gone for good. Anytime you need to access the Ribbon, simply click on the menu option you need (File, Home, etc.,) and the Ribbon interface will briefly reappear. If you want the Ribbon back permanently, just right-click the Ribbon’s menu options and deselect “Minimize the Ribbon.” You can put the QAT up at the top again by right-clicking it and select “Show Quick Access Toolbar above the Ribbon.” These few simple steps can make File Explorer a lot easier to use—and a tiny bit closer to the standard menu interface found in previous versions of Microsoft’s OS. The same basic procedure can help you clean up Microsoft Office’s Ribbon UI, if you consider it an eyesore, too. I hope it helps! Full credit to this article goes to Ian Paul and PC World
Following the event of the last few days, Snapchat is not willing to risk any further leakage.
Snapchat has released an official post about the recent leak of 4.6M usernames and phone numbers from its servers. The post blames what it says was ‘abuse’ of its API on the leak, but acknowledges that the way that it stores the information made it possible for a database of numbers to be used to sniff out usernames and match them up. Changes will be made to both Snapchat’s apps and the service in order to prevent future leaks including being able to opt out of the Find Friends feature that uses phone numbers. Snapchat says that it was notified of the possible security risk (publicly) in August and took some steps to correct it including limiting the speed at which its API could be queried. In what is one of the most cringe-worthy security moves in recent memory, Snapchat posted a response late last month to claims of risk that outlined just how a hacker might be able to match usernames to phone numbers. In the post, they said “Theoretically, if someone were able to upload a huge set of phone numbers, like every number in an area code, or every possible number in the U.S., they could create a database of the results and match usernames to phone numbers that way.” That is exactly what the group behind the leaked SnapchatDB.info database says that they did. The result was a trove of 4.6M Snapchat accounts matched up with usernames and phone numbers. Despite partially redacted phone numbers and usernames, matched conveniently in an online repository, Snapchat says that “no other information, including Snaps, was leaked or accessed in these attacks.” Notably, Snapchat’s public response to this hacking does not include an apology of any sort to its users who have had their user names or phone numbers publicly exposed. Perhaps its an effort to avoid an admission of guilt, but it still feels like a bad effort. The person(s) responsible for releasing the names and numbers told Techcrunch that “raise the public awareness around the issue, and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed. It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal. Security matters as much as user experience does.” The group says that they were following the research of Gibson Security, who gave a detailed account of how such an exploit could be accomplished to ZDNet in late December. The researches came forward after they say that they approached Snapchat and got no response from them on the matter. Snapchat’s statement today appears to confirm that its reverse engineered API was used to obtain the user info. As our own Josh Constine mentioned about this issue late last month, Snapchat’s first mistake was to not take the efforts of ‘white hat’ hackers seriously. If Gibson Security did indeed approach Snapchat far in advance of going public, their revelations should have been taken seriously and acted on with vigor. Snapchat’s first blog post on the issue in December acknowledged the potential vulnerability publicly and noted that some countermeasures had been put into place. But, in the same breath, it noted that there was still a method that could be used to accomplish this kind of leak. Yet it didn’t fix it. Now, Snapchat says that it will add an opt-out to its apps which will allow people to choose not to appear in the Find Friends feature after they’ve used their phone number for verification purposes. It says it is also ‘improving’ the rate limiting it used to throttle API requests previously and adding ‘other restrictions’ to address future attempts to abuse the service.
Here’s the full post from Snapchat:
When we first built Snapchat, we had a difficult time finding other friends that were using the service. We wanted a way to find friends in our address book that were also using Snapchat – so we created Find Friends. Find Friends is an optional service that asks Snapchatters to enter their phone number so that their friends can find their username. This means that if you enter your phone number into Find Friends, someone who has your phone number in his or her address book can find your username. A security group first published a report about potential Find Friends abuse in August 2013. Shortly thereafter, we implemented practices like rate limiting aimed at addressing these concerns. On Christmas Eve, that same group publicly documented our API, making it easier for individuals to abuse our service and violate our Terms of Use. We acknowledged in a blog post last Friday that it was possible for an attacker to use the functionality of Find Friends to upload a large number of random phone numbers and match them with Snapchat usernames. On New Years Eve, an attacker released a database of partially redacted phone numbers and usernames. No other information, including Snaps, was leaked or accessed in these attacks. We will be releasing an updated version of the Snapchat application that will allow Snapchatters to opt out of appearing in Find Friends after they have verified their phone number. We’re also improving rate limiting and other restrictions to address future attempts to abuse our service. We want to make sure that security experts can get ahold of us when they discover new ways to abuse our service so that we can respond quickly to address those concerns. The best way to let us know about security vulnerabilities is by emailing us: [email protected]. The Snapchat community is a place where friends feel comfortable expressing themselves and we’re dedicated to preventing abuse.
If you’re looking for more content for your 4K TV, you’ll soon have somewhere new to turn: YouTube. The Google-owned company will demonstrate 4K video next week at the International CES show as it moves forward with offering next-generation video.
YouTube will serve up 4K (a.k.a. Ultra HD or UHD) in a new format called VP9, a royalty-free codec that will also reportedly offer a better experience with Google Hangouts, according to GigaOm. VP9 consumes considerably less data than other, commercial codecs (such as H.265), YouTube said, letting the service stream higher-quality streams with less bandwidth.
However, hardware must support the format before consumers can view the streams. Google is reportedly working on that, too; it will demo streamed 4K content on TVs from LG, Panasonic and Sony. Several other partners, including Samsung, ARM and Intel, have signed up to build hardware that supports VP9.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has experimented with 4K. The service first ventured into supporting the format, which is typically 3,840 x 2,160 or 4x the pixel resolution of full HD, in 2010. Though the 4K streams appeared to work for Mashable’s Christina Warren when she watched them over a 50Mbps connection, she couldn’t verify the clarity since 4K monitors were a rarity four years ago.
That has changed, with several manufacturers offering 4K TVs and displays — some at impressively low prices. The challenge now is bringing true 4K content to consumers. YouTube is addressing this along with the likes of Netflix, which tested offering 4K videos, and Sony, which offers a 4K download service to owners of its 4K TVs.
For Evan Spiegel, the hardest words to say seem to be, “I’m sorry.”
An article on Mashable has stated that Snapchat’s CEO appeared on NBC’s Today on Friday in a pre-taped interview with Carson Daly to discuss the New Year’s Eve security breach, which resulted in 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers leaking online. Spiegel was visibly frustrated by the hack — Daly described him as “outraged” — but the CEO still did not offer an apology to users.
“Technology businesses in general are susceptible to hacking,” Spiegel said in the interview. “That’s why you have to work really, really, really hard with law enforcement, with security experts, internal and external groups, to make sure you’re paying attention and addressing security concerns.”
As Daly points out in the interview, however, Snapchat had been warned by a security group of potential risks just days before the breach occurred; in fact, it may have been months ago. Snapchat played down the threat.
“You know, I believe at the time we thought we had done enough,” Spiegel said. “But I think in a business like this, in a business that’s moving so quickly, if you spend your time looking backwards you are just going to kill yourself.”
Spiegel’s comments in the interview were similar to a statement released by Snapchat on Thursday night in which the company promised to release an update that would let users opt out of appearing in the Find Friends feature, which was used to leak user details.
“Find Friends is an optional service that asks Snapchatters to enter their phone number so that their friends can find their username,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We will be releasing an updated version of the Snapchat application that will allow Snapchatters to opt out of appearing in Find Friends after they have verified their phone number.”
As 2013 travels down the history book EWT analysts take a look at the top 45 most downloaded WordPress plugins in the past 12 months.
Plugins are the fundamental ingredients that constitute a flowering website – If you are running your website on a WordPress self hosted platform you will understand what I mean by that term. Whether you are managing a cooperate/business or personal/commercial blog, we all help ourselves with one plugin or the other.
Statistics has shown that more plugins was added to the WordPress data base in 2013 than in the preceding years. Likewise, more bloggers and webmasters (esp. in Africa & Asia) uses the WordPress self hosted platform making it the most popular CMS across the globe.
The stats are quite incredible. Aren’t they? “What plugins did they use?” remains a question we need to tackle in the following section.
A social sharing service provided by AddToAny that adds social sharing functionality to your website.
43. UpdraftPlus – WordPress Backup and Restoration —Download
This Plugin helps you perform a complete backup or restoration of your self hosted WordPress site into a cloud service such as: Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Rackspace, FTP, SFTP, email, DreamObjects, etc.
Convert your self hosted WordPress site into an e-Commerce site with this free plugin. Customers can buy products, services and digital downloads from your website.
Regenerate Thumbnails allows you to regenerate the thumbnails for your image attachments. This is very handy if you’ve changed any of your thumbnail dimensions (via Settings -> Media) after previously uploading images or have changed to a theme with different featured post image dimensions.
This plugin themes the WordPress login, registration and forgot password pages according to your current theme. It creates a page to use in place of wp-login.php, using a page template from your theme. Also includes a widget for sidebar login.
This plugin allows administrators to globally disable comments on any post type (posts, pages, attachments, etc.) so that these settings cannot be overridden for individual posts. It also removes all comment-related fields from edit and quick-edit screens. On multisite installations, it can be used to disable comments on the entire network.
Just stay where you are, you can have it all – BuddyPress adds a social networking functionality to WordPress site. Users can create profiles, post messages, make connection, create and interact in groups. In the part 1 and part 2 of ‘How to Create a Social Network with WordPress’ we covered the basics of setting up this plugin.
In compliance with the recent WordPress theme guidelines, this plugin ensures that themes functionality is limited to design, layout and structure and that anything that falls outside of this is developed as a plugin.
32. ShareThis: Share Buttons and Social Analytics —Download
Adds the ShareThis share buttons to your website. Also allows you to monitor how often people share your contents.
31. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) —Download
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) displays pages, posts, and custom post types related to the current entry, introducing your readers to other relevant content on your site.
Easily create and add forms to WordPress. Fields are easy to add, remove, and re-order. The contact form will let the user send emails to a site’s admin, and also send a meeting request to talk over phone or video.
This plugin generates locational breadcrumb trails for your WordPress powered blog or website. These breadcrumb trails are highly customizable to suit the needs of just about any website running WordPress.
24. Quick Cache (Speed Without Compromise) —Download
Speed your website loading with this easy-to-use cache plugin.
This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
Want to create a mobile site on WordPress? Here is your chance. WPtouch Mobile is a free plugin that helps you setup a mobile site on WordPress with 1,2,3 touches.
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines such as Google, Bing, Yandex, etc crawl your site faster and more effectively.
Supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features such as: Email subscription, CSS editor, Hovercard popups, etc previously only available to WordPress.com users.
No SEO knowledge is required – All in One SEO Pack is a WordPress SEO plugin to automatically optimize your WordPress blog for Search Engines such as Google. Even as a total novice, you can use custom titles, custom url, advanced canonical URLs, fine tune page navigational Links on your blog posts. This plugin also helps you avoid duplicate articles submitted to you as a guest post.
Let your customers, clients or readers contact you from your WordPress site. Contact Form 7 is an Ajax contact form with easy to use interface. Can easily be embedded into any page.
Sitting at the top of our list is ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast’ plugin. This plugin helps you improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site. Though the functions are a bit similar to that of All in One SEO Pack, the premium supports offers more.
Skype said its social media properties were targeted, with a group styling itself as the Syrian Electronic Army appearing to claim credit for the hacks.
”You may have noticed our social media properties were targeted today,” Skype said in a Twitter message late Wednesday. “No user info was compromised. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
Skype’s Twitter account, blog and Facebook page appeared to have been attacked by the SEA, a group that supports the Syrian government, according to reports. The Skype blog was still inaccessible late Wednesday and redirected users to the Skype homepage.
The SEA reproduced in a Twitter message a copy of what appeared to be its message using the Skype account on Twitter. The message read: “Don’t use Microsoft emails(hotmail,outlook),They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments.More details soon #SEA.” It did not figure by late Wednesday on Skype’s Twitter feed.
SEA later posted on Twitter contact information purportedly of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, stating: “You can thank Microsoft for monitoring your accounts/emails using this details.”
The attack on Skype’s social media accounts appears to be linked to disclosures through newspapers by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that Internet companies allegedly provide the agency real-time access to content on their servers for surveillance purposes.
The SEA has targeted previously many high-profile websites and Twitter accounts. In August, an attack purportedly by SEA on Melbourne IT, an Australian domain registrar, affected the websites of The New York Times, Twitter and other top companies.
“All work without play” they said, “makes Jack a dull boy”. 2013 would have been incomplete without all the fun in it. Today, EWT is bringing your attention to the top 20 PC games that branded our 2013.
The games shortlisted here can easily contend for the ‘best game of the year’ award. If your most preferred game is not listed here, you are free to include it on the comment section. The qualifications for contention: The game must be a stand-alone product that you can buy on its own, and it must run on a PC.
DayZ is a gritty, authentic, open-world survival horror hybrid-MMO game, in which players follow a single goal: to survive in the harsh post-apocalyptic landscape as long as they can. Players can live through powerful events and emotions arising from the ever-evolving emergent gameplay.
In Papers, Please, you win the lottery. Unfortunately, it’s the labor lottery, and you’re pressed into service as a border-crossing guard for your vaguely Eastern Bloc country Arstotzka. Your job is to examine people’s passports and—as drab days stretch into miserable weeks—make sure no criminal scum is trying to get into the country using falsified documents. Of course, the “criminal scum” is often people just like you—like the man who immigrates with no problem but whose wife has counterfeit papers. Do you let her in anyway? Or do you do your job and reject her? Keep in mind that if you let her in, there’s a good chance your pay will get docked and your family won’t eat tonight. Papers, Please is brutal. Unforgiving. Bleak.
After a swift fall from grace with the last two middling chapters of the Assassin’s Creed franchise (Revelations and III), I thought I was done. Burned out. Imagine my surprise when I put 15 hours into Black Flag my first day. Sailing around the Caribbean, sinking boats just to cause chaos, with my crew of pirates belting out sea chanties—I liked being a pirate. Star of the show Edward Kenway is the most affable protagonist the series has ever had. While some lament the lack of plot progression in the overarching series, I’m actually glad proceedings are less self-serious this time around. Assassin’s Creed IV is pure, unadulterated fun. Just make sure to keep a bottle of rum close at hand. Or this weird nonalcoholic rum for all you youngsters.
The Stanley Parable, once a mod for Half-Life 2, is now a stand-alone game. If you don’t know what The Stanley Parable is about, I highly recommend that you skip the rest of this entry and just go download the demo. Choice is the operative word in The Stanley Parable. You play Stanley, a hapless office worker who suddenly realizes that all his coworkers are missing. Also, a British guy narrates everything. “Stanley came to two doors and walked through the one on the right, towards his boss’s office,” the narrator says cheerfully. Do you listen to him, or do you rebel and walk through the door on the left? Do you stand there, paralyzed by choice, for minutes on end? Or do you contemplate how utterly meaningless life is? Let’s be honest: It’s probably the last one.
Eu não falo Português. Still, that didn’t stop me from becoming eternal king of the Portuguese Empire, a globe-spanning operation that discovered the Americas before Columbus was even born, and that grew to control the entire New World. In Europa Universalis IV, you take control of a country in the early Renaissance era and guide it toward empire. Or don’t. It’s a giant political sandbox. Want to know what would’ve happened if Ireland had thrown in with the French during the Hundred Years’ War? Or if the Holy Roman Empire had become an exceptional naval power? Go ahead and try it. The complexity of Europa Universalis IV’s grand-strategy approach takes some getting used to, but stick with it and you’ll suddenly find you’re making political decrees at four in the morning, wearing a crown you fashioned from an old pizza box. Perfect.
Look at your shelf of films (or your Netflix account or wherever they live). Are a good portion of your favorites neon-soaked, 1980s action films? Ones that feature spandex, an abundance of one-liners, and cheesy synthesizer and saxophone music? Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon takes place in a post-nuclear-war 2007. Your name is Sergeant Rex Power Colt. You have an electronic eye and a cybernetic arm. Your character is voiced by Michael “Kyle Reese” Biehn. It’s basically the same game as Far Cry 3, except way more pink. And way more amazing.
It’s been months, and I still don’t quite know how to put my experience with Gone Home into words—or perhaps I don’t want to. The experience is intensely personal, and not everyone is going to get as much out of it as I did. Gone Home is not, despite outward appearances, a horror game. There are no enemies to encounter, no middle act where you blow up the house and save the universe. Gone Home is a story of a family—and the secrets the family members keep even from one another, secrets that are hidden in the backs of old drawers and stashed under beds. What can you learn from the letter your mother uses for a bookmark? How about the box of papers in the basement? Or the details of an old rejection slip addressed to your dad? A lot, it turns out. Gone Home takes people as its premise, and people are fascinating.
8. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger abandons the self-seriousness of the last Call of Juarez game (The Cartel) and returns to the Old West, winning it the title of best arcade-style shooter of the year. You play as Silas Greaves, a grizzled bounty hunter and legend of the Old West. Greaves is actually the narrator of Gunslinger, relating his tales to a crowd of saloon patrons. And, as you can imagine, his tales are a bit…tall. Yes, you play the unreliable narrator of your own stories. The other people in the bar will call Greaves out on his lies, and the game world changes accordingly. “Now hang on, I didn’t say they were Apaches, I said they fought like Apaches!” Greaves says, and suddenly the Apache enemies turn into generic bandits. It’s a refreshing approach—toying with game tropes without taking itself too seriously. And for only $15? It’s a steal.
9. Tomb Raider
I never thought that in 2013 I’d be putting a Tomb Raider title on the Game of the Year list, but here we are. Developed by Crystal Dynamics, the new Tomb Raider is (like so many things these days) a dark, gritty reboot of the franchise. In this case, however, it’s a gritty reboot that works. The iconic Lara Croft is younger here, not as sure of herself. She’s shipwrecked on a mysterious island where the locals are less than friendly, and from there the game plays a bit like an open-world Uncharted. And I mean that comparison in the most favorable way. Tomb Raider’s mechanics just feel right: The game has dozens of collectibles scattered around the world, and for the first time in a long, long while, I actually snagged them all, just so I could keep playing.
10. Saints Row IV
If Saints Row were a presidential candidate, it would endorse Fun. Capital F. “Restrict guns? No, I want the entire world to have guns,” says President Saints Row IV. “Oh, and here are some superpowers and a kickin’ soundtrack and—you know what, let’s just remake Crackdown, but make it silly.” I love Crackdown. Remake Crackdown but set it in the anything-goes, Saints Row universe, where every moment is a new pop-culture reference, and one of your many superpowers lets you turn yourself into a nuclear explosion? Awesome. Plus, I think there’s an unspoken rule that any game prominently featuring Aerosmith’s perennial classic “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” has to make the GOTY list.
BioShock Infinite didn’t match its potential. Set aside the fact that the middle chapter is a drag, and you’re still left with an extremely problematic story that never quite gets a handle on any of its themes. And yet there were moments (particularly this one) that provided brief glimpses of the game it might have been, and even those brief glimpses were better than a lot of games. BioShock Infinite didn’t “save video games,” and it certainly didn’t have the same impact as the original BioShock, but those sky-high expectations were always unrealistic. It’s a shooter with a story that’s marginally better than those of most other shooters, set in a high-concept world that occasionally falters and shows its seams.
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm is the first expansion pack to Starcraft II, and the second chapter in a planned trilogy of games. The game’s campaign takes place after the events of the first game and you take on the role of Sarah Kerrigan and the Zerg race in an all new single-player campaign. Like the first game, you’ll decide how to proceed through the campaign by choosing your missions and your army’s upgrades—which now in the form of Zerg evolutionary enhancements. The multiplayer portion of the game, which is arguably what most people are going to get the game for, is also getting some major additions with new buildings, units, and associated strategies.
Battlefield 4 is being developed on a powerful next-gen engine and features Destruction 4.0 — allowing for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 style effects — tessellation and dynamic weather effects. As with Battlefield 3, the next entry in the series’ primary platform will be PC. More than just a yearly upgrade, the game will come with a host of improvements to the way its maps are set. For instance, each map in the game will be subject to various weather conditions including fog, sandstorms, rain and haze with these being completely random according to the leak. This, and a dedicated single-player campaign will be part and parcel of the next-gen Battlefield 4 experience.
SimCity is one of our most wanted games of 2013 for the PC. Heck, it’s been one of our most wanted games for a decade now. We’ve wanted a proper, current-generation sequel to SimCity 4, a game which has—thus far—remained uncontested by the likes of too many city simulations that simply fail to compete. The new SimCity offers a city simulation with more detail than ever before thanks to the powerful Glassbox engine it runs on, which simulates everything from underground water tables to the spread of fire, pollution, and crime. Beyond that, it’s got detail that’ll make use of high-end PC hardware to their max, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in a simulation. It’s got its share of problems, but they’ve been fixed. Aside from the game’s always online requirement, most of its issues that were around during its launch have since been alleviated, making it one of the best city simulation games of all time.
Total War: Rome II is set to be the latest and greatest title in Creative Assembly’s Total War series of real-time strategy games. As the eight standalone title in the series, Rome II is set in the classical antiquity with a focus on the Roman Republic. The game is set to offer a much larger campaign than any previous Total War title, encompassing the extent of the Roman Empire and its environs. This time around however, players will be prompted with a variety of decisions to make throughout their campaign. For the first time ever, players will have to make decisions which affect how the campaign plays out by assigning traits to their legions, customizing their loadouts, and more. Additionally, the game’s developers also seek to capture the uniqueness of the different cultures and fighting forces of the time so you won’t simply be commanding cloned armies to fight one another. Each unit in the game will have a unique look and feel associated to its culture, and a technological tree that makes historical sense.
Planetary Annihilation can be best described as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, offering real-time strategy battles that take place on a planetary scale. Games are expected to vary from half-hour 2-player battles to large scale, and lengthy 40-player matches. The game is set to feature a planet-based map system spanning over multiple star systems, different types of planets, and even asteroids. Players will be able to conquer planets and even entire solar systems in their war for galactic dominance.
Metro: Last Light is the sequel to Metro 2033, taking place a year after the events of the first game. Originally slated for release in 2012, the game has since been delayed to an early 2013 release. The writer of the books, Dmitry Glukovsky has been signed on to work with the developers on the game. Like Metro 2033, the game is expected to make full use of the PC’s capabilities to offer better visuals than its console counterparts.
Crysis 3 may be getting released on consoles, but it’s a game that finds its home on the PC as its developers plan to make full use of the PC’s powerful hardware. Veering away from the corridor shooter gameplay of the second Crysis, Crysis 3 is set to offer wide open spaces in a New York City overrun by flora and fauna. Much like the first Crysis and Far Cry before it, players can expect to be able to utilize free-form strategies against AI opponents as they traverse through the wide open areas.
Wasteland 2 is a tactical turn-based and party-based RPG with an “old school” isometric view in which players take control of a party of up to seven characters (three of which are NPCs), and all of whom are highly customizable. Wasteland 2 comes from the makers of Fallout and the original Wasteland—precursors to just about every other modern RPG. As one of the first major games to be funded by Kickstarter, Wasteland 2’s development is entirely independent from the machinations and meddling of marketing departments and corporate big-wigs.
Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons is a videogame developed by Starbreeze Studios in partnership with 505 Games. A lovely game just enough to squeak in at the bottom of the list.
