Google Play Redesign Creeps Out Briefly on Google+

A redesign of the Google Play app appeared briefly on a Google+ account before the post was pulled.

YouTube’s Eileen Rivera posted a screenshot of a redesigned Google Play app to her Google+ page, but the link now comes back as broke, and perusing her main feed also yields nothing. It appears that perhaps this was not yet meant for public consumption.

As AndroidCentral points out, if you look in the top left hand corner of the screenshot you will see a dog bowl. This is likely a reference to this being a “dogfooding” – or internal company usage – version of the app. That could also mean that there will be some more tweaks before it is released.

Seeing as the image has been pulled, there is no real indication of when, if ever, this refresh could make its way to the public. With Google I/O right around the corner, though, it seems like that would be a likely timeframe for this to make its debut.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

4G will disrupt Freeview TV in fewer homes than expected

Fears have been allayed over whether the 4G networks that'll launch this summer will interfere with Freeview telly signals.

A trial conducted by at800 found that a makeshift 4G network using the 800MHz band only affected Freeview reception in 15 out of the 22,000 homes surveyed, The Register reports. at800 originally predicted 120 households would experience problems. Those that did have trouble were remedied quickly with a cheap filter.

The trial was held in Cradley Heath and Rowley Regis, near Dudley.

When operators join EE in rolling our their 4G networks this summer, they'll need to use the 800MHz band, which is the same as Freeview (EE uses the 1,800MHz). Hence concern that your viewing would be interrupted because someone upstairs is browsing on their blower. Campaigners claimed up to 2 million households could be affected.

The operators chucked £180 million at the problem, but will get that back, seeing as it looks like at800 will have nothing to spend it on. Unless it throws a massive party.

All 15 homes that had reception issues featured a signal booster. The filters that come to the rescue have to be fitted between the aerial and the booster -- easy-peasy if the booster is near the back of the TV, but a pain in the backside if it's on top of a tower block, serving a lot of flats. So some households could still have issues.

Bigger trials are needed for a better grasp of the problem, but for the moment it looks like the vast majority of us will be able to watch telly while browsing the Web at super-fast speeds.

[Source: CNET]

Sky swamped with complaints after Yahoo email switch

Sky customers have been complaining in their droves after being deluged with thousands of irrelevant messages after the company switched email providers.

Sky switched from Google to Yahoo, but it's been far from a smooth transition, the BBC reports. Sky customers have been receiving old and deleted messages again and again, meaning hours of wasted time clearing out inboxes. Now Sky has offered a solution, but you're not going to like it.

Sky promised to have a fix sorted by 5pm yesterday, but it missed that deadline. It has posted astep-by-step guide to fixing your inbox, but it basically consists of 'delete any emails you don't want'. Which is exactly what many customers have been doing, and what had them up in arms in the first place.

Over on the support forums, one customer complained of having to sift through 17,000 unwanted emails. Others are also grumbling about not being able to send email, aliases being deleted, filters being reset, and Outlook just plain not working since the switch. Some say they can't even access their email accounts through a browser or on their mobiles, which will impact business and well as personal use.

I think the entry under "Everyone's Tags" at the bottom of this page sums up customer feeling on the matter.

Sky, which has more than 4 million broadband customers, says the problem occurred during migration of all email addresses to Yahoo's servers. As soon as the servers synchronise, the issue should be solved, according to Sky. Though there's no word on when that will be.

Shame it's not as confident as it was the other week about possible network strain.

[Source: CNET]

Costly DRAM is Driving Up Graphics Card Prices

Are you planning to build a gaming PC for the summer? If so, you might want to get started early in order to get the most bang for your buck. Yesterday we told you that desktop DRAM pricing is on the rise as contract chip prices have already jumped 50 percent in 2013, spiking 20 percent in March alone, and now we’re hearing that graphics cards are getting more expensive.

Once again, you can blame memory chip makers. According to Digitimes and its sources within the graphics card business, several video card vendors have increased retail prices for products made with DDR3 memory in the DIY market. Prices are up 10-15 percent, the news and rumor site says.

Those same sources say it’s unlikely graphics card pricing will drop in the next six months, though it’s not all bad news. To help offset the rising retail costs, vendors are getting more aggressive in their promotions, some of which we’ve already seen. AMD, for example, has given away some sweet triple AAA titles as part of its ongoing Never Settle bundles. It’s been rumored that the next Never Settle bundle will include Battlefield 4.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

HMV Stores to Live On in the U.K.

The HMV chain of music retail stores in the United Kingdom has been purchased, pulling it out of administration status.

HMV filed for administrative protection – the U.K. equivalent of bankruptcy – this past Jan. while it went in a search of a buyer. Despite having closed 66 of its stores during this time, the company has indeed found a buyer in Hilco, the company that also holds the Canadian HMV stores, has agreed to purchase the remaining 141 stores which are comprised of 132 HMV branded stores, and the remaining nine Fopp locations.

Hilco plans to retain all of the 2,643 employees in the company, and will move away from a plan that would have seen the HMV stores move deeper into tablets and away from music and video.

While no price of the purchase was announced, The Hollywood Reporter stated that some reports pegged the price of the company at £50 million, or approximately $76 million USD.

The 141 stores included in the sale are:

Aberdeen, Ayr, Banbury, Bangor (Wales), Basildon, Basingstoke, Bath, Belfast Donegall Arcade, Birmingham Bullring, Blackpool, Bluewater, Bournemouth, Bradford, Brighton Churchill, Bristol Broadmead, Bristol Cribbs, Bromley, Bury, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Canary Wharf, Canterbury, Cardiff, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Cheltenham, Chester, Chichester, Colchester, Coventry, Crawley, Cwmbran, Darlington, Derby, Doncaster, Dundee, East Kilbride, Eastbourne, Edinburgh Fort Retail, Edinburgh Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh Princes Street, Exeter, FOPP Bristol, FOPP Cambridge, FOPP Covent Garden, FOPP Edinburgh, FOPP Glasgow Byres Road, FOPP Glasgow Union Street, FOPP Gower Street London, FOPP Manchester, FOPP Nottingham, Gateshead, Glasgow Argyle, Glasgow Buchanan, Glasgow Fort, Gloucester, Grimsby, Guernsey, Guildford, Hanley, Harlow, Harrogate, Hastings, Hatfield, Hereford, High Wycombe, Horsham, Hull, Inverness, Ipswich, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Islington, Jersey, Kettering, Kings Lynn, Kingston, Leamington Spa, Leeds Headrow, Leeds White Rose, Leicester, Lincoln, Liverpool One, Livingston, Llandudno, Maidstone, Manchester 90 Market Street, Manchester Trafford, Mansfield, Merry Hill, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Newport (Wales), Northampton, Norwich Gentlemans Walk, Norwich Chapelfield, Nottingham Victoria, Nuneaton, Oxford, Oxford Circus, Peterborough Queensgate, Plymouth Drake Circus, Poole, Portsmouth Commercial Road, Portsmouth Gun Wharf Quay, Preston, Reading Oracle, Romford, Selfridges Oxford Street, Sheffield High Street, Sheffield Meadowhall, Shrewsbury, Solihull, Southampton, Southend Victoria, Southport, Speke Park, Staines, Stevenage, Stirling, Stockport, Stratford upon Avon, Stratford City Westfield, Sunderland, Sutton, Swansea, Taunton, Thanet, Thurrock, Truro, Tunbridge Wells, Uxbridge, Westfield London, Wimbledon, Winchester, Wolverhampton, Worcester, Worthing, Yeovil, York.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

iOS 7 Concept Features Widgets, New Lock Screen, Mission Control and More

Earlier this week, a number of Apple-focused bloggers claimed iOS 7 was running behind schedule and that it would bring a significant user interface refresh.

Designer F. Bianco has posted a set of images to Flickr with some interesting thoughts on what useful changes Apple could make to iOS 7 to improve the user experience. Apple's user interfaces will likely face new scrutiny now that Facebook has laid out a new vision for how phone users interact with their devices with Facebook Home.

One of the more interesting concepts that Bianco shows is a 'widget' mode for apps that allows users to see quick information or change app settings straight from the home screen, as well as a quickly accessible settings screen that can slide out from the side to quickly adjust settings.

Turning Bluetooth on and off, for example, takes four distinct steps and the process could be much improved with a quickly accessible preferences screen.

[Source: MacRumors]

Facebook addresses privacy concerns over Facebook Home

Facebook answers important user privacy questions. Read them before you install or buy anything.

A lot of folks have serious privacy concerns about Facebook's new Home application. Questions about location gathering, message reading, and the general "safeness" of Facebook tracking what you do on your Android phone. We have our own here as well, and have had plenty of internal discussion.

Facebook doesn't want folks to worry, so they released a privacy FAQ about the new product. It's a short read that everyone who might install the app needs to look at, but here are some highlights:

• You can use Facebook without using Facebook Home
• Facebook Home is just another app you install from Google Play. You can uninstall it at any time.
• Facebook Home collects your Facebook activity, location, Facebook messages, and the apps in your Home app launcher. This data is user-identifiable for 90 days.
• Facebook can not collect any data outside of the Home app, unless you use the HTC First  -- then it can track what apps generate notifications, but not the content of the notification.

We're not going to judge any of these policies -- that's for you to do. We are going to tell you about them and direct you to the full statement so you can read it and discuss. And you should.

[Source: AndroidCentral]

Chrome 27 beta wrings out more speed, streamlines HTML5 input

It's like clockwork, really. Chrome 26 has barely hit the stable track, and Google is already posting a Chrome 27 beta for desktops and Android devices to show what's next. Apparently, that future centers mostly on raw efficiency: Google has eked out an average 5 percent speed boost through a more aggressive resource scheduler. It also has a simpler interface for date and time forms on HTML5 pages. Most of the other upgrades coddle developers, such as the introduction of live audio input for the Web Audio API and an offline storage API for Chrome Web Store apps. There's no mention of Blink, so those who were expecting rapid adoption of the web engine beyond Chromium will be disappointed -- even so, it's good enough that we could see internet Guinea pigs giving the release a try.

[Source: Engadget]

GAME UK expands tablet sales to include iPads, more entry-level Android tablets

UK retailer GAME has been hunting for ways to stay relevant during a shift to downloadable games -- and now, that includes cribbing some style (just a little!) from Americans. Much like GameStop across the pond, GAME will soon sell a full range of tablets at 150 of its stores. The existing Nexus 7 offering will be joined by the seemingly obligatory 16GB iPad and iPad mini, although the rest of the lineup will be decidedly more frugal: options like the £100 Acer Iconia B1-A71 and £130Archos GamePad will be bracketed by a raft of mostly DGM-built slates that dip as low as £60. It's difficult to know how the expanded sales will help GAME's bottom line, although the Nexus 7 reportedly fared well enough that it's likely tablets are here to stay.

[Source: Engadget]

Star Wars 1313 shelved as Disney powers down LucasArts

There's a great disturbance in the gaming world, as Disney has stopped game development at LucasArts, putting all its current projects on ice.

Millions of gamers' voices will suddenly cry out in terror at the news, which sees the studio behind classics like The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and X-Wing hang up its development hat.

The LucasArts name may not die out completely, as Disney will be licensing the studio's games, Wired reports. In terms of making new games however, LucasArts' time is done, and has made significant layoffs across the board.

Development on both Star Wars 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault has been halted, though a source 'with knowledge of the decision' told CNET that neither game is being fully shut down.

Don't hold out too much hope though, as Kotaku also cites anonymous sources who say that "both games are effectively dead forever." Ouch.

Star Wars 1313 looked particularly tempting, and earned itself a spot in our 'Most exciting games and gadgets of E3 2012' rundown. The game was set to put you in the metal boots of a bounty hunter on Coruscant, blasting your way through a hive of scum and villainy, and it looked eye-bleedingly gorgeous.

It's a shame to see the studio's creative side die out, and it's certainly grim to see developers facing layoffs. Disney took control of LucasArts when it bought Lucasfilm last year, and confirmed that it would be cooking up a number of new Star Wars films. Since that acquisition, Mickey and pals have also cancelled the animated Clone Wars cartoon.

[Source: CNET]

The HTC First is Official

HTC has officially unveiled the HTC First at today’s Facebook Home announcement. The company says this is the best social experience you’ll find, with Facebook’s new Home experience pre-loaded and optimized onto the phone right out of the box. It’s clearly aimed at the younger crowd, but more clearly the Facebook fanatic.

Just as we saw leaked earlier this week, the device will come in multiple colors, including red, light blue, white and black, covering a nice little spectrum for users who want more choices. HTC First will be available on April 12 for $99. Right now, neither HTC or Facebook has talked up specs, so we’ll look out for those to hit soon.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Facebook Introduces Facebook Home for Android

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage in San Francisco today and said Facebook is going to focus on Android moving forward.

“The great thing about Android is its so open,” Zuckerberg said. “You can have apps that can be your keyboard, can be your home screen of your phone, you don’t need to fork Android to do this, you don’t even need to modify the operating system. The home screen is the soul of your phone.” Home will takeover your lock screen and your home screen and will provide all sorts of status updates that would otherwise populate inside a dedicated Facebook app.

Zuckerberg guaranteed that it’s still easy to access applications, however. You can tap a photo of your face at the bottom of the screen and swipe up to see all of your applications.

We expect Facebook will also introduce a smartphone, but we know that at least part of the experience is designed for multiple Android devices.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]