As far as Tetris goes, most variations look quite similar. You’re usually looking at a “wall” of bricks directly from the front. Torus takes that notion and throws it away; as you might have guessed from the name (or screenshot), this Tetris clone is played on a ring-like 3D surface.
You rotate the ring itself with the arrow keys, while a Tetris-like piece slowly (excruciatingly slowly, in fact) descends from the top. As soon as you make a solid line, it disappears.
Not all pieces are Tetris-like; some of them wouldn’t really work with a regular Tetris game but are a good fit for Torus’ 3D format.
Torus is ideal for playing at the office, because it has absolutely no soundtrack. The game is dead-quiet. It’s also very very slow (slow enough for me to mention it twice in one post) so you can safely look away for a moment and then keep playing. Also, as soon as the game loses focus, it automatically pauses.
Bottom line: It’s an impressive demo of the power of HTML5; if it were a bit faster, it would have some serious addictive potential.
Torus is an impressive 3D Tetris game powered by HTML5 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/17/torus-is-an-impressive-3d-tetris-game-powered-by-html5/
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Some of you who own Windows Phone 7 devices are still waiting for your pre-NoDo preparation update — never mind NoDo itself. A few workarounds have been posted, but unfortunately they didn’t work unless your carrier had completed testing and was ready to schedule the update.
Now, however, the Chevron WP7 team’s Chris Walshie has delivered a handy little utility that will allow you to update any Windows Phone 7 device — regardless of your carrier.
- Download and install the Windows Phone Support Tool (x86 or x64) and the ChevronWP7 Updater (x86 or x64)
- Launch ChevronWP7 Updater and select your language. If your language isn’t listed, stop and do not update.
- If were running WP7 build 7004 (you can verify in Zune) then run the updater twice.
Once the process completes, you should be able to copy and paste to your heart’s content. Let’s just hope all this update foolishness gets sorted out before we’re supposed to receive Mango.
Install the Windows Phone 7 NoDo update regardless of your carrier originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Scarlett Chorvat Scarlett Johansson Selita Ebanks Shakara Ledard
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Father’s Day is next week and many of you are still trying to figure what to buy. If you have a T-Mobile smartphone lying around, you may want to introduce Dad to the world of mobile broadband. More »
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/RqrXlwrbDao/save-dad-120-on-his-t+mobile-data-plan
Victoria Pratt Victoria Silvstedt Vinessa Shaw Virginie Ledoyen
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Indie developers turned to the Web hours after receiving warning letters from Lodsys last month, but larger devs took a more traditional approach, leaving the communication and finger-pointing to lawyers instead. Two such companies, the New York Times and OpinionLabs, came to light after filing suit against the patent troll yesterday, seeking declaratory judgements to invalidate Lodsys’s patents. A nine-page complaint filed by NYT lists four Lodsys patents, including 7,222,078, which had previously been used to target smaller developers. NYT’s ad click-through system and OpinionLabs’ surveys were both also targeted, and if the suits are successful, Lodsys would be responsible for all legal expenses, and wouldn’t be allowed to collect on its patents in the future.
We spoke with Julie Samuels of the EFF, who explained that filing for a declaratory judgment could theoretically enable NYT and OpinionLabs to have trials held in California and Illinois, where the declaratory judgments were filed, instead of the Eastern District of Texas — the notoriously plaintiff-friendly court where Lodsys filed its suit against seven devs on May 31st. Other devs who received letters but have not yet been sued can also do the same. The suits brought by NYT and OpinionLabs formally call the validity of Lodsys’s patents into question, but unfortunately don’t change the game for devs Lodsys already sued, who would still be responsible for licensing fees and other damages if the court determines the patents to be valid (and their apps to be infringing).
New York Times, OpinionLab sue Lodsys seeking declaratory judgement originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/8CAxan1xjXk/
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Here’s food for thought: Some cities are considerably more densely populated than others. Imagine packing all 6.9 billion people in the world into a city you know. How much space would that megacity take up? More »
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/EP5Hlkyg8O0/
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After months attempting to bring the Desire up to speed with Android 2.3, HTC is throwing in the towel, and it doesn’t have much more than a comments section full of disappointed handset owners to show for it. The UK branch of the phone manufacturer announced via its Facebook page that attempts to upgrade the Nexus One-esque smartphone to Gingerbread have proven fruitless, due to a lack of internal memory on the device. According to the company, the promised update just won’t play nicely with its Sense UI. Those desiring less official methods can always check out the leaked 2.3.3 ROM. Everyone else will have to suffer through the Froyo brain freeze.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
HTC Desire tries to catch Gingerbread, can’t keep up originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/14/htc-desire-tries-to-catch-gingerbread-cant-keep-up/
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If you’re lucky enough to own an Xperia Play — Sony Ericsson’s new Gingerbread-powered smartphone-cum-gamepad — you can now buy PlayStation (PSX) titles from the Android Market.
There are five titles currently available, all priced at £3.99: Syphon Filter, MediEvil, Cool Boarders 2, Destruction Derby, and Jumping Flash. They don’t have an American price yet, but that will surely change once the Xperia Play launches in the States.
Two important questions remain unanswered: How big are these games? The Market descriptions say the games are only 5MB, but that sounds incredibly unlikely — and more importantly, will it be possible to ‘spoof’ the Xperia Play and download PSX games onto other Gingerbread-powered phones, like the Nexus S?
In other news, the PlayStation emulator PSX4droid was recently removed from the Android Market. This obviously has nothing to do with today’s release of first-party PlayStation games.
PSX games now available in the Android Market, if you own an Xperia Play originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/psx-games-now-available-in-the-android-market/
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After months attempting to bring the Desire up to speed with Android 2.3, HTC is throwing in the towel, and it doesn’t have much more than a comments section full of disappointed handset owners to show for it. The UK branch of the phone manufacturer announced via its Facebook page that attempts to upgrade the Nexus One-esque smartphone to Gingerbread have proven fruitless, due to a lack of internal memory on the device. According to the company, the promised update just won’t play nicely with its Sense UI. Those desiring less official methods can always check out the leaked 2.3.3 ROM. Everyone else will have to suffer through the Froyo brain freeze.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
HTC Desire tries to catch Gingerbread, can’t keep up originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/nNqQx60lzsA/
]]>Some of you who own Windows Phone 7 devices are still waiting for your pre-NoDo preparation update — never mind NoDo itself. A few workarounds have been posted, but unfortunately they didn’t work unless your carrier had completed testing and was ready to schedule the update.
Now, however, the Chevron WP7 team’s Chris Walshie has delivered a handy little utility that will allow you to update any Windows Phone 7 device — regardless of your carrier.
- Download and install the Windows Phone Support Tool (x86 or x64) and the ChevronWP7 Updater (x86 or x64)
- Launch ChevronWP7 Updater and select your language. If your language isn’t listed, stop and do not update.
- If were running WP7 build 7004 (you can verify in Zune) then run the updater twice.
Once the process completes, you should be able to copy and paste to your heart’s content. Let’s just hope all this update foolishness gets sorted out before we’re supposed to receive Mango.
Install the Windows Phone 7 NoDo update regardless of your carrier originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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You know those fridge magnet kits composed of a whole bunch of words? The ones you put all over your fridge door and then try to arrange into all sorts of juvenile and/or amusing sentences. Well, Farragomate is the social, webby version of that very same pastime.
You get to play with a bunch of random strangers in real-time, and make up sentences out of a pre-set collection of words, including some fairly naughty ones, and all players’ nicknames. As you can imagine, some of the results are not child-friendly.
There are ten rounds to a game. Once a round is done, players get to vote for their favorite sentence from that round. You can’t vote for your own creation, of course. There’s in-game chat, too.
I think the vocabulary could be made a bit more eclectic, but even as it is, it’s a nice way to spend a few minutes and meet random strangers on the Internet (always a thrilling experience).
Farragomate is a social fridge magnet game where you make up sentences originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Natalie Zea Natasha Bedingfield Natassia Malthe Nelly Furtado
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