“As users build their Pokemon inventory, spending money becomes needed to store, train, hatch, and battle,” he writes. Gibson pointed out that the most popular Pokemon GO item in Australia is currently $0.99 worth of in-game currency meaning the game’s App Store ranking “is being driven not by big spenders but by a large number of users.”
And:
“We presume that out of every 100 units earned at the App Store, 30 would go to Apple, 30 to [software developer] Niantic, 30 to Pokemon and 10 to Nintendo,” writes Gibson. “Hence, we don’t think Nintendo will earn much directly from the game. However, Nintendo will earn income from its equity-accounted income of owning 33 percent of Pokemon Company.”
Not to mention the boost to Nintendo’s stock price. This is a huge win for Nintendo and proof that they can make money bringing their intellectual property to smartphones. Seems logical to me that we will see a massively multiplayer Zelda port to iOS at some point in the future.
Eager to get their hands on some Pokémon, iPhone users in the UK and other countries have resorted to altering the region settings on their devices and setting up new Apple ID accounts.
But an unexpected consequence of the workaround has left users angry: all of the data in Apple Music disappeared.
Yeah, probably not a good idea to change your region settings. If you did, read the article to learn how to get your music back.
A great story from Culture Creature. I love these types of things that delve into the history of a song or the art.
The cross design on the Appetite for Destruction cover was designed by Billy White, Jr. In an email exchange with Culture Creature, Mr. White explained that his cousin introduced him to Guns N’ Roses while White was an art student in Long Beach, California.
Somaltus, LLC has filed a complaint against Apple today in an Eastern Texas district court, accusing the iPhone maker of infringing upon its 2010 patent related to complex battery technologies. The small Frisco, Texas-based firm also filed lawsuits against Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba over the same patent.
When are we going to do something about patent trolls?
Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk has no plans to disable the company’s Autopilot function in the wake of a May crash of a Model S electric car using the technology, and the auto maker instead plans to redouble efforts to educate customers on how the system works.
I think that’s the correct decision. From all that I’ve read, it’s not autopilot that’s the problem, it’s drivers not taking responsibility for their automobiles.
The Sun is ready to set, perfectly aligned with the grid of Manhattan’s streets. Some people ooooh, others clap. One shouts: “Welcome to Manhattanhenge.”
The phenomenon happens only twice a year, in May and July. And it’s become one of the most photographed and popular attractions in New York City.
I’ve been in Manhattan for a Manhattanhenge and while the photography is fairly ordinary (after all, it’s just a sunset), the “social” aspect of it is hilarious. Hundreds of people standing on the corners, waiting for the light to turn green so they can run out into the middle of the street to take pictures down the city’s architectural canyons.
The Filet-O-Fish is one of the more curious items on the McDonald’s menu in that it receives virtually no advertising whatsoever, yet still continues to be sold by the chain despite the fact that it seems like nobody ever orders one and it’s been a problem item for years for the company due to difficulty in finding a sustainable, tasty source of fish meat at the volume the behemoth needs, as well as the fact that it requires a separate fryer to cook in than their other items. As it turns out, they keep it around because the Filet-O-Fish is actually intended to be eaten by a very specific kind of customer- people who abstain from eating non-seafood meat for religious reasons.
The genesis of the Filet-O-Fish came way back in the early days of the future fast-food king. In 1960, at a small McDonald’s restaurant in Monfort Heights, Ohio, the owner of the franchise, a man called Lou Groen, was struggling to keep his restaurant open.
You’d have to put a gun to my head to get me to eat a Filet-O-Fish but the story of its creation is interesting.
Pokémon Go players won’t have to worry about sketchy app permissions for much longer.
The developer of the game has acknowledged that it “erroneously” requested full access permission to users’ Google accounts on iOS and says Google is working with them on a fix for the issue.
After these concerns were expressed yesterday, Google is taking this step – one they shouldn’t have had to because the app should never have been allowed to have so much access to a player’s Google information. Google seems to again and again make these kinds of “mistakes” – trying to grab as much data from and about us as they can and only dialing it back once they get called on it.
The U.S. technology giant found itself under fire in April as the European Commission said its requirement that mobile phone manufacturers pre-install Google Search and the Google Chrome browser in order to get access to other Google apps may harm consumers and competition.
Apple is lending a hand to China while the country battles with its worst flood in years. The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), a Chinese non-governmental organization, said on Monday that it has received a 7 million yuan (approximately $1 million) donation from Apple.
Apple is the first U.S. company that has donated to CFPA in this year’s flood, said the organization on its website. The group says it will work closely with Apple to make sure the money is best applied.
“Our thoughts are with all those devastated by the flooding along the Yangtze River,” Apple’s CEO Tim Cook wrote on Weibo, the Chinese social networking site that is similar to Twitter.
The flooding has been devastating to the area with more than a million people displaced from their homes and hundreds dead.
“Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism,” Andrew Hollinger, the museum’s communications director, told The Post in an interview. “We are trying to find out if we can get the museum excluded from the game.”
Last week, techies at the code-sharing site GitHub received a treat when former NASA intern Chris Garry uploaded the source code for the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer, reports Keith Collins at Quartz. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was installed on board and served the lunar module that eventually reached the moon in July, 1969.
The source code was written by the MIT Instrumentation Lab with input from computer engineering pioneer Margaret Hamilton. And soon after the data was posted, the internet went to town dissecting every line. Collins reports that the code is written in an assembly program language that is gobbledygook to many programmers today. But the Apollo engineer’s comments within the code, which explain what each section does, are a time capsule of 60s geek culture.
I have no hope of understanding or reading the code but I think it’s hilarious it’s full of jokes and puns.
I asked Apple developers and educators around the UK what they thought of Swift Playgrounds for iPad. None yet had time to try it out in depth, so we were looking at the big picture of what it promised and to whom.
The general consensus was that, as a child-oriented environment for learning programming within a student/teacher setup (which is how Apple is marketing it), Playgrounds is an impressively committed innovation with real potential. Clare Sutcliffe, co-founder of Code Club and executive director at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, welcomed Apple’s “aim of helping children to learn more about coding and digital making.” She was “excited to see what Swift Playgrounds has to offer.”
You knew, as soon as Playgrounds was announced, the comparisons to Hypercard would come. I don’t think Apple set out to create a successor to Hypercard but for them, anything that gets kids interested in coding is good and will have benefits years down the road.
Standard CSS color keywords are limited to 149 named shades; the hexadecimal (or “hex”) color method has access to the full RGB gamut. The key to learning hex is understanding the hexadecimal counting system.
It’s not a big surprise to me that Apple ranked highest in the Smartwatch category, but I am surprised that it didn’t even place in the Fitness Band category, which Samsung won.
Update: Apparently Apple wasn’t included in the in the Fitness Band category, although it looked to me like it was.
One thing I love about Universal Audio’s plug-ins is their incredible attention to detail. They are able to emulate everything from the original, making them the best plug-in maker on the market.
I think Amazon has a great brand and provides a wonderful service for its customers, but allowing, or worse yet, encouraging, Chinese knockoffs is a terrible way to do business.
Forbes reports that Swift pulled in $170 million over the past year, thanks especially to her behemoth 1989 World Tour, which beat out acts like Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, and the Rolling Stones to become the highest-grossing North American tour ever on its way to grossing about $250 million in ticket sales worldwide.
Prisma transforms your photos into artworks using the styles of famous artists: Van Gogh, Picasso, Levitan, as well as world famous ornaments and patterns. A unique combination of neural networks and artificial intelligence helps you turn memorable moments into timeless art.
This is one of those little apps I love. It doesn’t work for every photo but it’s an app I’ll often use when waiting in line or just “doodling” in my head. Sometimes, you can create amazing images out of the most ordinary photos.
Quick update – this seems to be inconsistent. It only seems to happen on iOS, but it doesn’t happen for everyone on iOS. If you fancy helping out join the conversation on Twitter!
I figured I’d post this because I don’t see anyone else talking about it and it bothers me. If you didn’t know, Pokemon Go is the latest in the long running series of games from Nintendo (although Go is actually made by a developer called Niantic). It’s also the first (I think) to run on your phone. Needless to say, it’s a huge hit. And it looks like a ton of fun – pretty much everyone I know is playing it.
But there’s a problem.
Another example of why I hate when services force you to use your Facebook or Google or even Apple information in order to log on. I try and keep all of that stuff separate. It can be a bit of a pain to keep track of and manage but for me, it increases my security and privacy just that little bit more. Thanks very much to David Chartier For the link.
UPDATE: Use this link to revoke permissions for various apps on your Google account.
It’s not just on installs where Pokémon GO is killing it, on app engagement as well, the app’s usage has been unbelievably high. Over 60% of those who have downloaded the app in the US are using it daily, meaning around 3% of the entire US Android population are users of the app. This metric, which we refer to as Daily Active Users has put Pokémon GO neck and neck with Twitter, and in a few more days, Pokémon GO will likely have more users Daily Active Users than the well-established social network.
Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted his intention to soon publish part two of his “top secret Tesla masterplan” following an embattled several weeks for the Silicon Valley heavyweight.
Musk has hinted at major announcement on Twitter in the past, so this is very interesting. The big question is will it be something new, or will it have to do with the autopilot kerfuffle.
On Tuesday, July 12, the second-annual Prime Day will feature more than 100,000 deals worldwide exclusively for Prime members, making it the biggest Amazon event ever. New and existing members in U.S., U.K., Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, Belgium, and Austria, will find deals across nearly all departments and categories, ensuring there will be something for everyone. Members in the U.S. can shop starting at midnight PT, with new deals as often as every five minutes throughout the day. To participate in Prime Day, sign-up or start a free trial of Prime on or before July 12 by visiting amazon.com/primeday.
And:
“Prime Day is a unique opportunity to discover new items and great deals, on top of our already low prices. Following last year’s record sales, we have dramatically increased the inventory behind many deals. In fact, in the U.S. we have nearly double the TV units compared to Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President Amazon Prime. “Even with this massive selection we know many of the Prime Day offers will sell out, so members should download the Amazon shopping app to receive notifications on their favorite deals.”
Amazon’s attempt to bridge the winter shopping frenzy back to the middle of summer.
You are watching exclusive LIVE footage from Alaska’s Brooks River in Katmai National Park. Every year over a hundred Brown Bears descend on a mile long stretch of Brooks River to feast on the largest Sockeye Salmon run in the world.
If you have kids, you have got to show them this really cool live web cam.
For nearly 200 years Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, essentially functioned as one town. Citizens drank the same water, worked in the same tool factory, played the same sports (primarily curling), fought in the same world wars, and were born in the same hospital in nearby Newport, Vermont. They also shared the same cultural center, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, an ornate Victorian edifice built deliberately on top of the international border in 1901 by the Canadian wife of a wealthy American merchant.
Today, it is the only library in the world that exists and operates in two countries at once.
One of many fascinating stories about life along the Canada-US border. I live only a few miles from it and often see the border obelisks along the road, reminding me that our two countries are close in many ways.
My brothers and I were always fascinated by spinning things. We’d have competitions to find things to spin and see which ones would spin the longest. The cat hated that game.
