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PlayStation Vita gets Crunchyroll, NHL and Qello apps, Hulu Plus and Redbox Instant due this spring

Mar18
by on March 18, 2014 at 4:10 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Gadgets, Product Updates

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Few people buy the PlayStation Vita for its multimedia apps and streaming capabilities, but Sony is continuing to back its handheld console with new support for a number of popular services. Today, NHL GameCenter Live is launching on the device, giving subscribers the ability to stream live out-of-market games in HD. Crunchyroll, a streaming service for Japanese anime and television shows broadcast across Asia, is also arriving today alongside Qello, an on-demand platform for watching music concerts and performances. In a blog post, Sony revealed that Hulu Plus and Redbox Instant, the movie and TV streaming service spearheaded by Redbox…

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Google launches Android Wear platform for wearables, smartwatch Developer Preview, devices coming later this year

Mar18
by on March 18, 2014 at 4:04 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Google, Insider, Mobile

Android Wear
Google today announced Android Wear, a project that extends the company’s mobile operating system to wearables. The company is starting with watches, and has released a Developer Preview so app creators can tailor their existing notifications for watches powered by Android Wear. Google has partnered with several consumer electronics manufacturers (including Asus, HTC, LG, Motorola, and Samsung), chip makers (Broadcom, Imagination, Intel, Mediatek, and Qualcomm), as well as fashion brands (only the Fossil Group was named). The company says it will use these partners to launch watches powered by Android Wear later this year. Developers interested in leveraging Android on…

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With $6.65m in its pocket, Nitrous.IO is set to help more developers save time and effort

Mar18
by on March 18, 2014 at 4:00 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, coding, Insider, Programming

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Nitrous.IO, a 500 Startups-backed backend development platform, is setting out on a mission to save software developers time by cutting out the repetitive parts of creating development environments and automating them. To this extent, Nitrous.IO announced that it has closed a $6.65 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and with investors including 500 Startups, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, and Golden Gate Ventures. The company lets developers who build Web applications using Ruby, Node.js, Python, and Go programming languages take advantage of its platform to create a testing environment. Nitrous.IO co-founder Arun Thampi explains that building an environment takes time —…

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Firefox 28 arrives with VP9 video decoding, Web notifications on OS X, HTML5 video and audio volume controls

Mar18
by on March 18, 2014 at 3:52 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider, Mobile

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Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 28 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include VP9 video decoding, Web notifications on OS X, and volume controls for HTML5 video and audio. Firefox 28 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. On all platforms, Firefox has gained VP9 video decoding. For those who don’t know, VP9 is the successor to VP8, both of which fall under Google’s WebM project of freeing Web codecs from royalty constraints. Desktop While this…

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Visual translator app Waygo adds Japanese to its slate

Mar18
by on March 18, 2014 at 3:44 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Asia, japanese, Product Updates

Waygo, a mobile app that instantly translates Chinese characters into English just by hovering a smartphone camera over them, has now added Japanese to its slate. This should prove useful for those who travel to Japan but get utterly lost when trying to decipher menus or instructions on vending machines for example. The Waygo app, currently only available for iOS devices, now translates Japanese characters into English text without requiring a data connection. All you have to do is simply hover over the characters. Ryan Rogowski, the CEO and co-founder of Waygo, says that the company is focusing on Asian markets…

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