Introduction to Angry Birds

Angry Birds is one of the most popular games to hit the mobile gaming scene in recent years. Many of us are already well acquainted with its fun challenges and simplistic game play. However, the Angry Birds game is more than just another game on the block, it has managed to do something very few games have been able to do; develop a cult-like following amongst a broad range of dedicated fans. Moreover, the Angry Birds game has revitalized puzzle-based video games, a genre that has remained relatively static for years.

When it comes to action or strategy games that work primarily on the PC or gaming console, there are plenty of factors in play that define a successful game. Popular games generally feature mind-blowing graphics, intense game play and tons of multi-player features. Once a game has all the right ingredients, it has the ability to stay on the scene for years without the need to introduce major design changes.

However, unlike action games, it is notoriously difficult to create blockbuster puzzle games because there are very few factors that can be tweaked. The fact that the Angry Birds game was primarily designed for mobile gaming created a variety of hardware constraints for developers. Ultimately, it has managed to become an overnight success because it has combined the right elements including interesting challenges, a fun UI, catchy tunes, broad compatibility and a variety of upgrades that enhance the game while preserving its originality.

The basic plot revolves around a flock of birds who are now locked in a suicidal battle against a group of green pigs that have stolen their eggs. In each level, the pigs will be defended by a variety of defensive fortifications made from materials such as ice, stone and wood. Gamers, will have to use a slingshot to launch the birds against the pigs directly or strategically hit the structures in a way that it collapses over the targeted pigs. Naturally, as the game progresses, the composition of the fortifications and the arsenal of birds also improve.

The birds themselves have certain special features. As you start the game, you will only get access to the red bird. There is nothing special about this one but as you progress you will get to launch other variants include blue, yellow and black birds. These birds all have special abilities that can be activated once they are launched. For instance, the blue bird will split into three, the yellow bird can accelerate and do more damage, and the black bird can drop explosive eggs on the targets. Even the pigs have different variants with the smallest ones being the most vulnerable and the bigger ones, especially those with helmets or crowns, being able to take much more damage.

If you manage to pass the level with a few birds remaining, those birds automatically become worth bonus points. If you fail to pass a particular level, you will have to replay it in order to unlock the other levels. Keep in mind, that failure will prompt the pigs to playfully mock you, which in turns become an incentive in itself. Passing the level, is not all that counts, the goal is to do so by using the least amount of birds while doing as much damage as possible. This means, players will have to hit fortifications in a manner that will do maximum damage and kill the pigs in the process; each element of a fortification can yield points. Depending on your performance, you will get a rating of one, two or three stars.

Unlike most other games, Angry Birds fans can play on most platforms including iOS , Android, Symbian, PSP, Windows Phone 7, Google Plus and Facebook. Click here for the iOS version: Angry Birds on iOS

There are four basic iOS versions: Angry Birds Free/Paid ($0.99), Angry Birds Rio Free/Paid ($0.99) and Angry Birds Seasons ($0.99). All the versions are compatible with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that run on iOS 3.0 or later. Overall, the reaction has been hugely positive with all three versions managing to get a (4+/5) rating. More importantly, the iOS version of the Angry Birds game has a strong advantage over other rivals because it has got more access to exclusive Angry Birds updates, which is probably due to the fact that the iOS platform has been largely responsible for putting the game on the map. Examples of exclusive iOS Angry Birds updates include the initial Halloween edition. There is also an exclusive version for the iPad called Angry Birds HD.

The Angry Birds free version is not merely set to tempt buyers into buying the full version, which almost everyone will end up doing. It also features 15 levels that are not available in the full game, 5 mini episodes and the ability to share achievements. To make the game more competitive, it also includes leaderships boards that are derived based on the performance of your friends.

The Angry Birds paid version contains over 288 unique levels in addition to the other standard features. Like the free version,  you can share your achievements on Facebook or Twitter, and compete for the top position on the leaderships boards.

Angry Birds Seasons brings a sensational amount of  colour and animations that really set it apart from the other versions; it just seems more exotic. This Angry Birds game is based on the Chinese Moon-cake Festival theme.

This version may be a relatively shorter game with only 30 new levels but what it lacks in volume, it makes up in sheer quality.

The Angry Birds Rio Free version is set in Rio de Janeiro. In this game, the Angry birds have been shipped to this wonderful city, where they escape and set out to find two of their friends named Blu and Jewel. The game is actually based on the animated filmed called Rio. The free version contains 12 levels and 15 Rio Golden Beach Ball levels, four episodes and a variety of new achievements.

The Angry Birds Rio paid version features the same plot line but comes loaded with a total of 135 new levels, new achievements, special fruits (a secondary challenge) and boss fights.

The Might Eagle is available as an iOS in-app purchase. To get it, users must have an iTunes account that is linked to a credit card. The feature was first introduced with the “Ham ‘Em High” update. Gamers are given access to the Mighty Eagle which they can use every hour to to clear any uncompleted levels. In previously completed levels, gamers will be able to use a combination of regular birds and the Mighty Eagle to play a mini-game called “Total Destruction”, which requires the player to completely destroy all the elements of the fortifications. Those who succeed will earn a Mighty Eagle feather for the particular level.

The Angry Birds game has taken the mobile gaming world by storm and it has certainly made a mark on iOS users. The game is fun to play, beautiful to look at and challenging enough to cater to a range of players across different skill levels and age categories. The game is also highly addictive so you might want to think twice before taking a swing at work. The best thing about this game is that it manages to thrill with evolving themes and exciting new additions, while retaining its fundamental character.

Stay tuned, as we look at other versions of the Angry Birds game. In the meanwhile, let us know what you guys think about the Angry Birds game and which version you love best!

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Incredible Gadgets You Would Kill For – 20 Examples

Gadgets are more unusual and more clever than normal technological objects and that makes them gain popularity. These wonderful gizmos ease our daily routine and keep us in contact with the innovative movement, making sure we don’t get stuck in the past. But of course, in the world of gadgets there are also some devices that take it a little bit far, making us gaze at them with hope that we will get our hands on them sooner.

Window phone concept

Is it a window, is it a phone? No. Actually, it’s Window phone and this is the part where you are saying “Whaaat? What are you talking about?”. The phone is actually a concept with extraordinary features. Surely if this could be actually put into production, it would set a new standard for the term “cool”.

AFGT Gaming Device

This gadget seems to be the holy grail of the gaming world. Its interesting feature is the tactile feedback that is used to enhance the gaming experience. This very interesting gadget is made out of touch sensitive silicon, to be more specific, silicon air pockets, each with a pressure generator.

Sound Mug Speaker

This particular device could look a little bit strange at a first impression but actually it’s a damn cool thing. The crazy looking speaker can fit in your car’s cupholder and don’t worry about batteries, the gadget is powered by car’s accessory socket.

Vestalife BumbleBee Earbuds

If you’re a guy, it’s unlikely that you will be interested in these little pink earbuds but as a girl, you’ll find them pretty glamy.

Babelfisk

In case you’re getting lazy in classes these wonderful glasses will give you some help. They have two microphones that can be directed to where someone is speaking and you have text and audio recorded into a flash drive.

QWERTY Keyboard For iPhone

Surely, this sounds like a dream come true. The Iphone is everywhere and probably a lot of you have it encountered the typing problem. With this tiny little qwerty keyboard you can type fast and accurately.

Sliding Pooltable

Bio Robot Refrigerator

The Bio Robot fridge cools biopolymer gel through luminescence. It might look stinky and sticky but it’s actually an odorless gel that envelopes the food.

eRoll

eRoll could be the future of e-reading, along with iPad and another gadget that will be presented in this article. If you don’t want it to read ebooks on it, you can use it as a self defense weapon.

Folding-out Laptop

The Transformers wallpaper on this laptop says it all. This laptop transforms into a mega-laptop as soon as you unfold its keyboard.

MU SPACE

Listening music in bed with your headbuds in your ears can be really annoying and it appears that Yuan-Hao Hsu and Lin Tzu Hsuan have figured that one out. The result consists in a mp3 player pillow that will help you relax when taking your nap.

Wind circle

This will surely start a lot of discussions with your house guests but besides that it will also cool the air in the room. Yeah, it does that too…

Bracelet phone

Concept phones are becoming very popular these days. The stranger their shape is, the more popular they get. Probably that’s why this bracelet phone got so many fans or because it has a round dialer on it, like in old land phones.

Mint Sputnik projector

Portable Interactive Display

This device should be interesting especially for architects or industrial designers because of its interesting features. Its software can take CAD drawings and display them on the surface where they can be manipulated easily.

Newspaper of the future

Nowadays people try to find alternatives to using paper and they come up with interesting solutions. We already saw the eRoll in this article and tablets like iPad are made in a lot of variations today but Seon-Keun Park and Byung-Min Woo came with a different idea.

Air Clean Balls

Enough with the serious talking, let’s talk about balls (…?!). They have a funny name but an interesting feature, they can clean the air in the room by using a form of ionization with a photocatalyst complex sterilizing. It is interesting that it doesn’t freshen the air as you would probably think, but it actually cleans it, removing bacterias and viruses too, besides strange odors.

Geist Projector

We’ll keep on going with the balls issue but this time it’s about a projector. The mobility of the projected image is given by the levitating ball that sustains itself in the air with the help of electromagnetism.

Help Readers device

This device converts text to audio, helping you in case you have eye problems or because you’re infected with the laziness virus. in

HP LIM Glass computer

The HP LiM (Less is More) concept is set to feature a 19″ transparent touch OLED screen along with a wireless keyboard. The touch screen slides down to create a more ergonomic touch experience and easy navigation.

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Google Plus | Welcome to Planet Google

Something you have to admire about Google is the fact that they can be extremely persistent when they want to be. This is certainly the impression that I got when they recently announced their plans to roll out Google Plus; their latest attempt at social networking. Previously, Google had tried to enter the Social Networking scene through acquisition (Orkut), stealth (Buzz) and innovation (Wave). While, none of these brought success, they did teach Google some valuable lessons. This time, Google has dreamed big and put in a lot effort to realize that dream.

If I could describe Google Plus in one word, I might choose “intimate” because thatword seems to properly represent the philosophy behind this endeavour. To me it seems that Google has identified a fundamental reality of our average social experience: we are not the same person to everyone. Hence, it has built a system that can seamlessly allow us to customize the level of social interaction we want with different people.

There are some very impressive features that have gone into Google Plus that could really enhance the social experience. To give proper context to these features, I have compared them with Facebook.

At first glance, Circles seem to be a simple method of categorizing your friends: putting relevant friends in relevant Circles. However, you can also post material and directly interact with members of a specific circle. This is great if you want to avoid mentioning the same thing to two very different groups of contacts.

For example, you could post academic material in a circle containing your study friends, while posting work material to a circle dedicated to your colleagues.

Facebook: First of all, adding friends to different friend categories only influences the chat feature. To my understanding, the best ways to customize your social experience on Facebook would be to create different groups and add relevant friends into it. Also, do not forget customizing privacy settings to allow/deny access to albums or other material. Tagging people in posts also helps.

The problem is that this is very cumbersome. Most of us are in at-least a dozen groups and sooner or later people lose interest in interacting within groups because the primary method of keeping tabs is through the news feeds. Even this feature is not the best because it does not do a good job filtering out the people I am less interested in (the only option is blocking them out, which is something people are hesitant to do). Also, blocking out some content could really offend some people. Tagging people does help, but that also draws everyone’s attention, not just the ones you tag.

The Verdict: Circles are just simple; add your friends to a circle and you are good to go. The privacy, the posts and the entire social interaction is automatically customised. In comparison, Facebook is more complex and even though it does deserve credit for simplifying the privacy settings, it is still very complicating and still requires a lot of micro management.

This feature allows users to invite specific contacts or even entire Circles to a video conference. What I like about this is the fact that different participants can invite different people to the conference. The total capacity is actually 25.

Facebook: When I started writing this article, Facebook just announced that it would allow Skype video chats. However, judging by the initial feedback the video quality does not seem to be very good.

Verdict: In its current form, Facebook is structurally incapable of rolling out something similar to Hangout. It would require a completely new approach to the chat interface in general. Skype is wonderful as a standalone app, but efforts to integrate it into Facebook or other platforms will not provide satisfactory results overnight. Meanwhile, Google already has a lot of experience with audio and video services via Google Voice and its own Google Talk.

A lot of our pictures and videos are still lingering in our cameras and smartphones and some may never grace Facebook because we may simply be too lazy or too busy to upload them. Google’s instant upload solves this problem by automatically uploading all your pictures and videos to a private Google+ album. Later, you can decide on editing or posting it. Unfortunately, this is only available for Android phones right now.

Facebook: As far as I know, there is no comparable feature.

The Verdict: Google+ is the clear winner here.

Adding and tagging pictures is very similar to Facebook. However, Google’s interface with regards to editing and commenting is somewhat different. Also, as mentioned earlier, you can post pictures directly to different Circles. This means you do not have to go through the added problem of customizing privacy settings and offending people in the process.

Facebook: The only option is to upload pictures to different groups. However, as I mentioned earlier, this is a very cumbersome process especially because people tend to interact very little on groups. Circles in comparison make the specific social interaction more flexible and meaningful.

The Verdict: Uploading and sharing pictures on Google+ is easier but the only real difference is because of Circles. There are added features but I am not giving it too much credit for this feature.

An exciting name for a rather bland feature. Sparks allows you to add your interests (eg. Technology, history, fashion, etc.) and allows you to share and comment on these sparks with your Circles or other friends.

Facebook: posting links on your profile or adding interests to your profile list is quite similar to sparks. There is no great difference here.

The Verdict: I suppose I saved the last for the least, even on Facebook, I doubt people pay a lot of attention to the “interests” on the profile page. However, the only difference with Google+ is that you can post directly to your Circles, which might make the experience better but by itself, it is not much.

Just like with the Facebook button, you can now add a Google +1 button to your pages. With Facebook it shares the link on your Facebook wall. With the +1 button, it shares the link on your Google Plus page… but unlike the Facebook button, the +1 potentially influences search results when people in your circles searches Google for related terms. This is how the buttons look like… If you’d like to click each of them once, to share this article, that would be much appreciated!

Share750

This allows group chats across different platforms such as mobile (also currently restricted to Android) and PC. Users can initiate chats directly with specific Circles or friends. There are 3rd party apps that allow this sort of flexibility but as far as I know, this is the first time it has been fully integrated into a single social networking system.

Facebook: The chat interface has improved and now you can initiate group chats.  One thing I personally dislike is that Facebook displays chat histories and messages together. This really makes it difficult for me to keep track of anything properly.

The Verdict: Google’s chat interface is very simple and hopefully it will probably incorporate the experience it has gained through Gmail Chat. If it does, we are looking at a much better chatting experience. Chat histories are saved into the “chats” on the Gmail page.

I know I have not gone into the nuts and bolts of some of these features but I hope this gives people a good understanding of what Google Plus is all about.

If there were anything you guys would like to contribute, please let me know. Also, I am interested to know how many of you are willing to switch over from Facebook and if so, why?

Once you are done, go over to Part 2: Google Plus to see where exactly Google Plus fits in Google’s overall strategy, and what exactly are its rivals going to do about it.

Part-2

we examined some of the features of Google Plus in the context of Facebook. Now we look at how this fits into Google’s overall strategy. It seems like it is not merely an addition to an existing line of Google products, but it has become the focus of a major overhaul within the system. The first step seems to be the integration of existing Google profiles. In this case, all public profiles will be integrated by July 31, and all private ones will be deleted.

As part of its ongoing strategy, Google will re-brand both Picasa and Blogger. The former will now becomes Google Photos, while the latter will become Google Blogs. YouTube will be spared a name change, but then again, “Google Videos” would be a major downgrade

Re-branding aside, there are also various design changes being introduced to existingservices including Google Calendar, Google docs and the home page. The design changes for Gmail can be previewed from the “Themes” section but will be rolled out later.

The final push is on mobile platform. Google has correctly deduced the fact that the future of social networking strongly depends on how easily it can be accessed through smartphones. Google has already released apps for both Android and Apple (still awaiting approval, the last time I checked). The Android app is remarkably easy to use but it is still facing quite a number of glitches, which is understandable because Google Plus is still in the beta stage.

The important question is will Google’s efforts lead to success or failure? I am cautiously optimistic for three simple reasons.

Google provides users with a complete eco-system and users feel very happy inside: email, calendar, docs, search engine, and a whole bunch of other services. Thus, users will not have to compromise or duplicate certain features. For example, Facebook mail duplicates chat and email resources.

Certainly, the appeal will be dimmer for non-Gmail users but that does not mean that it will not be any better than Facebook.

Facebook may be the biggest social networking site (750 million according to the latest count) but it is ironically amongst the top 10 hated companies in the U.S.

Google on the other hand seems to command a strong measure of respect and trust from its users. This is partly because it has long championed the idea of “open source” technology and developed numerous projects concerning everything from clean energy to solutions for ethnic violence. In addition, it has dared take a public stance against authoritative governments and has a much stronger policy concerning privacy. Certainly, Google is guilty of lots of violations but the idea many users have of Google is broadly positive.

One thing I liked with Google Plus is the fact that privacy and account information can be downloaded or removed with a significant degree transparency. In comparison, Facebook has grudgingly allowed people to control much of their personal information (still a contentious topic) and its numerous PR disasters did not help its cause. To its credit, Facebook has addressed some of the important issues.

According to recent polls conducted by the Christian Post, 42.7 percent agreed that Google Plus would overshadow Facebook. Meanwhile, 42.6 percent believed that both networks would function together. More interestingly, 38.2 percent said they had already decided to make a move to Google Plus. The polls themselves only reflect the views of a few thousand users but in my opinion, they may be a good indicator of things to come.

In my opinion, Google Plus is a genuinely viable alternative to Facebook with impressive features that outperform Facebook. Once it is released from the beta stage, Google can count on a strong response. Do not forget that Google can also tap into a vast market of Android users as well, who are generally pro-Google.

Google Plus: My bet on the future of social networking

As I see it, Google Plus may go through three distinctive phases.

Currently, it is in the first stage of the process or the beta stage. Right now, it is attracting tons of curious visitors, tech geeks, enthusiastic writers and sceptics. However, the positive feedback it is receiving will help it expand relatively easily when it is officially released.

In the second stage, when it reaches a decent level of maturity (i.e. a fair number of users and all its features working well) then it might come to co-exist with Facebook as a genuine rival with a significant number maintaining multiple accounts (Facebook to remember the memories and Google Plus to make new ones).

In the third stage, Facebook will finally enter decline like MySpace once did. Afterwards, Google Plus will rise to dominance. In the process, there might even be an agreement to integrate all the data from FB to Google Plus (already some interesting apps are coming out in the Chrome Web Store).

That is a very optimistic view of things and that is assuming Facebook sits on the sidelines and watches (which it is not doing). However, if history is a guide, even if people are ‘too invested’ in Facebook (one major reason to stay) they will eventually move on. Memories are becoming easier to make, and for new generations that have not been exposed to Facebook in an intense manner, the choice will be easier to make.

I admit that I am quite biased towards Google because I use most of the services and I find micro-managing settings on Facebook to be a very tedious thing to do.

However, what I am interested is the views of the other side. If there are readers who disagree with my views, then please let me know what you think. I have a couple of questions for all the readers out there,1. Do you really think that people would remain on Facebook just because they are heavily invested in it? 2. What do you think about Google Plus and its future?

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