Headlines this week
- An enterprising group of developers have found a way to port exclusive Oculus Rift games to the HTC Vive. So far, two games have been ported and they both seemed to work rather well. According to Polygon, the game actually played better on the Vive which we found interesting. You also must own the Oculus Rift version of the game before the Vive version will work.
- Google Play Music is reportedly going to launch their podcast platform on April 18th. Apparently, there was an embargoed email sent to NPR which was then leaked to the general public. In any case, the podcast platform will be a welcome addition and assuming the leaked emails are correct, we'll see it live on the 18th.
- Mojang has announced that Minecraft: Pocket Edition is going cross-platform through an add-on to the game called Minecraft: Realms. The idea is to get everyone from every platform on the same version of Minecraft so we can all play together, no matter what system we're rocking. The open beta is out now with no indication on a release date.
- Facebook announced this week that it has open-sourced its ReDux program which makes Android apps smaller and perform better. Believe it or not, Facebook's official app uses this and despite being a resource hog, the truth is that it could be a lot worse. We don't know which apps will be using it, but we hope it's all of them.
- Two months ago, Google announced that their Safe Browsing initiative would do away with phony download buttons and deceptive ads. This last week, the company finally made good on that promise and these new features should be rolling out to everyone. Once it's done, it should be a cold day in hell before you see another fake download button.
- Facebook has created a new thing called an Account Kit that allows non-Facebook users to still use Facebook as a login. Instead of creating an account, you'll just use your phone number or email address and approve an authorization code. This was created to help apps get more non-Facebook users while still using the option to sign in with Facebook.
- Miitomo is having a hell of a release on mobile. The app currently sits with over four million downloads, or about 370,000 downloads per day and makes about $280,000 per week. About 80% of all of that is iOS users which brings up the old debate as to which platform is actually better for game developers. Nevertheless, the app is doing amazingly well.
- Google Voice Access is a new thing that Google is working on that gives you the ability to use your phone hands-free. This is designed and being developed for those with accessibility problems and that means it's catered specifically to those people. It's in closed beta right now but should be out sometime soon.
- In this week's Android Customization, Jonathan Feist has written up a nifty tutorial on how to take screenshots on an Android Wear device!
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