The Apple Watch claims to be many things: stylish timepiece, wrist-based communicator, mobile payment solution, fitness instructor, and, if you cough up for an Edition, embarrassing luxury item. But is it also a gaming platform?
The jury is still out on whether you’ll want to game on a tiny screen with limited controls and battery life, but this isn’t stopping the gaming app gold rush. Plenty of Apple Watch games are available on launch day. Which should you try? Start with these five.
What’s the most downloaded game of the year so far? That’s an easy one: It’s Trivia Crack. Challenging players to answer crowd-sourced trivia questions from across the globe, Trivia Crack is an unmitigated hit on both mobile and social platforms.
The new wearable version can be played entirely on the Apple Watch — no need to look at your phone — through simple taps to answer questions. You can post or accept challenges from other players, and you’ll receive a notification on your wrist when it’s your turn. The game also includes animated colorful characters and millions of user-submitted questions. Should you get it? It’s free, so we’ll answer that with another question: Why not?
Gamers looking for something a little deeper should consider Runeblade, a fantasy role-playing game from Everywear Games.
The single-player campaign puts you in the formidable boots of a War Mage challenged with stopping an ancient, evil menace from overtaking the realm. OK, so the backstory is trite, but the game promises tons of locations to explore, mythological beasts (and bosses) to destroy, and unlockable spells and abilities to earn as you level up over time.
It’s also designed to be played in short, 30-second sessions, though the game increases in depth and complexity over days, weeks, and months of game play, says the developer. We’ll see if that holds up.
One of the more intriguing offerings sneaking onto the Apple Watch is from U.K.-based indie developer Bossa Studios, best known forridiculous games like Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread.
In Spy_Watch, you’re the head of a spy agency that has seen better days. To turn the agency around, you must train spies, send them on secret missions, and use earned cash to improve their abilities.
This ambitious Apple Watch game is played via short bursts of real-time notifications between you and your agent in the field, which take place in two- to five-second rounds. You’ll need to make strategic decisions on the fly that will ultimately affect the success of the missions, be they related to time, resources, or locations. Think a spy-flavored choose-your-own-adventure game and you get the gist, though no guarantees you’ll look as suave as James Bond while tapping at your wrist on the bus.
With the iOS version taking home multiple award nods — including an Apple “Best of 2014” pick — Rules! was one of the first games announced for Apple Watch.
It’s a good match. Rules! is something of a cross between Simon and Memory. You’re tasked with tapping tiles based on an increasing number of rules for each level, such as “Tap numbers in descending order,” “Tap green,” and “Tap animals.” You have to remember each rule in order to progress, and a countdown timer keeps the stress level pretty high.
The Apple Watch version includes a daily mini-game challenge playable on the wearable, but with only 4 tiles instead of 16 due to the limited screen real estate.
That’s a bit of a bummer, but this isn’t: Rules! is free right now, if you know where to look.
Instead of paying $2.99 at the regular App Store, first download the freeApple Store app, which is primarily used to help you shop for Apple products or make appointments at the retail stores. Confusing terminology, I know, but bear with me. Open it up, and scroll down until you see a banner that says “Download Rules! Free.” Tap this, and you just saved three bucks.
What four-letter word comes to mind after spending $17,000 on an Apple Watch?
From Australian developer Right Pedal, Snappy Word places four random letter tiles on the Apple Watch face. Your goal is to see how many words you can create in 30 seconds. It’s accessible and smartly tailored for the Watch, plus it includes a real-time player-versus-player mode, or you can compete against others through a Game Center leaderboard.
Snappy Word’s dictionary is made up of nearly 4,000 words, says its developer, but my favorite is its price: F-R-E-E.
Bad news, phandroids. Android malware is on the rise.
According to Symantec’s latest Internet Security Threat Report, “17 percent of all Android apps (nearly one million total) were actually malware in disguise.” In 2013, Symantec uncovered roughly 700,000 virus-laden apps.
More than one third of all apps were what Symatec calls “madware,” or mobile software whose primary purpose is to bombard you with ads. The company also discovered the first example of mobile crypto-ransomware – software that encrypts your data and holds it hostage until you pay ransom for it – for Android devices.
(Norton Mobile Insights)
How to stay safe
The good news is that it’s pretty easy to avoid infection if you obtain your apps from a trusted source, like the Google Play Store. The company doesn’t break out how many of the 1 million+ malware apps were found in the Play Store, but Symantec’s Director of Security Response Kevin Haley admits the number is probably quite low.
“Google does a good job of keeping malware out of the Store,” Haley says. “And if a malicious app does make it in there, they do a good job of finding it and getting rid of it.”
On the other hand, if you visit alternate Android app markets, download apps from app maker’s Websites, get them via email links, or find them on Bit Torrent sites, you run a much greater risk of infecting your phone, he adds.
Other App Stores
Symantec used its Norton Mobile Insight software to crawl more than 200 Android app stores, downloading and analyzing more than 50,000 apps and app updates each day in 2014.
Most of the malware found by Symantec tries to steal personal data like phone numbers and contact lists, which are then sold on the Internet’s black market, says Haley. Some may cause your phone to send text messages to premium SMS services, automatically adding charges to your monthly bill. Other apps may pelt you with ads that pop up randomly over other applications. Some apps even change your default ringtone to an advertisement, Haley says.
The Android malware problem is greater overseas, especially in regions where users can’t access Google Play and must rely on third-party app marketplaces.
Mobango is one of hundreds of alternate Android app marketplaces in the wild. Be careful out there. (Mobango.com)
If you see unusual charges on your bill for premium texting services or ads start popping up where you don’t expect them, those are good signs you’ve got an infection, he adds. Your best recourse is to use a mobile security app to scan and protect your phone.
As for iOS? Symantec found a grand total of 3 infected apps in the iTunes store in 2014. Last year it found zero.
“One of the benefits of Android versus iOS is that it gives you a lot more freedom as to where you can download apps,” Haley says. “But that freedom comes with a cost.”
Twitter's Highlights feature is the social network's latest attempt to increase people's engagement with the site. Above: Twitter's SF headquarters.James Martin/CNET
Twitter seems to be taking a cue from Facebook.
The company announced on Thursday a feature called Highlights that -- like Facebook's News Feed -- is designed to draw on a user's information to deliver relevant content and keep people from becoming overwhelmed.
"While your home timeline is a great place to browse through and engage with Tweets, we know it can be challenging to find the time to get through everything," Twitter said in a blog post Thursday.
So Highlights serves users a concise selection of tweets once or twice a day to provide a summary of what's being talked about on Twitter. The Highlights -- currently available only for devices running Google's Android mobile operating system -- are delivered to a user's smartphone via a push notification. Users swipe through the highlighted tweets and eventually wind up at their Twitter timeline. The feature "lets you catch up quickly on the best stuff that is most relevant to you," Twitter said in its post.
"To create your Highlights, we look at things like the accounts and conversations that are popular among people you follow, Tweets from people you're closely tied to, topics and events that are trending in your area or within your network, and people that are popular or trending among people you follow," the post said of the opt-in feature.
And last week, the social networkredesigned its US home pageso that people who aren't registered on the site, or who aren't signed in, can still see a selection of popular tweets. Twitter has been trying to convince Wall Street that it has a larger audience than just the monthly active users it publishes numbers about. During its fourth-quarter earnings report in February, the companysaidaround 288 million people actively use the service monthly. Wall Street had been hoping for about 295 million such users.Highlights is the latest in a string of changes before Twitter's first-quarter earnings report April 28. Earlier this week, the company introduced an opt-in feature that lets users receive direct messages from users they don't follow. The company also recently released Periscope, an app that lets people stream live video to the site.
For its part, Facebook recently announced several changes to its News Feed, designed to let users see more posts from their friends and to make it more difficult for companies to put up unpaid posts.
Gartner Research Director Brian Blau said Thursday that the Highlights feature could help Twitter attract more users who don't want to be bogged down by an endless stream of tweets.
"It's going to help those who really aren't into Twitter, those lurkers who have an account but aren't participating all of the time," Blau said. "This potentially could be a nice feature and maybe will prompt more engagement."
Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability in Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating system that could let a hacker continuously crash either device as many times as they want.
Discovered by researchers at mobile security firm Skycure, the vulnerability is activated when you connect to an unknown open Wi-Fi hotspot (something you should never do in the first place), which the the hacker can then use to take control of several functions on your device.
Once you’re on the network, a hacker sends your iOS device an SSL certificate, which allows a device to talk with an app or website securely. Think of an SSL as something that lets your phone communicate with an app’s servers without anyone listening in.
In this instance, though, the SSL is purposely flawed, letting the hacker use their exploit to force any app using SSL to crash for no apparent reason.
The researchers at Skycure soon realized that they could crash not only apps, but also entire iPhones or iPads, causing the devices to enter a seemingly endless restart cycle that prevents you from either device at all.
The researchers said they were also able to combine the SSL certificate vulnerability with another hack that forces iOS users to automatically connect to specific Wi-FI networks.
In this instance, a hacker could force your iPhone to connect to their network and then start using the SSL certificate vulnerability to keep shutting down and restarting your iPhone.
The Skycure researchers refer to this practice as creating a “no iOS zone,” since any iOS device within range could be impacted. The only way to stop the cycle would be to leave the malicious network’s Wi-Fi range.
Skycure says the easiest way to avoid this issue is to stay away from unknown Wi-Fi networks and make sure you’re always running the latest iOS updates. Though they said they’ve reached out to Apple to let them know about the issue, Skycure says they still haven’t received a response.
This isn’t the first vulnerability discovered in Apple’s iOS, which execs have often boasted is far more secure than competitor Android. In the past, the software has been found to other security issues, though Apple is always quick to address them.
In this case, Apple will likely fix the vulnerability and move on.
Seriously though, the best thing you can do is stay away from connecting to any free Wi-Fi networks you aren’t familiar with. In addition to opening you up to a silly vulnerability like this, free, open Wi-Fi connections can also let hackers see much of what you’re doing on your iOS device.
YouTube now attracts more than 1 billion users a month.James Martin/CNET
Ten years ago today, a startup called YouTube uploaded its first video.
Co-founder Jawed Karim, in a private test of the fledgling service's capabilities, posted a short video of himself at the San Diego Zoo. The 18-second clip shows Karim unenthusiastically noting how elephants have "really really really long, um, trunks. And that's cool. And that's pretty much all there is to say."
Actually, there's a lot to say. From that modest beginning, a mammoth has evolved.
It's difficult to overstate just how big YouTube is: By the time you finish watching Karim's "Me at the zoo," other YouTube viewers around the globe will have collectively watched more than seven years worth of video. In the time it takes to watch that test video two more times, about 12 days of footage will have been uploaded to Google's video site.
Today, YouTube attracts more than 1 billion unique visitors a month -- or one out of every seven people on the planet. And that audience is helping create online stars. Today's fastest-rising celebrities aren't coming out of Hollywood. They're teens hamming it up or breaking it down in front of the computer to create a new kind of entertainment.
"No one organization has done more for creatives in the whole history of humanity than Google or YouTube," said Will Keenan, who heads the US digital division of television production giant Endemol.That dominance wasn't a foregone conclusion. In 2006, Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube, which was founded by Karim along with entrepreneurs Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The sheer might of its parent, though, didn't guarantee success. (How frequently do you check your Google+ social network, for example?) Several factors early in YouTube's existence played out in its favor and set it on the path to becoming the biggest media platform on the planet.
Utilitarian start
YouTube's main attraction at first wasn't the videos you could watch but the files you could store online. The founders wanted to create an easy way to share videos, not necessarily a place to sit back and let others watch them. At a time when video files were large and online storage capabilities for them were scarce, YouTube's appeal was in its role as an early version of now popular cloud-based service Dropbox.
YouTube started with a guy at the zoo.Screenshot by Richard Nieva/CNET
"People were already videotaping at that time, but they had no way to store that content," recalled Zefr CEO Rich Raddon, whose company helps studios manage their copyrighted material on YouTube. "It was more of an archivist point of view."
Here, Google's resources were key.
"They were really able to benefit from Google's scale," said Laszlo Bock, Google's head of human resources. Bock started at Google in 2006, the same year the search engine bought YouTube. For Google, the challenge was finding a balance between getting involved enough to be helpful but not a hindrance.
One of Google's perks was its arsenal of technology. The infrastructure needed to sustain heavy usage was daunting for a startup but not for one of the Internet's biggest companies.
"It was necessary that the platform got bought early by Google because the sheer costs to store and code and stream all that video were massive," said Raddon. Google's data centers around the world distributed content to make it quick to access so viewers didn't have to wait for videos to load. "When you hit play, there isn't that much buffering because that content had been spread out, localized throughout the world."
The un-TV
YouTube was one of many sites striving to be the the Web's home for free video. One way it set itself apart was by letting its users figure out what the site should be, rather than prescribing that YouTube should feel like "real" television.
"A bunch of services out there, they really thought they were going to be TV," said Jim Louderback, who ran multichannel network Revision3 and is now an editorial director of the VidCon conference on online video. "YouTube looked at themselves and said, 'What's going to make it easy for people to share video? We're going to let it be what it is."'
That democratic approach extended to elements reminiscent of social networks. Unlike the inherent distance that rests between TV and its audience, performers and viewers on YouTube could form interactive online communities. YouTube's most successful "creators" quickly learned that being accessible and authentic on the platform was crucial for building a fan following.
"It was a platform that was built for us and populated by us," said Bing Chen, YouTube's former head of global creator development and management. "Suddenly it became the most social platform in the world." Chen left YouTube last year to start a company called Victorious, which helps creators launch mobile apps to help promote themselves.
All the world's stage
While YouTube's initial appeal was as a place to upload content, it didn't take long for it to become a site predominantly for watching video. YouTube began to take shape as a platform for publishers, with the most successful often being people with no background in the traditional media world.
The launch of the YouTube Partner Program in December 2007 was a turning point for the service's evolution into a platform for performance. The Partner Program is how YouTube shares revenue from advertising that plays against a video with the person who uploaded it.
Five years later, YouTube opened that program up from allowing just the producers of very popular content to join, to letting in anyone who wanted to try to make money from their videos. The program went from 30,000 partners to millions within a few months, said Chen. "It opened up the floodgates."
Louderback said his Revision3 channels had deals with a slew of competitors, sites like Metacafe and Dailymotion, but YouTube was the only one that ever seemed to pay up. "When somebody sends you a check, you're more likely to keep working with them," he said.
The second decade
YouTube is spending the month of May celebrating the 10-year mark of its beta site launch.
As YouTube embarks on its next 10 years, it faces more competition than it's had since those early days. Ad dollars are migrating online, and rivals like Facebook and new ventures like Vessel are beefing up Web video efforts to eat some of YouTube's lunch. Though Google doesn't disclose terms, and those terms vary by creator, the site generally is known to share 55 percent of revenue from ads run against an partner's videos.
But for now, with more than a billion people visiting the site every month, YouTube isn't sweating it.
"Unless the Internet breaks, YouTube isn't going anywhere," Keenan said.
Google will allow users to download their search history — a handy tool if you've ever wanted a closer look at what really makes you tick online.
The details of the functionality are outlined in a Google support document, which breaks down exactly how anyone can save their list of searches.
First, visit history.google.com/history when you're logged in to your account. Then look for the options icon, and click download.
You'll be prompted to create an archive, and your history will begin downloading — it's as simple as that. The archive will be saved to your Google Drive in the form of a zip file that can be saved to your desktop computer.
Of course, you'll need to have your search history option turned on for the feature to work. If you've opted out of keeping a record of your search history, you'll find nothing available.
One blogger noticed early testing of the feature last year, and pointed out the wider availability over the weekend.
Google's wireless service is expected to launch as early as Wednesday.CNET
Google has been readying its own wireless service for smartphones, and it could launch in the US as early as Wednesday, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The service, which would compete with local wireless providers like AT&T and Verizon, is expected to let customers pay only for the data they use on the network. That would mean users only pay when they make calls, listen to music or use apps, as opposed to common wireless service agreements that charge a bulk rate for a certain amount of data.
What Google wants to do is somewhat unique, according to the Journal's report. The company plans to offer two types of services that overlap. When users are on Wi-Fi, their phone calls and other data would use that connection. When not on a Wi-Fi signal, customers would use common cellular radio signals, which are more costly.
Google isn't building its own wireless network to do this. Instead, the Internet giant has reportedly made a deal with US carriers Sprint and T-Mobile to use their networks. For now, this scheme is only expected to be available on Google's Nexus 6 smartphone.
A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.
Google's new wireless service underscores its ever-growing ambitions in the wireless industry. The company began its efforts in 2005, when it purchased the nascent Android mobile phone software and began giving it away to handset makers such as Samsung, LG and Lenovo. Today, Android powers more than 80 percent of the world's smartphones and commands significant influence in the wireless industry.
The next step for the search giant is to expand into how the cellular and wireless connections themselves are delivered to you.
For wireless companies, Google's entrance to the market is potentially worrisome. Google, with its resources and influence, has the power to shake up the entire industry.
When Google product chief Sundar Pichai confirmed the wireless service in February, he sought to reassure the carriers. He said Google's wireless service was meant to be a small scale experiment. Google's rationale is said to be in trying to innovate new practices and pricing models and trying to get the wireless industry at large to follow suit.
Wireless service isn't the only industry Google's hoping to upend. The company began taking on the home-and-business Internet service providers in 2010 with a project it calls Google Fiber. The service offers Internet connections to people's homes in cities like Kansas City and Austin for much less than larger rivals Comcast, AT&T and Verizon charge.
Google is also hoping to bring its service efforts to developing countries. The company has been building a way to beam Internet connectivity to rural populations via high-flying balloons with a project called Loon. Google is also experimenting with satellites for the same purpose.
The hacking group reportedly exploited security holes in Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Windows.Getty Images/Ikon Images
A group of Russian hackers has been using flaws in two popular pieces of software -- Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Windows operating system -- to try to get information about other governments, according to a report published by FireEye, a well-known United States security firm.
FireEye in October said the group, called APT28, is after information about governments, militaries and security organizations -- including the US and other diplomatic targets -- that would "likely benefit the Russian government."
One of the ways it has been doing that has been to exploit security holes in Windows, the top operating system for desktop computers, and Adobe's Flash, which lets you see animations and designs on the Web. Reuters earlier wrote about the FireEye report.
Adobe has already issued a fix and Microsoft is currently working on one, according to FireEye. The Microsoft problem is reportedly less dangerous because it involves "enhanced powers" on a computer that an ordinary user would not have, according to Reuters.
Adobe and Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment.
Cybersecurity has become a top of mind issue not only in Silicon Valley but across all other industries. Part of that is thanks to high-profile attacks in recent years against governments, newspapers and big companies. A devastating hack of Sony Entertainment in November revealed embarrassing secrets about the company, including financial data, information about its executives and plans for upcoming projects. Some, including the FBI, blamed the hack on the North Korean government.
The report comes a day before the beginning of the RSA conference in San Francisco, the US's largest confab of companies and experts from the cyber security industry.
APT28 has been at it since 2007 and allegedly has a government sponsor based in Moscow, said FireEye. Other security firms have tied the group to a breach in the US State Department, seeking information about President Barack Obama's travel schedule.
Last year, the OnePlus One made waves in the smartphone community by offering a high-end handset for just $299 off-contract. The only downside was just how hard it was to actually buy one, with the phone’s Chinese manufacturer OnePlus choosing to make sales of the One invitation-only. Not any more. To celebrate the first anniversary of the launch of the One, OnePlus is dropping its invite system to let anyone buy the handset. This isn’t a special offer or a limited deal — it’s forever. And yes, we know it’s strange to celebrate a smartphone simply going on sale in the normal fashion, but as we noted in our review of the One, this isn’t a normal product.
In a blog post announcing the news, OnePlus claims that the company has now sold more than 1 million handsets. However, they do add that the One’s successor, the OnePlus 2, will revert to the old invitation-only system when it goes on sale. This choice, says OnePlus, is made to minimize their risk when it comes to ordering components and making the handsets, something that subsequently allows for the company’s “razor-thin margins.” Let’s hope we see even more value with the OnePlus 2.
