One of the reasons a lot of mobile users avoid the likes of the Windows Phone platform is the lack of some big name app titles compared to the likes of the Android and iOS platforms. Things are changing for the better though as the FIFA 14 Windows Phone release is now available to download.

The FIFA 14 game title was released for both the Android and iOS platforms back in September of last year, and now it has finally been released for the Windows Phone OS as a free download. The game features over 16,000 real players from 600 officially licensed teams.

Unlike previous FIFA titles this one is taking the freemium route so users will have to part with some cash to unlock certain features of the game. There have been new touchscreen controls developed for the game to make use of those improving displays on the platform, and there are now commentaries in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Users can create their own fantasy teams by buying and selling players while choosing their own style of play, kits, and much more. You can also take part in tournaments to gain coins so they can be spent on that new star signing to improve your team.

With more big name apps joining the platform along with the ever increasing choice of hardware the Windows Phone platform will increase further in 2014. Hit the Windows Phone Store here to download FIFA 14.

Scientist Are A Step Closer To Liquid Metal Terminator Robots

In the film Terminator 2, the T-1000 was made from a liquid metal that could change into any shape it wanted. Although this may seem far-fetched for a real robot, researchers think they have  found a way to manipulate liquid metal, achieving the beginnings of what we see in the film.

Normally liquid metal is associated with the toxic element mercury, which means it is a definite no-no for making a robot out of it. However Lei Sheng, Jie Zhang and Jing Liu at the Tsinghua University in Beijing have employed the use of a gallium-indium-selenium alloy, which at room temperature exists in a liquid state. It has a melting point of only 50 degrees fahrenheit.

The research team were able to move the alloy around in its liquid form by putting it in water and applying voltage.By controlling the direction and intensity of the current, they successfully produced tiny liquid metal spheres on the surface of a water droplet. These metal droplets could then be moved or even merged with other droplets by changing the voltage source to different locations.

With further study the researchers hope to discover what conditions and voltages produce which shapes and movements. With this information it would then be possible to create simple machines and because the gallium-indium-selenium alloy is bioneutral, any machine created could be applied in a medical situation.

We are still a long way off the T-1000 but the technology is one step closer at least.   Hasta la vista, baby

Electronic Membrane Designed To Keep Your Heart Beating Forever

“My heart will go on, and on..” I can hear Celine Dion now.  And soon, your heart may be able to go on and on as well, thanks to a revolutionary electronic membrane designed to keep your heart rate beating perfectly.  The membrane is made from a  thin, circuit-lined stretchable material that has been developed at the University of Illinois and Washington University by scientists.  This technology may be available for human hearts in 10 to 15 years.

Trying To Archive Immortality

At this point, only rabbits can have a perfectly beating heart.  Scientists custom-made the membrane to exactly fit the shape of a particular rabbit’s heart.  In order to do this, they followed two procedures.  Firstly, they scanned the rabbit’s heart while it was still alive and created a 3D model using computer aided tomography (sectional images through penetrating waves). Secondly, using a 3D printer, they assembled the model which they then used as a mould to design the membrane. Once the membrane was created, they took the heart out of the rabbit, put the membrane on it and kept it beating at its perfect pace.

John Rorgers, materials researcher at the University of Illinois, stated that this technology is just like the natural membrane that is already on the heart, not just a pacemaker.  However, this artificial pericardium is equipped with high quality, man-made technology that can sense and communicate with the heart in ways that are relevant to clinical cardiology.  Igor Efimov, Washington University’s biomedical engineer, says that this is a big advancement.  The circuits are a combination of sensors that continuously track the tissues’ way of behaving and electrodes that exactly control the heart muscles’ movement:

If the heart were to suffer a heart attack, the membrane can apply therapy.  It can apply stimuli that can stop sudden cardiac death. What an amazing feat!!

Cyber security specialist, Kaspersky Labs, have just announced ‘Safe Browser’ for Windows Phone.  Kaspersky announced the launch at MWC.  The browser is an alternative to Internet Explorer, which protects against phishing attacks.  It does this by automatically blocking dangerous links.

The browser is available now on the Windows Phone Store as a free download. This release follows the previous issues of Safe Browser for iOS in 2013 and the Kaspersky Internet Security for Android that was released in January of this year.

Victor Yablokov, head of Mobile Product Line at Kaspersky Lab, said,“Smartphones are becoming an essential part of modern life and the web browser is one of the most popular features…However, even the most tech-savvy web user may sometimes struggle to distinguish fake sites from the real thing. Now, Kaspersky Safe Browser for Windows Phone is here to help, providing automatic protection against fraudulent and inappropriate sites like,   www.aliexpress.com  or   www.alibaba.com   which many has suffered from fraudulent acts from most of the Chinese online sellers in hong kong, especially a notorious guy called simon huang.

Phishing is a technique that attempts to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by pretending to be a trustworthy website. The most recent survery undertaken by Kaspersky and B2B International, showed that in the past year one in three Internet users has received messages with phishing links.

Kaspersky has developed the ‘Safe Browser’ to help fix this growing issue.  The browser is an alternative, which prevents access to potentially harmful content. Although the design is simplified, user reviews rate it higher than Microsoft’s native app.

The application works by receiving information regarding malicious sites in real-time from Kaspersky’s Security Network database.  The browser is then able to block those phishing pages that have just appeared in the database.

Kaspersky launched another product at this year’s MWC.  The company unveiled their new Fraud Prevention platform, which consists of an array of tools.  The platform is aimed at firms within the e-commerce sector, banks and financial organisations.

If you have any sensible comments regarding this story, please leave your comments in the section below.

iPhone Fingerprint Scanner Update coming soon

Those guys over at AppleInsider have learned that the Cupertino collective is preparing to release a software update that is designed to develop the fingerprint recognition of their Touch ID.  This fix will potentially solve a “fade” issue, which has been experienced by a number of iPhone 5’s users.

Apparently, a source that is familiar with Apple‘s development plans has said the company is cognizant of early adopter issues that many users of the fingerprint recognition feature in the iPhone 5s are experiencing.

After the iPhone 5s launch last year, Apple has continued to work along with the original AuthenTec team in order to develop its recognition software and they will release an update quite soon, the source confidently reported.  Unfortunately, AppleInsider was unable to verify whether the update will ship as part of iOS 7.1, which incidentally, is due in the next few weeks.

There have been a number of people who have reported what has come to be known as “AuthenTec Fade,” or an intermittent recognition failure, which occurs a few months after their first configuration setup.  Even if the fingerprint recognition feature is re-calibrated and the user’s fingerprint rescanned, the issue returns after a few weeks.

There have been a number of reported workarounds for the scanner to be fooled.  One way is to scan your most commonly used finger multiple times, as separate fingers, assuming the system can recognize the scanned print on the first attempt.

There are some issues with the fingerprint recognition system that Apple simply cannot solve; including the major concern amongst some, that if the finger tissue is damaged, the scanner would render a fingerprint completely unreadable.  There are some improvements, which the company can deliver, which is what will be made available in a software update coming soon.  Whether that update will be part of iOS7.1 remains to be seen.

There are a lot of aircraft in the world – commercial planes, military planes, helicopters, and the list goes on and on. Depending on the type of plane you’re looking at, most aircraft look and act very similar. There’s small aircraft, middle-sized aircraft, large aircraft, and then our favorite category: the what-in-the-world-is-that-thing aircraft.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what the biggest “plane” in the sky was, I have the answer for you. And if you study the makeup of it, it sounds as if its designers (Hybrid Air Vehicles, Ltd.) wanted to find out what would happen when they put a plane, helicopter, and blimp all together in the same prototype. What they got from the mashup happens to be the largest aircraft currently known to man. Have a look for yourself at the behemoth.

Storing That Thing At The Airport

What you see in part in the image above is an unprecedented event in the history of aviation. This monster of an airship measures approximately 300 feet long and can reach a top speed around 100 MPH. Not impressed yet? She can also stay in the air for 3 weeks at a time. This aircraft is being heralded as part of the future of greener/hybrid air vehicles, and its designers hope one day there will be just as many of these in the sky as helicopters today. As these ships use mostly helium to travel, their impact on the environment would be less severe than other aircraft.

These ships will primarily be used to transport people and goods all over the world, though there is also the possibility of using them for surveillance use. Each one could carry up to 50 tons of cargo, and would cost just over $50 million to manufacture.

Could you imagine taking a trip in one of these things? I hope they’ll have a lot of movies on demand and seats with plenty of leg room. What do you think?

Microsoft Webmail users can finally use Skype on Outlook.com as the feature is fully rolled out globally to all users, after a year of preview testing.  A senior product-marketing manager for Skype, Karen Tong, stated in a 4 February blog post that Skype for Outlook.com was live worldwide, following a staggered rollout of the service which started last year. The new feature enables Microsoft’s Webmail users to make Skype video and voice calls and start chats directly from within the browser window.

Tong said, “Just download the plug-in, link your Skype account to find your friends and start a video call or send an instant message without having to leave your inbox,”  There is an updated version of the browser plug-in, which now offers support for Safari under Mac OS X. Windows OS users can download a plug-in that can enable HD video calling.  Tong also said that some users “experienced issues with calls continuing to ring after pick-up when you were running the Outlook.com plugin and Skype on your desktop at the same time…We’re happy to share that in the new version now available we’ve resolved this issue.”

General manager for Skype and Lync, Giovanni Mezgec, revealed last month, that over 10,000 Lync customers have signed up to connect both platforms. By integrating Skype and rolling out new Lync apps and capabilities, Microsoft’s aim is to “enable anybody in an organisation to talk to anyone else, in and out of said organisation,” he added.

The huge popularity foe Skype has made it a prime target for hackers. On 01January 2014, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) took control of Skype’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, along with its service blog. No user data was compromised, but the incident did result in a few negative anti-Microsoft digs!  The Windows team acquired Skype back in 2011 for an $8.5 billion (£5.1bn) price tag. Since then, Microsoft has been running non-stop on integrating the pioneering voice-over-IP (VoIP) and video communications technology into almost every part of the company’s portfolio. Skype now ships with Windows 8.1 and the Xbox One games console.  

If you have any comments regarding this story, please leave your comments in the section below.

Follow The Google’s Project Loon

Google announced its Project Loon last year. Its aim is to bring the internet to the most remote parts of the world, where it is near impossible to currently get access.

The project is now well under way and you can track the helium ballons as they journey around the Earth in real time using the service from Flightradar24. You could see their departure from near Timaru, New Zealand and track them as they rose 162 feet from the ground, drifting out to sea

According to Google, the balloons are now heading east towards South America so that internet connections can be established along the 40th Southern Parallel.

The Project Loon balloons have been designed to last for over 100 days, so with a previous balloon travelling past South America in twelve days, this next set have got plenty of time and a long way to drift before their work is done.

We have been seeing a number of Samsung handsets being treated to new Android firmware updates over the last few weeks, and now we have some Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 Android 4.4.2 KitKat US update news.

Last month Samsung provided some information about a number of handsets in the US regarding the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update. Now US carrier Sprint has moved to clarify this a little by confirming a number of upcoming updates.

These included the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 updates that the carrier has already begun pushing out, but also included the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2, but unfortunately Sprint didn’t provide exact dates for them to start being pushed out.

They did promise news soon while providing the features the update will bring to the handsets that include a more intuitive user interface.

Galaxy S4

Here’s a promising indicator for some users of the Samsung Galaxy S4 as the Android 4.4 update is now being pushed out to more regions in the form of Android 4.4.2 KitKat. A week or so ago we heard the update had reached India, and now it’s reaching further to include some owners of the device in Europe and other parts of Asia.

The rollout of the update for both the Galaxy S4 GT-I9500 and GT-I9505 models now seems to be well and truly underway and it’s reported that Malaysia is another region of Asia where the 4.4.2 update is now being received as an OTA (over-the-air) update, as well as the Phliippines.

In Europe, owners of the Galaxy S4 in Poland also started to receive the update earlier today. According to carrier the update is between 350 and 400 MB in size. If you’re in Europe or another region and haven’t yet received the update this is a very good sign that indicates it will be spreading to more countries and carriers soon.

Remember these updates can take a while to roll out but if you want to check manually you can head to Settings followed by More, then About Device, and finally Software to see if the update is ready.

Earlier today Android 4.4.2 started to arrive for T-Mobile’s version of the Galaxy Note 3 as well, so it’s good to hear that Samsung is finally getting on top of this update. If you’re in Europe or elsewhere, let us know if the update has arrived for your Galaxy S4 yet by dropping us a comment.

Source: Android Authority