Angry Birds Update Adds New “Power-Ups”, 15 New Levels

Rovio may have just released Amazing Alex a few weeks ago, but it’s committed to bringing more levels to its Angry Birds franchise that continues to be popular. In an update released today, the original Angry Birds game for iOS got 15 new tropical levels that sees the “piggies continue their beach vacation”, that is, until the birds show up.

Today’s update also sees the addition of four power-ups; King Sling, Birdquake, Super Seeds, and Sling Scope.

  • King Sling upgrades your slingshot for “maximum power and velocity”
  • Birdquake will bring the pigs’ defenses “crashing to the ground”
  • Super Seeds will turn your bird into a “pig-popping giant”
  • Sling Scope lets you use laser targetting for “pinpoint precision”

Upon launching the update you’ll get 20 free uses of a power-up and each day you get one additional use. But of course, if you can’t wait that long there’s a bunch of in-app purchase bundles to give you more uses of those power-ups, ranging from a 5-pack of any power-up for $1.99, 10 uses of a single power-up for $0.99 or you could go all in for 125 power-ups for $20.99.

A little side-note, Rovio has now (finally) brought full retina support for the iPad 3 so you can enjoy the game on the wonderful Retina display.

Review: The New Day One

Day One

Day One

Twenty years from now, what will you remember?

Last week, a friend of mine found an old MP3 player in her drawer. Upon recovering the contents of the device[1], she synced its music back to her iPod nano, and then she gave it to me. It was full of songs we used to listen to years ago. If songs can be associated with certain moments or periods of your life, than that MP3 player was like a photo album in sound form. Memories. Old emotions and melodies coming back to life, not a distant echo anymore. It felt like grabbing the headphones of 16 year-old me, today, with the knowledge that those moments won’t be coming back, but the experience of someone who cherished them will.

But what do I remember?

In twenty years, I’m not sure I’ll be able to remember the songs I like today, or the faces of people that I care about now. I don’t even know if I’ll be around in twenty years. But I do know that I want to do everything I can to make sure I can get there with my own memories. We are what we know. And I want to remember.

Where the human mind can’t get, I think software can help. In the connected and post-PC era we’re living in, I believe the devices and apps we use play an important role in enabling us to create memories. But just as relevant as “content creation” has become to this discussion, we have to ensure the memories we create today will be preserved digitally for the future.

For the past few months, I have been using a new version of Day One to build an archive of my life. Released today, the new Day One goes beyond the previous version’s support for text entries and adds photos, location, and weather information in an app that, for me, has become more than a simple journaling utility.

Developed by Bloom, Day One went through a remarkable evolution to get to the major updates published today. Last year, I took a look at the app and noted how it was helping me build an “archive of my thoughts” thanks to its simple and elegant interface:

There’s one thing I never really considered storing in a digital archiving app — memories. I’m talking about things like “what did I enjoy doing today” or “I decided to take a walk with my girlfriend” — specific moments that matter in life, that are important, but which our brains often blur and forget after some time to make room for new data to process and maintain.

And then again:

I try to enjoy every moment, but there’s so much the human brain can remember and it’s perfectly normal if something will get lost in the process of assimilating thoughts and processing them to turn them into memories and experiences.

If 2011 Day One was the TextEdit of memories, the new Day One is their Evernote. With support for photo attachments, location data, and improvements to sync and Mountain Lion, today’s Day One wants to overcome the limitations of text to become the window into your past life.

Day One is visual memories. Read more

Apple: About Power Nap→

Apple: About Power Nap

Last week, Apple published a support document that provides more details on Power Nap, the technology Apple introduced with OS X Mountain Lion to manage certain updates even when a Mac is asleep.

Firstly, Apple notes that, aside from the features explained on the OS X webpage and the System Preferences app, Power Nap also supports Spotlight Indexing and Help Center updates when a Mac is plugged into an AC outlet. The “other iCloud updates” mentioned in Power Nap’s settings include Find My Mac, so you’ll be able to track a Mac’s location even with its lid closed; VPN connections (with certificates) for corporate email and configuration profile updates are supported as well.

Power Nap can be rather confusing for new users, as all of its capabilities aren’t fully explained in System Preferences and the Help Center. Apple’s document also details the frequency of Power Nap updates, so make sure to check it out here. [via @applespotlight]

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July 2012 In Review

July was an interesting month for MacStories as we covered the launch of the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, and launched our first eBook. Containing all our Mountain Lion coverage from the site in addition to exclusive articles, the book was a challenging but immensely rewarding project. With the exception of some advice from a few trusted people, we handled the book’s creation entirely by ourselves and are very proud of the end result. If you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, it’s not too late to change that — and remember that 30% of all proceeds will go directly to the very worthy cause that is the American Cancer Society.

Besides Mountain Lion, the other notable pieces of news were Google’s acquisition of Sparrow, and the all-but-confirmed rumour that the next iPhone and iPad mini will be announced on September 12th. Apps-wise, July was a quiet month as developers readied theirs for Mountain Lion, but we did see the release of the Tweetbot for Mac alpha along with Rovio’s new franchise, Amazing Alex. For stories, we had two great interviews, an excellent piece on discovering and making music on the iPad, talked about the apps and tools we use to write more efficiently, and created some hands-on examples of what the rumoured 7.85” iPad would look and feel like.

Jump the break for the full month in review, and feel free to read previous ‘Month in Review’ editions from 2012.

Read more

Safari 6.0 and Google Search URLs→

Safari 6.0 and Google Search URLs

Brent Simmons writes about the lack of URLs for Google searches in Safari 6.0:

I asked on Twitter. One way is to drag the magnifying glass into whatever text I’m editing. Another way would be a bookmarklet that gets the current page location. A third way would be an AppleScript script.

I ended up writing a Python script.

From my Mountain Lion review:

That said, there is one aspect to the new smart search field I don’t care for: it no longer displays Google Search URLs after you’ve used it to search for something. So if you want to share a direct link to a Google Search, you’ll need to copy it from the share sheet in either Messages or Mail.

In fiddling with Keyboard Maestro, I built a super-quick macro that grabs the URL of the frontmost Safari window through AppleScript. You can download the macro here, or check out the AppleScript itself if you want to create a system Service with Automator.

As pointed out by user @jaydisc on Twitter, some Apple apps on Mountain Lion can receive the copied search terms as clickable URLs in rich text format. In my tests, only Mail was able to receive search terms in RTF and, apparently, this is a known bug.

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Gmail 1.3: Faster, but Still a Web App

Gmail has a small update out this afternoon, promising all around smoother animations and scrolling, the ability to save picture attachments to your photo library, and bug fixes that squash some annoying issues.

Gmail 1.3 on iOS is certainly a bit speedier: scrolling through the Inbox and revealing the panel feels as smooth as a native app, although Gmail’s sliding animation to a message can still display lag here or there. However, the speed improvement doesn’t change that Gmail is a web app, with the Gmail splash logo being displayed at startup, network complaints when strained for bandwidth, and some “this doesn’t feel right” moments when composing email.

A new feature added is the ability to save pictures to your photo library, but it’s clunky, awkward, and not obvious. To save an image attachment, you have to open the image attachment in Gmail’s browser, then tap and hold on the picture to bring up the dialogue to save your picture to your photo library. Oddly, you can print from the message view, but you can’t save a photo (you have to open it first). I think the Gmail for iOS team would be better off replacing the Safari icon in their browser with a sharing icon, letting users Open in Safari, Save to Library, Open in App, or Print from a more familiar and traditional list of actions.

Composing email still feels awkward, with the compose window being relatively finicky and jumpy, but bug fixes have at least solved one annoying selection issue. Before, I couldn’t drag the cursor before the first letter of the first sentence in Gmail for iOS, but this is remedied in today’s update.

Gmail is passable as an app (it’s certainly not Sparrow) and it’s slowly getting better, but its flaws as an email client in a web view still show in the most important places, such as when working with attachments and composing a message. If you’re inclined on being in Google’s ecosystem, Gmail is free on the App Store.