Rovio Mobile have released updated levels to the Angry Birds Seasons series for Chinese New Year. Year of the Dragon has a whole new set of levels and fun all designed around the Chinese New Year. The new features include the ability to use the Mighty Eagle (Mighty Dragon) for help clearing those hard-to-beat levels. Like all the previous ABS updates, this one offers a new set of colors, graphics, items, and more, all centered around the common theme.

Fireworks popping, lanterns glowing, red envelopes bursting with money – it’s Chinese New Year! This holiday is China’s biggest and longest festival, a time for feasting with family and friends, setting off fireworks, and having fun. The Angry Birds are celebrating the start of the Year of the Dragon, but the piggies are trying to scare them away from their eggs! Luckily the Angry Birds have some help – the Mighty Eagle has transformed into the fearsome Mighty Dragon!

Download Angry Birds Seasons now.

It Appears our Android’s may be dreaming of more than Electric Sheep!

Telstra has today launched Androidland — a world-first store within a store that showcases the latest Android™ smartphones and tablets.
Unveiled at Telstra’s flagship retail outlet in Bourke Street Melbourne, the 154 square meter space brings together interactive technology, games and on-site experts to explain the features of Google’s popular
Android operating system which now powers some of the world’s leading smartphones and tablets.

The Amazon Kindle Fire has been a raging success so far due to its low price despite its fairly low end specs. This has made the device popular with the Android Mod community keen to get Android goodies and the latest Android OS Ice Cream Sandwich (or ICS) onto the device.

Would be Kindle Fire modder’s beware, several reports are emerging from users that managed to Brick their devices in gaining root access. Details are sketchy as to the exact cause. Probable causes include the recent Amazon update, bad permissions and even the mere presence of Vending.apk (Android Market) itself. In the worst case the device goes into a recovery boot loop with the message:

“Your Kindle has detected a problem and must clear app storage. The recovery process will erase some applications and data from your device. Apps from the appstore are stored in the cloud and can be reinstalled later.
This will reset your kindle to its original factory settings. you will need to re-register your kindle prior to downloading items from your Amazon account.
Please press power button to proceed.”

However, after following the prompt the Fire reboots itself back to the same screen. The dreaded boot loop or bricked state where the device cannot be communicated with over USB. Congratulations your Kindle Fire is now as useful as a brick, albeit an expensive one! This is a serious issue as in many cases there is no adb shell or Fastboot access to the device leaving it impossible to fix without sending it back to Amazon. One solution remains – the factory cable fix.

It appears the device can be brought up in factory mode by using a factory cable. This is a special micro usb cable that has an pin 4 connected to +5V, a pin that’s not normally used. You might be lucky searching online for a Motorola factory cable. If you have a little DIY experience with a soldering iron its easy to make one yourself. BE WARNED!!! This has the added danger of blowing up your Kindle Fire and PC USB port if done wrong!!! Details on how to make one can be found below. When the factory cable is connected the device comes up in Fastboot mode which means custom ROM’s can be flashed to the device. Right now we’re days away from a CM7 build and will no doubt see a CM9 ICS build early next year.

UPDATE:Be warned that larger system partitions such as system can’t be reflashed due to fastboots’ memory limit. The latest favored fix is to use TWRP 2.0 recovery tool to restore which uses the smaller recovery partition, more here.

Making a DIY Factory Cable

WARNING: REQUIRES SOME PREVIOUS SOLDERING EXPERIENCE AND A STEADY HAND AS PARTS ARE SMALL

DISCLAIMER: WE ACCEPT NO LIABILITY IF YOU SHORT CIRCUIT OUT YOUR PC IN THE PROCESS!!!!!

REALLY!!!

What you will need:

• USB->Mini/Micro-B USB cable
• Sharp model knife
• Soldering Iron and Solder
• Soldering tools: pliers, wire stripers, desolder
• Small piece of insulated wire (red)
• Elecrical tape
• Continuity Tester
• Optional: In case you butcher the micro end of your USB cable a handy alternative is the Sparkfun USB MicroB Plug Breakout Board, its way easier to solder and avoid shorts this way.

If your device manufacturer uses this method to flash their device your device should boot into factory mode

Once you’ve used the factory cable for recovery purposes do not use it for normal use!

The Kindle Fire is a neat little Android tablet from Amazon and what better complement than a cool Android 4 ICS style launcher. Installation is via a simple package download:

• Make sure that in Settings->Device Allow Install from Unknown source is enabled.
• Download the apk via device web browser from Syndicate Apps.
• Open the downloads folder and install the apk from there.
• Navigate back to home. Click the option to always use launcher by default.
• Note: this is still in beta so not everything is working yet such as folders, you can upgrade if you so desire.

Now you can enjoy the Android goodness you have come to expect such as live wallpapers, desktop widgets and more.

Linux thin clients fit into palm size USB have been available for years. Norwegian technology company FXITech have now applied a similar idea to Android. Cotton Candy is a USB device that contains a dual core 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos ARM CPU, has its own 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microSD slot and HDMI-out while only weighting 21 grams.
The device can be plugged into a PC, for example, and will launch a standalone Android 2.3 Gingerbread window on a Mac, PC or virtually any screen it is plugged into. The device is expected to go on the market in a year’s time for under US$200. By then hopefully we’ll see the latest and greatest Android OS on there.

A new incarnation of the of the remote controlled toy for the smart phone era has arrived with Sphero. It’s the first robotic ball that you can control with your smartphone or tablet via tilt, touch, or swing. Sphero delivers a unique mixed-reality experience with single and multi-player games that let you engage in the virtual world and play in the real one. Most of all, Sphero will challenge, entertain, and always surprise you. It’s the ball evolved.

The ball contains a small Orbotix Smart Robot at 74mm diameter and 168 grams. Its controlled over your device Bluetooth and has a 50ft range and a top speed of 3ft per second. Internal guidance system including gyro, accelerometer and compass. It has an induction chargeable battery that gives over 60 minutes fun at full speed. Inside is a multi-colored LED capable of producing thousands of colors. The Sphero can also change color via an internal multicolored LED.

A few starter apps are also available for Sphero

• Sphero Hub
• Sphero Blox
• Sphero Drive
• Sphero Golf
• Sphero Draw N’ Drive

Check them out here. Read more info and where to purchase on http://www.gosphero.com

Google announced that they will be releasing the Google TV 2.0 incorporating Android 3.0 features. This new update will bring several improvements including the Android Market and an improved user interface. Here are the main additions:

• Improved user interface thats easy to use
• Content search feature will make it easier for users to find movies, videos from Live TV, Netflix, YouTube, HBO GO, and more.
• New and improved YouTube App, brings a better user experience.
• Android Market and apps. Over fifty Android developers are already working on apps for Google TV.

Google says that Sony devices are going to get first dibs on the Android 3.0 update. The Logitech Revue will receive it later on. New Google-TV-powered devices will also be coming in the near future.

Google TV has had a tough reception since its introduction in May last year. Its greatest criticism has been the level of content rather than the platform itself. This may explain Google’s intentions to move into the cable business. What come of that remains to be seen.

Hong Kong, Wednesday 18th October – Samsung and Google jointly announced the new Galaxy Nexus complete with the latest Android OS. The Galaxy Nexus differs from the Galaxy S2 mainly by looks, much the same hardware powers the device.
Galaxy Nexus features a super slim profile, 4.65” Contour Display with true high definition (720p) resolution and a lightning-fast dual core 1.2ghz processor combined with 4G LTE or HSPA+ technology. The highlight of the even however was the unveiling of the latest OS Android 4.0 – Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).

The primary goal of Ice Cream Sandwich was to merge features from Android 2.3.x Gingerbread and Android 3.x Honeycomb into a united OS for phones and tablets alike. But we got much more! Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing. Several exciting new features have been included making ICS the best Android release to date.

• Lock Screen: The device can now be locked with a facial recognition option using the front facing camera.
• Homescreen, Launcher: The Honeycomb toolbar has been integrated appearing when you need it on devices without buttons. The home screen toolbar now allow holds favorite apps with a simple drag and drop. The task manager shows a preview of active apps similar to Honeycomb and includes the ability to flick a selection to terminate the app.
• Screen Shot: You can now take a screen shot by pressing the power and volume down buttons.
• Data Usage: You can now monitor the data useage of each app historically. Limits can be set to warn or switch off data hungy apps.
• Camera and Photo Editing: Picture-taking is now instantaneous with zero shutter-lag. You can literally take pictures as fast as you can tap the shutter button. The built-in camera app now has a panorama mode that’s ridiculously easy to use.
• Video: The stock camera app features automatic focus, time-lapse, low-light capabilities, and even “tap-to-snap” still shots while you’re shooting video.
• People: The functionality of Contacts has been renamed. Connections to a contact now appear for any social apps that are installed such as Gmail/Google+, Twitter, Facebook etc. Google Voice messages can now be fast forwarded.
• Android Beam: By touching two devices with NFC together you can now share any contact or content. A simple tap on the sending device and the content appear on the receiver.
• And More: The keyboard, browser and Gmail apps have all been improved.

A full list of the new features can be found here.

After months of rummors today Amazon announced their new Tablet the Kindle Fire. It will retail for $199 in the US and ship on November 15th. In conjunction with the Amazon App store this device is a serious competitor to the iPad. The only problem at the moment is that the device will only be available in the US. This is because it is integrated with the Amazon Cloud, which isn’t available outside the US for legal reasons.

The Kindle Fire is an Android tablet, though it has been heavily skinned do don’t expect to see anything familiar to the current crop of Android tablets. It has a 7-inch multi-touch “vibrant color” IPS display capable of 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi with 16 million colors. It packs a dual-core processor, 8 GB of internal storage, USB 2.0, a standard audio jack and weighs 14.6 ounces. No, there’s strangely no 3G version—for $199 the Fire is Wi-Fi only, though Amazon was quick to add that computer-related system requirements are nil because “it’s wireless and doesn’t require a computer” (take that, Apple?). The Fire also eschews a camera or microphone, which given the importance of both in Apple’s iPad, probably means this is still Amazon’s warm-up to full-blown iPad response. Claimed battery life is 8 hours for reading and 7.5 hours video playback with wireless disabled.

The most intriguing thing about the Fire? Its promised integration with Amazon’s cloud services. Amazon says it plans to offer free storage for all cloud-related content. Also: You can preorder the Fire now, but it won’t ship until November 15.

Read more

Recon Instruments have created a slightly different take on Google Goggles by creating a physical set powered by Android. The MOD Live Goggle (Micro Optics Display) attaches to a set of Alpine ski goggles. It offers real-time feedback, including speed, jump analytics, latitude/longitude, altitude, vertical distance travelled, total distance traveled, chrono/stopwatch mode, a run-counter, temperature and time. MOD Live also integrates with Android smartphones for additional apps and live connectivity giving access to navigation, resort points of interest, caller ID*, text messaging*, MP3 playlists*, buddy tracking*, wireless camera sync, and much more. You can buy them online now from shop.reconinstruments.com.
*Android smartphone required to use some features of MOD Live.

Features:

• Speed
• Altitude
• Vertical
• Distance
• Jump Airtime, Distance, Height and Drop
• GPS Location
• Chrono/Tracker
• Temperature
• Run Counter
• Stats History with Maximums, Minimums, Averages
• Widescreen
• Time
• Bluetooth Low Energy Remote Control
• Navigation
• Caller ID
• Text Messaging
• MP3 Song Playlists
• Wireless Compatibility with Select Wearable Sports Video Cameras
• Transforms your MOD Live into a Viewfinder
• User Configurable Dashboard
• Even more Android Apps available from Recon HQ Online…