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New Xperia Lounge beta app for Sony

Get in on the action with the Xperia™ Lounge beta App

If you want competitions, events and amazing experiences you can’t get anywhere else, get the app that’s packed with them: the Xperia™ Lounge beta app.

The Xperia™ Lounge beta app can be downloaded on any   Android smartphone but for the best experience, download it on an Xperia™.
                                 

Download the Xperia Lounge beta app now and get access to a world of entertainment today.

Get it on…

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Sony SmartWatch 2 – the world’s first water-resistant smartwatch

Sony SmartWatch 2 is a second screen for your Android smartphone that, as well as enhancing existing phone functionality, offers unique new benefits. Combining form and function in a sleek design, it serves as a multi-functional watch, notifier, Android app interface and phone remote control, all-in-one.

Download a host of SmartWatch apps and experience a range of unique functions – many of which can even be enjoyed without ever needing to reach for your phone:

• Handle your calls by a simple touch of your wrist
• Take a photo remotely from your SmartWatch, using a smart camera app
• Control your presentations remotely using Presentation Pal
• Taking a run or on the bike? Select a mapping app on SmartWatch to check your route with a quick glance at your wrist
• Read previously downloaded e-mails when not connected to your phone
• Use lifestyle apps like Runtastic to map and instantly track your fitness activities on the go

Quickly and easily adjust the tracks and volume on your music player, without ever taking your phone from your pocket

SmartWatch 2 is also both sleek and reassuringly robust thanks to its water and dust resistant design, giving you the freedom to enjoy it on the beach or simply on the go – come rain or shine.

The best of Sony in a SmartWatch

If you use Android, on either smartphone or tablet, Sony SmartWatch 2 is your ideal smartwatch partner.

It’s easy and convenient to access notifications from your wrist such as messages, calls, email, Facebook™/Twitter™, Calendar, or use it as a remote for your Walkman™ or other digital media player. This wireless accessory is ideal for pairing with large-screen devices, such as the newly announced Xperia™ Z Ultra, in situations which call for discrete usage.

SmartWatch 2 introduces new features as a natural successor to the current Sony SmartWatch such as NFC connectivity for one-touch pairing, stunning premium design and a range of technologies including higher resolution for sharper viewing, better visibility even in sunlight, longer battery stamina, more intuitive interface, standalone watch functionality and a wide range of pre-installed and recommended apps.

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Sourcing Content for Business Blogs

Blogs are useful for many marketing and communication purposes. They’re also useful simply as software that manages content. Businesses can use blogs to communicate a corporate vision, to build thought leadership corporate-wide or for subject matter experts. Blogs can be very useful in support of public and media relations efforts and they are certainly excellent tools for making a site more search friendly with fresh content that attracts incoming links.
One of the best resources for blog content comes out of interactions with prospects and customers. If an organization can tap into the flow of dialog that happens between front line employees such as sales people and customer support there is an abundance of valuable content available. If customers and potential customers have questions about certain topics, then it’s pretty likely that many others will too.
Many times, an organization is already capturing this kind of information formally or informally. All it takes is a few phone calls or emails to the right people/departments in the organization to start leveraging the insight that comes from those interactions.
Most often this kind of content comes in a question answer format, but it doesn’t have to be presented that way. Lists of tips, indicating trends or creating a series of posts based on a theme are all viable options. Q/A style content is also great for building up a FAQ, or frequently asked questions content. Doing so with keywords in mind for post titles and category labels along with attention to how you link posts to each other can bring significant SEO benefits as well as provide a great resource for people searching for solutions your company has to offer.
It’s really a win win win situation. Leveraging or re-purposing current activity for blog content saves the company a lot of time, the nature of the content is synonymous with the kind of information prospects and/or clients are looking for and aggregating the content with keywords in mind using a structured blog format makes it easier to find on search engines.
Obviously, the source of this kind of information needs to be anonymous. No client or prospect wants to see their name on a company blog after calling a help desk or sales office to ask questions and no business wants the legal implications.
Making the capture of Q/A content part of a normal business process can also fuel internal knowledge base or CRM applications. Sharing this information with support and sales staff via a central repository can be quite helpful for daily interactions and in many cases, is already a function being performed.
While many companies are interested in starting a business blog, the question of how to source content efficiently often stands in the way. Leveraging information capture and distribution activities that are already occurring within an organization is one of the best ways to find the most useful and productive content for business blogging.

Careful with Your Linkbuilding Strategies

If you haven’t been following the SEO sphere lately here’s what you need to know: Google is starting to push harder against artificial linkbuilding methods, including low quality links, link networks and so on.

Earlier this year Google started sending warnings to websites that were breaking one or more of Google’s policies regarding backlinks. Then we had the Penguin update which supposedly hit many of those websites hard.

The curious thing is that in some cases the penalty coming from those bad links was pretty harsh, and large websites that were penalized were desperate to fix things.

Google’s own advice was to remove those bad links. so the websites started asking for other websites to remove links pointing to them, and threatening to sue if they didn’t! I am not sure if this was clear, but here’s what they were basically saying: “Hey, you know those links you have pointing to my website? While I appreciated them a couple of months ago, I don’t need them anymore, so please remove them or I’ll sue you!”.

Search Engine Land has a very interesting article covering this whole debacle:Insanity: Google Sends New Link Warnings, Then Says You Can Ignore Them. Here’s a quote:

But what if people couldn’t get links taken down? The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, just generally suggested such a thing was possible without giving any specific advice.

This led further support to those who argued that “negative SEO” was now suddenly a real possibility, that any publisher could be targeted with “bad links” and made to plunge in Google’s rankings. Google stressed that negative SEO in this way is rare and hard. To this date, negative SEO still hasn’t seemed to be a wide-spread problem for the vast majority of publishers on the web.

Those reassurances — along with a Google help page update saying Google “works hard to prevent” negative SEO — hasn’t calmed some. Negative SEO has remained a rallying cry especially for many hit by Penguin (and many were deservedly hit) looking for a way to fight back against Google.

Bottom line: don’t resort to artificial linkbuilding schemes, networks or paid links, as sooner or later it will get your website penalized. Sure, natural linkbuilding takes a lot more time and effort, but at least you can be sure it will be worth it in the long run.

From 10 to 7 Google Results per Page

It looks like Google is willing to experiment even with sacred elements of search, like displaying 10 results per page. The guys from Search Engine Land and SEOMoz started spotting last week some pages with only 7 results.

Here’s a link to the Search Engine Land article talking about it: 7 Is The New 10? Google Showing Fewer Results & More From Same Domain.

Apparently only 20% of search queries are displaying this behavior, though, and the reason might be connected with sitelinks. Those are the extra, smaller links you get when you search for the name of an authority website. It seems that Google wants to clean those pages a bit, as the sitelinks themselves already add a bunch of extra links.

Another theory is that Google wants to give more value and real estate to authority websites, as displaying only 7 links allow them to dominate the first page for some search queries. Here’s a quote from the SEL article:

Indeed, back in the middle of 2010, Google made it official that in some cases, sites might be able to dominate all the results then expanded this later that year.

Now, it feels like another expansion is happening. As said, that’s not directly connected with the shift from 10 to seven results. But it does mean that potentially that brand sites will have an even easier time than ever before to “push down” negative content.

Google recently covered that it’s been working on changes to both sitelinks and site clustering (its term for how it groups pages from the same site). Both shifts covered may be connected to this. But we’re checking with Google to learn more.

The bottom line remains the same: invest your time and effort into creating authoritative and value-packed websites, as those tend to perform much better over the long term.

Anyone Still Tracking Google PageRank

Until a couple of years ago most bloggers and webmasters would track the PageRank of their sites almost religiously, and use it as street cred on most situations. A PR2 or PR3 was average. PR4 or PR5 was pretty good. PR6 was pro level, and anything above that was reserved for the Internet moguls.

Every three months or so Google would also update the nominal PageRank (the one you could see using a toolbar or an online service), and people would go crazy about it. The folks who saw their PR increase would celebrate and brag. The ones who got downgraded would complain bitterly.

Myself included.

I remember one update when this blog got a PR7. As you can imagine I was pretty happy. Too bad it didn’t last long. On the next update it went down to PR6, which I believe is the current PR.

Anyway over the years people started talking less and less about the PageRank of websites, probably because we started to understand that it was just one out of hundreds of factors that affected your search rankings.

In many situations it would be hard to see a correlation at all between PR and search traffic, as we had cases where a site lost most of its PR while its search traffic surged.

The last time I checked the PageRank of any of my sites was probably two years ago, and I don’t see many people talking about it or about PageRank updates either.

So my question: are we finally over the PageRank hysteria? Are you still tracking it? Have you heard about any updates lately? Let me know what you think with a comment below.

Google Launches Tool to Let You Block Links

A while ago I talked about the Penguin update, and about how many webmasters and site owners were now doing something we would never have imagined a couple of years ago: they are contacting other sites to stop linking to them and to remove previously placed links.

Well, it looks like Google notice all the buzz and decided to go along. Yesterday it announced aDisavow Links tool inside the Webmasters Central. If you have low quality or spammy sites linking to you and would like to remove those links you can now use that tool and Google will take care of it.

Who should do it, though? Here’s quote from a Search Engine Article:

Who should use the new tool? It’s been primarily designed for those who were impacted by Google’s Penguin Update, which in particular hit web sites that may have purchased links or gained them through spamming.

In the wake of Penguin, panic ensued among some SEOs and publishers. Some wanted a way to ensure that they could discount bad links and start fresh. Others worried that people might point bad links at their sites in an attempt to harm them with “negative SEO.” A new business of people charging to remove links was even born.

Things got worse in the summer when Google released a new set of link warnings that didn’t clarify if publishers really had a problem they needed to fix — if they could — or not.

Luckily most of my websites weren’t hit by Panda or Penguin, so I guess I won’t be using the tool. What about you?

If you want to read the official announcement, here it is.

Building an “Archives” Page with Simple PHP

In my opinion most websites should have an HTML sitemap (also called “Archive” or “Archives”). That is basically a page that will contain a link to all other pages of the site. In case of a blog it will contain a link to all blog posts.

Such HTML sitemap is beneficial both for search engines and human visitors. Search engines benefit from it because it becomes easy to crawl all the content of the website. Human visitors, similarly, become able to quickly look for a post that was published on a particular month/day/year. On top of that there’s an SEO benefit, as your link juice will spread evenly across all pages.

In order to build such an “Archives” page I used to use and recommend a plugin called SGR Clean Archives. That plugin is quite old, however, and it stopped being updated a while ago.

Then a couple of days ago I received an email from a reader who took my recommendation and was using the plugin. He said that his server was becoming really slow lately, and upon further investigation they discovered that the plugin was hammering the server and causing the slowness.

He also pointed out that my own “Archives” page was not working anymore. Damn! My guess is that the latest versions of WordPress rendered the plugin’s code slow and ineffective.

Anyway I needed to find an alternative. Since performance was a crucial aspect here I decided to implement my own “Archives” page using raw PHP and WordPress functions. It turned out to be an easy task:

1. Create A Template

The first step was to create the page template I would use for the “Archives Page”. Basically I copied the structure of a normal page (usually page.php), and added the following piece of code on top:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Archives
*/
?>

2. Add the PHP code

After that I removed the piece of code that outputs the normal content:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
<?php the_content(__('Read more'));?>
<?php endwhile; else: ?>
<?php endif; ?>

And substituted it with my own PHP code to output the links of all published posts:

<h1>Archives</h1>
<ul>
<?php
$args = array( 'numberposts' => 1000 );
$lastposts = get_posts( $args );
foreach($lastposts as $post) : setup_postdata($post); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

3. Create the Page

After that all you have to do is to create a page inside WordPress and make it use the “Archives” template. That’s it.

I am using that code on my archives page right now. The only thing I am not happy with is the fact that all links are mixed together. I would like to separate them month by month, to make it easier for humans to find what they are looking for.

As soon as I solve that problem I’ll post an update, so stay tuned.

Update: Somehow the code above was not working with 2000+ posts. With 1000 or fewer it works fine though. Since I have more than 2000 posts published I opted for a simpler archive with links to the monthly pages, with the following code:

<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
</ul>

You can see this live already.

How to Promote Your Website Like a Brand

Branding at the individual, small or even medium level is a difficult endeavor. However, there are little excuses for inadequacies these days as Google makes it more difficult to rank with content marketing that isn’t “brand friendly” – that is, tactics that are one-off gray or black hat link building techniques.

Today, we must function as brands, and the reality is that although we imagine companies like Kellogg’s and SeaWorld as the behemoths of brand marketing – companies with lackluster websites but still the ability to generate links eight times quicker than us – we are very capable of reflecting a similar identity online due to benefits of miniature scale we can create for ourselves through the proper marketing channels that brands often experience and build on offline.

Link Building with Momentum in Mind

We’ve left behind the term “link building” and must instead focus on identities like “link development” through content marketing. If we build our businesses and link development competencies with the idea that we must build scale, we’ll be a lot more successful with our efforts because we will develop competencies.

What does this mean?

No more one off guest posting for links. Yes I am guest posting here, but I am doing so with the intention of building authority and referrals, and actually, the link matters little to me because I don’t do much SEO for my own blog. Hopefully some of you follow my blog or follow me on Twitter, which will create an audience that will multiply my future efforts online.

If I simply blog for a link, that effort is reduced. If you want to create scale (as you should), you’ll do similar. Yes, the link is valuable, and you should aim for a combinatory effect with your guest posting, but your sole intention should never be the link itself. In the new world of content marketing, it’s no longer a valid excuse.

Creating A Snowball Promotion Strategy

Many brands have the benefit of content that serves itself, and only need to release it into the wild to see the benefits it can create online. Us small peons don’t, right? Well, the reality is that we do. We can’t ever be Kellogg’s or SeaWorld, but we can have the “publish” button that sites like SEOmoz enjoy – when thousands of eyeballs view their content all at once.

This comes from deliberate, long practice of developing audience through mechanisms like guest posting in the target markets our audience operates in. Constantly releasing great content online and then creating introductory “sticky” promotion elements will create the brand mechanisms others enjoy. What are these introductory sticky elements?

• Twitter accounts – getting potential customers to follow us
• Facebook accounts – getting potential customers to like us
• YouTube accounts – getting potential customers to subscribe to us
• RSS feeds – getting potential customers to subscribe to us
• E-mail marketing – getting potential customers to subscribe to us

I say “introductory” because these allow you to remarket to your consumers for free – and are a few steps to the secondary, more powerful sticky element, SEO. If we guest post or do PPC advertising, if we never capture audience intent through one or more of these sticky elements, we lose the potential to scale, because our cost per acquisition continually rises.

This creates a negative brand efficiency if they do not, as customers, follow/like/subscribe to content they enjoy – as such an engagement is an introductory buy-in to your brand identity.

So this means your job, as a marketer, is not to initially think about how you might get thousands of sales, but how you will create the snowball promotion effect every time you release something online. Because if you do not generate that snowball, even if you create a viral sale effect, it will eventually become nothing.

Brands have that snowball effect – which is why every Apple event is covered and talked about once one word is leaked out – and why Six Flags can immediately touch thousands of eyeballs on their brand when a press release is opened up. They built it, but they had it bad compared us – they didn’t have the benefit of online, free promotion mechanisms to do it. They had to do it through high cost per acquisition activities like billboard, display and television advertising.

Build the brand snowball by:

• Leveraging the maximum amount calls to action to social accounts on your sidebar, after blog posts, and occasionally, within blog posts, without appearing spammy
• Most often releasing content to interested markets asymmetrical to your own, such that they might have interest in future relevant content of yours
• Promoting content through all social channels relevant to your own and not to channels where there isn’t much application (such as Pinterest for Daily Blog Tips)
• Creating memorable and brand-identifiable social accounts that are easy to type in, easy to find, and match the company sales mission across all available properties

Creating A Brand Effect in SERP Results

As you build those accounts, you will begin to effect a real change in the search results, depending on your vertical. For example, SEOmoz, a now established “brand” in SEO, has the benefit not just of ranking well that being a brand provides, but also getting a higher clickthrough rate because of it.

It is likely a higher clickthrough rate is a positive signal to Google to actually rank you higher, which then gets you even more clicks – and more links, and so it goes. But that’s not where it stops to create a “snowball effect”. Obviously, hopefully you’ve now established some search result rankings, and some sales. From here, build on that efficiency and “snowball effect” by multiplying effort.

Do this by:

• Signing up customers immediately for e-mail newsletters such that they can serve as content promoters even if they can no longer be upsold
• Immediately leverage a secondary call to action such as “follow us on Twitter/like us on Facebook!” after they’ve completed a conversion event
• Creating content that is good enough to be talked about through word of mouth, bringing new customers back to your website to then be pulled into future promotion efforts through social and email campaigns
• Using rel=author where applicable to create brand identity/quick identification when potential customers use your services online

Hopefully posts like this can help push you to start creating your own mini-brand online. SEO isn’t dead, but I believe winning a competitive vertical by sustaining a business on one-off linking strategies truly is.

Ross Hudgens is the founder of Siege Media, a digital marketing consultancy. He frequently writes about SEO, digital marketing, and branding online.

How Authorship can take your blog to the next level in 2013

If you haven’t heard of Google Plus, Google’s new social network, then perhaps you’ve been living under a stone for the last year. Whilst it’s certainly not yet a Facebook or Twitter, Google is doing everything it can to push and promote it. That’s something that as a blog owner you should give serious consideration to. Taking on the might of Facebook is a huge challenge for Google and having learned many lessons from their previous attempt with social networking called Orkut, this time they’re out to really push G+.

Of course I can hear you asking why should I care, I already share my content on Twitter and Facebook which has a far greater reach. The answer is quite simple. Google is giving out plenty of encouragement for you to be active with them. As a serious blogger, you should take advantage of it! So if you’ve gone through your SEO checklist and think you have everything covered, don’t forget to markup your blog with rel=author!

Everyone likes a great picture

The first and most obvious advantage is the ability to have a pretty picture of yourself in the SERPS (search results). You’ve probably seen quite a few sites that have this when you search Google. Do you think you’re more likely to click the result with the picture or the one without? The web is becoming more social because ultimately people are social animals. Your picture in the SERPS not only makes you stand out from your competition, but it can make you appear more trustworthy. As the vast majority of blogs aren’t yet using Google authorship, then you really should be! Here’s what it looks like when implemented correctly.

Not only this but click through rates within search results are often much higher with sites that have authorship enabled. Bottom line, this means more visitors to your blog. If you even got an easily achieved 10% increase in your CTR, this means an extra 10% of organic search visitors to your blog. Obviously that’s clear value to you, no matter if or how your blog is monetised. A 10% boost in new traffic for 20 minutes of work to set it up is a clear and easy win for you. However, it gets much better.

The big picture, if you’ll pardon the pun

The big picture goes far beyond the ability to have your picture in the search results. That’s just a nice little carrot that’s dangled in front of you. Google wants to stay at the top and to do that they continually need to find better ways to organise and understand the plethora of documents on the web. Pagerank and links which are the fabric of their understanding of the relatedness of the web are buckling under the pressure. To take things further they need to understand who is adding the content and how authoritative these people are within the realm of their topic areas.

Authorship is a great way to do this, and it really is a stroke of genius. If they can get webmasters like you to link their blogs and content written around the web to G+, then they can start to understand more about the context of who is building the great stuff on the web. If they can understand who the great authors are then they can use that to rank quality sites much more easily and give their users a much better experience. If you put out great content, then that means you!

What does this mean for you?

This means that you need to be giving the right signals to Google that your content is the kind of content that deserves to rank well and to be receiving the gift of the traffic Gods. Do you already get the kind of metrics and interactions that Google loves to see on your blog? Do you get great comments, links, and social shares because of the quality of your blog? Then you should be telling Google that you are the author of this great stuff!

Once they know that you are the author you can start to build your ‘author rank’ or agent rank as their patents describe it. Now I’ll be honest, nobody knows if Google is currently using this as a signal for ranking. You have to realise that they’ve put so much effort into it this and it’s likely to be so potent a ranking signal that it’s obvious that it’s coming soon. Delivering quality relevant results is at the heart of what Google wants to do, and you dear reader should see the opportunity to be at the very heart of it from the beginning. Of course we don’t yet know what the full effects of this are likely to be, and this post is not the place for a discussion on correlation versus causation, but hopefully you can see that the potential is huge.

What you need to do set it up

Firstly you need to create a personal profile with Google Plus, fill out all the information required, and add a picture of yourself. Note, you need to use an actual real picture of you (a headshot is best). Company logos are not what was intended here. Then you need to add your site (or any others that you post on) as a site that you contribute to in your profile.

Finally you need to add the link to your G+ profile page on your blog posts and you’re good to go. If you use WordPress as many are, you’re probably usingYoast’s SEO plugin (which I highly recommend). Yoast kindly has made it easy for you by providing fields to do this within the plugin. Alternatively many other SEO plugins provide this functionality. Once you’ve done this you can test the results with Google’s Rich Snippets testing tool and if it all works you need to wait a couple of weeks.

The implications of doing this

Google already understands more about your site than you think. It knows about interactions and social sharing as well as other important metrics. Make sure that this great stuff is linked to you, the real life human being. Why? The answer is because as a ‘known author’ you can take this authority around the web with you. Think of it as a suitcase full of topic authority. If you contribute to other sites as well as your own, then your articles there should get a boost based on your authorship. Also if those other sites do the right things then your posts should further increase your author rank.

Finally one of the other obvious connotations of this that you don’t often hear about is the impact of people guest authoring on your site. It clearly will benefit them but think about how it would impact you to have the highest quality authors on your site. Once you see that Google can understand who is authoring all this content you can see that attracting industry thought leaders and experts to post on your site (with verified G+ authorship) is going to massively help. Top experts aren’t going to work with low quality sites, so in effect you can leverage the authority of others to help your own ranking. You should positively encourage expert authors on your site! However you need to make sure that these are quality authors, so your vetting process needs to be even stricter.

A semi advanced tip

If you’ve already shared content on other people’s sites through the connections you have then you should contact those site owners. Not only is it likely to be good to get back in touch anyway, but you can explain the importance of authorship implementation. If you’ve contributed to sites all around the web in the past then you may be able to build up very quickly by implementing this on your past work. A head start is always a good thing, but just make sure that you only link quality work back to you.

A final word of caution

I’ll finally say that if you do any kind of black hat SEO promotion, then you should stay far away from this. Of course most don’t do that stuff, but I thought I’d mention it. By creating authorship and taking it around the web with you, you are linking all of your work. You need to be sure that you’re ‘whiter than white’, otherwise the past might come back to haunt you.

Why not tell me what you think in the comments. Have you used rel=author markup and have you noticed a CTR or other improvement on your blog?

Harvey Pearce is the owner of SEO Derby a digital marketing company focusing on Search, PPC, CRO, and Social, based in the UK. He has a passion for all things digital and a little boy who is the centre of his world.

Uncoverr.com: A Resource for Web Designers and Developers

Lachy G., an old time Daily Blog Tips reader, contacted me to let me know that he launched a website aimed at web designers and web developers, calledUncoverr.com.

What is the site all about? It basically features book reviews, articles and interviews about web development in general. If you browse the books section, in fact, you will find a big list of books for Javascript, PHP, AJAX, ASP and so on.

He also published a recent interview with Chris Garrett. Here is a quote from it:

Can you talk about the time commitment in writing a book, was there much research, or have you always been able to just publish your personal views and opinions on the various topics you have written about?

I think everyone underestimates how long a book will take. Not just the writing either, the whole process takes *months*. You can never just splurge your thoughts out if you want it to be a top quality book, you must be sure of what you are saying is both true and will work for the reader. With publishing online you can send it out and correct or tweak based on feedback. You don’t have that luxury in print so everything must be checked, checked and checked.

Overall I think it is a nice idea, and if they manage to keep adding fresh content like interviews and book reviews, it will be a nice resource for web developers. Check it out.

Leaked Motorola Moto X video shows features, confirms August release

We've been seeing quite a lot of teases and rumors about the Motorola Moto X, but this is leaked promo video from Rogers Wireless is the first leak we've seen that gives a real look at the phone, the features, and even confirms an August release date for the device. And, if you're a Canadian reader, it let's out the potentially bad news that the Moto X will be exclusive to Rogers in the True North. 

But, for everyone else, we want to focus on the features, which looks pretty exciting. The number one feature of the Moto X looks to be a big new feature that Google first showed off at I/O this year for Search/Chrome: hands-free voice commands. Apparently, the Moto X will be listening at all times, and can be activated with the phrase "OK Google Now..." From there, the device will be able to respond to any normal Google Now command or search without you ever needing to touch your device. We're very excited about this feature alone, because we've been searching for the fastest way to initiate voice commands on an Android device, and this would be it. The only issue here would be battery life, and how much battery could potentially be wasted because the device has to be constantly listening. 

Next up, Motorola has done away with any notifications LEDs on the device, because they don't really tell you what you need to know. Instead, notifications will show as a faint, flickering image on your device screen. The example given was a Facebook Messenger icon flashing below the clock. Again, this looks like a nice addition, but it also could have battery concern issues attached. Additionally, we're hoping that notifications can be made more rich than just the app icon, and perhaps show a preview of the notification message.

Lastly are new features for the camera. The camera app can now be launched with a twisting gesture; just twist your hand back-and-forth, and the camera app will launch. That should make it easier and faster to get into your camera app from wherever you are in the system. Once in the camera app, things get a bit strange. It seems as though Motorola has decided to do away with tap-to-focus functionality, because the two features shown would make that relatively impossible. With the Moto X, you can take a photo by tapping anywhere on the screen; or, you can take multiple shots in burst mode by holding your finger on the screen. It's possible that tap-to-focus and taking a picture could be combined, but unless there is solid image stabilization, that could lead to shaky pictures. 

The video says that the device will be released on Rogers in August, and Rogers is usually one of the first major carriers to get a device, so that window sounds reasonable for the U.S. release as well. One last strange bit is that the video says the Moto X will only be available in black and white on Rogers, and doesn't mention any other colors or customization options. So, we're wondering how many customization options will be available when you purchase through a carrier, and how many will be exclusive to buying directly from Google. 

source: Ausdroid via Android Central

iGenius How Steve Jobs Changed The World

20 PS4 Features You Might Have Missed in Excitement

1. New interface is called “PS dynamic menu”
2. PS4 HDD can be replaced
3. PS4 allows games to be accessed from other machines (when signed in)
4. One PS4 will be assigned as the “Home” PS4
5. It comes packaged with HDMI
6. Not region locked
7. Impressive camera
8. Camera has 4 mics
9. Video Unlimited movies will now be streamable on PS4
10. Instantly switch between games and apps
11. Touchpad is a pressable button
12. PS Mobile app will act as a second screen and allow game purchases
13. Cross game chat
14. Video compression/decompression and upload facilities
15. Suspend mode
16. Game uploads in background and in sleep mode
17. Gaikai for “best PS3 games”
18. Existing PS+ membership rolls over and price is the same
19. Sony Pictures working on new content
20. More than 140 games in development for PS4

Batman: Arkham Origins Collector's Edition Details Leaked

Finally the details regarding Collector's Edition of Batman: Arkham Origins has been leaked online all thanks to "PS3Gen.Fr".

PS3Gen got their hands of poster of Batman: Arkham Origins Collector's Edition (which seems pretty legit) and as per the details on it, Batman: Arkham Collector's Edition will include:

• A holographic collector’s box
• Unique 3D metal game pack
• An Art of Batman Arkham Origins book
• A gorgeous 23cm tall Batman/Joker figure
• Two codes for ‘exclusive’ DLC.

Source

PS4 Specs Much Better Than Xbox One on Paper Admits Xbox One Developer

An Xbox One developer admitted on Reddit during an AMA that PS4 has much better specification than Xbox One on paper but also added games on Xbox One looks as if they are running on high-end PC.

According to the developer, games such as Forza 5, RYSE and Killer Instinct just look stunning and spectacular on Xbox One.

The developer wrote on Reddit, "The facts are on paper, the PS4 has better specs and the most you can debate is by how much,"

"What I can tell you is I have played Forza, Killer instinct, and Ryse on the Xbox One. They look as good as the games I play on a high end PC. Ryse reminded me of darksiders II."

Do you agree with views of this developer?, let us know in the comment section below what you guys think about it.

Source: Reddit

First Mad Max Gameplay Premiere On July 15 confirms Avalanche Studios

Mad Maxis schedule to launch on PS3, Xbox 360, PC, PS4 and Xbox One. You can watch E3 2013 trailer of Mad Max below

Xbox One Without Kinect Would Have Cost Less Than $399 says Xbox One Dev

We all know that Sony's next-gen Playstation console, PS4 4 is tagged with price of 399$ in comparison to Xbox One with price tag of 499$. Many people wonder why this price difference of 100$? Either you can blindly accuse Microsoft for charging extra 100$ for console with almost similar configuration as of PS4, or you actually see what comes in package as whole. Difference we found is Kinect 2 which is coming in bundle with Xbox One. 

We all know Kinect is a success, and with Kinect 2 as camera device in Xbox One it will be something to look forward and i think 100$ extra will worth, where for PlayStation 4 you'll have to put extra 60$ for PlayStation Camera.

An Xbox One developer on Reddit during AMA session has stated that Kinect is the best feature of Xbox One and the sensor cost almost as much as the console.

A Reddit user named "nkripper" asked: "What do you feel is the best feature of the XB1 that people have little knowledge about?"

To this Xbox One Dev replied: "The majority of the masses care only about the console, except that the success of the Kinect carries much more weight to us. The sensor costs almost as much as the console to make."

Immediately after this reply another user "GhostofAce" added, "But the problem with the Kinect is as of right now, July 13th 2013 a decent amount of people don't want it. A lot of people switching to the PS4 are doing it because they don't want to pay $100 more for a camera they don't want."

User "Krakn3dfx" followed the above argument with his by stating: "The original Kinect was a highly successfully sold product that ended up only being a Dance Central peripheral and then disgarded like some old Rock Band equipment. Nothing about it in regards to the XBO appeals to me, I would rather you offer a SKU without it for $100 less and throw a cheap headset in the box instead. There seem to be a lot of people like me. I know you guys are proud of your product, but you seem to be going after a market that no longer exists with your TV and motion control hardware."

To this Xbox One Dev replied: "As I mentioned earlier, I don't know what price point the Xbox One would be at without the Kinect, but it would be much less than 399.

I see it not as a market that no longer exists, but one that haven't been explored due to technological limitations."

This mean Xbox One would have cost much less than $399 (which is a price tag of PS4) without Kinect. This would have been a better strategy from Microsoft against Sony and PS4, but they thought otherwise and are paying the price for it i.e Xbox fans are switching to PS4 and are doing this because they just don't want to pay $100 more for a camera they don't want.

10 PS3 Exclusives Games Yet To Be Released

This is more than alright though, the best titles for a console tend to come out towards the end of it’s life. It’s a bittersweet affair that happens in every successful console’s life cycle. Just look at what we’ve seen this year for the PS3 and it’s been a good year for gaming in general as we usher out the old and bring in the new. The PlayStation 3 still has a few exclusive gems to share with us before the year is done.

1. The Last Guardian:

The Last Guardian promises to be interesting with Team ICO behind the game’s development there is a lot to look forward to. The story is about a boy as he becomes friends with a giant, wild- yet friendly creature as they try to escape what appears to be a monolithic and ancient castle.

The wonderful cinematic sequences, creature design and art style are going to be a treat for anyone who is a fan of games like Shadow of the Colossus and Ico. The action ans well as  game-play in The Last Guardian also looks like it will bring a fresh twist to the Action-Adventure genre. It will be interesting to see how a young boy deals with large, armored soldiers while apparently not having any real weapons. The underlying tone of friendship and dedication is a nice touch of emotion that we should be seeing more of in gaming.

2. Beyond Two Souls:

Quantic Dream the developers of the dramatic action-adventure, Heavy Rain are bringing us Beyond: Two Souls. This new game stars Emmy nominated actress, Ellen Page. Page is playing our main character, Jodie Holmes as we follow her through her life. Make no mistakes, Ellen Page is in this game, unlike the “The Last of Us,” she is actually the star now.

Two Souls is approaching a subject that is as heavy as it is mysterious while Quantrics tries to answer the questions of life after death. Jodie isn’t alone and will also be accompanied by a supernatural being whose’ been with Jodie since she was a little girl. There are still a lot of questions surrounding this title still and if Quantic Dream’s previous development follows their former games they will be keeping the story well under wraps.

With quite a few videos online now there is plenty of juicy game play to wet your whistle before it’s release. If you’re really interested in this game you won’t have to wait too long since it’s scheduled for release in early October.

3. Tales of Xillia:

Namco Tales Studios is finally presenting a North American and European release of Tales of Xillia, a popular RPG that was released in Japan over two years ago. The combat is fast-paced and has a very interesting ability to be able to link a player with another character in their group. This player-created link allows them to fight with you, granting special attacks and abilities.

The Real-Time combat system allows you to switch between one of your four active characters on the fly to keep combat moving fast. Tales of Xillia is promising to bring great stories and character development as they offer a choice of two different characters, which is the first for the Tales series. If you’ve got a craving to play an action RPG, you should definitely give this game a try

4. Puppeteer 

This adorably stylized platform title from SCE has a classic and almost make-believe, fairy tale feel to it; much in the same vain as Little Big Planet. In Puppeteer the player needs to save the world from the terrible Moon Bear King who steals the souls of children so that he can turn them into puppets.

This game is somewhat of a departure from SCE Japan Studio would usually do it seems, but with a large library of games and other projects they’ve been involved with it’s not too surprising that the developer would make a game like Puppeteer. This title appears to be a game that the whole family can play, offering a fun and exciting story for younger children and a good challenge for teenagers and even parents. Fans of the Platform genre are sure to enjoy this title.

5. Until Dawn

Developers, Supermassive Games is bringing us Until Dawn. A game that follows a group friends who’ve decided to spend the night in a cabin on the anniversary of their good friend’s death. This dark and chilling game has the atmosphere and feel of of a classic horror movie akin to Evil Dead and other amazing slasher films.

Until Dawn puts you in control of eight teenagers in a game where attention to detail is important and knowledge is everything. There are plenty of horror movie tropes to play off of and missing them may cause more than one of your characters to die, While the release date still has yet to be announced Until Dawn is still on schedule for a 2013 release. While the game is a bit short, but it sounds like there are going to multiple endings based around the survival of your teenage characters. This Survival Horror game is something that movie buffs will love.

6. Disgaea Dimensions 2: (Fall 2013)

The Sequel to the 2003 release of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness originally released on the PS2 brings a more tactical flair in the RPG genre. The over the top character design should make this game very fun, just like the previous Disgaea titles. With a story that plays like an Anime cartoon any fan of the genre should get a good laugh out of this game and it’s cooky characters.

Dimensions 2 is also giving players more options than in previous installments of the series by adding a character personality system, giving players a choice of what kind of personality they want their characters to have. Disgaea Dimensions is due out in October had is a great game for any fans of the Tactical-RPG genre.

7. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle

This ridiculous, Manga infused fighting game comes from CyberConnect2 and is being published by Namco Bandai Games. Players will be able to deck out their fighter’s in a variety of ways, including costumes, sound effects and colors that characters use as you fight your way to victory.

The game that plays like a comic book will also have character specific story sequences for defeats and victories alike, giving the player a bit of a different story depending on who they’re fighter as well as who they are fighting. This superbly Bizarre fighting game will be out August 29, 2013 for those lucky enough to be in Japan. Unfortunately there are no release dates set for American or European release.

8. Ratcher And Clank: Into The Nexus 

Ratchet And Clank: Into The Nexus is the final entry in the Future series. The game is set after the events of Tools Destruction, Quest for Booty, and A Crack in Time.

Insomnia Games believes that this latest iteration will be a return to roots and will have gameplay mechanics that will be similar to the older Ratchet and Clank games.  After the disaster that was All 4 One, this latest game promises to give the players a much better experience.

All the weapons from previous Ratchet and Clank games are confirmed to be present in this game. The game will be released later this year exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

9. Rain: (Summer 2013)

This uniquely brilliant idea has been developed by SCE Japan Studio and PlayStation C.A.M.P. Rain is about a boy who is lost in a world he doesn’t recognize and sees a girl who is like him, they can only be seen in the rain and are otherwise invisible.

The player locates our characters by interacting with water like leaving wet footprints, splashing through puddles and standing in the rain to reveal the character’s full silhouette. This original puzzle Adventure should keep you entertained for awhile. Though seemingly dreary has a wonderfully naive charm and just a touch of mystery to entice players. Rain will be made available for download in the late summer of 2013.

10. Gran Turismo 6: 

Racing fans will be excited this holiday season with the release of the sixth installment in the series. Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo 6 is going to have all the racing fun you loved from the previous title with much more than ever before. With the demo for game already available on the PlayStation Network anyone with an PS3 can get a taste of what’s to come in the GT6.

Come winter of this year there will be plenty of car enthusiasts to enjoy their favorite sports cars and the chance to find new ones. The game boasts a 1200 cars and 33 tracks and over 70 layouts and a myriad of customizations for every car you can get your hands on to test, race and sell. Polyphony Digital’s attention to detail and need to get everything just perfect is what is really going to have racing fans foaming at the mouth with anticipation.