| Candy Crush Saga sweetness heading to Amazon Appstore, Kindle Fire tablets Oct 16th 2013, 06:23, by Juan Carlos Torres If there ever were a bittersweet game, that distinction would belong to Candy Crush. Now the deceptively simple and addictive productivity-killer is coming to Amazon’s Appstore and, of course, its handful of Kindle Fire Android tablets. Say goodbye to your book-reading free time soon. 
The “same game” genre, where players line up three or more items of the same kind to score a point, has been around for quite a long time, but every now and then someone comes along with a twist that catapults the game into a hit. With challenging puzzles, mouth-watering candy-themed visuals, and a hypnotizing soundtrack, Candy Crush Saga has risen to such fame among desktop and mobile gamers that the game can be found everywhere you look. Well, almost everywhere. While Candy Crush Saga is available on Google Play Store, some Android devices, at least those that don’t have Google Play Services, have not been so lucky. Such is the case with Amazon’s tablets, all of which run Amazon Appstore instead, at least by default. That problem will be a thing of the past now that Candy Crush Saga is coming to the Appstore and on Kindle Fire tablets, such as the new Kindle Fire HDX, which got a teardown treatment just recently. Candy Crush Saga is already available on Amazon Appstore in selected regions but a worldwide launch will take place on October 17. If you own one such device and haven’t experienced the game yet and are the type who gets easily sucked into these kinds of casual games, play at your own risked. VIA: Android Central |  | Google Play Books gets major version bump, improved search features Oct 16th 2013, 05:48, by Juan Carlos Torres Surprisingly and without much fanfare, nor formal announcements, Google has released version 3 of its Google Play Books Android app. The changelog is quite short and to the point and the new version focuses on the thing that Google does best: search. 
Ebooks, despite their convenience, do exhibit some warts, especially when compared to their plain text cousins. This is particularly true when dealing with ebooks that have, as Google calls them, “original-pages”, that is, pages that have been scanned and directly put inside the ebook, making the page practically an image instead of flowing text. This makes searching, much less text selection and copying, almost impossible. This new version removes that obstacle, allowing users to search for text inside scanned pages. Google doesn’t go into details, but this new feature probably relies on Optical Character Recognition (OCR), a field that the company is quite familiar with. Still, OCR isn’t perfect, so actual results may vary. Another feature added to this release is a “See All” button that will take user to their My Library page right from the Read Now section of the app. And of course, what update would be complete without mentioning a dash of stability improvements here and there. The new Google Play Books app is up now on Google Play Store and should be rolling out to users everywhere by now, though, as always, that may depend on local markets as well. Download: Google Play Books on Google Play Store
VIA: Android Police | |
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