We recently caught a glimpse of the Sony Xperia UL thanks to a leaked image of the smartphone circulating the Web just a few days ago. It looks like we didn’t have to wait long to hear Sony’s official announcement for the handset as they unveiled the Xperia UL today.

The Xperia UL features a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, a 5-inch 1080p display, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB of RAM, 13MP rear-facing camera and looks to be a slightly thicker version of the Xperia Z. Just like the Xperia Z, the Xperia UL will be both water and dust resistant, but the device will also offer the ability of taking burst photos of up to 15 frames per second as well as coming with a dedicated camera button and a wide range of connectivity, such as NFC, DLNA and an IR-port.
Read full post →Sony Xperia UL Announced In Japan With 5-Inch 1080p Display

Google Field Trip recently made the transition of being an Android-exclusive application thanks to its iOS application, and it looks like it came at a great time as Google has announced it will allow its Field Trip users to gain free access to 13 museums for an undisclosed limited time.

Field Trip users can receive Free Entry cards inside of the app’s “nearby” tab when they’re found to be close to one of the 13 museums. Once they’re offered a Free Entry card, all you’ll have to do is show the card to anyone who would normally stop you from entering a museum for free, which hopefully results in you gaining complete access instead of having your smartphone chucked into a nearby bush.

Unfortunately for Field Trip users around the world, the 13 museums the application will gain you free access into are all located in six major U.S. cities. The list of museums participating in Field Trip’s Free Entry cards promotion are as follows:

Read full post →Google Field Trip Gives Users Free Admission To 13 Museums

Madden fans will know this year will mark the 25th year anniversary for EA’s most beloved sports video game franchise, and they’re making a pretty big deal of it with this year’s Madden 25. Normally, EA would sell standard editions of their latest Madden game on current generation consoles, PC, handhelds and mobile devices, but seeing as this is a pretty big year for the Madden franchise, they’re going all out with a special Anniversary Edition of their upcoming game.

For Madden 25, EA is making a $99.99 Anniversary Edition of the game available at a number of retailers, but the pre-order bonus Amazon is offering with their customers’ purchase of the game is one we’re sure football fans are going to want to jump on immediately. In addition to providing additional in-game content, Amazon has teamed up with DirecTV to offer a $10 discount on a new subscribers’ monthly bill which also includes NFL Sunday Ticket Max at no additional charge.

Those of you who aren’t able to watch DirecTV due to the service not being available can use the code Amazon provides in its Madden NFL 25 Anniversary Edition to watch a season-long trial of NFL Sunday Ticket. In this case, since you can’t watch DirecTV, you’ll be able to stream it on a number of other devices.

There are more and more connected devices than ever and the trend is going to grow in the near future. MessagePetz launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $45,000 in funding to develop a Wi-Fi Teddy Bear that will allow parents to send love messages to their kids via the display embedded in the interactive stuffed animal.

According to MessagePetz CEO and co-founder Glenn Jones, “Being away from your kids can be one of the most difficult things a parent can go through”. Parents will be able to send their child’s MessagePetz Bear a ‘hug’, a ‘kiss’, an ‘I love you’ or a personalized message from the free app on their smartphone. Then the LED heart lights up to let the kid know that a message has arrived and is displayed on the screen. Simply by hugging the toy a reply is automatically sent without using a smartphone, and custom replies can be written in advance.

The MessagePetz Bear starts at $89 for early backers.

Read full post →Wi-Fi enabled Teddy Bear by MessagePetz on Kickstarter

As we had reported earlier, the deal Yahoo made to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion is now official, and in our previous report, we asked how Tumblr users are feeling about this. We expect that there will be mixed feelings, with some possibly happy that Yahoo is now throwing their weight and support behind the website, and with others a bit more apprehensive and worried that Yahoo might begin to over commercialize it with ads and whatnot. The latter seems to be the case, at least that’s what WordPress’ founder, Matt Mullenweg, seemed to imply in his blog (source link below).

Mullenweg stated that on average, WordPress typically imports about 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, but since news of the acquisition went official and started to spread, the blogging platform noticed a huge spike to over 72,000 imported posts in the last hour! It’s definitely way too early to tell if Tumblr users are defecting to WordPress, or if they’re simply playing it safe by keeping an alternative blog ready to go should they decide they do not like where Tumblr is heading after the acquisition, but what do you guys think?

Earlier today we had reported that Yahoo’s board of directors had reportedly approved the company’s buyout of Tumblr for $1.1 billion, and sure enough it turned out to be true as Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, announced the acquisition herself on her Twitter account. The company has officially announced that they will be acquiring Tumblr in a $1.1 billion cash deal, and that they will be keeping Tumblr’s CEO, David Karp, on board, and that Tumblr will continue operating independently as a separate business. Interestingly the company has also added that they promise not to “screw it up”, which we guess is good news for Tumblr users who might be worried that with Yahoo acquiring the company, things will be changing drastically and not necessarily for the better either.

According to Marissa Mayer on Yahoo’s Tumblr page, “Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love.  In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences.  The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.” While it definitely sounds promising, what do Tumblr users have to say about this? Are you worried or excited about this acquisition? [Press Release]

It seems that Google might have something to announce later today, or at least that’s what has been hinted at in a recent post by Google’s very own Vic Gundotra who in his Google+ post, revealed he was struggling to sleep and that he cannot wait until tomorrow. Could we be looking at some major updates that Google will be bringing to their apps, like Hangouts, or maybe Google+? Or could it even be the announcement of the next major version of Android which unfortunately did not seem to be mentioned during Google I/O. It could also be possible that the announcement might have something to do with the next-gen Nexus 7, all of which are possibilities! In any case we’ll try not to speculate too much for now, but we’ll definitely be keeping our eyes peeled for an announcement of sorts, but in the meantime what do you guys think? Could Mr. Vic Gundotra simply be speaking in general, or is he hinting at something?

Just the other day Sharp announced their plan to start work on a HiDPI IGZO LCD display that could possibly offer users a pixel density of 262ppi, which we have to admit is pretty impressive. However not long after that, Samsung has recently announced plans of their own in which the South Korean company will be showing off a 13.3” notebook display that has the ability to offer up a resolution of 3200×1800 which would essentially offer users a whopping pixel density of 276ppi! The company will be showing off this new display during Display Week which is happening this week, and just to give you guys some context, Apple’s Retina displays on their MacBook Pro models are sitting at 220ppi for the 15” model, and 227” for the 13” model, meaning that if Samsung were to start mass producing laptops with this resolution, Apple will definitely need to start playing catch-up. We’re not sure when Samsung will start making laptops with such a high resolution, but we’d hate to think just how much one of those laptops might cost.

Nintendo is primarily a gaming company and the only foray the company has done with the mobile market is to create handheld gaming systems like the Nintendo 3DS, but what if Nintendo were to create a smartphone of their own? While we’re sure that probably isn’t the cards for Nintendo at the moment, a concept has been created as to what a Nintendo-made smartphone could look like, thanks to the folks at T3. While this is purely a concept, the folks at T3 are suggesting that with the pressure from Sony and Microsoft with their next-gen consoles, perhaps an alternative to Nintendo’s core competency might be to dive into smartphones.

It’s a pretty interesting concept as it incorporate functions from the Wii U console, like Wii U Chat, Mii Verse, the ability to play Nintendo games on your phone and so much more. The latter is probably the most interesting considering that Nintendo’s stance at the moment is to keep their titles off mobile devices, unlike Sony and Microsoft who have gladly embraced the mobile platform and have brought PlayStation and Xbox titles to mobile devices. In any case if you have a couple of minutes, check it out in the video above. What do you guys think?

Just like smartphones and tablets, a console can have amazing hardware but if there aren’t many games for it, gamers will just go to the competition. So far console manufacturers such as Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have relied on getting exclusive titles as a means to draw gamers in, and if you’re looking forward to the next-gen Xbox, you’re in for a treat because Microsoft has revealed that they will be taking the wraps off several exclusive titles during E3. This was announced by Aaron Greenburg in the latest Major Nelson podcast episode. We’re not sure what sort of exclusive titles Microsoft has planned for E3, but if you’ve been an Xbox gamer and the next-gen Xbox console is on your list of things to buy, check back with us during E3 to see what the “tons of exclusives” and “world premieres” Microsoft has planned for us!