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Super Mario Run has quickly climbed to the top spots in the free and grossing app categories on the App Store, and the most dedicated players have probably already gone through the rather short single player campaign (called World Tour). After all, it takes just about an hour or two to finish the whole thing, including the final boss fight that never felt as tense or climactic as you'd expect. But once you start gunning for the full collection of special coins and for building out your kingdom, things start getting more complicated. Here is why we took the opportunity to share our tips and tricks on how you can be better and win at Super Mario Run. Download Super Mario Run for iPhone and iPad Boss fights : Did you know that you could jump over bosses and do not necessarily need to go below them as is the usual case for most gamers? This could save you same attempts, and - of course - it would be always better to ensure that you approac...

Google's Motion Stills app for iOS takes Live Photos that you've shot with your iPhone and turns them into cool-looking, perfectly stabilized and looping GIFs. Now the Big G has updated Motion Stills with even more editing tools allowing you to add motion-tracked text overlays to your clips, create automatic cinemagraphs, and more. Motion Text allows you to add text overlays to your Live Photos, which can then automatically follow a moving object at 1000 FPS, says Google. This happens thanks to advanced machine learning algorithms capable of tracking individual object and camera movement and differentiating between the two. It's pretty neat stuff! Check out this cool example from Google: The new version of Motion Stills can also create automatic cinemagraphs. Cinemagraphs are still photographs for the most part, but feature minor repeated movements in either the foreground or background, while everything else remains completely still. Thi...

Facebook has came up with a concrete plan that will aim to reduce the spread of fabricated news on its network. This course of action comes as a result of last month's scandal, in which the social media giant was criticized for becoming an involuntary platform for fake news to spread. This was hardly the first time in which suspicious content became viral via Facebook, however, some of the stories were about the U.S. presidential elections and caused an outrage as part of the community argued that they influenced the outcome of the event.   Adam Mosseri, VP of Facebook's News Feed division, issued a lengthy statement on the company's blog regarding the new changes. Some of it reads: We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we’re approaching this problem carefully. We’ve focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both o...

When Google launched  PhotoScan  last month, we were sort of impressed by the app's premise and intuitive design, but we were also disappointed with the results it produced. Back in November, PhotoScan was only capable of outputting images with a maximum resolution of 2000 x 2000 pixels (roughly the equivalent to what a 3 MP camera would produce size-wise). This, coupled with the fact that PhotoScan was easily confused when cropping and that the final results also exhibited quite a bit of compression, turned us off from Google's new image scanning app. Google has just released a new update for PhotoScan that bumps its output resolution to 3000 x 3000 pixels (roughly around 5 MP), which is a definite improvement over the previous version. The app has also become a bit smarter when it comes to cropping. The previous version of PhotoScan was easily confused by straight lines, so placing the photo you wanted to scan on a plain surface was essential. This update improves t...

Good ol' Mega Man Legendary Japanese video game developer Capcom announced that next year will see the release of all classic Mega Man titles on mobile. All of the Blue Bomber's iconic NES adventures will land on both iOS and Android in Japan in 2017. The press release makes no mention of the games coming to the West, but we'd say there's a big chance this happens sometime following the Japanese release. Mega Man is one of the most recognizable video game characters and has starred in over 100 titles. The first six games in the series, the ones that are launching on mobile next year, first came out on the Nintendo Entertainment System between 1987 and 1993. The first six titles starring the Blue Bomber are notorious for their unforgiving difficulty but are fondly remembered by gamers for their innovative for the time non-linear game design, tight controls and awesome action-packed gameplay. From the single screenshot accompanying Capcom...

Apple has pledged to commit $44 million as an investment for an Indonesian R&D center in order to obtain a certificate that would allow the distribution of the iPhone 7 across the country.  The funds will be provided over the course of three years and the investment will comply with a telecommunications policy that the Indonesian government will introduce in 2017. As of next year, all 4G smartphones sold in the country must have “local content” of 30% or more in terms of software, hardware or an investment commitment. If a manufacturer fulfills these conditions, a“local content certification” will be granted in order to allow the distribution of devices priced at 6 million rupiah ($448) and above. News agency Reuters approached Apple for a confirmation of the investment figure, but the company declined to comment and pointed to an announcement from 2015, in which Apple had committed to construct an iOS App Development Center in the country. ...

Super Mario Run is a lot of fun: sure, it takes just an hour or two to go through the whole campaign (we have people on PhoneArena who did it in half an hour, but they also wear a Mario shirt in the office...), but if you want to unlock all the secret characters and pass all the challenges, it will take days. Well, let's not be afraid and get started right away with the first step: here is how to unlock all the six playable characters in Super Mario Run. You start with Mario, of course, but you can unlock five more characters: Princess Peach, Toad, Luigi, Yoshi and Toadette. Note that each one of these characters has a special skill that you can use to pass the challenges in the game. Let's start with the first character that you will likely unlock: Princess Peach The whole story of the Mario game circles around a girl, and not just any girl, but Princess Peach trapped in the evil hands of Bowser. In Super Mario Run you unlock Princess Peach ...

T-Mobile president and CEO John Legere has a crusade against the top two wireless carriers in the U.S., which he calls "Dumb and Dumber." Yes, the executive is currently focusing his acidic wit on Verizon and AT&T. Today, the unconventional Legere posted a hilarious Christmas Carol knock off on his Twitter page. In the clip, Scrooge represents Verizon (which is easy to determine thanks to the Verizon check mark on his night cap) and is awakened by a shadowy figure. "Are you the ghost of Christmas future?," he asks. "No dumb-ass. I'm the future of wireless," says the figure who reveals himself to be a hooded John Legere.  As in the real Christmas Carol, Scrooge (Verizon) is given a look at the future. That includes a Big Red customer who just received a message that he exceeded his data limit. "Now he's afraid to post a selfie," says Legere. And then there is poor Timmy. His family is being charged so much for wireless th...

Today is the 12th and last day of Microsoft's 12 Days of Deals promotion. The last sale takes $200 off the  Microsoft Surface Pro 4 . Three models are included in the savings. In addition, those taking Microsoft up on the deal will also receive a free Type Cover. The latter not only protects the 12.3-inch screen on the slate, it doubles as a QWERTY keyboard. The deal does not limit you to a plain ol' Type Cover. You can choose one of the NFL Special Edition models that will display the logo of your favorite team as they try to make the playoffs. All together, with the $200 savings and the free Type Cover, the deal saves you $359. And the three models of the Surface Pro 4 that you get to select from include: 256GB / Intel Core i5 - 8GB RAM - $1,099 (Reg. $1,299) 256GB / Intel Core i7 - 8GB RAM - $1,399 (Reg. $1,599) 256GB / Intel Core i7 - 16GB RAM - $1,599 (Reg. $1,799) If interested in any of the deals pertaining to the Surface Pro 4, visit the Microsoft S...

Courage - Nintendo has risked the wrath of Mario-loving Android users with its iOS exclusivity It's taken Nintendo a good while to bring an official Mario title to mobile devices and finally,  Super Mario Run launched yesterday  for iOS. It's not available for Android users just yet but in apparent attempt to capitalize in on the hype, a number of knock-off versions have popped up on Google Play. This follows  a Nintendo-themed title that sneaked into the App Store  prior to Super Mario Run's launch, and since there's no legit alternative for Droidsters, fake versions will probably thrive. Just like  Flappy Bird  and so many other popular titles before it, Super Mario Run presents a chance for opportunistic devs to rack up the downloads. From  Mario Run Jumper  to  Super Plumber Run , the Play Store has a broadening selection of not-so-Super Mario games for your to try.  It's likely that Super Mario Run will make...

BlackBerry has signed over (mostly) global rights to use its branding on phones to Chinese manufacturer TCL. The news follows an announcement by the Canadian company in September that it would stop making its own phones and concentrate instead on services and software. Under the terms of the agreement, TCL will “design, manufacture, sell, and provide customer support for BlackBerry-branded mobile devices,” while BlackBerry will chip in with the software and services. The deal is being touted as “global,” but there are some limitations: it won’t apply in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, or Indonesia. According to  Bloomberg , this is because Blackberry already has a licensing agreement in place in Indonesia, and is currently working on another deal with an Indian company. It’s also interesting to note that this isn’t TCL’s first outing at the buying-defunct-smartphone-brands rodeo — it previously purchased Palm back in January this year (bu...

Commissioner of Taxation Chris Jordan has announced an independent review into the "unprecedented failure" of the Australian Taxation Office's (ATO) storage hardware that took its online services offline earlier this week. The ATO's website, tax agent, and business portals initially crashed on Monday, as a result of a "world first" hardware issue. The outage continued through Tuesday, which is when the ATO called in Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to help it determine the underlying cause of the problem that the ATO said was encountered for the first time anywhere in the world. Jordan said on Friday it was the ATO's worst unplanned system outage in recent memory. LATEST AUSTRALIAN NEWS NAB sent details of 60,000 customers to wrong email address Turnbull's agile struggle is all glitz and no grunt ​Australian government to continue focus on digital delivery in 2017 Australian ISPs to block piracy sites from the pocket of content o...