Apps of the week: Puk, Gratuitous Space Battles, Zaxxon Escape and more

Every week, the editors and writers at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This week's selection is all games! There's a simple flicking game, a superhero fighting game, a strategy game, an arcade game, and a couple casual games.

Puk - Simon Sage

Puk is a, simple, minimalistic flicking game for iPhone. Okay, so it's not so much flicking as it is slingshotting. Players are provided a set number of puks and a number of targets to take out by pulling back on the puks and releasing. You have a limited amount of time to take out all of the targets (many of which need more than one hit to be eliminated). If you can't quite make it, you can shake your phone up to three times to nudge the puk into position, but if you can't do it, game over. If you do wipe them all out, you move on to the next round. Eventually, barriers start popping up and the color scheme starts screwing with you, making it particularly difficult to get your targets in time.

Puk has a ton of polish, and the simple gameplay makes for some really instinctual gameplay. There's no real variation on the force of your slingshots, so it really just boils down to speed and accuracy. Ultimately, it's a really light, fast game that can kill small amounts of time really well.

• $0.99 - Download Now

Gratuitous Space Battles - Joseph Keller

Gratuitous Space Battles is exactly that: a lot starships slugging it out on a top-down battlefield. This isn?t a traditional strategy or tactics game. You don?t command the ships. Rather, the fun in Gratuitous Space Battles is outfitting and deploying your ships on the battlefield, finding the right combinations of weapons, armor, and positioning to make sure your side comes out on top. Choosing from an assortment of fighters, frigates, and cruisers, you carefully make decisions about which role your ships will play, attempting to overcome various hazards and restrictions each battlefield presents. Some, for instance, limit the types of ships available, or nullify defensive shielding. For those of you who have played and loved GSB on your PC or Mac, the version for iPad is every bit as fun as the original. Pick it up on the App Store for $9.99.

• $9.99 - Download Now

Zaxxon Escape - Chris Parsons

Enjoy a new twist on the 80's classic. As Sega describes it: 30 years later, ZAXXON is back and rebuilt for a whole new generation in this fast action arcade game. You're on a mission is to escape ZAXXON?s asteroid city. ZAXXON?s minions have transformed the fortress into a maze of tight corridors and you must fly your ship out safely! In other words, you get to fly in some really cool 3D planes and blow the heck out of stuff. There is pretty much no end to the game but you do have 30 missions to complete. You can do it the hard way, by simply just playing through the whole game numerous times or you can give in and purchase some in-app stuff. I say take the hard road, avoid the IAP's.

• $0.99 - Download Now

Tiny Wings - Ally Kazmucha

There are very few games that stay on my iPhone or iPad longer than a few weeks. One of the games that has stayed on my phone for the better part of 2 years is Tiny Wings. I absolutely love this game and the simplicity of it. It's one of those games that you don't mind unlocking all the achievements for and then going back and doing it again.

For me, this is one of the best games ever created for iOS and ranks up there with the likes of Plants vs. Zombies and Cut the Rope. They're the few that will always remain in my favorite games folder and still get played on a pretty regular basis. If you haven't played Tiny Wings, you're missing out on a classic.

• $0.99 - Download Now

Injustice: Gods Among Us - Rene Ritchie

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- there are a lot of great things I don't like, and a lot of dumb things I like quite a bit. Injustice: Gods Among Us by Warner Bros. and NetherRealm Studios, is decidedly in the latter category. I love superheroes, and any chance I have to play as a superhero, even in a game that's fairly horrible, I jump in with glee-filled abandon.

On the positive side, there are a ton of DC Universe characters here, including the entire Justice League lineup like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and more, as well as Batman Family staples like Nightwing, Harley Quinn, Joker, etc. And all of them come in a couple of Else World universe forms, including the standard Earth 1, as well as Insurgency and Regime.

On the negative side, there's a card-like system grafted on that's meant to introduce deeper, experience-based gameplay, but? I just want to crack superheads. Also, on my iPad mini, I constantly had "iOS mem warning" errors in ugly red font defecated across the top right of my screen. That should have caused a rejection and a rethink, because it's horrible UI.

It's also free-to-play, but not onerously so.

The fighting system is workable, given the limits of multitouch, and while there's the usual adolescent dose of testosterone and cheesecake, there's some interesting if muddy at times character design.

All in all, if you love DC characters, and fighting games, Injustice: Gods Among Us is a no-brainer. If not, it's probably a no go.

Since it's my pick of the week, I'm guessing you've guessed which way I've fallen.

• Free with IAP - Download now

Fruit Blast Mania - Leanna Lofte

Fruit Blast Mania is my new little time-killer game. It's a simple puzzle game where you have to blast bunches of fruit with the goal of eliminating as man of them as you can. All the adjacent fruits of the same color will be blasted away when you tap one of them in the bunch. You can't blast singletons, so you have to be strategic and think about how the fruit will fall after you blast away a group. This is just the general game play of Fruit Blast Mania, though. There are other little goals and missions with each level to make it even more interesting.

Fruit Blast Mania is simple, fun, and a great way to kill a few minutes of time when you can.

• Free - Download now

Your choice?

Now that we've chosen our favorites for the week, we want to hear yours! Did you pick up a killer app, accessory, or game this week? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/XU0LICUclCM/story01.htm

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How To Create A Google+ Business Site - Internet Marketing Academy

April 11, 2013

A Google+ site for a business is much like a personal Google+ site. It can be used to blog, to embed content from other websites, or to link to other websites. Your business Google+ site is linked to your business Google+ account. If you do not already have a Google+ account for your business, your first step is to create a Google+ account.

Claim your existing Google+ listing

Many business pages for local businesses were created automatically by Google, based on available information. To find out if your business already has a page, log on to your Google+ account (http://plus.google.com) and search for your business name. If you have a page that you have not claimed, there will be a button under the heading ?Is this your business?? that reads ?Manage this page?. Click the button to claim the business page.

Create a new Google+ page

To create a new page, on the left hand side of the screen, select the Pages icon if available, or if not select the More icon followed by the Pages icon. Then click the ?Create new page? button and follow the prompts. You will need to select the type of page, whether a local business, a business with multiple locations, or a product or brand. Since you can create multiple pages, you can create one for every business location or every product, as well as one for your entire business. Verify the ownership of the page, and assign multiple managers to oversee the page.

Personalise your Google+ page

Add a description and links to your website. Add a profile picture of 250 x 250 pixels, and then change the cover image to either a single image spanning the page or a row of five smaller images. Pages for local businesses should also include an introduction, your business hours, the website name and address, the contact information, recommended links, photos, and videos. See How To Use Google+ Local for more details specific to local business use. The Google+ page allows you to post updates, pictures, and videos. Use these interactive features to list your latest special offers, link to your most recent blog posts, or display your latest videos.

Hang out

Google+ pages are different from other social media pages in that they integrate with Google Hangouts. This allows you to put a video chat room feature on the page. You can use the Hangouts to create specific events such as product briefings or video training seminars which can be recorded and posted on YouTube. You can also use the Hangouts as a customer service platform, or as a bonus feature provided to VIP clients.

Thanks!

?

Sean

?

Sean McPheat

Managing Director

The Internet Marketing Academy

http://www.internetmarketingacademy.com

?

(Image: MorgueFile)

Posted in Google+ | Tagged branding, Google, social networking |

Source: http://www.internetmarketingacademy.com/blog/how-to-create-a-google-plus-business-site/

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Govt. says Beyonc?, Jay-Z took ?educational? trip to Cuba

Singer Beyonce, center holding camera, walks with her husband, rapper Jay-Z, right of her, as they tour Old Havana,??
Sure enough, Beyonc? and Jay-Z may have 99 problems but the State Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Ain't One.

OFAC, which enforces sanctions against Cuba, assured Republican Representatives Maria Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in a letter Tuesday that the pop power-duo's recent trip to the island on their fifth anniversary had the governmental green light. The Florida lawmakers had written to the Treasury Department demanding to know whether the trip fell afoul of Cold War-era restrictions on Americans' travel to Cuba.

"It is our understanding that the travelers in question traveled to Cuba pursuant to an educational exchange trip organized by a group authorized by OFAC to sponsor and organize programs to promote people-to-people contact in Cuba," Alastair Fitzpayne, Assistant Treasury Secretary for Legislative Affairs, wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Yahoo News.

Fitzpayne, however, also seemed to put a little distance between OFAC and the globetrotting couple, who gave vast sums to President Barack Obama's reelection campaign. He noted that "organizations holding people-to-people licenses must certify in writing to OFAC that any travel that they conduct will consist of a full-time schedule of educational activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba."

But OFAC "does not request the identities of the travelers on each trip," he said.

Ros-Lehtinen was unimpressed.

"If the tourist activities undertaken by Beyonce and Jay-Z in Cuba are classified as an educational exchange trip, then it is clear that the Obama Administration is not serious about denying the Castro regime an economic lifeline that US tourism will extend to it," the Cuban-born lawmaker said in a statement.

"That was a wedding anniversary vacation that was not even disguised as a cultural program," Ros-Lehtinen said. "As more human rights activists engage in hunger strikes, I don't think they will see any evidence of how this scam endeavor will help them become independent of the regime."

If you?re inclined to dig through Treasury's regulations, here they are, but it?s probably enough to say that, as part of a 60-year-old embargo imposed after Fidel Castro seized power, Americans aren?t supposed to go there. And lawmakers like Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart have denounced tourism in Cuba because it provides the Communist government there with sorely needed foreign currency.

The embargo, first imposed by Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 and tightened by many of his successors, aimed to punish Castro?s government for nationalizing U.S. property, to dissuade other Latin American countries from following in Castro?s revolutionary footsteps, and, ultimately, to drive Castro from power.

Tourism to Cuba -- notably from Europe and Canada -- has increased over the years as the island has seen the development of luxury hotels. Americans have been going there in larger numbers as well, and advice on how to go there illegally has proliferated online. With the Soviet Union long gone, Americans have also softened their support for the embargo.

That's not to say that everyone approves. In March, Republican Senator Marco Rubio ripped American visitors to Cuba. "Cuba is not a zoo where you pay an admission ticket and you go in and you get to watch people living in cages to see how they are suffering," Rubio said in a speech.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/treasury-dept-beyonc%C3%A9-jay-z-took-educational-trip-005112645--politics.html

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BoE's Haldane: Need simpler bank rules that are harder to game

By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank regulators need to develop much simpler rules to make it harder for large financial firms to game the supervisory system, Bank of England official Andrew Haldane said on Tuesday.

"We need to do a radical pruning, simplifying of our regulatory apparatus (that) places much less emphasis on what are unreliable measures of risk," Haldane, the BoE's executive director for financial stability, told a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

He said current international capital rules place undue burdens on small firms and may exacerbate, over time, the problem of banks that are seen as "too big to fail."

"Complex frameworks if anything are easier to arbitrage, easier to game," he said.

Haldane said that the world's major economies essentially allowed banks to regulate themselves in the run-up to the global financial crisis of 2007-09, with disastrous results.

"We have moved to a system where we essentially ask banks to grade their own exams," he said. "The self-regulatory regime that we've put in place has been gamed successively."

The Dodd-Frank Act, the U.S. financial reform law that Congress passed in response to the financial crisis, is some 2,300 pages long, and has been criticized for its complexity and opaqueness.

(Reporting by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boes-haldane-calls-simpler-bank-rules-harder-game-202227603--sector.html

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James Deen: Farrah Abraham "Sex Tape" All Her Idea, Really More Like a Porno

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/james-deen-farrah-abraham-sex-tape-all-her-idea-really-more-like/

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Retinoic acid gradient visualized for the first time in an embryo

Monday, April 8, 2013

In a ground-breaking study, researchers from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan report a new technique that allows them to visualize the distribution of retinoic acid in a live zebrafish embryo, in real-time. This technique enabled them to observe two concentration gradients going in opposing directions along the head-to-tail axis of the embryo, thus providing long-awaited evidence that retinoic acid is a morphogen.

The report, published today in the journal Nature, puts an end to a long-standing debate around the presence of retinoic acid gradients across the vertebrate embryo, during the early stages of development. It also sheds light on the role of retinoic acid in tissue development.

Retinoic acid has been thought to be a morphogen, a signalling molecule that diffuses throughout the embryo switching genes on and off and imparting different cell fates depending on its concentration. However, retinoic acid concentration gradients had never been visualized because retinoic acid cannot be tagged with the commonly used 'green fluorescent protein' GFP, or GFP-like proteins, as label.

"Until now no one had succeeded in monitoring the concentration of retinoic acid in real-time in a live embryo, and there was no direct data proving the existence of a retinoic acid gradient in the vertebrate embryo, explains Dr. Miyawaki, who led the research.

In order to monitor the concentration of retinoic acid in live zebrafish embryos at the early stages of their development, Dr. Miyawaki and his colleague Dr. Shimozono developed a technique to tag the molecule that acts as receptor for retinoic acid with genetically-encoded, coloured fluorophores. Based on the principle of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), the tags allow them to visualize the presence of retinoic acid and quantitatively determine its concentration over time.

By combining this technique with pharmacological and genetic manipulations, Miyawaki and his team demonstrate the presence of two linear retinoic acid concentration gradients across the antero-posterior axis of the embryo, from the trunk area to the head and the tail. Their findings suggest that retinoic acid diffuses quickly, thus establishing stable and robust gradients that are resistant to external perturbations.

"A better understanding of the gradients of retinoic acid is essential for research into the patterns of tissue development. It is necessary if we ever want to control the development of three-dimensional tissue structures from induced pluripotent stem cells, for regenerative medicine for example," concludes Dr. Miyawaki.

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RIKEN: http://www.riken.jp/engn/

Thanks to RIKEN for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127627/Retinoic_acid_gradient_visualized_for_the_first_time_in_an_embryo

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Louis Tomlinson vs. Tom Parker Twitter War: Who Won?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/louis-tomlinson-vs-tom-parker-twitter-war-who-won/

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