Phandroid
Twitter buys Cover, the folks behind the contextually aware lockscreen app
You might remember a few months back when we covered (heh, heh) a new Android lockscreen app called Cover. The application’s claim to fame was a lockscreen that supplied you with convenient shortcuts to apps, based on your location. For instance, if you were home, you’d find Facebook and other social networking apps, but when in the office, it’s all business with Gmail, Calendar, and so forth.
In a new blog post, the 3 man team at Cover has just announced that they’ve been officially acquired by none other than Twitter. So what exactly does Twitter want with a lockscreen app? Well, that part remains to be seen. The folks at Cover aren’t revealing any real details, only mentioning that they’ll be building upon what makes Cover so great — useful contextual information. Whether this means a Twitter lockscreen, or something else entirely, we’ll have to wait to find out.
Finding new ways of getting smartphone users into their app without even having to open the app in the first place is a pretty smart move and mirrors what we saw Facebook doing with Home last year, or Yahoo with Aviate. After acquiring Vine back in 2012 (and the failure that was Twitter Music), it’s clear Twitter is looking to branch out, and the lockscreen could be where they’re headed next.
[Cover]
AllCast update allows you to stream and mirror to Amazon Fire TV
Koushik Dutta made quick work on getting AllCast up to snuff for the launch of Amazon Fire TV, as the developer has issued an update that will allow you to play all your content from your mobile device on the big screen. It also enables complete 1:1 device mirroring for those of you into that kinky stuff.
Koush was pleasantly surprised that the Fire TV was the best among all the current mirroring solutions AllCast supports. Whereas Chromecast suffers with audio after a few minutes of high bitrate playback and Apple TV sound is not yet implemented, the Amazon Fire TV provided both high quality video/audio and low latency at the same time.
The latency isn’t low enough to play timing-based games such as Flappy Bird, racers or shooters, mind you, but it should be perfectly fine for playing videos and showing photos.
It’s just another testament to Amazon’s desire to provide a device with great visuals and powerful hardware to make for one of the fastest set-top box experiences out there. Head to Google Play for the download if you’re interested, and watch a couple demos of the feature in use in the embeds above and below.
Full S-OFF for HTC One M8 released (and how to turn your GSM variant into a GPe device)
Last week, it was root. This week, it’s full-on S-OFF, baby. A team named Firewater did the deed on opening up the HTC One M8, giving us a solid S-OFF method that will allow folks to tinker with the inner workings of the HTC One M8′s software.
Said tinkering has already resulted in someone posting a method for turning GSM HTC One M8s into Google Play Edition devices (meaning they swapped out the Sixth Sense-coated software for stock Android). Remember that this is NOT compatible with CDMA versions, so those on Sprint or Verizon will have to wait for other developments. Find the instructions for that in the thread linked above if you’re already up and running with root and S-OFF.
If you haven’t yet gotten S-OFF, you’ll be on track to get it by the time you’re finished reading this article. First of all, you’ll need the following prerequisites:
- Working ADB (meaning you can perform this on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows)
- A working internet connection on your device, whether that’s 3G, 4G or WiFi.
- USB debugging (and likely a microUSB cable)
- Device unlocked and rooted with HTCDEV or with a temporary root method
- A supported device, natch. HTC One M8 and M7 are givens, with many other Qualcomm-based HTC devices from 2012 being compatible.
There are a couple of other things to note. For starters, those with the Verizon version of the HTC One M8 will specifically need to use WeakSauce by Jcase to root their device before performing the Firewater S-OFF. Those instructions were provided last week so hop to it if you haven’t already.
Once you’ve gotten all that squared away, you can find instructions and downloads for your specific method right here. Take care to read each step carefully, and make sure you know what you’re doing before you proceed.
[via XDA, Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
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