Author: Zach Walton

3D printers have been used for quite some time to make toys. Some of these toys are impossibly cool puzzles, while others are board game figurines. One company is now staking its fortunes on a line of 3D printed dolls.

MakieLab, a London-based toy company, announced today that its first toy line, Makies, have passed certified as safe for children three and up in Europe. They will be the first 3D printed toy on the continent to bear the CE mark.

So, what does a 3D printed doll look like? A combination of nightmare fuel and Child’s Play reruns:

I’m sure some children will absolutely adore these things, but I’ve always been terrified of dolls. It’s mostly the eyes, and these dolls definitely fulfill the creepy eye quota.

Putting my fear of dolls aside, this is a big deal for 3D printers. It means that 3D printed products are finally entering the mainstream and getting government approval.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to attend therapy for my irrational fear of dolls.

[h/t: 3ders]

Reviews of the latest BlackBerry phone – the BlackBerry Z10 – have been generally positive, but are not asking the tough questions. Can the BlackBerry Z10 make phone calls? Can it help you cheat at Scrabble? Can it play obnoxious memes during lunch? These are the questions that one brave reviewer has agreed to tackle.

Sortable has reviewed the BlackBerry Z10 by not comparing it to other phones, but rather testing it out in a variety of situations. The review should help you come away with a better understanding of what the BlackBerry Z10 is truly capable of.

The BlackBerry Z10 has proven itself as a decently popular smartphone (in Canada), but it still has to prove that it’s the savior RIM BlackBerry is punching it up to be. We might be able to get a better grasp on its potential fortunes once the phone launches across all major carriers in the U.S. next month.

For the past few months, Valve has been testing its Steam client on Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution. During that beta period, many of the games were locked away in beta testing leaving those not invited high and dry. Now that beta period is over, however, and Steam is ready to celebrate.

Valve announced today that Steam for Linux is officially out of beta. It’s available as a free download from the Ubuntu Software Center. Steam coming to Linux, as well as the efforts of many indie developers, may finally make Linux a viable gaming platform. That’s what the folks at Canonical think at least:

“The introduction of Steam to Ubuntu demonstrates growing demand for open systems from gamers and game developers,” said David Pitkin, Director of Consumer Applications at Canonical. “We expect a growing number of game developers to include Ubuntu among their target platforms. We’re looking forward to seeing AAA games developed with Ubuntu in mind as part of a multi-platform day and date release on Steam.”

All games purchased through Steam for Linux will also be playable on Windows and Mac through Steam Play. That’s great for those who already own hundreds of games on Steam for Windows, but perhaps want to start experimenting in Linux.

For long time Linux users new to Steam, Valve has a treat for you guys as well. Team Fortress 2, Valve’s hugely popular team-based shooter, is available day one in all its free-to-play glory. For a limited time, Team Fortress 2 players on Linux will also receive a free exclusive in-game Tux item. Other Valve titles available today include Half-Life, Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source.

To celebrate the launch of Steam for Linux, all the currently available Linux titles on Steam are on sale until February 21. There’s over 50 titles to choose from, and a lot of them are pretty fantastic. You can check out the full list of games on sale here.

Before you ask, PC and Mac gamers can get in on the sale too.

In November, it was discovered that Google’s Nexus 4 had a LTE chip in it. Some users were able to get the 3G-only phone onto 4G LTE networks in Canada, but it wasn’t exactly a widespread exploit. It apparently was enough of an issue, however, for Google to patch it out in the latest Android update.

Anandtech reports that the latest Android update hitting the Nexus 4 – Android 4.2.2 – has removed the ability for the Nexus 4 to access LTE networks on band 4. Before, users could simply access LTE by choosing band 4 under Phone Info. That method of connecting to LTE has now been removed, and it doesn’t look like there’s any other way to access it.

Here’s the guys from Anandtech showing how the Nexus 4 automatically kicks users off of LTE after the update:

It’s an unfortunate turn of events for those who were getting LTE speeds on such a cheap phone, but it really was only a matter of time before Google patched it out. If you still want to get access to LTE, Droid Life suggests users either wait on updating or hope an enterprising developer takes out the radio update from the latest Android update.

Either way, Nexus 4 owners will probably find a way around this latest update to keep getting their LTE speeds.

Mozilla was one of the first browser vendors to announce support for Windows 8 in March of last year. At that time, the company said it would be take advantage of the Metro UI to create a touch-enabled version of the popular Web browser that conformed to Microsoft’s Metro design principles. It’s been almost a year since then, and Metro Firefox is finally out in Firefox Nightly.

Mozilla announced via Twitter today that a Windows 8 Metro UI version of Firefox is now available in the Nightly distribution. Firefox Nightly is the highly experimental version of Firefox so expect a few bugs.

If you don’t want to take on Firefox Nightly, you can check out some screenshots of Mozilla’s preliminary work in Metro-fying Firefox here:

The design being used here is the similar to the UI currently used by Firefox for Android. There are a few Metro-ifications on display here, however, that I hope make their way into Firefox for Android at some point. Most noticeably, the bookmarks display in the Windows 8 version of Firefox is far superior to the simplistic drop down list on Android. Good thing somebody at Mozilla is already working on something like that.

[h/t: CNET]

Nintendo declared 2013 as The Year of Luigi this morning during its Nintendo Direct broadcast. Kicking off the celebration will be the release of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for the Nintendo 3DS in March.

The UK Nintendo Direct just wrapped up and Nintendo UK has been busy adding all kinds of videos to its YouTube channel. Most are the same from what we got in the U.S. this morning, but one unique addition is that Nintendo UK has a new Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon trailer. You might have already seen it if you watched the entirety of this morning’s Nintendo Direct. For the rest of us, it provides an in-depth look at the features being added to the game from the game’s producer – Shigeru Miyamoto.

Joining Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Nintendo will also be releasing Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Mario Golf World Tour and Super Luigi U this year to celebrate The Year of Luigi. More on that here.

The Nintendo eShop for 3DS has been a bastion of creativity and innovation since it first launched in 2011. Nintendo’s own studios have created a number of unique titles for the service that don’t conform to the conventions set by their big budget releases. That focus on innovative titles will continue with the next wave of eShop titles hitting the service.

During its Nintendo Direct this morning, the company announced that HarmoKnight, Kersploosh!, and Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move would be coming to the Nintendo 3DS eShop this spring.

The first is HarmoKnight, a rhythm platformer from Game Freak. The developer has taken time off of working on the Pokemon franchise to make this unique platformer that bears a striking resemblance to Bit.Trip Runner. It’s just as, if not more, charming than Gaijin Game’s effort, and features some stellar tunes if the trailer is any indication. With this being GameFreak, the game will also feature some Pokemon music crossovers that’s sure to delight fans of the franchise.

HarmoKnight will be available on the eShop on March 28.

The second is a far more “interesting” title called Kersploosh! In this game, the player controls a rock that’s been thrown down a well. The player will have to maneuver the rock on its way down to avoid obstacles as it makes its way to the water at the bottom. It’s certainly unique, and could very well be a really fun title.

Finally, Nintendo showed off the latest game in its Mario and Donkey Kong series called Minis on the Move. Much like the previous titles, the game is focused on solving puzzles as Mario leads miniature versions of himself to the exit while avoiding hazards.

Go here for more news from this morning’s Nintendo Direct.

This morning, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata sported a rather fetching Luigi hat and announced 2013 as the year of Luigi. He said it’s about time the character got his due after being a supporting character for so long. Of course, seeing is believing, and now you too can watch Iwata celebrate the life of Luigi with his sweet hat.

Besides Luigi, this morning’s Nintendo Direct also included new details on Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Fire Emblem: Awakening DLC, new eShop titles, and LEGO City Undercover. The video also featured the first look at Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, a 3DS remake of 2010′s Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii.

For some extra fun, try to count all the times Luigi shows up in the background during this Nintendo Direct.

Amazon introduced GameCircle in July of last year as a way to help developers easily add features like achievements, leaderboards and more into their Kindle Fire games. In a recent study, Amazon has found that GameCircle integration has proven to be most advantageous to developers.

Amazon conducted a study into GameCircle’s engagement and monetization rates from November 2012 to January 2013. The three month period showed games that integrated GameCircle produced 38 percent higher conversion rates and 33 percent more in-app orders than games that didn’t integrate GameCircle. When those stats are combined, Amazon says that GameCircle enabled games drive 83 percent more average revenue per user.

So, where’s all this money coming from? Unsurprisingly, GameCircle has been kind to the free-to-play model where players can enjoy the game for free, but are offered in-app purchases. GameCircle’s leaderboards encourage players to compete with friends in FTP games like Temple Run 2. Those players will also be encouraged to buy in-game items to better compete with friends. That’s where part of the increased revenue comes from.

GameCircle also offers a robust discovery mechanisms which help drive engagement. These discovery mechanisms are visible from the user’s game library, and include information on how many friends are playing each game, the number of achievements unlocked and leaderboard activity. This information encourages players to jump into games and compete with others.

As such, a separate study conducted in January found that 32 percent more players will open a game when it has this GameCircle enabled information on the games screen than those that do not. It once again into ties into the idea that FTP gamers are more likely to play your game, and spend money, when they’re encouraged to compete with others.

For those thinking about building a Kindle Fire game, you might want to check out GameCircle. It has helped other developers be successful on the Kindle Fire, and it might just help you as well. Check out the documentation here to get started.

In November of last year, Facebook introduced Developer Alerts to help developers know when something goes wrong with their app. The original alerts only covered breaking changes, app status changes and policy violations. Now Facebook is adding another important aspect of the development platform to it.

Facebook announced today that Developer Alerts will now include API error notifications. When encountering an error, Facebook will alert you via email and Facebook notification. To keep spam down, it won’t be sending you an alert every time the API encounters an error. It will only do so if your app encounters an “abnormally high API error rate.”

Here’s what you can expect to see:

Facebook plans to roll out API error notifications starting today, and should be available to all apps in the coming weeks.

Developers reported 295 bugs to Facebook this week, with 48 bugs being accepted for further review. The Facebook team also fixed 31 bugs this week. You can check out the full bugfix list at the blog post.

During the annual D.I.C.E. conference last week, a number of gaming luminaries spoke on the state of the industry. These talks were all posted online with the exception of one that didn’t show up until this week. Unfortunately, it was the most important talk of all – a chat between Bad Robot’s J.J. Abrams and Valve’s Gabe Newell.

Gamers, and Valve fans in particular, can now rejoice as the talk has been posted online in its entirety. Learn how two of the most famous men in their respective fields compare storytelling in film and gaming. You’ll also get to see the announcement that shook the world – Valve collaborating with Abrams on Half-Life and Portal films:

When it was unveiled, BlackBerry 10 was seen as the shining light for RIM BlackBerry as it heads back to the path of profitability. The platform’s fans think this is the one that will succeed, but the company still has a major problem ahead of it. It’s traditionally strong enterprise customer base is shrinking.

Tom’s Hardware reports that Home Depot is taking its employees off BlackBerry in favor of Apple’s iPhone. It’s a pretty hard hit for the company as Home Depot had 10,000 employees on the BlackBerry platform. It’s unknown if the transition to the iPhone occurred before or after the BlackBerry 10 announcement.

This isn’t the first major loss for BlackBerry as other major businesses and government agencies have been moving their employees off BlackBerry in favor of iOS or Android devices. Late last year, Yahoo kickstarted the migration away from BlackBerry when the company offered to buy every employee a smartphone, but only offered iPhones or Android devices. Soon after, government consulting firm Booz Allen and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board also moved their employees off of BlackBerry.

Despite all of this bad news, BlackBerry 10 may be doing decently well. BlackBerry announced last week that first day sales of the Z10 was the best the company had ever seen. In a statement to Tom’s Hardware, the company also said that “over 2,7000 unique businesses in North America already registered for our BlackBerry 10 Ready Program.”

In short, BlackBerry is losing business, and that’s a bad thing. To counter this, it’s Z10 handsets seem to be doing decently well, and it still has quite a few Enterprise customers. That’s a good thing. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if the good outweighs the bad when BlackBerry 10 launches across all major carriers in the U.S. next month.

Early last year, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange found that he could technically run for the Australian senate while under house arrest in London. A lot has happened since then, but Assange’s political aspirations have not diminished.

The Age reports that Julian Assange will be on the ballot for thet Australian Senate in Victoria come election time on September 14. He has been registered under the Wikileaks Party, a newly formed political party comprised of 10 close friends of Assange and pro-Wikileaks activists.

The newly formed party, according to Assange’s father John Shipton, will be focused on “the democratic requirement of truthfulness from government.” It’s obviously a very Wikileaks-centric platform, but the party has yet to mention how it will use this to appeal to voters who probably have more than just government secrets on the mind.

So, how does this all work? Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as he evades a state mandated extradition to Sweden. The Age explains that Assange is eligible as an overseas elector:

Australian citizens living overseas can enrol to vote as an overseas elector, and consequently run as a Senate candidate if they left Australia within the past three years and intend to return within six years of their date of departure.

The rules make Assange eligible to run, but there’s a very real possibility that he would not be able to return to Australia even if he did win. If that turns out to be the case, he will appoint a Wikileaks party nominee to the seat.

This is a strage, but not unexpected, turn of events. Assange may just be popular enough to win the election in September. If it’s successful, we may just start seeing Wikileaks parties popping up in countries all over the world, especially Europe. The continent has already seen an increase of applications for the alternative Pirate Party, which has already won a number of seats in various levels of government across Europe.

The Android Developers Office Hours for the EMEA region recently took place, and the entire session is now up on YouTube. The team covers a number of topics that are relevant to the Android developer, regardless of region, like authentication issues, certain devices not supporting apps, and other problems that plague developers.

Check it out:

Adobe Flash was recently hit by two zero-day exploits that the company quickly worked to patch up. Now one of Adobe’s other popular Web plugins – Reader – has been hit.

Computer security company FireEye found yesterday that Adobe Reader was hit by a zero-day exploit. The exploit is currently found in the latest Adobe Reader versions – 9.5.3, 10.1.5 and 11.0.1. Here’s what the exploit does:

Upon successful exploitation, it will drop two DLLs. The first DLL shows a fake error message and opens a decoy PDF document, which is usually common in targeted attacks. The second DLL in turn drops the callback component, which talks to a remote domain.

FireEye has alerted Adobe to the threat, and the company is now investigating the report. It will have an update on what actions it plans to take soon.

Instead of waiting for Adobe to act, you should probably switch to a different PDF reader. There are numerous free, open-source PDF readers that do a marvelous job without relying on a Web browser plugin that can be exploited to insert malware onto your system.

The Firefox 19 Beta is also testing out a new native HTML5 PDF reader plugin that would be far more secure than traditional plugins. It’s only a matter of time before the HTML5-friendly Chrome follows suit with its own.

[h/t: The Next Web]

The Surface Pro is selling out pretty much everywhere. Consumers hoping to grab Microsoft’s latest tablet/laptop hybrids have been met with disappointment after stores across the nation sold out almost immediately. Now Microsoft is working to get more stock into stores by the end of the week, but you still might not get one.

In a quick post from the Surface team last night, the group acknowledged that “some retail and online locations have been low or out of stick of Surface Pro.” Here’s what the company will be doing to ensure stock will be back in stores by the end of the week:

In the U.S., we are shipping additional units of the 64GB SKU to Best Buy, Staples and Microsoft Store now. We are shipping 128GB SKU later this week to retailers, with some units available by the end of the week. Our priority (and that of our retail partners) is to fulfill orders from customers who made a reservation first. Canada is following a similar timeline but may take an extra few days to start arriving.

As you can see, those who had reservations will be taken care of first. That means the stragglers may have to wait more than a week to get their hands on the Surface Pro.

The team concludes that they’re “working as quickly as [they] can to get Surface Pro to market.” If you find that stores are still out of stock, they ask that you just wait a few days for more to show up.

Despite some rather important launch titles being delayed further into the year, the Wii U still loves you. That’s at least what Nintendo may be trying to get across tomorrow with a special Valentine’s Day Nintendo Direct.

Nintendo announced that its latest Nintendo Direct for North America will go live tomorrow at 9 a.m. EST/6 a.m. PST. The company isn’t saying what exactly will be shown, but says that the event will cover “upcoming Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games.”

Whatever it is, it’s going to be hard for Nintendo to top January’s Nintendo Direct that announced a number of new titles including a remake of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. This event sounds like the company will be sharing details on upcoming games of the near future like LEGO City Undercover and The Wonderful 101.

Of course, we can’t forget the Nintendo 3DS getting some love this time around as well. Nintendo’s release schedule for its handheld is looking far more populated than that of the Wii U for the next few months so expect a few more details on titles like Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon and Castlevania Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate.

Whatever happens though, Nintendo fans will want to keep their expectations in check. It’s doubtful that the company will announce any new games. It might not even be that long of an event, but we just might get to see Reggie exiling more Nintendo employees to Japan.

The smart car is the next big revenue driver for app developers. These cars may not be everywhere just yet, but app developers would be smart to jump on in its early stages before it takes off. Amazon is doing just that by bringing Cloud Player to Ford’s line of smart cars.

Amazon announced today that Android devices with Amazon MP3 can now wirelessly connect with Ford SYNC Applink-equipped vehicles. Beyond being able to play your MP3 collection through your car’s speakers, the Ford SYNC version of Amazon MP3 also supports voice commands to keep drivers safe.

“We want customers to be able enjoy their entire music library wherever they want, from whatever device they choose. And we know that cars and music go hand-in-hand. That’s why we’re excited to bring Cloud Player to the car,” said Steve Boom, Vice President of Digital Music for Amazon.

The following features of Amazon MP3 are making their way to smart cars: