LUSARAP

Barnes & Noble has slashed the price of its Nook HD and Nook HD Plus tablets as part of the Get Reading festival happening this month.


The Nook HD and Nook HD tablets will be available at a new lower price point in conjunction with the Get Reading festival on July 13.

For a limited time, the 7-inch Nook HD will be priced at £99 for the 8GB edition, or £129 for the 16GB version. The larger 9-inch Nook HD Plus prices now start at £149 for 16GB of internal storage, while 32GB will set consumers back £179.

That means Barnes & Noble has shaved £30 off the RRP of each of those tablet models to celebrate the Get Reading festival taking place in Trafalgar Square on July 13.

Anyone wishing to purchase one at the new lower price points will have to do so pretty sharpish, as the offer only extends until July 31.

“To celebrate the free Get Reading festival and to help make digital reading more affordable across the UK, we have reduced prices on our award-winning Nook HD and Nook HD tablets for a limited time,” said Jim Hilt, MD of Barnes & Noble. “We are committed to promoting the cause of literacy and we hope that families from all over the UK come to the Get Reading festival on July 13 for a fantastic day of events featuring some top authors and celebrities.”

The Get Reading campaign is a partnership between Nook and the London Evening Standard and aims to help improve literacy in schools.

Working closely with the Beanstalk literacy charity, Barnes & Noble has already donated 1000 of its Nook Simple Touch eReaders to the Get Reading campaign pre-loaded with children’s books.

The Nook Simple Touch eReaders are also available at a discounted price for the Get Reading festival, and can now be purchased for just £29.

Spotify is now available for free on smartphones and tablets for the first time, as the music streaming company launches a new service, Spotify Shuffle.

The HTC M8 may miss out on a 2K resolution display after all, according to a leaked User Agent Profile (UAProf).

Google has launched its Google Now Launcher onto the Google Play Store, enabling owners of old Nexus devices to get the full Nexus 5 experience.



















As part of the stock Android 4.4 KitKat experience launched with the Google Nexus 5 last year, Google provided quicker access to Google Now and a number of home screen interface tweaks.

Now, those modifications have been made available to the wider Nexus-owning world through a free Play Store app. This app also works on Google Play edition phones from the likes of Samsung, HTC, and LG.

The Google Now Launcher makes the Now card system available by swiping right from the homescreen. Previously you had to open up a Google search in order to do this.

Another key addition is voice operation. By saying "OK Google" from the homescreen, you can instruct your phone to accept vocal control, or to initiate a search for term.

As well as these major additions, the Google Now Launcher adds a number of cosmetic tweaks. The navigation and status bars are now translucent, just like on the KitKat OS proper, and app icons are a little bigger. There’s also a new wallpaper picker.

It’s a shame this release isn’t a wider one. The market for new launcher apps as a way to strip your bloated Android device UI back to something approaching stock AI is considerable, and an officially endorsed Google effort would doubtless be massive.

Google Now Launcher is available now for all Nexus and Google Play experience devices on the Google Play Store.

Images of the purported Nokia Lumia 1520V mini have appeared online with a suggested April release date.

MAN MEETS MAGIC & MACHINE. The year is 2054. Magic has returned to the world, awakening powerful creatures of myth and legend. Technology merges with flesh and consciousness. Elves, trolls, orks and dwarves walk among us, while ruthless corporations bleed the world dry. You are a shadowrunner - a mercenary living on the fringes of society, in the shadows of massive corporate arcologies, surviving day-by-day on skill and instinct alone. When the powerful or the desperate need a job done, you get it done... by any means necessary.

Features:
- The complete Shadowrun Returns campaign (12+ hours of gameplay!) optimized for touchscreen input.
- Explore a grim cyberpunk future where magic and technology rule the streets.
- Make every action count in gripping, turn-based tactical combat.
- Create and customize your character from one of six unique archetypes.
- Over 350 different weapons, spells and abilities: sling fireballs, kneecap enemies with your shotgun, or roundhouse kick them in the face!

Following the company’s takeover by Google, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has claimed that Motorola phones will benefit from the fastest access to new Android updates.

A picture of a brand new Sony smartphone has hit the web, fitting the description of the Sony Xperia Z2.

New Sky Sports Ashes Event Centre lets you analyse decisions and rewind the action so you dont miss a single delivery.


Cricket-lovers planning to tune into the Ashes on Sky Go via an iPad will be able to access the new Ashes Event Centre to play with new features while you watch the action unfold live.

In what Sky Sports is calling a ‘second-screen cricket experience’, the Ashes Event Centre will let users view the same statistics that the Sky Sports commentary team will have access to during the five test series.

You’ll also be able to use the Hawk-Eye review system to do your own analysis on the game-changing decisions made by the third umpire.

If you happen to miss a wicket or a face-off between Joe Root and David Warner, the new timeline feature will let you re-watch the action simply by stepping back in time.

Forming part of Sky Sports’ comprehensive coverage of the Investec Ashes Series 2013 this summer, the Ashes Event Centre can be found inside the current Sky Sports app and will be free to download for Sky Sports subscribers.

If you don’t have Sky, but do own an iPad, you’ll need to pay £4.99 to unlock the Ashes content from the in-app purchases section. If you don’t own an iPad but do subscribe to Sky Sports, you can get check out the new features via the Sky website.

The Ashes iPad app follows in the footsteps of similar offerings introduced by Sky Sports to accompany its coverage of Formula 1 and Premier League football giving users access to the same stats and tools used by Sky Sports presenters and pundits.  

New iPhone 6 rumours have surfaced, with a newly leaked Apple patent suggesting the upcoming handset could feature a curved touchscreen display.