Hasta La Gadget!

To say that the Android-powered OUYA game console has garnered some serious attention is a hell of an understatement, and that’s sure to be the case as developer units keep trickling out into the wild. As it turns out, it’s not just game devs that are getting some hands-on time here — some of the folks at Mozilla may be working on getting a version of its Firefox mobile browser up and running on the game-centric cube in short order.

The news comes courtesy of Ed Krassenstein, an administrator for OUYAforum.com. According to him, a Mozilla developer reached out to him earlier today to talk briefly about the process of bringing the browser to the OUYA platform:

We’re investigating what we need to do to make Firefox usable on Ouya. It already works and we have some preliminary patches for gamepad support, but there’s still quite a bit of work to be done to make it really usable. Part of this work will be making sure that WebGL and Canvas support performs well on the device, and making sure that the relevant APIs (such as Gamepad API) are also supported

The platform certainly presents some… interesting challenges, thanks mostly to its non-standard control scheme. After all, plenty of people have scrolled down a webpage on a smartphone screen, but I’d wager the number of folks who have done so with the assistance of a full-size game controller is considerably smaller. Still, the fact that some Mozillians have already worked to surmount that particular stumbling block is heartening news for fans of third-party Android browsers.

Krassenstein’s initial post didn’t offer a name for the anonymous Mozillian he had spoken with, but he eventually confirmed that it was Chris Lord, a Mozilla mobile platform engineer who happened to tweet an image of a Firefox build running on an OUYA earlier today (see above). Granted, it doesn’t actually work very well — Lords notes that it’s “kinda unusable” for the time being — but it’s a step in the right direction at least. Lords also revealed on Twitter that a gentleman named Kats (aka Mozilla software dev Kartikaya Gupta) is mucking around with Firefox for the OUYA as well, though there’s no word on how many others (if at all) are spending time on this.

Naturally, this project is in its very early stages, and there’s no guaranteeing that a final, fully-compatible version of the browser will ever actually become available to OUYA owners, but it looks like things are off to a promising start. And hey — they’ve still got a few months before OUYA’s official release, so there’s a chance an OUYA-optimized version of the browser could debut right in that launch window.

The Newsstand app, which was introduced in iOS 5, can be rather annoying if you don’t take advantage of reading magazines and periodicals on your iOS device — it just sits there taking up space on your home screen. If your device is jailbroken, you can hide the app with a simple tweak, but non-jailbroken users will have to deal with. However, a new tweak was recently discovered that allows non-jailbroken users to “hide” apps in the Newsstand folder.

If you have a handful of apps that you want to hide, you could just put them in an “Unused” folder and call it a day, but why not use the Newsstand app anyway in order to kill two birds with one stone? This trick allows you to store any app you want inside Newsstand, and it allows for an infinite number of apps, as opposed to regular folders. Here’s how to do it:

This trick requires near-perfect timing, so if you’re not quick, you may have trouble getting it right. First, move the Newsstand folder/app to the second page of your home screen, and any apps you want in the Newsstand to the third page. Stay on the third page while you do this next step: Press the home button, and then immediately tap and hold an app you want to move.

Continue holding until your iPhone goes back to the home screen. Once that occurs, release your finger and immediately swipe to the second page. Wiggle mode should now be activated if the trick worked. Then, you just tap on the Newsstand folder to open it, and then press the home botton to close it. The app you initially tapped and held on should now be in the Newsstand folder.

Again, it does take a little bit of practice to do it correctly, so it may take a few tries. You don’t need to be extremely fast or anything, but you’ll at least need to be quick on your feet. This trick also applies to creating folders within folders. There are some caveats, though. Rebooting your iOS device will remove all of the apps from the Newsstand folder, and you also can’t remove the apps from the Newsstand folder without rebooting. Try this at their own risk, and make it quick because Apple may do away with the oddity as soon as they realize it’s there.

[via iDownload Blog]

iOS 6 “Newsstand as app folder” trick discovered is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Addictive games? Retro-style photos? Delicious food? What’s that? You like all of those things. Good news—you’ve come to the right place. This round of the best iPhone apps of the week has the follow-up to your favorite game, an abstract wallpaper maker, and more. More »

Instagram might have gotten some crazy backlash from its policy changes back in December, for which they pulled an about face and returned it back to normal. However, a lot users were done with the service at that point, and vowed to switch to an alternative. Then again, that doesn’t seem to be scaring Instagram too much, as the company has reported 90 million monthly active users, as well as 40 million photos being posted per day.

AllThingsD notes that the service’s monthly active user base is actually up 10% from last month, so it seems that the privacy policy debacle wasn’t a huge deal for its users after all. Instagram’s Kevin System says that the company “continues to see very strong growth around the world.”

Along with those 40 million photos being posted every day, Instagram says that its users are liking photos at a rate of 8,500 per second and are posting 1,000 comments per second as well. This actually marks the first time that Instagram has posted statistics on its user base, but detailed numbers are still scarce.

According to AppData, Instagram use on iOS and Android actually rose quite a bit late last month, but with use on Facebook falling by 25%. Furthermore, according to AppStats, Instagram apparently saw their active user numbers cut in half to 40 million, but according to Instagram’s own numbers, that’s clearly not true.

[via AllThingsD]

Instagram boasts 90 million monthly active users, 40 million photos per day is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In case you hadn’t heard, pretty much everyone in America has the Flu right now. It’s bad for economic productivity—unless you work in the food delivery business, in which case, the listless and miserable are a boon for business. The online food ordering service Seamless reports huge month-over-month increases in some classic sick people cuisine. More »