Angry Birds Space, the latest installment of Angry Birds series surpassed the 50 million downloads on all mobile platforms.

The game has hit the 50 million download mark just 35 days after launching, making it “the fastest growing game ever”.

“There’s only one conclusion to draw: something even bigger is on its way! Stay tuned and keep flinging those Birds!” –  Rovio announced on their blog, so stay tuned for more surprises from the Finish company. The original Angry Birds game, released in 2009, surpassed 700 million downloads earlier this year.

Angry Birds Space is available for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac, leaving out only Symbian and Windows Phone owners “in the dark.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKgGphfZXqA

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As promised, Rovio has released today the Angry Birds Space for Android and iOS devices and you can get them already on the stores.

Rovio also released a new video of the Angry Birds Space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc-XlVLHJDo

You can get Angry Birds Space right now on the follow links:

Play Store (Android Version) for Free (ad-supported) – Link

iTunes (iOS version) for $0.99 – Link

Looks like iOS’ brilliant virtual assistant Siri needs to brush up on her Japanese. She had trouble keeping up with local counterpart Syabette Concier as the latter exhibited mastery of Japan and any Japanese related queries.

A youtube video pitting the iOS star against NTT Docomo’s Syabette showed that Siri failed to impress when put into a one-on-one battle of the virtual assistants.

Siri was either too slow providing answers to questions asked in Japanese or failed to answer the question at all.

Siri learned Japanese in addition to other languages she can already speak via the iOS 5.1 update.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH_Fqz7-omo

We have already seen many teasers of the forthcoming mega-release from Rovio, Angry Birds Space. 

But Rovio does not want to leave any stone unturned when it comes to promotion of their big launch on March 22. It is quite evident from their latest video that goes by the name ‘NASA announcement’ on youtube. The trailer, interestingly, features a space astronaut, currently in his space station and floating in zero gravity. He explains the trajectory of the bird (represented by his angry bird plush toy) in space when released from a stretched catapult. Following the wonderful demonstration the highlights of different and very fresh, new levels of angry birds space are also shown that instantly prods the child within you to get your hands on the game and play right this second.

Enough words, time for some video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxI1L1RiSJQ

Boy, I am all buckled up and ready to download this app the moment it launches and take down all the pigs, once again. Are you?

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The immensely popular photo sharing app on iOS devices, that instantly transforms the look and feel of the picture, might finally come to devices running green bots from Google. 

At SXSW (South By South West) conference this year, it seems very likely that  instagram CEO, Kevin Systrom, will announce the app officially for Android. It is one of those remaining few apps that Android users have been craving to install on their devices. The app currently has more than 25 million users and given the fact that many new generation Android devices have fantastic cameras, it would make absolute sense to launch this app on Android Market, oops, Google Play.

Meanwhile, if your hands are itching to try a great photo transforming and sharing app on Android, head to Google Play and download Streamzoo.

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Following a monumental 25 billion downloads milestone, Apple reveals their top free and paid apps from the App Store. Apps from the gaming category dominated the list of both Top Paid iPhone and iPad apps with 17 titles making the list for iPhone and 13 titles making it for iPad. Interestingly, not a single Apple app made it to the Top iPhone and iPad Paid list.

Breakout game Angry Birds dominated the pack of paid apps ranking number 1 in iPhone and its HD versions ranking number 2 and 3 respectively in iPad. Facebook remains the top free app download for iPhone while the free HD version of Angry Birds top the list of free iPad downloads.

Fruit Ninja, Doodle Jump and Cut the Rope joins Angry Birds in the list of most downloaded apps from the games category with other highly popular apps such as Pages, Pandora and Words with Friend also making the list.

The Apple App Store opened July 10, 2008 via an update to iTunes.

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At this point Finland is known largely for two things, Nokia and Angry Birds. Last years World Mobile Congress saw Nokia shake it up a little bit, and it looks like Rovio is about to do the same thing.

In an Interview with All things D Rovio CEO Mikael Hed stated that Rovio has a non Angry Bird game “It will be out in a couple months,”.    While no further details were given you can bet  that this game will be fun and addictive.

This is not to say the Rovio has laid the Angry Birds franchise to rest…far from it. In fact there is a new Angry Birds game coming out on out March 22 where the Angry Birds will be going into space.

Perhaps this just means that Rovio is not putting all their eggs in one basket they know all too well that if they do a one day a some hungry pigs may pick them up and take them away.

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With Siri still dominating the nascent cosmos of voice recognition apps, will TellMe or Majel be able to prove their mettle? 
The dawn of 2011 gave momentum to the frail voice recognition ability to search engines and smartphones but the tremors were felt amongst the Android and Windows Phone eco-system when Siri was born in August last year.

Siri, did manage to impress the masses it and most of us were aw-struck by its sheer abilities.
But when people actually laid their hands on the device and use this intelligent app the reviews varied between the two extremes.
For some Siri a charm to use, they feel its the ‘mojo’ of their phone, for others, well, they are still trying to comprehend with it in the accent it understands.

App developers and mobile OS giants started working on this new dimension ravenously and came up with multiple apps out of which I am enlisting a few that managed to get our attention.

Evi (iPhone – $0.99/Android – Free)

Evi by True Knowledge which promotes itself as ‘revolutionary artificial intelligence’ is based on the web site’s own search engine and licensed voice recognition software from Nuance. Apparently, the voice behind Siri is also powered by software from Nuance. Evi is a boon for those who do not own an iPhone 4S and would like to use a voice based phone assistant. Evi works well if you need to dig out general information using voice search, but, Evi is unable to set up meetings or read out text message to you like Siri does.
Also, Evi gives this frustrating  “I’m having trouble getting a response from my servers” error message frequently which squeezes out the excitement one gets from a voice recognition app.

TellMe (Windows Phone)

Microsoft has been working with TellMe to bring voice based information search to not only phones, but PC, TV, Cars and of course Windows 8. So, this integrated app has advantages in its multi-platform uses. This comes as a default with all next generation Windows phones available today. It uses a pretty standard set of commands and works well if you need to open or start a specific application via speech. But is it still incomparable to Siri.

Dragon Go (iPhone, Android – Free)

Another voice based app from Nuance Communications, Dragon Go, does not speak back to you and gives you plate full of results for your simplest of search queries. It gives you results from numerous websites including Ask.com, YouTube, ESPN, LiveNation, OpenTable, Pandora etc. in a tabbed interface. So, even if you are not content with what pops-up on the centre tab after you fired your query, you can simply swipe left or right to get more (and maybe) relevant results. Give it a try, it’s gotta 4+ rating on iTunes.

Iris (Android – Free)

A well suited app for the playful user, Iris is very popular with Android users and its creators Dexetra is thankful for a million downloads of the app in just two months. With more than 46,000 satisfied users, Iris is rated 4 on the Android market.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77B8DF0XMGc

If you watch the video above, you will see that the app creators have a tendency to specifically demonstrate typical search queries on their product which Siri cannot execute in its current state. They hardly ever compare how the two AI bots fare when asked a standard question that both apps can definitely process and give results for. (Time to think?)

Ask Ziggy (Windows Phone – Free)

Ask Ziggy serves many functions that are absent from Siri (finally, we are getting somewhere), like status updates, directions, general queries and even mathematical queries. The looks and the voice throughput are a downer. Even Metro UI is unable to help us like the boring looks of the app.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=facRa8frDT0

There are plans to make Ziggy better. Language translations, multilingual support and developing the grammar recognition will be available in next version(s) of the app.

Cora (Windows Phone – Pending App Hub Approval)

The yet to be launched app developed by Jeremiah Isaacson, Cora aims to improve what Ask Ziggy has been able to deliver. It is again based on Nuance voice recognition technology and borrows a lot of it’s design from Siri. It is too soon to comment on the app which has not been officially released yet, but we do have a preview of its abilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06dQvpUJgTE

One point that I would like to mention here is that the developer(s) creating apps for Windows phone should use the power of Metro UI, its the USP of any Windows mobile device and any app that follows this latest UX feels seamlessly integrated with the phone.

Last, but certainly not the least…

Majel (all Google devices)

Banking on the ability to understand commands given in natural language and diction, Google’s Majel, would be a radically altered and evolved version of Google’s Voice Actions.  Majel, named after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the voice of the on-board computer from Star Trek is expected to release by the end of this year.

Will this be the ultimate answer to Siri or will the cold-war that has existed between Google’s Android and iPhone continue forever after?

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Steve Jobs would have really appreciated ‘Clear’, a new task and list management app from realmac software, as it ostentatiously displays minimalist yet intuitive way of  handling tasks without using the conventional buttons commonly found in various apps serving the similar purpose.

Currently hosted as the ‘iPhone app of the Week’, Clear, shuns the ‘press-here-to-add-a-new-list’ feature. All you need to do is swipe, pull down, pinch apart and use other touch screen gestures to manage your tasks. Sounds interesting! Take a look at the video

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S00H-rz7fGo&context=C31adfe2ADOEgsToPDskJRtVi0kJx-gp59-9yjy44i

Clear, seems to be a winner in the first place. However, I will briefly take you through the pros and cons of this eye-candy app that is creating headlines across the tech world on internet.

Thumbs Up for:

1. Color coded heat-map to prioritize tasks.
2. Simple, elegant and intuitive gesture control.
3. Fast and effortless, because of the minimalist design and no hidden or background features.
4. Attractive color scheme.
5. User-friendly layered interface.
6. Only for 99¢.

Just when you thought you’ve seen everything the extremely popular Angry Birds franchise had to offer, it looks like the flock is headed to where no bird has gone before.  Check out the teaser after the break.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YZ_yLQadBg