‘Gears of War’ is getting a movie

One more video game is getting a movie adaptation. Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition announced during a livestream that Universal Pictures is working on a movie adaptation based on the series. According to Rod Fergusson, head of The Coalition, the plans are “the next logical step” to support the franchise. “We’ve done comics and novels in the past but the opportunity to work with Universal to bring the movie to life was perfect,” he told Variety.

It isn’t clear if Universal will follow a straight adaptation of the game but Fergusson has shared his thoughts on the matter. “I think you have to let the movies be the movies. They’re two different mediums, and two different audiences in some cases, and I think some video game movies in the past have failed because they tried to make a movie for gamers. If you have this great IP with a deep backstory and lots of lore that you can make interesting stories out of it’s great, but if you just go after the gaming audience then it isn’t going to be a successful movie.” Let’s hope whatever they work on would fare better than the video games turned movies in the past. If you want to get more of Gears of War though, Gears of War 4 will be out on Xbox One and Microsoft Windows on Oct. 11.

Review: Lenovo Moto Z

Text and photos By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

On its own, the Moto Z is an inspired flagship device. It’s made of top tier materials, offers the best of Moto’s bespoke software experiences, yet presents users with a pretty pure Android experience with very little in the way of unwanted bloatware (unless you’re getting it from a carrier).

It’s my impression that Motorola, one of the oldest makers of smartphones in the industry, has always seen a future beyond the smartphone. 

Their first Android device, the Droid (sold in Canada as the Motorola Milestone), was the first to have a slide-out keyboard which differentiated it from most candy bar Androids of the time.

The Moto Atrix smartphone, had the ability to be mated to a laptop accessory and even a desktop, it preceded Microsoft’s Continuum feature of extending a smartphone to become a notebook replacement.

With Moto Maker on the Moto X, the company championed customization and personalization, plus they introduced leather, wood, and other materials to the smartphone market. Kicking off a trend that companies like OnePlus, LG, Huawei and others picked up on, but never really pulled off elegantly. Now, with the Moto Z, we're seeing the next phase of evolution.

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Google Chromecast Ultra deals with big 4K streams the ‘old-school’ way

One of the many products Google released at its #madebygoogle event is a new Chromecast dongle. While it looks similar to what Google has released in this category before, what sets it apart is it supports both 4K and HDR streaming. Google claims the Chromecast Ultra can also start streams 1.8x faster this time around and it has better Wi-Fi reception, too. The Ultra is powered via microUSB and can be charged off TVs that provide enough power over USB or through the included AC adapter. But how does it handle the high-bandwidth needed by 4K videos? Google’s answer is an Ethernet adapter. Simply plug it into the device and you don’t have to worry about the Wi-Fi connectivity you have at home.

Source: The Verge

‘Actions on Google’ to open Google Assistant to third-party developers

If Google plans to unseat the Amazon Echo in its own category, it’ll need all the help it can get. And that’s what it is planning to do with the Actions on Google program launching in December. This program will allow developers to build “Actions” for Google Assistant (akin to the 3,000+ “skills” of Amazon’s Alexa). There will be two flavors to this: Direct Actions and Conversation Actions. Direct is similar to what you can do with Siri, Alexa, and even Google’s own Google Now voice assistant. You ask it for information, schedule a meeting, etc.

Conversations, on the other hand and as its name suggests, is more of a back and forth. One example given at the Google event is when Scott Huffman tried to get an Uber and had Google Assistant pass the conversation off to Uber to finalize the request. And that’s where developers would need to work with Google. Aside from the Google plans to release an Embedded Google Assistant software development kit to let tinkerers load Google Assistant on things like Raspberry Pi as well as for other hardware manufacturers to have Assistant in other products.

Source: The Verge