Take a Minecraft-inspired road trip in Blocky Roads

If you spend many of your waking hours building block houses, fighting off creepers and spending your sleeping hours dreaming of exploring the great-wide landscape of the pixelated paradise in an off road vehicle, then you are in luck.

Blocky Roads is a mix between the environment-building fun of Minecraft and the side-scrolling racing of one of the company’s other titles, Offroad Legends…

Neurio vows to make all homes intelligent

Neurio is an electrical monitoring device developed by Energy Aware Technology. The small device sits in the home's breaker box and "monitors how much power homes are using, and figures out the cost of running individual appliances using smart algorithms that look for patterns and potential problems." Using a self-learning algorithm, the unit collects data about the electrical items in the home. Reports and information are provided to the user, who then determines which ways to better eliminate energy consumption.

Most importantly, the monitoring and cloud reporting does not require home owners to install sensors on any device. As the unit sits in the breaker box, connected to the central home electrical hub, it monitors information directly from the source. Using a companion app, cleverly titled "Wattson," a homeowners' smartphone becomes the simple monitoring tool needed to determine real time power consumption and usage...

AT&T catching up to Verizon in LTE coverage

Yesterday, AT&T announced that it has flipped the switch on its LTE network in 14 new markets this week. Places like Peoria, Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa; and St. Cloud, Minnesota now have access to the carrier's 4G network.

Obviously, if you're an AT&T customer with an LTE-capable device in one of these areas, this was huge. But the even bigger news is that this latest rollout brings the total number of AT&T LTE markets to 461—39 shy of Verizon...

Apple Stores to start replacing screens and other parts on iPhone 5c, 5s

Apple will soon begin conducting in-store hardware repairs for both the iPhone 5s and 5c, according to a new report by 9to5Mac. The company will be able to replace displays and other components on the new handsets, on-site.

This means that Apple Stores will no longer have to replace an entire device due to a cracked screen, or a bad button. The initiative will not only help Apple save money, but will also keep users from having to setup new devices...

‘Star Wars: Tiny Death Star’ now available for download

Great news gamers! Star Wars: Tiny Death Star is now available in the US App Store. The game is a joint venture between NimbleBit—the maker of popular games like Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes—LucasArts, and Disney.

First announced back in October, Star Wars: Tiny Death Star offers up similar gameplay to Tiny Tower, in that it tasks players with helping construct a Death Star with over over 80 types of residential and commercial floors...

The best hardcore games for gamers

If you consider yourself a gamer, you don’t need the word defined for you. But for the rest of our readers who may not fully understand what hardcore games are, there is a type of player who can be classified as a gamer.

Gamers are dedicated to the sport. They play all manner of games, from casual puzzles to side-scrolling platformers to epic role-playing games (RPG). Most of the time, a gamer’s favorite is the hardcore genre. These are games that take many long hours of deeply engaging gameplay to get through. Some of them are updated regularly to expand on levels and in-game areas so that they never really end.

This is our selection of the best of the best hardcore games…

Amazon (again) takes potshots at iPad in Kindle Paperwhite ad

On the surface, Amazon is seemingly supportive of Apple's iOS platform as the company updates its various iOS applications on a regular basis - even if it's just a courtesy to its iOS-loving users who want to enjoy Amazon services on their iPhone and iPad.

Scratch a little deeper and all hell breaks loose.

For starters, the online retailing giant is waging legal battle against Apple over e-book price fixing. And given the two tech titans increasingly compete on hardware, software and services, it's really no surprise Amazon's marketing department is taking direct jabs at Apple users every now and then.

This February, for example, the company aired a much-flawed screen comparison video pitting its 1080p Kindle tablet against Apple's better-than-1080p iPad with Retina display. This time around, an Amazon ad is challenging the e-reading experience on a tablet such as the iPad, versus that on the Kindle Paperwhite.

Have a look right below...

Samsung talks future: folding screens and 4K smartphones coming in 2015

One of the thrills of writing about technology is that more often than not one gets to blog about the next big thing always lurking just around the corner. Fans of technology have been living in the future forever and today Samsung spoke to the technophiles, sharing some of the upcoming technologies its mobile display unit is aiming to bring to market in 2014 and 2015.

We'll be living in the post-Retina world next year as Samsung preps to double the pixel count on smartphone and tablet screens, we're being told. And by 2015, your mobile devices will have full 4K resolution displays - that's a whopping 3,840-by-2,160 pixels normally found on Ultra HD TV sets, or four times the pixels of the full HD (1,920-by-1,080) Blu-ray movies.

By comparison, the iPad's Retina display maxes out at 2,048-by-1,536 pixels. But that's just scratching the surface...

IFTTT can now add photos to iOS Camera roll, create new to-dos in Reminders

If you're not familiar with IFTTT (an acronym for 'IF This Then That'), this tremendously powerful app permits you to create time-saving service meshups to automate common tasks.

For example, you could tell IFTTT to update your all social media profile photos when your Facebook profile pic changes. Or, you can even create a Recipe to receive SMS notifications when iDownloadBlog publishes an article, for example.

IFTTT has been around since 2010, but only released an iPhone app back in July. The software has since seen several maintenance updates and today the team issued a new version which brings the ability to add photos directly to your iPhone Camera roll, create new to-dos in the stock Reminders app and more...

LastPass password manager gets some iOS 7 love

Though I've been syncing my Safari web passwords lately using the new iOS 7 password-syncing feature called iCloud Keychain, I'm still a 1Password type of guy, mainly as iCloud Keychain doesn't support secure notes, tagging, folders and what not.

That said, I understand AgileBit's password manager may not be everyone's cup of tea due to its high asking price ($17.99 for the iPhone/iPad app, plus an additional $49.99 for 1Password for Mac).

But there are other password managers out there and one of them called LastPass is free and has just received a nice little makeover for iOS 7...

AT&T lights up LTE in 14 new markets

AT&T has hit some major milestones in its LTE quest this fall. As of early September its 4G network covered over 240 million people, in over 400 markets. And it’s not showing any signs of slowing down.

The carrier announced another major expansion of its LTE network this week, giving folks in 14 markets access to the speedy connection for the first time. We've posted a list of the new areas after the fold...

Pebble announces support for all iOS 7 notifications, new SDK

Big news today for current and potential Pebble users. The company announced a major update to its smartwatch platform that includes support for all notifications in iOS 7, as well as a new SDK and new APIs for developers.

Previously, the Pebble was very limited on the types of push notifications you could receive from your iPhone. But now, thanks to updates made in iOS 7, it will be able to receive alerts from Facebook, Google Maps—you name it...