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Review: Viator: My Pocket Booking Agent | iPhone

apptrawler — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 08:02:41 +0000

I like to think that I’m pretty organised when traveling, as I love reading guides, hearing about experiences and acting on guide information, to make sure my latest adventure is just that. After a recent tour of the west coast of America I found myself making a new friends of the digital variety.

I had been recommended the Viator app and in particular, their VIP access services. It can save you hours in research time as you attempt to find where to go and when to go there. I started using their services in San Francisco when be booked our amazing trip on the Napa Valley Wine Train. I couldn’t believe how painless it was and what a fantastic experience I had. My worry about having a printed confirmation was quashed by the fact they had a passbook app for iPhone meaning they could scan my phone for confirmation.

As the tour took us down the coast road through Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara and finally Santa Monica we used the app religiously. It’s guides were useful and honest and the visitor feedback was always great to read but it was the VIP access that kept me hooked and when we finally reached LA it paid off, when we used it to book a VIP experience at Universal Studios.

Eight of us were treated to a behind the scenes look various sets in the Universal back-lot. from plane crash scenes to walking on the set of some of the top comedies. As we walked around the props warehouse, real film crews were going about their daily businesses as if we were extras in some TV show. All the while we smiled to ourselves as we thought of the hundreds of people currently queuing in lines and scrabbling for views of the shows.

Thanks to the App I was able to arrange some of the most memorable experiences the West Coast had to offer. I was skeptical about a travel app that books trips and tours for you thinking they would be bias and overpriced but I was pleasantly surprised to see both the guide and a booking agent go further than just taking you to tourist traps.

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3 Crazy Computer Glitches That You Won’t Believe Happened

JakeMesser — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 16:06:13 +0000

Try to imagine the world without computers. It’s pretty difficult right? They are so ingrained in everything we do today that it’s hard to imagine life without them. Back in 1997, only 18% of homes in the USA has access to the internet. In 2012 that number was 75%

Of course, with over 2 billion people worldwide using a computer, it’s only a matter of time before bad things happen. And here, we present five examples of when computers decided that it was time for craziness. Through a combination of human error and computer programming, we’ve seen some crazy things happen…

Google Blocks The Web. All of it.

Google. We all use it. We’ve all marvelled at its amazing ability to find just what we are looking for. One of the great things about Google is that it wants to look after us. If we happen to stray onto a site it deems unsafe, it gives you a warning. Google then sends you back, content in the knowledge that you’ve just avoided a potentially sticky situation.

However, one day, a Google employee was doing some maintenance and forgot to include a backslash somewhere important on a particular URL.

This was bad.

How bad? Well, it seems that for a certain length of time, (around one hour) Google classified websites as unsafe, preventing anyone using Google from accessing them.

How many websites?

All the websites. Every single website indexed by Google was deemed unsafe. Bad times indeed.

US Navy Destroyer Crashes Because of Math.

Computers have the ability to do the things that humans can’t, such as work out complex equations in less time it takes to make a cup of coffee. The US Navy decided to jump on the bandwagon by retrofitting their battleship USS Yorktown with new computer systems. They believed this would cut operation costs by up to £1.7 million pounds.

Unfortunately, they chose to use Windows NT to run the system. This turned out to be a bad idea as Windows NT turned out to be as reliable as a fireman made out of chocolate.

Software glitches, bugs and errors were commonplace.

And then the Navy’s great battleship tried to divide by zero. And things got really bad.

Trying to divide by zero resulted in something called a buffer overflow error. It crashed the entire system and left the USS Yorktown without power. She had to be towed back to port.

Big Brother is watching you. And Big Sister.…In fact, the entire family.

Common sense dictates that any sensitive material online needs to be password protected or encrypted. You don’t want any old person walking away with your information. It’s not such a major security issue when it comes to your neighbours Wi-Fi for example. It’s kind of a big deal when you are talking about the military and their army of flying video surveillance drones.

The US Army discovered that hackers were able to access the live feeds of these drones using software that costs less than a Game of Thrones Blu-ray box set.

How? Well, the Army had simply neglected to encrypt their drone software on any level, giving the public unfettered access to military hardware like they were playing Call of Duty. Anyone with a bit of tech-savvy was able to see what the drones were seeing.

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Review: Zombieville USA

apptrawler — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:15:09 +0000

The age of zombie games came and has not really gone. With The Walking Dead, Day-Z, and people still playing Left 4 Dead religiously, it might be a while before these shamblers disappear. Not every zombie game is equal though, and Zombieville USA is definitely a great mobile game for the money.

Zombieville USA is simple; you choose a character, each of which has strengths and weaknesses, and you side scroll through towns, bashing zombies with melee attacks or utilizing guns to mow them down. The more zombies you kill, the more money you get. You can also loot homes for ammo and to hide from the onslaught.

Some levels you might luck out and find a vehicle has spawned. It’s neat when this happens; you can tap it to jump right in and it will not only take you directly to the end of the level, but kill tons of zombies along the way.

In between levels, you can buy weapons or health, often a tough choice when you don’t have much cash on you. As you get through later levels, a lot of the weapons become obsolete. Getting into level 40+, you might as well forget everything else and stick with just the rocket launcher and laser gun, which really takes a lot of the fun away. It would be much better if the other weapons could be upgraded to be strong enough to take on the stronger and more numerous zombies (and boy, is there a ton in later levels). It makes it feel like the other options are just moot at that point and it becomes less fun.

As far as it goes, it doesn’t seem like there is an endgame, though it’s possible it doesn’t go past 99 levels, which will still keep you busy for a very long time. It’s truly a game of survival; you will keep going and going against wave after wave until your finger can’t tap anymore. Despite it’s very hard AI later in the game, it is still an enjoyable mobile game you’ll find yourself going back to, from time to time.

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