firehose

A new petition is currently underway at Change.org, in an attempt to collect signatures of fans hoping to see a playable Reggie Fils-Aime in Nintendo's upcoming Super Smash Bros.

The petition, which can be signed right here, pushes forward the idea that the Nintendo of America COO could "use Nintendo controllers and characters to his advantage as attacks." The movement is also encouraging Twitter users to directly contact Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai to increase the chances of a playable Reggie.

"To raise awareness about this, please use the hashtag #ReggieForSmashBros and Tweet to @Sora_Sakurai to let him know about this petition. Also Tweet to @NintendoOfAmerica, @NintendoEurope, and @NintendoUK; and post about this on Miiverse to prove to Nintendo that Reggie deserves a spot on the roster."

Fils-Aime has previously stated he's open to becoming a new playable character in the new Nintendo 3DS and Wii U release Super Smash Bros.

In a video that ran on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Fils-Aime took to answering a few questions from Nintendo fans; one of which asked whether the Nintendo president would be available in the game.

"Great question," said Fils-Aime. "You have to ask that to Mr. Sakurai. He's the producer of the game, it's his game. But if he wants, my body is ready."

Google's Android platform has had a robust mapping and directions system for years now, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for innovation in this space. Today, Transit is releasing an Android version of its very popular iOS app, which offers bus, subway, and train directions in 43 cities across the world. Transit's claim to fame is its easy-to-read interface and hyper local "nearby" routes that provide up-to-the-minute departure times and step-by-step directions. Fortunately, both of those features translate well to the Android app, which also offers schedule timetables, itinerary maps, and route planning features.

Unfortunately, one big feature missing from the Android version is any kind of offline capability, which makes the app more or less useless once you get on a subway. For its part, Transit says that it will be adding offline capability along with other features in the coming months. On an HTC One, the app performed well, though it did take longer than we would like to acquire our location and provide nearby directions in midtown Manhattan, so hopefully that gets improved as well.

While it can be argued that an Android user doesn't really need a separate app for public transit directions thanks to the solid features found in Google Maps, Transit offers a pleasant interface and enough features to make most strap hangers satisfied. Once offline support is added, it will be a no brainer for anyone that regularly uses public transit. Transit for Android is free and will be available in the Google Play Store today.

Google Reader is long gone and while a handful of new alternatives have popped up over the last few months, one popular option is essentially closing up shop: The Old Reader. In a blog post, the team behind the RSS reading web app said that they are giving up development on the product because they're simply exhausted from building the product. As of Monday, the web app is no longer accepting new users. And in two weeks, The Old Reader will turn into a private site for those who've registered before March 13th. If you're an Old Reader user who signed up after March 13th, the time to pull your data and move over to another product is now — user data is available for export in OPML files.

"We have had no work life balance."

The Old Reader launched about a year ago after founders Anton Tolchanov, Elena Bulygina and Dmitry Krasnoukhov were unhappy with changes Google made to social and sharing features in Google Reader, according to The Washington Post. The Old Reader caught on and at one point had as many as 60,000 users sign up in a single day, the Ukrainian team said on its Facebook page. Currently, the app has about 420,000 users, the team said. Things were going well until March, when Google announced that it was going to kill Google Reader. Since then, the trio has gone from a normal life to one they described as "hell in every possible aspect we could imagine." Over the last five months "we have had no work life balance at all," the developers wrote. Such a sleep-deprived lifestyle just isn't sustainable "if you're running a project for hundreds of thousands of people," they said.

Posted by Dan Seifert on July 29, 2013 09:21 pm

I've owned a Nexus 7 since launch last year (it's a 2012 model obviously, not the fancy pants new jobber), and my ownership with it has been a bit of a bumpy ride. If you've followed my complaints for the past year or so, you already know this. When I first got the device, running Android 4.1, it was pretty great — performance was snappy, Chrome wasn't a total dog, and I got a ton of use out of it. But as time went on, my Nexus 7 started to seriously degrade, to the point where I couldn't use it anymore. The Android 4.2 update had a seemingly negative effect on performance, things got noticeably slower and laggier, and Chrome became virtually unusable.

In addition to the performance drop with the Android 4.2 upgrade, it got really bad after I loaded some movies and TV shows on the Nexus 7 for a plane ride and then deleted them afterwards. Because the Nexus 7 didn't properly support TRIM functionality, the internal storage never really recycled those sectors from my now deleted shows, leaving the internal storage stuffed to the gills. As a result, performance dropped off a cliff — apps took forever to open, the interface was virtually unusable, and it would even take upwards of a minute to unlock the thing. I tried every trick in the book to fix it: root and install custom ROMs, try different kernels with over clock settings, and even use some of the memory recycler apps in the Play Store, which to my knowledge mimic TRIM functionality. Each attempt offered a brief respite of usability, but the Nexus 7 would quickly deteriorate back to its earlier crappy performance and I would once again be extremely frustrated with it.

So when Android 4.3 finally hit Google's servers last week, I had no qualms with wiping the slate clean and force installing it on my Nexus 7 with Google's developer tools. Doing so completely wiped the tablet, erasing any of the modifications I made and essentially brought the Nexus 7 back to an out-of-box state, but with Android 4.3 on board. Initially, I didn't really feel like the upgrade had much of an effect on performance — the Nexus 7 still felt rather slow and sluggish (albeit actually usable). But after a day or two of getting settled in with the update, performance ramped up and the Nexus 7 became incredibly snappy — even better than on the day I bought it last summer.

My concern was, of course, that this newfound usability would not last and the Nexus 7 would degrade back to its prior state of being a paperweight. But after using it extensively for the past five days or so, performance hasn't dropped a bit. The interface is snappier than ever, apps open swiftly, scrolling actually happens when I want it to, and Chrome is able to load websites before my toddler graduates from college. And all of this is with stock settings — no rooting, no custom ROM or kernel, not even a custom launcher such as Nova or Apex.

It appears that Google has fixed the performance degradation problem with the Nexus 7 by finally adding TRIM support in Android 4.3 (which also applies to all devices that have been upgraded, though I never had any performance issues with my Nexus 4), as noticed by Brian Klug at Anandtech. This means, in theory, that performance on the device should remain usable, even as time goes on and I continue to use my tablet to do all of the things it was designed for. I'll be watching it closely (and probably be very vocal about it if performance drops off a cliff as it did before), but I actually have a usable tablet once again, and I didn't have to shell out upwards of $200 again to get there.

I'm a happy camper with my 2012 Nexus 7 now, and despite the whiz bang new screen and improved everything on the new model, I think I will be hanging on to my older tablet for the foreseeable future.