Netflix announced today that it will allow downloading of movies and TV shows for offline viewing. According to their help page about the update:

You can download select TV shows and movies to watch without an Internet connection from the Netflix app on your iOS or Android device.

To download titles from Netflix on your mobile device, you will need:

• iOS 8.0 or later
• Android 4.4.2 or later
• An Internet connection
• The latest version of the Netflix iOS or Netflix Android app

The change comes shortly on the heels of Amazon Video announcing the same functionality.

Although Android Wear will ostensibly extend to all kinds of wearable devices, Google explains on its blog that it’s starting in the area that makes the most sense: the smartwatch.

The idea behind Android Wear is to bring contextual information to the user when it’s most needed. That can mean getting the latest updates from a social app, pumping in instant messages and photos, and showing the fastest route to get to your next appointment.

The first concept for Android Wear, which Google displays in a concept video, has a lot in common with what we’ve seen from both Google Now and Google Glass.

Android Wear is voice-enabled, following the “OK Google” dictation scheme of gathering information. Google also says that Android Wear will hit on the popular health monitor market, allowing for real-time access to data for both users and apps.

Of course, as Pebble has proven, a wearable platform is nothing without apps. Google has released a preview version of Android Wear for developers. This will allow existing Android developers to start preparing their existing apps for Android Wear, including customized notifications. The company says additional APIs and resources will be available soon.

Google also announced that it is working with consumer electronic brands such as Asus, HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung on Android Wear devices, as well as with chip makers such as Broadcom, Qualcomm and Intel — as well as fashion brands like the Fossil Group. Longtime smartwatch fans will recall the Microsoft SPOT powered Fossil smartwatch from the early 2000s.

We expect to hear a lot more about Android Wear at Google I/O later this spring. Source.

To amp up visibility and create consumer connections, companies like Bitly and TiVo design fun mascots to get users more invested in their products. A successful campaign can go viral and help propel certain brands to household names. You can’t think of Energizer without picturing its bunny, just like you can’t imagine Geico without the gecko.

Let’s examine nine such mascots and their mysterious origins.

1. Domo for NHK

IMAGE: FLICKR, SEAN NABER

Domo is the fearsome monster mascot for Japan’s NHK-TV. Created by animator Tsuneo Goda, the brown creature first appeared in stop-motion animation ads for the station.

“One night, I was up late, and I started drawing circles, squares, general shapes. As I was looking at it, a story came up in my head,” Goda says in an interview with About.com. “That’s how Domo came about — just a bunch of shapes put together.”

The mini-monster is now famous in his own right, featured in merchandise and comic books.

2. TiVo’s TV

IMAGE: FLICKR, SEAN KELLEY

Anyone with a TiVo set will recognize its ever-smiling mascot, thanks to designer Michael Cronan’s determination.

“I wanted to provide a kind of identity that would become as recognizable as the mouse ears are to Disney,” he says in an interview with PVRblog.

A mascot that looked like a TV was the obvious path, so Cronan stuck a smile under the logo and added rabbit ears, as a nod to a vintage small screen era. He then added the legs after seeing “the little Darwinian fish-with-legs evolution character on a bumper sticker.”

3. Android’s Android

IMAGE: FLICKR, MARSMETTN TALLAHASSEE

TiVo has a TV, and Android has…well, an android. Designer Irina Blok created the green robot while at Google in 2007, inspired by the male and female pictograms found on bathroom doors.

4. Energizer Bunny

IMAGE: FLICKR, TODD L. GILBERT

Energizer hit the mascot goldmine with its ubiquitous, sunglasses- and sandals-sporting bunny. For the past 25 years, the sassy animal has been drumming it up commercials and moving product for the battery company.

The mascot was developed in 1989 to mock Duracell battery ads, which featured pink bunnies. Artist Eric Allard designed the one-off concept, but it grew in popularity — and kept going and going and going…

5. Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome

IMAGE: FLICKR, CORY GURMAN

In the 1980s, a prank was born where people stole garden gnomes, photographed them at various locations, then sent pictures back to the gnome’s owner. It persisted through the mid-2000s, parodied and popularized in films like Amelie.

It also inspired Philip Marchington, a creative director at the McKinney agency. He used the prank as a basis for a campaign for Travelocity, a travel website. The Roaming Gnome became wildly popular, and has his own Twitter and background story (he left home for eight years to pursue a life of travel).

6. Yesware Yeti

IMAGE: Yesware

Yesware is all about yetis. The email productivity service designed the goofy green monster to represent the company’s “friendly yet quirky” culture, says Eileen Ani, Yesware’s designer and engineer.

7. Twitter Bird

IMAGE: FLICKR, PRACHATAI

Twitter’s crisp little logo was stumbled upon, rather than hatched by an advert team. The site’s founders were looking on iStockphoto, a popular source for stock pictures, when they came across a bird drawing by a contributor named Simon Oxley. They bought the design (along with a robot drawing which appears when a link is broken) and used it (but have since redesigned it to its minimal, modern look).

*Fun fact, the mascot’s name is Larry (which mysteriously bears a similarity to famous basketball player, Larry Bird).

8. Reddit’s Snoo

IMAGE: FLICKR, MARTIN LAFRANCE

Reddit, the popular online community, had a mascot before it was even conceived. While a student at UVA in 2005, the site’s co founder, Alexis Ohanian, doodled the little alien with orange-red eyes and named it Snoo.

“I had no reason for choosing an alien. I just really wanted a mascot for our website (which at this point we hadn’t even begun working on),” Ohanian wrote in a Reddit thread.

The alien got its moniker because Ohanian originally planned on calling Reddit “Snew,” a shortening of “What’s New.” The spelling deviated from there.

9. Bitly Pufferfish

IMAGE: FLICKR, MIKE FABIO

Bitly, the link-shortening website, found a fitting mascot in the expanding and contracting pufferfish. It was the brainchild of the company’s CTO, Todd Levy, and Betaworks employee, Neil Wehrle, who told Mashable in an interview they wanted it to be “more of a beach ball than a poisonous fish that can hurt you.”

BONUS: Geico Gecko

VIDEO: YOUTUBE, BONNIE DAVIS

What’s the first car insurance company you can name? It’s probably Geico, thanks to the ad men of the Martin Agency. However, the talking lizard wasn’t supposed to exist.

The mascot had to be whipped up during the Screen Actor’s Guild protest, which prevented the company from using live actors in a commercial. Thus, the Martin minds came together and produced the first gecko spot, riffing off the animal’s naming similarity. The British lizard became a viral hit, and is still going strong in commercials nearly 15 years later.

*Fun fact: The gecko was originally voiced by actor Kelsey Grammar.

Source

The trailer teases intense game-play, and most importantly, the newly-designed Batmobile will be driveable for the first time in this franchise. The game will feature an open-world Gotham that is supposedly going to be larger than the world in Batman: Arkham City.

In the game, Batman must protect Gotham City from the return of Scarecrow and his gang of super villains including Penguin, Two-Face and Harley Quinn.

The official release date is still unknown, however the game’s publisher confirmed a 2014 release to

In the game, Batman must protect Gotham City from the return of Scarecrow and his gang of super villains including Penguin, Two-Face and Harley Quinn.

The official release date is still unknown, however the game’s publisher confirmed a 2014 release to Kotaku for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source

I don’t buy a lot of games for my phone, but I’ve got no problem snatching them when they’re free. Thankfully Google likes to give stuff away every now and then. This time it’s a collection of LEGO games.

Free Android LEGO Apps

The list of free LEGO games currently includes:

All of these games were compatible with my Samsung Galaxy S III except for LEGO MINDSTORMS 3D Builder and LEGO Building Instructions.

Get ‘Em While They Last

There’s no telling how long this offer will last, so if you have any interest in these games, I’d go ahead and get them.

Click here to find them in the Google Play Store.

Netflix is not about to let Amazon have all the fun when it comes to delivery drones.

To tout its own robotic home delivery technology, Netflix released a video for its “Drone2Home” service, which will find you anytime, anywhere. And we do mean anywhere.

While all the bugs may not have been quite worked out yet, Mashable is looking forward to the day when we can get a DVD copy ofTerminator delivered by an actual killer robot.

The parody video from Netflix above lampoons Amazon’s Prime Air program, which was introduced by CEO Jeff Bezos during a 60 Minutes segment.

Amazon is not alone. UPS has recently said it is exploring the viability of drone delivery, as has a flower delivery service in Detroit.

As for Netflix, it’s safe to assume you wont be seeing its drones filling the skies anytime soon. Its DVD segment, while still a lucrative business, is in steady decline as streaming becomes its primary service.

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Enjoy the perks of rising through the ranks of your Los Santos and Blaine County business ventures with The Business Update, coming next week on Tuesday March 4th to PSN and Xbox Live. Thrill-seekers and weekend warriors can hop in any of three all-new, blazing fast sports cars: the Albany Alpha, Dinka Jester and Grotti Turismo R… or take to the skies in the new Vestra airplane.

Swing by Ammu-Nation to pick up two new weapons, the Heavy Pistol and Special Carbine, which both offer some serious firepower.

Dress for success with formal and business casual attire options like new suit jackets, slacks, glasses, heels and blouses, or don new all-business hairstyles and currency themed tattoos. There’s also a collection of new masks, perfect for disguising yourself during the next hostile takeover.

Just like the recent Valentine’s Day Massacre Special, the new vehicles and weapons will be available in both Story Mode and Online. In Story Mode, weapons will be deposited into all three characters’ inventory with two full ammo-clips and all three cars are accessible from their garage properties. In GTA Online, you’ll be able to purchase the new weapons and their attachments at any Ammu-Nation location while the vehicles will be available for purchase from L

egendary Motorsport and Elitas.

Don’t forget that this weekend is your last chance to grab the Albany Roosevelt limousine, the Gusenberg Sweeper machine gun and all the rest of the exclusive items from the Valentine’s Day Massacre Special before they’re gone. Once you purchase them in-game, they’re yours to keep – but they will no longer be available to purchase after midnight PST this Sunday, March 2nd.

And stay tuned for details about our upcoming Business Update Event Weekend as well as more info to be revealed on future updates including Online Heists, the Capture Creator update, new Assassination and Flight School missions for Story Mode and much more…

This weekend is also your last chance to grab the Albany Roosevelt limousine, the Gusenberg Sweeper machine gun and all the rest of the exclusive items from the ​Valentine’s Day Massacre Special before they’re gone. Once you purchase them in-game, they’re yours to keep – but they will no longer be available to purchase after midnight this Sunday, March 2nd.

Designer: Hiromi Kiriki

Source

via Mental_Floss →