Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past four days, a little mobile game called Pokémon Go has taken over … like, everything. I say this because I was literally living under a rock for the last four days (camping) and had no idea had spread like a virus. According to Forbes magazine, the Nintendo game has already taken over Tinder on the Android platform and is about to surpass Twitter in daily active users.
Think about the scope of that for a second. And what’s interesting is hasn’t been released globally yet – currently it is only available in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Just wait until till get a hold of it in Japan, China, and Europe.
For those not familiar with the game, one traditionally sets out to catch and train little characters called Pokémon which are later sent out to battle against other Pokémon with friends. What makes different is its use of augmented Reality combined with GPS. Now you wander around the real world in search of Pokémon, and when you find one, it pops up on your phone’s screen showing where the little digital creature is, superimposed over real life.
It sounds addicting and, apparently, it is. If you see people walking around the park or even just down the street with their faces buried in their phones even more than usual, now you’ll know why.
Hey, at least folks are getting some decent exercise. Unfortunately, they are also losing their jobs. Expect the craze to continue for the foreseeable future. Niantic, creator of the game, has paused international rollout because their systems were already overloaded, says Business Insider. But that rollout should resume again soon, as the company seeks to maximize the buzz around the game.
Tesla on the rise
Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased a new “masterplan” on Sunday, and that one tweet was enough to send Tesla shooting upward. All Musk said was “Working on Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, part 2. Hoping to publish later this week.” Apparently that’s enough to quell investor concerns, which have mounted over the past few weeks as the electric automaker’s automatic pilot mode has been called into question as the possible cause of death in a recent motor accident in Florida.
Musk has also gotten some flack for expressing serious interest in merging Solar City, a solar panel manufacturer, with Tesla. Musk is not only one of Solar City’s chairmen, he’s also one of its biggest shareholders. Then there’s the fact that it is apparent Tesla is missing manufacturing targets, which isn’t encouraging considering the company has taken over 400,000 pre-orders for its forthcoming Model 3 vehicle, a car which caught serious interest with its $35k price tag.
But, if we know Elon Musk, he’s going to say some magic words, back them up, and all will be well with Tesla once again. Probably later this week.
More iPhone 7 rumors
Finally another day, another iPhone 7 rumor. This time we see a very clear image of the alleged phone’s back side, which seems to indicate the new handset will have a much larger camera lens and cleaner antenna lines.
We don’t know if there will be a new image sensor to go along with that big lens, or if the size difference is really about improving low-lite performance (we vote for the latter, for what it’s worth) and we STILL don’t know what’s happening with the headphone jack for sure. So, for now, you can hope for another leaked image, or just sit patiently until the expected launch date in September.
