News archive (12 / 2021)

Back in 1989, the world of platformer games was pushed to new level. Genre, dominated by Nintendo's cute-sy platformer characters was overtaken by first-ever cinematic platform adventure, Prince of Persia.

Originally released for Apple II, but later ported to most of the available gaming / computing platforms of that era (including Commodore Amiga and Atari ST), the game became a commercial success - and an icon of its kind.

In Prince of Persia, you control the protagonist in order to save the princess who has been captured by the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar. Set in medieval Persia, the game resembles 1980s adventure movies in many ways.

Now, a Spanish developer ultrabolido has taken the 1990 MS-DOS port of the game and further ported it to... your browser!

Using purely HTML5 and JavaScript, the game is true to its MS-DOS port, using the same graphics and same music as the 31-year-old MS-DOS version.

Here's a reminder of how the game's Amiga port looked like:

HMD Global announced today that the official, stable Android 12 update for Nokia X20 is rolling out to its customers.

Roll out includes Europe, but might also include other territories. After the disaster with Android 11 update schedule, it seems that HMD Global, the manufacturer of Nokia branded phones, tries to win back its audience. Company originally was the first major Android OEM to push speedy Android updates to its users and had a (back then) one of the longest support lifecycles for its phones.

Nokia X20 was released in April, 2021 and HMD Global has promised that the phone will get Android 12, Android 13 and Android 14 before its support runs out.

Source: HMD Global press release via email

There has never been an universal, true way to measure websites' traffic, but one site has managed to make it almost a reality for quarter of a century.

Alexa.com has been around since 1996 and has provided relatively accurate information on how popular each website/domain in the world is. Surely, it has always been relatively flawed metric, as the measurement data is based on various browser extensions and toolbars - thus, typically harming the rankings of sites with more security-conscious users.

Nevertheless, Alexa has provided a decent take on which websites are gaining popularity and which are declining. Alexa has been traditionally one of the key metrics that was included on Wikipedia pages about websites and web services.

Alexa.com was bought by Amazon back in 1999, but Amazon decided to keep the service running as it was for years and years, even tho it didn't exactly fit to its other businesses very well.

But now, Amazon has decided to call it quits. Alexa.com service will be discontinued as of 1st of May, 2022.

Alexa has provided professional SEO services, too and those are coming to an end as well. New subscriptions can't be bought and the old ones will cease when the Alexa itself will be shut down.

OnePlus has started its Android 12 OTA rollout for its most recent high-end models, namely, OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro.

Company hasn't announced the update officially yet, but both, XDA-Developers and Android Update Tracker confirms that the update has begun rolling out.

The changes since the previous Android 12 beta aren't big, but for those jumping directly from Android 11 to Android 12, even the visible changes are quite significant. OnePlus' OxygenOS 12 is merging slowly with its parent company's - Oppo's - ColorOS, so the design and UX changes are gearing towards that goal.

The OTA rollout is phased, as it often is, so you might not see the update available yet on your own handset. But we assume the Android 12 OTA will be available for most customers by end of the week. Those who use locked handset, the OTA might get delayed further.

OnePlus plans to release Android 12 also to several other models: OnePlus 7 series, OnePlus 8 series and many Nord models should get the update. For full list of phones promised to get the update, a href="https://www.androidupdatetracker.com/m/oneplus/12">refer this page.