Last we heard, Feral Interactive’s iPhone port of Rome: Total War was due before the end of summer. School summer holidays last until the start of September here in the UK, around mid-September in the US, so they have just over a month before they’re officially going to be late.

While there’s still no word on an exact release date, Feral have just sent out a tweet detailing what requirements your phone will need in order to be able to play the game.

So anything from an iPhone 5S up should be fine, and like most modern mobile games you’ll need iOS 11. Here’s a larger version of the image, just in case:

Rome: Total War for iPhone will be available from the App Store for $9.99/£9.99/€10.99. Users who have already purchased the game for iPad will be able to download it onto their iPhone at no extra cost, and transfer their save file.

Are you looking forward to finally being able to play Rome: Total War on your iPhone? Let us know in the comments!

Think Silicon just released GLOVE (GL Over Vulkan … yeah, I don’t get how they make that work either) an open source middleware component that makes it so you can run OpenGL ES on Vulkan.  Available for Android, Linux and Windows, it seamlessly translates OpenGL called to Vulkan at runtime.  The code is available on GitHub under the LGPL v3 open source license.

Details of how GLOVE works from the Github page:

GLOVE (GL Over Vulkan) is a software library that acts as an intermediate layer between an OpenGL application and Vulkan.

GLOVE is focused towards embedded systems and is comprised of OpenGL ES and EGL implementations, which translate at runtime all OpenGL ES / EGL calls & ESSL shaders to Vulkan commands & SPIR-V shader respectively and finally relays them to the underlying Vulkan driver.

GLOVE has been designed towards facilitating developers to easily build and integrate new features, allowing at the same time its further extension, portability and interoperability. Currently, GLOVE supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and EGL 1.4 on a Linux platform, but the modular design can be easily extended to encompass implementations of other client APIs as well.

GLOVE is considered as a work-in-progress and is open-sourced under the LGPL v3 license through which it is provided as free software with unlimited use for educational and research purposes.

Future planned extensions of GLOVE include the support for OpenGL ES 3.x and OpenGL applications.

Keep in mind this is a pretty early release and has only been tested on a small subset of hardware with mixed results.  You can find a great deal more technical information on how GLOVE works and how to extend it in this document.  Keep in mind, this is a fairly new technology and only has been tested on a small subset of devices.  You can read more about this release here.

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GameDev News 3D

A new wave of innovation is surging ahead. And, the world’s manufacturing powerhouse, Asia, is riding its crest.

The billions of appliances, gadgets, machines, and vehicles that are routinely rolling off Asian production lines are becoming smarter and connected. So too are the factories that make them.

Built with sensors, infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and enabled by machine learning (ML), these devices will push the boundaries of the Internet of Things (IoT) through the next decade and beyond. Advanced algorithms will help them see, listen, reason, predict and more, without requiring “always on” connectivity to the cloud.

This is the intelligent edge and it is based on the principle that data has gravity. In other words, the closer we move computing to a device, the faster we can move from insights to action.

You can see edge computing is any scenario where data is collected and processed inside a device or machine, allowing it to act faster than it would if had to rely on the cloud. Equipment on a factory floor can use ML and AI to anticipate when a part will break or fail. An autonomous car will be able to take evasive action when it faces a possible collision. In both cases, the milliseconds saved could be the critical difference between a safe outcome and an accident.

At this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, we saw how the intelligent edge will be a key part of a future in which trusted, ubiquitous computing will be part of the fabric of life.

“Everything in our lives is being connected,” Nick Parker, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Consumer and Device Sales, said in a keynote address to a sell-out audience.ws. “Whether it is the sensors in our domestic appliances, whether it is our cars, whether it is new markets for precision agriculture, whether it is the IoT of our lives, or maybe in the experiences we have with technology.”

With insights gleaned from these connected intelligent devices, companies will be able to reimagine business models with new product offerings, new customer experiences, and new efficiencies.

The business potential is huge, and the competition is likely to be fierce. Isaiah Cheung, Microsoft’s Vice President for Consumer and Device Sales in the Greater China Region, said the race is now on among Asian manufacturers and service providers to get into the intelligent edge game.

“New emerging device companies in our region want to infuse their products with AI,” he said. “And big, established companies are doing the same. They want AI built into the big multimillion dollar machinery in their factories to improve efficiency. And, they want to build the intelligent edge into all the consumer devices, appliances and services they export around the world.

“Just the other day, I had one big brand ask me how they could put AI into a new line of rice cookers. Another one is doing the same with its white goods. The list goes on and on.”

To add to this progress, Microsoft has established the  Intelligent Edge Partner Community. “Our initial focus is on fostering collaboration across our partners, providing training, and early-adopter programs,” Roanne Sones, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Core Operating System and Intelligent Edge, shared. “From a resource perspective, members receive access to documentation, specs, builds and certification details to further their intelligent edge business”.

Parker sees a new wave of business opportunities and economic progress coming off the back of the intelligent edge, with Asia being a major player.

“Asia has always been very much a center of global innovation, whether it is in a lab in Shenzhen or our partnerships across the Greater China region in terms of supply chain or our partnerships in Taiwan,”  Parker to a media conference at Computex. “We see so much of our new technology, particularly in the intelligent edge, starting here and delivering worldwide.”

Asia is also playing a major role in developing new AI technologies, with Microsoft’s research labs around the world – including in China and India – working in this space for decades. They have achieved a series of breakthroughs, using the immense computing power of the Azure cloud.

With this know-how, Microsoft has been able to infuse AI into its core products and services. It has delivered AI tools and frameworks, including cognitive, vision, spatial and object APIs, and earlier this year announced a limited preview of Project Brainwave, an architecture for deep neural net processing on the edge – all of which partners can use to enable next-generation AI applications and solutions that run on devices.

Meanwhile, intelligence is spreading across mass markets as microcontroller units (MCU) become connected. These tiny AI-enabled single-chip computers (see picture at the top of this article) now power more than 9 billion new devices around the world every year.

“An MCU is a single-chip computer that is no larger than your thumbnail,” Distinguished Engineer and Managing Director at Microsoft, Galen Hunt, told the Computex audience. “These are very tiny, very low-cost chips and enabling them with connectivity means you can turn anything into an IoT device. We are headed to a world where everything can become connected.”

As amazing as they are, these tiny chips have had one a big flaw: They were never designed to be secure. When a device is compromised, it can impact your privacy, your data and your infrastructure, and even your physical security.

“If these devices aren’t secured, who are we bringing into our most personal spaces? Who are we bringing into our homes, into our schools, into our hospitals, our offices, our factories? And what is at stake? Our data, our privacy, our infrastructure, our property, even our safety.”

This changed this year when Microsoft launched Azure Sphere, an end-to-end solution for creating highly secure, MCU-powered devices.

In a recent blog, Hunt described MCU internet connectivity as “a two-way street.” “With these devices becoming a gateway to our homes, workplaces, and sensitive data, they also become targets for attacks. Look around a typical household and consider what could happen when even the most mundane devices are compromised: a weaponized stove, baby monitors that spy, the contents of your refrigerator being held for ransom.

“We also need to consider that when a device becomes compromised, it’s not just a problem for the owner, it can also become a problem for society. A device can disrupt and do damage on a larger scale.”

This is what happened with the 2016 Mirai botnet attack where roughly 100,000 compromised IoT devices were repurposed by hackers into a botnet that effectively knocked the east coast of the United States off the internet for a day.

With connected MCUs built into billions of new devices every year, it is of “paramount importance” that security keeps pace with an ever-changing threat landscape.

Hunt suggests that as we look to a future, where every device will be smart or intelligent, we need to redefine what we mean by “smart”. Yes, smart devices are intuitive, insightful, and easy to use. But we need to add one more thing: Smart devices must be secure – if a device is not secure it is not smart.

This makes security essential for manufacturers in Asia and around the world. “We see an ecosystem that is very eager to deliver the products that customers need, and customers need secure products,” he said adding that Azure Sphere makes it easy for manufacturers to create smart/intelligent products that are innately secured.

READ: Unlocking the Economic Impact of Digital Transformation in Asia Pacific

ALSO READ: Microsoft’s AI Blog

Earlier this month, we announced new intelligent event capabilities in Microsoft 365 that enable anyone to create live and on-demand events for teams and across the organization. Today, we invite you to use the public preview of live events in Microsoft 365 and discover new ways to foster connection and engagement between leaders and employees at every level in your organization.

More than ever before, employees in the modern workplace seek work environments that unlock creativity, make their lives more productive and fulfilling, and foster a sense of connection with their organization’s mission and purpose.

A critical first step for your organization to thrive in this new culture of work is to drive alignment of your people around shared purpose and goals. Leaders realize that organizations who do this well have an advantage in attracting and retaining an engaged workforce.

Here are four ways your organization can enable leaders and employees to connect with new live events in Microsoft 365:

1—Use live events to kickstart interactive discussions across your organization

Today, executives at Microsoft—including CEO Satya Nadella—use Microsoft 365 to connect and communicate with employees around the globe. Now, any company or organization with Microsoft 365 can create these moments of high engagement, where people are focused on leaders and their messages and ask questions to clarify or reinforce conversations in the community.

Using Microsoft Stream, Teams, or Yammer, you can create a live event wherever your audience, team, or community resides. Attendees receive notifications and can participate in real-time, with high-definition video and interactive discussion using web, mobile, or desktop.

Following an event, it’s easy to make the recording available on an event page, allowing you to watch the event on your own schedule and catch up quickly with powerful AI features that unlock the content of the event recording. The recording is automatically transcribed and detects changes in speakers—making it simple to search for content later.

For employees who are in different time zones or unable to attend live, the conversation keeps going, so they still feel connected to leaders and peers—helping to overcome geographical or organizational boundaries.

The event and recordings are powered by Microsoft Stream, the intelligent video service in Office 365.

2—Foster sustained dialogue in open communities

Give everyone a voice—before, during, and after a live event in Microsoft 365—with Yammer communities that span functions or the entire organization. Providing a forum for employees to be heard is an important piece of transforming a culture. These communities are where people can come any time to raise ideas, concerns, or questions, and where leaders can reply in an authentic way.

An active Yammer community builds trust and a sense of connection and belonging. And it provides a forum where employees who might not feel comfortable speaking out during a live event can connect directly with leaders.

With inline message translation, live events in Microsoft 365 empowers people to express themselves in their own language.

3—Create an intranet site for leaders to share events, blogs, video, news, and resources

Communicate at scale as a leader with a continuous, online presence using content, conversation, and video channels within a SharePoint communications site. You can optimize for news distribution and blogs, and deepen engagement with related content, polls and surveys, and readership analytics.

This is also a great spot to share recorded events for later viewing. Simply create a dedicated page for each event where employees can submit questions and comments in advance. Leaders and organizers can then use this input to craft the messaging and content of the events.

4—Plan corporate communications and measure impact

Executive and internal communications may be managed by a team of one or a team of many—but it takes careful planning and execution to ensure success. Microsoft Teams—the hub for teamwork in Office 365—is ideally suited to work together in the creation and production of events and other executive communications. It provides an effective backstage for your live event, giving you a shared space to work with speakers and approve content before sharing with a broader audience.

Once you have begun engaging your audience, every message within a Yammer community has a visible count of how many people your post has reached. This helps both community organizers and employees understand what is being read. Group insights demonstrate how the knowledge and information created in the community benefit people—regardless of their membership status in the group. For example, passive visitors may gain value from group conversations and apply the information elsewhere in their daily work. You can also see the number of views for an event recording and across a channel, and how many people liked the video. Pages and news articles also have statistics to understand readership.

Empowering all leaders across an organization

Leadership, of course, does not just refer to organizational leaders. Leaders of communities may be subject matter experts, functional managers, or passionate individuals who are leading areas of expertise, practices, or interest groups. These same capabilities in Microsoft 365 can enable leaders at any level to create and sustain connection with their communities.

Patrick Yates, manager of Diversity and Inclusion at TDS Telecom, considers community connections and engagement an important part of the employee experience, and a boon to recruiting talent. “Younger generations entering the workforce especially want a modern, inclusive environment—to be part of something that’s larger than themselves.”

Connect your employees and leaders today

Experience the public preview of live events in Microsoft 365, and get started on connecting your leaders and employees today. We will be adding additional features and functionality based on your feedback in the Tech Community.

To create a live event, you will need an Office 365 E3 or E5 license and your admin must give you permission to do so. To attend a live event, you need an Office 365 license for authenticated users. Public (anonymous) access is possible in specific configurations.

For more information on the intelligent event capabilities, visit the Microsoft 365 live events post on Tech Community.