birthdays
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Windows 95 turned 25 today
Windows 95 is 25 -- yes, the Start menu has been around for that long.
Facebook helps you celebrate birthdays with videos and fundraising
Whether you're a fan of Facebook's birthday-centric features or not, it's still pretty handy to know when your buddy's next celebration day is so you can mark the occasion. The social network keeps adding new ways to celebrate, with recap videos that extend your birthday another few days to simple text-based wish-sending. Facebook has just added two more ways to celebrate: fundraisers and personalized videos for your close friends.
Store It is a wishlist app that falls short of its potential
Store It, free in the App Store, has the potential to be more powerful than other wishlist and gift apps on the market. It has a great concept, but isn't so great in execution. You add items to your list by searching websites with the in-app browser, scanning a barcode or uploading a photo. This is in stark contrast with Instalist, an app I reviewed a few weeks ago, which only gives you a non-searchable selection of items from Amazon. With the free version, you can create two lists with up to eight items each. For US$0.99, you can build 50 lists with a maximum of 150 items per list. Search for items on the web via Google or go directly to your preferred sites by adding them to the "favorite retailers" section. You select your item by clicking on the "add new item" button at the bottom of the screen. Store It only pulls the image from the website. You have to add the name and price of the item. It would be nice if this information was automatic, the way that it is with Amazon's wishlist button. If the image doesn't show up for some reason, the app lets you take a screenshot of the product that you want. You can include notes with each item on your list for things like the size and color of the item or whether it's a must-have gift. You can also create lists for other people. I used Store It to keep track of the gift ideas I had for people on my holiday shopping list. Store-It connects with Pricegrabber to give you price comparisons. This is a cool idea, but you don't always get targeted results. For instance, I received price comparisons on iPad Mini cases alongside actual iPad Minis. There are a few quirks to the app. There are default websites included in the "favorite retailers" section, like Apple, Amazon and Pricegrabber. Even though I'm in the US, they are all UK sites. Likewise, the price on each item in your wishlist is in euros. Oddly, you can set the currency for the comparisons on Pricegrabber, but that has zero impact everything else. Store-It also has one big limitation: You cannot email a full list to anyone, however you can share individual items via social media. The point of a wishlist is to keep everything that you want in one place to make it easy for the people who are shopping for you. Why create a wishlist app that doesn't let you share your entire list? This feature is supposedly forthcoming, but I question why the developer released this app with such a critical piece missing. The option to build your lists online or offline make Store It a strong app conceptually, but until the developer adds more sharing features and cleans up some of the quirks, it's not going to live up to its potential.
Never forget important events with Birthday Board Premium
Let's be honest with ourselves. We'd forget 90% of our loved ones' birthdays if it wasn't for Facebook. If you are like me and you don't check Facebook every day, you're probably still forgetting 50% them. Birthday Board Premium, US$1.99 in the App Store for iOS 6 or later, leaves you no excuse to forget them ever again. Birthday Board takes its design cues from the wooden perpetual calendars that are all the rage on Etsy right now. I've always found those to be clunky and a bit useless, but this, this is awesome. It could not be any simpler to use. All you do is import birthdays from Facebook or your contacts. You can add birthdays manually, as well. If you'd like, create additional boards to track events like weddings or anniversaries. You can also make boards for specific birthdays – one for family, one for coworkers, etc. Set reminders, up to a week before the event, so that you know when a birthday is coming up. There are different sound options for these alerts, which is nice. I also like that you can set the reminder to go off at a specific time of day. I never remember things if I'm reminded in the morning, but setting a reminder around lunchtime ensures that I'll take a moment to send a note or make a phone call. Birthday Board makes wishing someone a happy birthday a breeze. When you click on an event symbol, a pop-up appears with more information. This links you to the person's Facebook page so that you can write on their wall or create an e-card or video message. It also tells you the person's astrological sign. If their birthday isn't for a while, click on the hourglass in the center to see a countdown of how many days are left until the event. There are a lot of customization options available. You have 5 different themes (flat, photos and glass are pictured above) and six different color options for each. I'm crazy about this feature because anything that allows me to color-code is fantastic. I've set different themes and colors for my various event boards. Add more customization with the six different badge shape options and use different badges for family members, friends, coworkers or classmates. There is a free version available with in-app purchases, but I suggest going for the full version of Birthday Board.
Mac 101: Deduplicating your birthdays in the Facebook era
More Mac 101, our ongoing series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Adding Facebook integration to the OS X Contacts application was not without controversy; many of us feared an onslaught of @facebook.com email addresses polluting our pristine data. Assuming you can get past that hurdle, however, you may be faced with another annoyance: duplicate birthdays all up in your Calendar. Here's why they're there, and how to clear them up. The birthday listings that appear in OS X's Calendar app under the Birthdays calendar seem like ordinary events, the kind you should be able to edit and delete with impunity. Thing is, they aren't. The Calendar app is just putting a friendly face on the real source of the birthday information: your contact data. For every person in your Contacts app with a valid birthday bit of data, you'll see a corresponding Calendars item for that friend (or foe). While you can manually enter birthdays for your contacts (or strip them all at once using the Birthday Remover iOS app, for the misanthropes), most of us don't have hundreds of birthdays already listed in our Contacts data (although if you ever imported your Facebook contacts via another method, you might have quite a few). Facebook profiles and birthdays, though? That's another kettle of friends. Many of your Facebook contacts probably have their birthdays in their profiles; certainly most of mine do. One might think that turning on Facebook contact sync would simply match up the Facebook friends with people already in your contact listings, especially if those same-named folks happen to share a birthday. What are the odds? Sadly, it doesn't work that way; it's up to you to remove the duplicated data and match up the contacts to get things nice and clean. Short of turning off Facebook's contact sync in OS X, this is the most straightforward way to deal with it. Important safety note: the procedure described below will remove birthday data from your local contacts. Please back up both your contacts and calendar data beforehand. If at some later date you turn off Facebook sync, or your friends leave Facebook altogether or stop sharing their birthdays, you will no longer see the dates in either your Contacts or Calendar views. For the majority of your Facebook friends, you may not care about this risk, but I do not recommend removing the birthdays of immediate family, spouses etc. Live with those dupes. It's better that way. It's easy to see duplicated birthdays in Calendar; they show up at the top of the week view in the all-day events area. Here's my double record for the irrepressible Gedeon Maheux of the Iconfactory. Double-clicking one of these gets me to the detail view for the birthday: Note the lack of any editing options. That's because the real data lives over in Contacts, so I'll click the Open in Contacts hyperlink. Of course, since I have both a Facebook and a conventional contact for Ged, in my All Contacts list he shows up twice. That's deeply annoying -- and easy to fix. The trick is to select both contacts in the list, then choose Link Selected Cards (Cmd-shift-\) from the Card menu. In the event that there's duplicates in the local contacts plus a third Facebook contact, I select all three (or more) and the menu item changes to "Merge and Link" as seen here. Now that I'm dealing with a unified view of the two different flavors of the contact, I click the Edit button at the bottom of the contact detail. Here's the view of the two birthday listings -- one local, one Facebook. I can't delete the Facebook data; in fact, I can't suppress or hide any of the Facebook contact info without totally disabling Facebook contact sync. (This is annoying.) So my only good option is to actually remove my local record for Ged's birthday by clicking the delete button next to that line. Aggravating, but not as aggravating as double birthdays for everyone. So that's what I'll do. Once the contacts are linked, it's possible I may still want to get to the individual instances to make adjustments or changes. Look at the bottom of the detail where it says Cards and two gray line items; those are actually clickable, not that you'd know it. Clicking one of them will bring up a sub-detail pane that shows only the info from that record. Finally, if you truly want to avoid any notifications for all those birthdays, you can achieve that (while still seeing them in Calendar) by right-clicking the Birthdays calendar, choosing Get Info, and checking the Ignore Alerts box. Happy birthday to all!
Behind the Mask: Two years and two thousand miles
Some of you will recall what Champions Online was like at launch. I think that a lot of readers here at Massively still remember that soreness. The first year of CO was kind of a rough, rocky ride. At some point or another, I think all of us expected the game to fail. It was really only in the in the last few months of that year that Cryptic started to turn the game around. The second year of Champions has been a lot more successful. I'm pretty sure that from a bottom-line perspective, the F2P launch helped turn the game into a profitable venture. However, that hasn't been the only major change. If Cryptic had held this kind of attitude from day one, I think things would have turned out differently.
World Wide Web turns 20, finally shakes that acne problem
Happy birthday, World Wide Web! Hard to believe you're turning 20 already. It seems like just yesterday we were hearing the pitter patter of little dial-up, delighting at the words "you got mail," and getting frustrated when calling our friends and receiving that dreaded busy signal. You're all grown up now, helping people learn how to farm and become overnight pop sensations. What, we wonder, will the next 20 years bring? At the very least, you'll eventually have to move out of your parents' basement, get a real job, and settle down. It's hard to pay attention to that kind of stuff, though, when you've got another year of sneaking beers ahead of you. So go ahead, World Wide Web, enjoy yourself tonight -- just make sure to be home by midnight.
Apple planning May event to celebrate its 10-year retail anniversary
Get your glad rags out, because it looks like Apple's preparing to celebrate the 10th birthday of its first retail stores at the end of next month. Employees have been told they can't request any vacation time in late May, possibly because Apple's planning some sort of event to mark the anniversary. The first Apple Retail Stores launched on May 19, 2001 in McLean, Virginia's Tyson's Corner Mall and at the Galleria in Glendale, California. The Glendale store has even achieved cult status now with the store number designation 001. It is possible that the holiday blackout is due to a new product launch; new Sandy Bridge iMacs are due, and there's always the iPhone 5. However, the iMac doesn't seem special enough to stop all staff going on holiday, and the iPhone 5 now seems more likely for September. The most recent holiday blackouts were for the Verizon iPhone 4 and the iPad 2. If Apple is planning a birthday party for its retail stores, will you be going along? How do you think Apple should mark the anniversary? Let us know in the comments. (Edited to fix store name.)
Vanguard's fourth anniversary raises new questions
Vanguard is somewhat of a unique beast among other "AAA" MMOs; it's a forgotten child that still offers great adventure, open-world excitement, and hardcore raiding. While we all have heard of the botched launch and practically dead-in-the-water development cycle of the game, the fact of the matter is that players are still playing it. You can't force a player to enjoy himself, so why are the members of the Vanguard community still playing? Is it possible that they are having a good time? Or do social ties mean more than great adventure? Could it be that players simply have not found a game that they enjoy more than Vanguard, warts and all? We asked the players on the official forums and received a total of four responses. The thread was immediately pushed down by standard complaint posts. Could it be that the community has been the worst thing for the game, a game that needs, more than anything, positive word-of-mouth? Click past the cut and we'll look into it.
Three years of Massively: A few of our favorite things
Three years ago today, Massively cartwheeled into the MMO blogosphere, providing fresh fields on which its writers could ruminate (and a credible reason for its editors to go prematurely grey). If you don't remember those earliest days, it's probably because you were too busy "actually gaming" to "read about gaming." But if you're here reading this now, then you understand the unavoidable, irresistible lure of the gaming meta and why we writers do what we do (protip: it's really, really not for the money). To commemorate the occasion of our having existed three whole years without being thanklessly defenestrated, dethroned, or otherwise decommissioned, we asked the Massively staff members to reminisce about their past articles and offer up their favorite posts from the site for your amusement. Join us after the break for a retrospective of our very best work -- funny, sad, ranty, weird. Then hit the comments and let us know which of our posts really made a splash for you this year. Happy birthday, Massively! Let's eat internet cake!
EVE Online turns 7 today, BIG corp runs huge anniversary lottery
On May 6th 2003, a little online space game by a relatively unknown independent Icelandic games company was officially released. Fast forward seven years down the line and that little company is a megalithic giant in the games industry. Spanning four countries and leveraging hundreds of staff, the company has begun to expand its portfolio with a console MMOFPS and a new MMO based in the World of Darkness setting. Under CCP's development, EVE Online has stood the test of time and enjoyed a steady increase in subscriptions. At EVE's sixth anniversary last year, they announced having reached 300,000 active subscriptions with a peak concurrent user total of 53,850. Some time in December of last year, the number of EVE subscriptions finally surpassed the number of citizens in CCP's home country of Iceland. That number rose to 330,000 active subscriptions by March of this year, with a peak concurrent total of 56,021. With the Tyrannis expansion around the corner, EVE is sure to see the same characteristic growth this year too. CCP took the time to start a congratulatory thread on the EVE forums to mark the day. To celebrate, they're also donating massive prizes to EVE's oldest and most respected player-run lottery. The BIG lottery's anniversary draw is open now for entry and closes on Sunday, May 16th, with a live prize drawing the following day. The first place winner takes home a colossal 25 billion ISK prize, with the second place reeling in a huge 10 billion ISK. CCP is sponsoring prizes of a year's free game time, a battleship model from the EVE store, a copy of the new EVE: The Burning Life novel and an EVE T-Shirt. Not to be left out, E-ON Magazine is offering the latest four issues of the magazine plus a copy of their EVE Strategic Map booklet. Finally, EVE player "Ash Tre" is sponsoring the contest with a pack of faction cruisers. From all of us here at Massively, happy birthday EVE Online!
Guildwatch: "Enjoy the Soviet Union"
Oh my -- we've heard about undercutting prices on the AH before (and everyone knows that when you get undercut on the AH, you just buy the lower sales and bring them back up to your prices), but I don't think I've ever seen someone get quite so angry about it. Blueroot was just chugging along, selling Runecloth at what his Auctioneer claimed it should be, and all of a sudden Crunkya showed up, angry that he'd been undercut so much and had to invest so much money in someone that was clearly an Obama voter. Wait, what? Yeah, we're not sure how he got there either, but you can see the result above. Lots more drama, as well as downed and recruiting news, in this week's Guildwatch, which starts up right after the break below. If you have a tip for us, from your guild or just a guild you've been following on your realm, please do take a second and email us about it at guildwatch@wow.com. We get a lot of tips and it takes a lot of time to sift through them, but as long as you make it look like what you see below (keep it short and sweet, include all necessary guild info), you'll see it here.
EVE Online turns 6 today, announces over 300k subscribers
EVE Online is the first massively multiplayer online title from CCP Games, one that's redefined what we can expect from a sandbox game. They created the gritty far-future setting of New Eden, a place where EVE's players can do as they choose in a vast galaxy comprised of thousands of solar systems, both mapped and unexplored. Today CCP Games celebrates EVE Online's sixth birthday. They state, "A 6 year persistent history. A living history where truly brilliant strategies have unfolded. Truly terrible betrayals unveiled. We are excited to see what will happen next." CCP also announced their new subscriber milestone: EVE now has over 300,000 active subscriptions (not including trial accounts), up 22% over the past five months alone. Their peak concurrent user record has also climbed to 53,850 players interacting in the same space, a record we've noticed they seem to shatter with increasing frequency. "That is exponential growth," CCP says. "We couldn't think of a better birthday present than having more people play EVE Online than ever before. It is another sweet reminder of EVE's boundless potential."Congratulations to CCP Games from the team at Massively, and here's looking to the next six years.[Via Warp Drive Active]
Birthdays under control on your iPhone
I always have a problem with birthdays. I generally don't make a big deal about my own, and sometimes that leads me to forget my friends' big days. iCal helps me, and I have a few birthdays in there that have pop-ups a few days in advance. It works well, especially if I remember to make it a repeating alert from year to year. Now, here's another solution that plays well with the iPhone or iPod touch. It's called Birthday Reminder [App Store link] and sells for $1.99US. It scours your contact list to pull birthday information, and shows you all the ones you have in a nice chronological list. You can also tap on anyone in the list and call or text them. It tells you when the birthday is coming up, and how old the person will be. A couple of notes: First, I didn't know contacts even supported birthdays. You can add them on the iPhone or in the Mac app by selecting Add Field>Birthday. There are some other goodies in there too, like 'maiden name,' but that's a subject for another post. After Birthday Reminder scans your contacts, you can set up the app to email you to jog your memory about upcoming birthdays. You can decide how many days in advance you want the warning, and you can also get sound effects with the notice, or not. You can't specify the time of day you get the warning; that's coming in version 1.1. As it is, they come at midnight, G.M.T. At first, this app seemed a bit redundant, but as I used it I found it quite helpful and gave me a nice overview of birthdays I needed to worry about. Here's some small nits... I don't think the GUI looks all that great. It is pretty plain, actually. I tried syncing the list to the developer's server for the email function. One day it worked fine. The next it kept crashing the app. You can't set multiple reminders. If you tell it to warn you 2 days in advance, that's all she wrote. Birthday Reminder is a clever app. It's not life changing, but is certainly convenient to use. With a couple of the little bugs removed, and a few features added, I think it makes a nice, useful addition to your collection.
City of Heroes spill the beans on their 5th birthday celebrations
Yes another one of NCSoft's MMOs is celebrating its birthday this week and this time it's City of Heroes. Celebrating its fifth birthday on April 28th and continuing through May, the devs have plenty planned in an attempt to reward existing players and tempt back lapsed heroes and villains to Paragon City.Whilst being vague about exactly what's going on, the devs have an in-game event planned beginning 11am EDT on April 28th. Apparently 'all CHAOS is going to break loose' until 12am on the 29th. There's the promise of merits, badges and lovely XP. Also at 8pm EDT, there will be a special address from Lead Developer Positron; apparently he has some info to share. What could that be I wonder? The broadcast will also appear shortly after on the game's official website.Also keen to bring heroes and villains out of retirement, anyone who logs on between 28th April and 3rd May with an expired trial or retail account will be able to access the live servers and join in on the fun. As a final incentive, any character -- that's character not account -- who logs in between 11am on 28th April until 31st of May will find themselves awarded with a special fifth anniversary badge.There will also be some cool contests running, including one where you get to design a t-shirt logo and another where you can create an homage video. Details will appear on the official site next week, but for now, more details can be found here.
The Daily Grind: MMO Anniversary Extravaganza!
This next week is quite a big week for anniversaries, birthdays and celebrations in our favorite MMOs. We kick off the festivities today with Lord of the Rings Online's 2-year anniversary, and finish off next Tuesday with a 5-year for City of Heroes, a 5-year for Lineage II and a 4-year for Guild Wars. Each of these games promises to have their own unique anniversary celebration in-game and out.So the question is, which of these games have you stuck with since day one? As traditional MMOs are entering their golden years, yelling at those younger F2P games to get off their lawn, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to stick with one game. Even if it's not one of these games celebrating a milestone this week, which games have you stuck with for years and years?
Engadget Mobile turns 3!
It seems like only yesterday that we were wrapping Engadget Mobile in swaddling clothes and showing it off to the grandparents. Now look at it: a gargantuan force of pure cellphone-news terror, stomping across the internet and taking no prisoners. How adorable. And to think, it all started three years ago today! Take a moment and head over to our favorite mobile phone site in the world and wish them a happy birthday -- they deserve it. Oh, you might be interested to know they're giving away an HTC S740 to celebrate, so it's not just cake and ice cream that's being slung over there.Here's to the next three... hundred!
Happy 3rd birthday to the Xbox 360
After a couple of notable birthdays this week, the reflection comes to its triumphant conclusion: Yesterday, the grandpappy of the big three, the Xbox 360, marked three years in existence.By now, we should hope you know the drill: Has it been a good 36 months for you? What do you hope for in the next 12? What are you afraid of? Well, besides, you know, the obvious.
[UPDATED] Azerothian birthday cake
I think I've lost count of the ongoing tally between the Alliance and Horde cakes over here at WoW Insider, although I can say for certain that I've never actually eaten a WoW-themed cake (bummer!). Reader Steve tipped us in to a cake that doesn't side with either the Horde or Alliance, but features the two continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms (Northrend didn't make the cut, apparently).While a map and faux faded parchment colors probably don't help make a visually appetizing cake -- the lower right of the cake is actually the Naga depicted on the world maps, don't worry about the green -- this literally sweet gesture was made by WoW widow girlfriend Natalie for her man Sean's 21st birthday. Sean plays on the Bronze Dragonflight EU and held a party for his guildies in May Contain Funk where this edible Azeroth was unveiled. According to Steve, the cake was vanilla sponge with raspberry jam and was, "absolutely delicious". Since those guys didn't send us a slice, we'll just have to take his word for it![UPDATE: Reader Alex3 sent in a picture of his friend Woo's birthday cake made by Woo's awesome mom -- a Warlock icon cake that looks delightfully, infernally scrumptious! Man, I'm hungry now. Check out the gallery for all the awesome Warcraft-themed cakes we've seen over here at WoW Insider.] %Gallery-31459%
YABI - Yet Another Birthday Importer updates with new UI, multiple alarms
YABI, as we've mentioned before, fills the void left by iCal's lackluster Address Book import of birthdays by offering far more flexibility and power. YABI can create a custom calendar for birthdays and anniversaries, display a person's age in the event alarm title, select only specific contacts to import events for and - drum roll please - create alarms for these events. What's even better is that Ferruccio, YABI's developer, has updated this already handy little utility with some great new features: New, very updated Unified UI that brings YABI in line with Tiger and possibly Leopard A built-in self-updating mechanism thanks to Andy Mutaschak's Sparkle (on a side note: you're probably seeing a lot of 3rd party apps adopt this slick feature) Support for multiple alarms and more! This is a great utility for anyone who, like me, needs a little more help than iCal provides with keeping track of the important dates in their lives. YABI seems to be freeware since I can't find any donation links at Ferruccio's site.
