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RIFT tops Raptr's May most-played list
Is RIFT taking the charts by storm? At first glance when it comes to Raptr's most-played PC and Xbox 360 titles in May, it would appear so. However, just as with everything else associated with statistics, it's important to know the full story before jumping to conclusions. RIFT jumped up 13 spots to garner a 7.76% share of player hours in May, topping even League of Legends and World of Warcraft. This was largely thanks to a reward campaign that quadrupled the number of players from March. The company notes that Neverwinter was also a "big mover" in the month among Raptr players, netting 11th place.
Twitter #Music adds genre charts to aid your musical discovery
Unless you've been living under a proverbial rock, you've at least a passing familiarity with Twitter's #Music service, and today the platform given us another reason to check it out, thanks to the addition of genre charts. When #Music launched a month ago, it provided the means to discover and hear tunes from popular, emerging and suggested artists along with those you and your friends follow. Now those discovery pages have been expanded to include ten musical genre charts (country, hip-hop, rock, etc.), plus five additional charts titled Superstars, Popular, Emerging, Unearthed and Hunted. The Superstar and Popular charts display the most popular songs and new music that's trending, while Emerging and Unearthed are two avenues for finding lesser-known songs and artists. Finally, the Hunted chart displays music that's currently popular in the blogosphere. So, people of Twitter, go forth, use these new charts and find your musical bliss, but only on the web, 'cause the iOS app is without them... for now.
Spotify Charts launch globally, showcase 50 most listened to and most viral tracks weekly
Taking a page out of Billboard's playbook, Spotify is using its listener data to determine the most popular music in a particular country. Available on the website or as embeddable widgets, the weekly updated charts will reveal which tracks are most listened to for the Spotify 50. The Social 50 list will contain the tracks most often actively shared by the service's users, including via Facebook and Twitter. Another new addition is the ability to see play counts for an artist's top tracks, tracking global plays since October 2008. That's rolling out to desktop clients first and will pop up elsewhere later, while the charts will update every week at noon ET. Hit the link below for this week's list topped by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Daft Punk, although we'll know if it's really taking off when we see a green record on someone's wall in a future episode of Cribs.
Hyperspace Beacon: Examining the gear of SWTOR 2.0
The developers at BioWare turned a corner when they redesigned the commendation system for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Most players seem to welcome the simplicity and practicality of the new system coming with 2.0. Reducing the number of comms players have to track allows players to focus on playing the game and not on managing currency. Unfortunately, the gear progression is a bit more like separating M&Ms, making you wonder why there are more yellows than blues and whether there's really a difference between dark brown and light brown. Not to mention that SWTOR proves once again that MMO designers have no idea how to make a decent helmet. PvP gear also has me wondering what returning players are going to think about having to regrind again so soon after a major change with Update 1.6.
Dead Space 3 rockets to top spot in this week's UK charts
Dead Space 3 boldly went where the previous Dead Space had gone before: No. 1 in the UK all-formats charts. We know, shock horror (ho ho ho), but more interesting is that the third main entry in the series scored 26.6 percent less UK launch sales than its predecessor. 65 percent of those sales were for the Xbox 360 version, 31 percent for PS3, and 4 percent for PC (although that discounts digital purchases).Last week's leader, Ni no Kuni, dropped to sixth following a 63 percent dip in sales. More alarmingly, after just four weeks DmC: Devil May Cry slumped all the way down to 25th. That's concerning considering how quiet 2013's been in terms of major releases so far.As for the rest of this week's ten best-sellers, there's been barely any movement. The remaining standouts are Hitman: HD Trilogy, which held steady in fifth place, and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which entered the top ten for the first time on the back of the newly released 3DS version.
Ni no Kuni casts a spell on the UK charts
Hang on, is that a Japanese role-playing game at the top of the UK charts that doesn't have the words 'Final,' 'Fantasy,' or 'Pokémon' in its name? No, that doesn't sound right...Well, pierce me a lantern and call me Mr Drippy, because the PS3-exclusive Ni no Kuni is indeed this week's best-selling game in the UK. To give you an idea of just how surprising this is, you have to go back almost exactly a year for the last JRPG to take top spot in Her Majesty's kingdom, and that was Final Fantasy 13-2. And here's an even more staggering stat for you: by Chart-Track's data there isn't another clear-cut example of a chart-topping JRPG that's not a Final Fantasy or Pokémon game in the last decade. Bam! Have a new trailer to commemorate the feat.Ni no Kuni's impressive ascent pushed Black Ops 2 down to third, while DmC: Devil May Cry fell out of the top ten altogether after just two weeks, down now in 11th. The other new entry in the top ten is the Hitman: HD Trilogy, which debuted at fifth.
American Airlines becomes first FAA-friendly carrier to use iPads through whole flights
You don't have to wait for an FAA rethink to use your iPad on an airliner below 10,000 feet -- if you're part of an American Airlines crew, that is. As of this month, the air carrier is the first cleared by the FAA to use iPads in the cockpit at every point during a flight. The program starts just with Boeing 777 pilots at first, but it should eventually grow to save $1.2 million in weight-related fuel costs per year across the airline, not to mention a few trees and the strain of 35-pound flight bags. American is confident enough in the tablet switchover that it plans to stop handing out any paper updates to its charts and manuals as of January, just days after its entire fleet gets the regulatory nod for iPads at the end of this year. We just wouldn't anticipate Android or Windows tablet rollouts anytime soon. American isn't opposed to the concept, but it's only promising that slates beyond the iPad will be "evaluated for use" if and when the FAA applies its rubber stamp.
Visualized: Android's device diversity cut up into 3,997 little pieces
Some call it diversity, some call it fragmentation. However you slice it, there's a lot of Android devices out there. OpenSignalMaps has tracked a staggering 3,997 unique phones, tablets and other Google-powered gadgets, and has put them into a chart weighted by popularity. Not surprisingly, it's powerhouses like Samsung's Galaxy S II and HTC's Desire line that dictate the platform, while that Concorde Tab you bought in Hungary sadly doesn't have much traction. The normally signal mapping-oriented crew is careful to warn that the actual variety might be less: there's 1,363 one-timers in the group, and some of those may be custom ROMs and the endless carrier-specific variants that OEMs are sometimes eager to make. There's even more to look at through the source, including Android 2.3's continuing dominance and the mind-boggling number of Android screen resolutions, so click ahead for an even fuller picture.
UK gets official Top 100 music streaming chart next week, Billboard seen crying in the corner
Used to be, musicians were judged (commercially speaking, of course) by how much radio play they got and how many albums and singles they sold. The UK's answer to Billboard, the Official Charts Company, has seen a future filled with streaming music from services like Spotify, Napster and Deezer and decided that it needed a streaming chart to truly judge the success or failure of today's, and tomorrow's, top tunes. Thus, a Top 100 streaming chart was created and is set to launch next Monday, May 14. So, who rules the web across the pond, sonically speaking? You'll have to wait for the full list, but a preview of the top ten artists awaits in the PR below.
EVE Online's time dilation keeping game in sync
Leave it to one of the most popular MMO studios to figure out how to control time -- and do so successfully. Through technical wizardry, CCP did just that when it released a time dilation feature into EVE Online last month to reduce lag during massive space battles. So far, it's working great, according to CCP Veritas. In a new blog post, he shows off graphs and recounts recent events that show how "TiDi" (as he calls it) is successfully slowing down in-game time to keep player commands and on-screen action in sync. "In all cases, it has kicked in appropriately when the server node has become overloaded, keeping things running responsively and sanely," he writes. "In both huge fights [shown on the graphs], the module response time was kept under one second for the vast majority of the action, which is a tremendously large improvement over the 20, 40, 600 seconds we'd sometimes see in fights of this scale." EVE Online has also made a few quality of life improvements to EVE Gate, including a better login system, a navigation menu tied in with the rest of the site, and a way to quickly zip to dev posts on the forums.
Tim Cook: Macbook Pro and iMac are the best selling notebook and desktop in the US
Tim Cook kicked off today's 'Let's talk iPhone' event by the numbers, mentioning that "the MacBook Pro and iMac are the number one best selling notebook and desktop in the United States." Apparently the Mac platform grew by 23 percent over the last year, versus a four percent growth from the PC sector. Brandishing a chart tracing the trend back five years, Cook says that Apple is now pushing 60 million Mac users worldwide, leaving Cupertino just shy of owning a fourth of the personal computer market. "There are still 77 percent of people who are buying something else," Cook said, "We have an incredibly high ceiling here. We have a long way to go."
Freemium isn't free: 25 to 34 year olds spend the most on extra content
The "freemium" business model has infected a wide swath of the gaming universe, from casual Facebook games, to shooters, MMOs and all manner of mobile offerings, and for good reason: These games hemorrhage cash money. That free-flowing river of skrill has to come from somewhere, though, and the mobile research group Flurry seems to have found an answer. Drawing from a sample size of approximately 20 million users across 110 thousand Android and iOS apps, Flurry has determined that people aged 25 to 34 are responsible for 49 percent of the money spent on content in freemium titles. Interestingly, users between the ages of 18 to 24 played the most, contributing 32 percent of overall playtime, but they actually spent far less than their wizened elders. No specific dollar amounts were referenced, but we have a feeling they'd be fairly significant.
Nook WiFi and Kobo eReader Touch Edition assault the Amazon Kindle fortress: a chart
The e-reader market just got a lot more crowded this week with the launch of the touch-enabled Nook and Kobo eReader Touch Edition. Will either device be able to take down the Amazon's industry defining Kindle? We've broken down the specs on the two new readers, the Kindle, and Sony's comparable Reader Pocket Edition (PRS-350SC) to find out which device will come out on top. There's a lot of overlap features between the different readers, like infrared touchscreens and Pearl E Ink displays. All of those important details and more in the chart after the break. Check it out, because you obviously like reading things.
Google Music Beta versus the titans of the streaming music space: a chart
It feels like just yesterday we charted the streaming music landscape, but it's already changed in a big way -- Google is muscling in on the likes of Rhapsody, Pandora and particularly Amazon with its Google Music Beta. Being able to take 20,000 of your personal tunes, stream them over the web and cache them locally on your device isn't functionality to sneeze at, so it's time we updated our charts. After the break, see how the big streaming services stack up.
Visualized: Google charts the rise and fall of United States revenues
Where would we be without Google? Well, we wouldn't have pretty charts to gawk at, for starters! The Mountain View squad has pulled 10 years' worth of fiscal data from the US Census Bureau and compiled it into some gorgeous, infinitely sortable, and re-organizable graphs. They inspire both our admiration and apprehension, as their lines illustrate most starkly the shrinkage that replaced US economic growth over the latter half of the last decade. We've only picked out a few of the big states here, but all 50 are in Google's public database -- why not hit the source link and check up on your local governors' pecuniary (mis)management skills, eh?
iPad gets approval from FAA to replace paper flight charts and maps
The Federal Aviation Administration is moving with the times, it would seem, as it has just granted the first approval for the use of iPads instead of paper charts for informing airline pilots while on duty. There are already a number of EFB (electronic flight bag) devices in use, however the iPad is by far the cheapest and most portable one that's been validated yet. Executive Jet Management, a charter flight operator, went through three months of testing with the iPad, wherein it was used by 55 pilots on 250 flights, in order to obtain its FAA license to rely exclusively on the Apple tablet for its in-flight mapping data. Other airlines will have to go through the same process in order to dump their big stacks of paper charts for a slinky slate, but the important thing is that the precedent has been set. As to redundancies in case of failure or a software crash, the likeliest scenario is that pilots will carry a spare iPad with them, though there wasn't even a single (software) crash during the trial period -- which also included rapid decompression and electronic interference testing. So there you have it, the iPad's found itself a grown-up job just in time to retire from its throne as consumer sales leader. [Thanks, Andrew]
HP TouchPad vs. iPad vs. Xoom vs. PlayBook: the tale of the tape
At last, the webOS-empowered TouchPad, HP's answer to the growing tablet market. And make no mistake, it's coming in with guns blazing -- specs-wise, the slate stands up pretty well to the competition currently in play (e.g. iPad) and the other up-and-comers not quite out the gate (e.g. Motorola Xoom and BlackBerry PlayBook). Stacked side-by-side, it's clear Apple's entry is lacking a bit in both memory (256MB vs. 1GB for everyone else) and front-facing camera -- not that we expect that to be the case for all of 2011. When it all comes down to it, what'll set these slates apart will be the platforms and software themselves -- should make for an interesting summer, no? In the meantime, for the nitty-gritty on technical specifications, venture past the break.
How the iPad and iPhone shift reading habits
Read It Later is an Instapaper-style platform for saving and tracking various things to read online, and they recently released some interesting information about iPad and iPhone reading over on their blog. The line for when people save articles is pretty constant no matter what hour of the day you're talking about -- we're pretty often browsing for and discovering new things to read all of the time. But when you look at the graphs about when people retrieve those articles on their mobile devices, you see some interesting trends. The iPhone graph, seen above, has lots of little peaks in it, but those peaks come at "in-between" times -- when we're eating some breakfast, traveling via commute or about to go to bed. That's fascinating -- according to this data, the iPhone is really a whitespace device, providing productivity when we don't have access to anything else. And the iPad graph is interesting as well -- as you can see on RiL's page, it sees most of its activity later in the evening, when we're on the couch just relaxing. And there's one more little bit of interesting data -- users who own an iPad are apparently doing less reading on their computers during the day. In other words, they're saving articles specifically for iPad time, because apparently they prefer to do more reading on the iPad itself. Remember, these are brand new categories of devices, and it's really crazy to see how they're changing our habits so quickly. [via TechCrunch]
Samsung Galaxy Tab price wars: US carriers face off
Samsung's Galaxy Tab. You know our thoughts on the device, so let's assume you've passed the "should I buy it?" question and onto the more specific, "whom should I sign on with?" You're certainly not bereft of choices: by the end of November, five of the six largest US carriers (sorry, MetroPCS) will offer the Android slate -- but not all pricing schemes were made equal. Carrier-agnostics, we're here to help! While we've already bemoaned the $50 premium on AT&T's model, we have confirmed there is no activation fee, which narrows the price between it and Verizon's offering to just $15 (and Ma Bell, along with Sprint, seem to be the only two offering a $50 Media Hub voucher). On paper, US Cellular has the lowest two-year cost with $760 on contract, but $15 monthly for 200MB is pretty ridiculous when just $20 gets you an entire gig on Verizon's network, or $30 for 2GB on Sprint. T-Mobile wins the award for the most insane disparity in data offerings: $25 for 200MB, or 25 times the data allotment (5GB) for just $15 more. 'Twas the best of deals, 'twas the worst of deals. If you ask us, there isn't really a clear-cut winner, but we'd definitely contend Big Magenta's got the most alluring on-contract value if 5GB is in the range of your data usage; the equivalent plan costs $60 on Sprint and $50 on Verizon, with the latter offering no discount for making a two-year commitment. Then again, if you're the kind who prefers to be unrestrained and plan to spend $600 regardless, it's Verizon with the most competitive data plans overall. And of course, your decision will undoubtedly be influenced by network performance in your area. Consider yourself informed.
Auto-updating charts with Numbers and Keynote
If you find yourself making the charts for your presentations in Numbers and would like an easy way to update them, the chart updating feature in Keynote does just that. With a simple click, your chart in Keynote is updated to reflect changes made in your Numbers spreadsheet. This feature requires that you start your workflow in Numbers. After creating a chart, copy and paste it over to a slide in Keynote. Now, whenever you click on the chart in your Keynote presentation, a button will appear atop of it. Clicking on the arrow with the two circles on it will update the chart with figures from Numbers. Alternatively, you can click on the "edit data" button (after clicking on the chart) and then "update all" within the data table. However, it's important to note that you must save the Numbers file first before doing this. Otherwise, the changes won't carry over.
