bandwagon
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The Daily Grind: Do you dislike playing an "overpowered" class?
In the never-ending cycle of patching, class-tweaking, and talent overhauls, most classes in any given game get their time in the spotlight as the flavor of the month. There has always been a certain sub-culture of lemmings within any given player base who flock to the most powerful classes simply because they represent the path of least resistance to the end-game. While these bandwagon riders are usually acknowledged for what they are, its difficult sorting out who is playing for power and who is playing for more sincere motives.At the same time, it's ostensibly a lot more fun behind at the top of this never-ending cycle than the bottom, so shouldn't players enjoy their moment in the sun, no matter how temporary? And so we ask you, dear Massively readers: Are the benefits of kicking butt in PvP or getting that coveted raid spot worth the cost of being lumped in with the power-hungry lemmings?
Spotting celebs with the iPhone
Obama and Lindsay Lohan are far from the only people rocking the iPhone lately -- a new site called "Coolspotters" claims to track brands and the celebrities that use them, and the iPhone is pretty cool lately. 32 celebrities have been spotted -- everyone from Mike Tyson to Heidi Klum to Rose McGowan (pictured, though that really could be anyone, couldn't it?). In fact, the Apple iPhone is actually the most popular product on the site right now -- one spot above something called the Omnipeace t-shirt (yes, but does it have a multitouch screen?), and two spots above the MacBook Air.Because everyone knows you need a site to tell you that what you own is cool, right? Of course, they are cheating a little bit -- I don't think the fact that Steve Jobs is using something necessarily makes it cool. Otherwise, we'd all have seen celebs toting around Newtons.Still, if seeing celebs use the same product you have is your thing, the iPhone's got you covered there, too. Can't say it influenced my purchase much, but good to see that the rich and famous are catching on to what's been TUAW's favorite tech-cessory for a while.[via Kottke]
University jumps on even bigger bandwagon: free iPhones and MacBooks to students
Oklahoma Christian University? Sure as hell (woops) haven't heard of it either, but they must be the Cal to Abilene Christian University's Stanford (or sub your fav rivalry here) as they seem ready to pony up the cash necessary to fund the next free-gear-to-students publicity stunt. This time the offering is not only an iPod touch or iPhone, but a new MacBook as well -- and to sweeten the deal, current students can trade their machines in for a new one. Your tuition (and tithing) dollars hard at work, OCU parents, students, and alumni.
NYTimes says children's virtual playgrounds are serious business
It's that's time again, gentle reader: the New York Times are taking a look at the financial side of virtual worlds, and analyzing the potential for growth within the market. But instead of focusing on Second Life or World of Warcraft, it's ... WebKinz and Club Penguin.Despite my mental age, until now I've known the bare minimum about either. But now they're big business, and the virtual worlds market is entirely under their thrall. Or so the article claims. There are a few flaws in the article, but there's plenty of food for thought -- could virtual worlds overtake television in the children's entertainment sector? Is there big money in virtual worlds aimed at kids? Or, like the conference last month discussed, how will this influence our children?Nobody really knows, I suspect. Analysts are notorious for being unable to predict what children want, beyond jumping on the bandwagon when it comes into town -- it's not like the 'adult' virtual worlds market, where further growth is guaranteed. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Bandwagon iTunes backup service 50% off on MacZOT today only
Bandwagon, the clever automated iTunes backup service (with a future promise of synching libraries), has certainly been making the discount news lately. Last week they whipped out a deal with DreamHost customers, and now their $24/year service is only $12 at MacZOT today only. I haven't had a chance to leave Bandwagon reliably running to get a good feel for how well it works. For the limited time I've been using it so far though, it has reliably been backing up my iTunes library to my FTP space at the steady upload bandwidth limit I set, and I'm on song 51 now. While everyone at TUAW recommends you secure a good backup solution for all your data, Bandwagon is a great, simple option for alternatively backing up your iTunes library to FTP space that's just waiting for something to store. If you're interested though, you'd better jump on the deal because MacZOT offers discounts on each app for one day only; when they're gone, they're gone.
DreamHost offers free year of Bandwagon iTunes backup and sync service
It sure has been getting easier lately to use an account with web hosting behemoth DreamHost to back up your Mac. We found some good ideas for this back in April, but now DreamHost has gone one step further and partnered up with Bandwagon, a web-based iTunes backup service we found in March. In one of their annoyingly lengthy blog posts (scroll to the end of it), DreamHost unveiled that they are now offering a free one-year membership to Bandwagon's DIY services to all DreamHost customers, available through the end of July. This is a great deal, especially if you have both an expanding iTunes library and a massive chunk of storage at DreamHost just waiting for something to do.To access the offer, current DreamHost customers need only to go to the new Partners Page in the DreamHost control panel, then click on the Bandwagon logo to be taken to the Bandwagon signup page with the coupon code already inserted. The rest of the setup is pretty straight-forward, though I think I should share the solution I developed for a slight snag I ran into: For whatever reason, Bandwagon's FTP client couldn't log into my DreamHost account to begin uploading my iTunes library until I created a brand new FTP user. I don't know if this will hold true for everyone, but it's probably a good idea from a security standpoint anyway, take that advise how you will.So far, after finally signing up for Bandwagon and getting everything going, I'm pretty happy with the service. Bandwagon's account manager can display statistics of what kinds of data and how many you have stored online. I'll have to see how the rest of the upload process on my 6396 item iTunes library fares before I say much more, but until then this sounds like a great deal that DreamHost customers shouldn't pass up.
Bandwagon iTunes backup revamps pricing plans
As Mat noted a couple weeks ago, the ambitious team at Xackup announced, then thought better of it and retracted, Bandwagon: an unlimited-storage service for iTunes backups to run over your Internet connection. Greedy fiends that we iTunes users are, with visions of multigigabyte libraries dancing in our heads, we apparently shocked and awed Bandwagon into the just-announced revamped pricing plan. The new plan offers iTunes backup for $1 monthly, and backup + sync between two Macs for $1.50. Cheap, no? The catch: this is BYOS -- bring your own storage. At launch the service will support backup to Amazon's S3 cloudisk service, with basic FTP and Omnidrive links to follow within a month or two. The Bandwagon blog details the changes here and explains more of the why here. Considering that Xackup is also launching Xackmail (Mail.app & Outlook backup) and Neverfuget (iCal backup/sync to Backpack) tools, this company is making a serious play for Mac home/net backup customers on all fronts.Will Bandwagon pull you onboard? I might consider it myself, and work out a "homebrew co-lo" agreement with friends or family to put a spare drive and FTP access at their place, reciprocating with the same at my place -- or just bite the bullet and start paying Amazon for disk space.[via UneasySilence]
Xackup bandwagon iTunes Online Backup Service
We've mentioned previous efforts to roll your own online iTunes backup using Jungle Disk and Amazon's S3, but frankly that seemed like a little bit of a hack, and potentially opened you up to some surprisingly large fees. Now Xackup is introducing an all-in-one iTunes online backup services called bandwagon, which uses S3 as well, but is mediated by Xackup, so the pricing is fixed at $69 year (introductory price) for unlimited storage. Xackup also includes a client, which sits in your menubar (right) and allows you to control the backup and restore process (e.g. selective backup/restore, search, etc.). Unfortunately, it appears that bandwagon is strictly a backup service and does not offer on-the-go access to your music (though I suppose in principle you could use it with your notebook to download particular tracks or albums you had previously uploaded from your desktop). Unfortunately, I can find no information on the bandwagon site concerning bandwidth limitations, if any.As I noted before, bandwagon is presently available (until the end of February) for a special price of $69 for one year of unlimited storage, after which the price will jump to $99/year. If you want to try it first and see how well it works, they also have a 30-day demo of the service available for $1. Thanks to those who sent this in![Via MacNN][Update: the Xackup people have pulled the service because "the response has been overwhelming... [and they] underestimated the demand." They say their long-term pricing plan is "as yet undetermined."]
