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Apple Podcasts update makes it easier to find content in your favorite genres
Apple has updated its Podcasts app on iOS, iPadOS and macOS with features that make it easier to find content in your favorite genres.
Twitch nixes Communities, adds tags to improve content discovery
Video game streaming service Twitch launched Communities in February of last year. These were ostensibly hub page for specific games or topics that members could create to help people find content. Now the company will shut these pages down mid-September in favor of a new tagging system. Twitch will also add 10 new categories for streamers to help describe their content for better discovery.
The Daily Grind: Do you have a class (or type) you tend to play in games?
I will freely admit that WildStar has made the Esper look pretty attractive this week, but the fact remains that it's probably not going to be one of my main classes. Sure, it looks cool, but I tend to be more likely to play melee classes, and even more likely to opt for hybrid classes where they're an option. I like being able to kill things with weapons with magical backup, that's just how I roll. Some people tend toward certain roles. Some tend toward certain class types, like "the stealth class" or "the heavy armor guy" or "the pet class where I don't have to really pay attention." Some just have certain archetypes that keep showing up. Do you have a class or type that you tend to play in games no matter what? Or do you just wind up playing whatever strikes your eye during character creation? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
How to use TradeSkillMaster 2
WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! TradeSkillMaster is the only addon you need to make millions of gold, and it's the only way to do that without expending an unreasonable amount of energy crafting and auctioning the items you sell. It's just been completely overhauled for version 2, and you should know that: Version 1 is never being updated again. When it stops working, probably on 5.4 patch day, it's never going to get fixed. Version 2 forces you to completely redo all your settings. There are no imports of your old groups or anything else. Basically, you have no choice: if you want to use TSM (and no other addon comes within spitting distance of being as useful as it for gold-making), you have to upgrade to 2, and you're going to have to redo everything. If you're really unlucky, an addon updater might have already overwritten your old version with the new one and taken all your setup with it. Version 2 took me a few days to get to the point I'm at now where I can do almost everything I did with my version 1 settings. In fact, I found all my experience with TSM 1 caused this process to take longer than it would have if I was completely new to the addon. Some concepts (like groups) are now very simple and intuitive, but it took me a while to get over my experience using TSM 1 groups. That said, once I made the jump, I found that things are faster now and I expect I'll be able to make my gold with less effort. There are some things that are gone (or moved) but once I decided to try going without them, I realized I didn't miss them as much as I thought I would. There's plenty of help, but diving right in, here's what you need to know to get started with TSM 2:
Ask Massively: Feeds and faceplustweets
Google Reader might be on its way out, but old-school RSS is here to stay. If you haven't jumped to Feedly or some other RSS platform yet, July 1st is your doomsday. How is this relevant to your interests and why am I telling you this in Ask Massively? Well, many of you readers probably don't camp our front page, and if you're not into social media and the latest faceplustweet craze, RSS can help you keep up with the parts of Massively you want to read (and avoid the ones you don't).
Namaste Entertainment charts the history of MMOs [Updated]
It's one thing to have a vague sense of what MMOs came out when, but it's another thing entirely to see a huge chunk of history plotted out in one comprehensive chart. It's also dang cool to see. During her research into user-generated content in MMOs for Storybricks, Namaste Entertainment's Kelly Heckman built a giant graphic to get a handle on how games developed over the years. She not only plotted them by year released, but also lumped them in with their respective genres and showed which games inspired others. The end result gives the viewer a bird's eye view of the industry as it's grown in the past decade and a half. "It turned out so well we made the movie with it and plan to release the source so anyone can make a movie with it," Heckman said. You can walk through this giant infographic in the gallery below, and make sure to hit the jump to watch the accompanying video that makes use of the chart. [Update: Here's a direct link to a much bigger version of the infographic.] %Gallery-130322%
Boxee 1.2 update will bring order to apps with categories
It may not be as swanky a revamped browser, but Boxee has revealed that the v1.2 update for the Boxee Box will help users browse through the available apps by adding more categories. NewTeeVee points out a blog post directed at developers to show how their app can be assigned some of the 14 new categories, an upgrade over the three (video, photo, music) available previously. The new version is expected to drop in "a few weeks" so we should find out then what else is in store.
App Store categories get browser pages
Apple has apparently taken another step towards bringing iTunes to the browser, as you can now browse actual categories of the iTunes store right in regular HTML rather than having to click over into iTunes. There's still no support for television or movies, but you can dive in from categories to artists and then even explore and preview songs, right in your browser of choice. Assuming, of course, that your browser of choice is Firefox or Safari -- while Chrome or IE will probably work, we haven't tested them extensively yet. All we need now is for iTunes to cut it out with the automatic jump into iTunes -- even though your browser will load up a real page in the background, the browser store still tries to throw an external link request out to iTunes. Our own Brett Terpstra found that when you copy or type a browser link directly into your browser, the store won't try to open, but if you click in from an external link (like those here on TUAW), iTunes will try to open. Apple may not want us just browsing iTunes outside of the official app, but it would be nice for those of us who are pointing out iTunes content to folks who may not actually have iTunes installed to have a link to share. For more fun tricks you can do with do with browser-based app store links, look here.
The new WoW Insider and the launch of Wrath of the Lich King
Finally, the day has come. Our designers here at WoW Insider have been working on a long-awaited new design for the site, and finally, you get to see the fruits of their work. Welcome to the brand new WoW Insider, just in time for the launch of the game's second expansion.And that's not all -- from now (actually, we kicked off this morning already) until Wrath's launch, we're going into overdrive. We'll have multiple contests every day until November 13th -- we're giving away some of the coolest stuff inside and outside of the World of Warcraft, and all you have to do to win it is keep an eye right here on the site (yes, even you too, EU folks). As we announced a few days ago, we're hosting multiple reader meetups all across the country, too, so if you're in the area, you can come with us to get your copy of Wrath at the midnight launch, and maybe win some stuff there as well.And of course, we'll have what we always have: unprecedented coverage of this game and its players. Stay tuned for all the Wrath previews we can post -- we'll have looks at all the new zones in Wrath of the Lich King, your guides to which quests to look for while leveling, walkthroughs of all the new instances, where and when to get your new addons, and we'll let you know exactly where to spend your next ten talent points and what to do with your new talents and abilities. If you need to know something about Wrath of the Lich King, it'll be on this site just in time for launch.After the break, find out what's new around WoW Insider's redesign.
Apple.com has new Spotlight interface for search
While it was hard to miss that Apple.com received a complete redesign with this week's WWDC events, the finer points of the site's new functionality are now coming into the, erm... spotlight. Eagle-eyed TUAW readers have been commenting and reporting on a number of interesting new enhancements to apple.com's abilities, such as the horizontal sub-navigation that Gruber mentioned on some of the product sites (try apple.com/mac to get an idea). A really cool new (and long overdue) feature to searching Apple's site is more or less the web-based equivalent of the Spotlight interface. As you can see, the search box is pinned to the top right of ever page at apple.com now, and running a search produces near-instant results in a drop-down menu style interface. A 'View all search results' option at the bottom of that menu displays the page I snapped for this post, complete with a more robust and categorized list of search results that can be expanded and collapsed, helping you find just what you need far more quickly. The site even appears to be using cookies to store a recent list of your searches, keeping them always accessible at the far right of this search results page.Altogether these are some very, very welcome new tools for searching Apple's exponentially growing product, information and support material. It should be noted, however, that the last update Apple made to their discussion forum still holds true, and that includes its own powerful search tools; this spotlight UI seems to apply only to the rest of apple.com.
iSticky offers notes with reminders, sending via Bonjour, more
Sticky notes are great, but sticky notes that can have reminder alarms, be sent to other Macs via Bonjour, sent over the web and SMS, archived and more - are better. If any of these features have your inner nerd excited, then check out iSticky - a sticky note app on steroids. Also on the feature list are themes, categories, encryption, document linking and more.While we don't think iSticky is Universal yet (at least, the author isn't bragging about it on the site), a demo is available. iSticky also offers a wide range of licenses depending on which features you need and whether you need a family/business pack. Prices run from $16 USD (single license, Bonjour sending but not over the web) up to $90 USD for a 12 license pack with all the toppings. Check it out if Apple's Stickies just aren't cutting it for you anymore.
