databases
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Director's letter for Age of Conan talks loot, merges, and dungeons
If you've not been happy with loot rewards in Age of Conan, you can take some succor in the fact that the designers aren't happy with them either. The latest director's letter discusses the problem of rewards in the first Dragon's Spine dungeon and explains that the team is trying to create interesting loot without creating a huge power imbalance between new and veteran characters at the cap. While the next few dungeons will fill out the loot sets that have been established, the team is actively working on long-term solutions. Beyond that, the game remains on-track for server merges in the summer, with older unplayed characters moving into "archival" status to make database merges less onerous. The tradeskill revamp and further dungeons are also in the works; Coils of Ubah Khan is nearing launch as the next dungeon. For more details on the updates and discussion of achievements, take a look at the full letter.
DevJuice: Forage offers SQLite query GUI for devs
The OS X Forage (US$9.99) app provides a simple query and editing interface for SQLite databases. This app targets developers who use pre-built databases for iOS, OS X and Web deployment. It enables them to test and refine queries as well as to edit table data, and do so outside of the command line. It's a pretty sweet little app. I was able to open, edit and save updates to a variety of database files. Admittedly, my testing was fairly light, but it easily handled address book and photo databases from the iPhone, which are my primary area of testing, as well as several test databases provided by the developer. Updates are handled as transactions. You can add and change data but the changes aren't stored until you specifically hit the Save Changes button (you see it at the bottom of the table editor, next to the row add and delete buttons). Visual updates (they're subtle -- you may have to change your selection to see them) indicate which items have been changed. You cannot yet revert without saving, but that's something promised for future releases. You create new SQL queries by double-clicking on tables. Each query occupies a tab in your workspace. In the following screen shot I have two query tabs in process. These tabs enable you to tweak each SQL query independently. You cannot, at this time, name the queries, but it's pretty easy to move through the workspace as needed. Yes, the app is in early days, and the only big complaint I have is that the app itself isn't fully stable. I managed to crash it a number of times. The developer assures me that a bug fix update is imminent and will address the problem. For now, what you're buying is an evolving product that shows promise, and one that many developers will find useful even now.
MIT's got a way of using encrypted data without decrypting it, next stop, traveling without moving
Excepting Jersey Shore participants, people generally value privacy and it's a bigger issue when so much data is stored online. Ethical data controllers will keep it encrypted, but much like leaving food in a fridge, you have to take it out if you wanna use it, which is when it's most at risk. A team from MIT, thinks it's found a solution: a database that allows you to ask it questions without taking it out of the fridge... wait, what? CryptDB works by turning data into "homomorphic" information: strings of numbers, which you can then calculate against one another to get the answers you require. The frankensoftware is comprised of other encryption services, layered like an onion -- but capable of switching between processes instantly. The project was funded by Google and Citigroup and has been so successful that DARPA might be rolling some tanks up Massachusetts Avenue to offer the team a $20 million bounty. Head on down to our source link to read the paper that's so complex it made our eyes go cross-eyed.
Wowhead's 12 Killer Days of Khristmas
The Feast of Winter Veil has officially started, and Wowhead is joining in the holiday spirit. The site logo has been made a bit more festive, and the icons for items and users on the forums are now sporting a cheery holly border. They're also running a contest titled (slightly threateningly) "12 Killer Days of Khristmas." Each day between now and December 24, they're giving away fabulous prizes: For phase one of the contest (12/13 to 12/18), winners get a Wowhead Prize Package, containing one of those nifty steins, a (slightly tacky, IMO) K-logo necklace by Killer, an Alienware cap, and a totally rad Wowhead t-shirt.
Wowhead adds group-by-slot and more
Although Wowhead has a blog now, and those of you who (like me) are huge fans of the site are probably reading it already and thus have already seen this news, I figure a good many Insider readers would be interested: Wowhead has released another round of new features. Stat weighting presets are updated for Wrath. If you have any suggestions on how the new presets could be improved, please drop by the thread on Wowhead's forums. Combat ratings (hit, crit, and haste) have been combined across melee, ranged, and spell, to reflect changes made in the 3.0 patch. Filters have been reorganized to cut back on clutter and scrolling. When using stat weightings, you can now group gear by slot (example). If the stat weightings are solid enough, this provides a much prettier (IMO) alternative to sites like Lootrank. I like the "group by slot" especially, for quick access to gear lists. Another set of solid updates by the Wowhead team, making the best database even better. Thanks, folks!
Wowhead's WotLK site is open
The gates to Northrend are open – to the lucky few who have gotten invites into the beta. For the rest of us, the best we can do is follow along on sites like, oh, here, as well as WotlkWiki and others. Now there's one more to add to the list: Wowhead has opened their Wrath site, with details on hundreds of items, quests, spells, and more, as well as the talent calculators we've talked about before One of my particular favorites is the beta patch notes, which are nicely formatted and have links to all relevant spells, abilities, talents, and items mentioned in the notes (super-handy). New data updates are coming in all the time. There are many neat and yet-undiscovered things to be found there, so take a look around, and let us know if you come up with anything interesting.
WOWDB introduces Simplified Chinese language option, promises more upgrades
In more international WoW news, Curse's foray into the realm of WoW database sites, WOWDB, is now available in Simplified Chinese, joining Allakhazam among the major database sites that offer the language. In addition, Curse's announcement post also hints at additional features coming to WOWDB "soon," which seems like it may be a direct answer to Wowhead's recent extensive features upgrade. WOWDB has already been accused of copying Wowhead in the past (and, to be fair, opposite accusations have been made). Of course, Wowhead doesn't yet have a Simplified Chinese language option, so in this case, it seems WoWDB has come out ahead. We'll be eager to see if these new options coming to WOWDB make it stand out from the pack.
WoWWiki levels up
Those of you who have been around for a little while will no doubt know about one of the most useful resources in this World of Warcraft: WoWWiki. If you're new to the party, let me tell you about it. WoWWiki is, as the name suggests, a wiki about all things Warcraft. From boss strategies to patch history to insanely detailed lore, if it's about the Warcraft series, it's probably on there somewhere. And if not, it's a wiki, so you can write it yourself!The occasion for this particular post is that they have just completed some major upgrades to their software and infrastructure. Here are the highlights: WoWWiki is now hosted in a distributed fashion across the Wikia network, which should mean more stability and less chance of catastrophic failure. A new default skin, which looks nice and classy. The OpenSearch plugin is now working again, so you can add WoWWiki as a search engine in Firefox or IE (though I still prefer Firefox's search keywords). Click on the menu by your search field while browsing WoWWiki to check it out. A proper sidebar menu, with links to important parts of the site. This fixes my single biggest complaint about the site, which is that it was hard to navigate. The sidebar is also now customizable; users can pick which widgets they want to see over there, and in what order. This is very cool. A new version of MediaWiki, which brings many feature improvements and bug fixes. Head on over and check it out! And thanks to Kirkburn and everyone else who has helped make WoWWiki such a fantastic site.
Wowhead now knows NPC abilities
Wowhead has gone live with a few new updates to brighten up your April Fool's day, and help you get the pink residue of Hello Kitty out of your eyeballs with some of their tasteful black (just don't check their front page). The new 3D system I wrote about previously has gone live, featuring improved quality, NPC models, armor models, and the ability to preview items on any race or gender character model. Quest tooltips are now supported for sites powered by Wowhead, which includes us. This allows me to mention, for instance, that Sunfury Attack Plans is a good quest to group up for, since the Plans are a group drop. Most NPCs now have a tab listing their abilities. A few NPCs are missing them due to a couple of reasons: no data has been collected on them yet (e.g. Techbot), or there are two (or more) mobs with the same name (e.g. Kael'Thas). This latter difficulty has been fixed, and NPCs affected by it should have abilities listed the next time Wowhead parses data. This last one is what I'm most excited about. It's nice to be able to see what a boss (or just a random mob) can do ahead of time, or, in the inverse, to see what mobs use a given ability. If this had been around a while back, I wouldn't have gotten all excited about Holyform, since I would have been able to tell right away it was just used by some Sunwell trash mob.
More Wowhead goodness
Once again, Wowhead has come forward with a few nice new features. First up, we now have dynamic searching (pictured), possibly spurred on by the new competition: just start typing and your search results appear right below the search box, summoned by the power of JavaScript. This even works in the newly updated Firefox search plugin. It doesn't get much more convenient than that, although I am partial to my keyword searches.Secondly, we have scads of new filters, one of which fills a request from the last post to see all items purchasable with Badges of Justice. We can also filter for quest rewards from a given zone. Furthermore, filters are now usable on more pages: quest subset pages, zone page quest tabs, and token pages. There is a useful filter for items that are new in patch 2.4. It is also possible now to see what items share a cooldown with a given item (example). Finally, quest difficulty levels have been added to quest pages, showing at what levels the quests are red, orange, yellow, green and grey, and forming a nice pretty rainbow. Now where are my ponies?
iWeb 1.1 can handle multiple site databases
I was pretty darn happy with iWeb's update the other day, and good news of feature enhancements is still cropping up. Comments on my review of iWeb's new features pointed out such handy additions as a pop-up calendar when clicking on a blog post's date - great for adjusting its schedule. There are also six new themes that add some much appreciated diversity to iWeb's style.Then today I noticed this Apple Support document that details iWeb 1.1's ability to handle more than one website/database file. Now, you can create multiple database files and work on them separately. In fact, you can keep these files anywhere you want to; not just in your Application Support folder.Check out the Apple Support document for details on how to create a second iWeb database and how to handle working with multiple sites. There are a couple of minor gotcha's, but overall, this should be good news for anyone who wants to use iWeb to create and manage multiple, completely separate websites (publishing to non-.Mac locations, of course).
MySQL and OS X, a happy couple
The Apple Developer Connection has just posted a nice article about MySQL (the famed open source database) and OS X, calling it an 'ideal development combination.' The article reveals that some of the developers at MySQL AB (that's the commercial company that makes MySQL) program in XCode, for a number of reasons. It also talks a little bit about the process of turning MySQL into a Universal Binary (it went well).
TUAW Tip: visit your Library
This tip could definitely be classified as rudimentary to some, but I thought it would be handy to shed some light on a folder in the Home directory that is rarely opened by many users: the Library. For those who sometimes wonder things such as where Safari stores your bookmarks or where Mail.app keeps all those messages you never reply to, your Library folder is calling your name. The Library in your Home folder is where Mac OS X stores all the data you enter into almost any and every application you use. Take a look at ~/Library/Safari, for example (the (~) stands for your Home folder). In there is just about everything Safari stores for you, including your bookmarks and history. There are plenty of other handy folders to check out in your Library, such as the Fonts folder which stores all the fonts you install, but I think the real meat of the Library is the Application Support folder. This is where most applications will store their information, such as Adium extras, Camino/Firefox bookmarks, NetNewsWire subscription information and the database file iWeb uses to create your website.The Library is where (almost) all of it happens boys and girls, so take a look around. There are a lot of handy folders in there, but more importantly: in addition to the rest of the folders in your Home directory, the Library is one of the most vital to back up. So feel free to look around and familiarize yourself with your Library, the "guy behind the guy" of your Mac OS X Home directory.
