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Date and WoW? The Digg crowd doesn't believe you.
The image says it all (click for a full size version), here. A digg regarding a WoW-themed cake (hey, we've seen some of those recently!) made by a player's girlfriend resulted in the response seen above. What do those 1816 commenters have in common? None of them think you can date and WoW.[Via Joystiq]
WoW Moviewatch: Behold, the power of a GM
Digg is linking to this blog post (who knows how long it will last) about "the Top 10 WoW Exploits of All Time." Like most Digg stuff, it's a few things you've probably seen before, compiled and hyped up to be much cooler than it is. But of the exploits-- Old Ironforge, falling under Stormwind, the airport, and the top of Ogrimmar-- the last one is the most interesting (and not really an exploit). It's video of someone setting up a private server and showing off just how much control a GM has over the game. The comments in Digg point out that these "commands" are probably not what the actual Blizzard GMs use to control the game-- they're placeholder commands created by whoever hacked the server code. And while all of this stuff is pretty cool, we're guessing that if you're actually a GM, the chance to use it is rare-- usually you're fixing tickets, not spawning legendary weapons or Rag in the middle of Stormwind. Still, it's a fun little watch.
Rig of the Year (So Far)
Digg today brings us our first TUAW rig of the day/week/month/year. Owned by flickr user washington_dc_photographer, this workstation sports three 30 inch Apple Cinema displays, 1 G5 Quad, 1 G5 Dual, 1 15 inch PowerBook, 6TB of external storage, 6 CF card readers, and a 15 inch Sony wireless TV. I can only imagine the kind of money that he must have spent on this setup, but I certainly see why this would be needed for a full time professional photographer shooting large RAW files and running Aperture. In any case, this setup certainly sets a high bar for future 2007 rigs, so don't forget to submit yours to the TUAW flickr pool.
Digg Podcasts
Digg just went through a interface overhaul, adding a few new features and surprises to its collection of user-powered ranking tools. A new "Podcasts" ranking area joins the News and Videos sections, allowing users to view and rank popular audio broadcasts, as well as link to those podcasts for download. Unfortunately, this new feature proves to be less compelling than News and Videos because of the relatively stagnant nature of the listings. Unlike the other features which ebb and flow over time, few new podcasts are introduced on a daily or even weekly basis and the popular items tend to float to the top of the list and just stick. Digg's strength lies in tracking trends, and podcasts, unfortunately, don't seem to have trends.Update: read more about Digg's new features here.
Blizzard takes banned player's suicide threat seriously
ClassifiedPeon (who has an awesome name) posts on her LJ about hearing a story on the radio about a kid who got banned from WoW, and then decided to try and bribe his way back into the game. At first, he pleaded Blizz to let him back in, and even offered them money ($3,000 via Paypal, supposedly, though how a kid like this gets money like that who knows). Blue, of course, declined the offer, which is when he sent them an email threatening to end his life if they didn't let him back into the game.And that's when Blizzard got serious. According to the original messageboard where the story was posted, not only did they send the kid an email with phone numbers for depression crisis centers, but a few hours later, the cops reportedly showed up at his door. Blizzard had apparently identified the kid from his IP address, and called the cops on his suicide threat. The story's been posted on Fark.com as well (and Digg also got their say), and the (hilarious) consensus there is that Blizzard did exactly the right thing in calling this little punk out on the stupid stuff he said. If the kid is really suicidal, he does need more help than Blizzard can offer him, and if he was just trying to lie his way back into his account (which is more than likely considering the kid was not only outright cheating, he was also supposedly using a "stolen serial"), he deserves to have the cops show up at his door.Unfortunately, apart from the messageboard post I can't find any actual news source on the story, so for all we know the whole thing is made up by the guy who posted it (and who posted it last January, you'll note). But it's an interesting tale, and it supports my thoughts from the other day: while there are probably some false positives floating around Blizzard's ban list, most of the people they give the heave-ho probably deserve it.
My Dream App Semifinals voting ends tonight
Voting for the Semifinals round of the My Dream App contest ends tonight at Midnight (EDT), and with it, seemingly any chance of Desktop Wars (my original choice) making it to the final round. Digg founder Kevin Rose, Peter Cohen and Jason Snell from Macworld, David Pogue of the New York Times, and netcaster Leo Laporte are just some of this rounds Big-Name™ judges. Everyone who votes in this round will get a free copy of playful recording software Voice Candy.So get out there and Vote! Show your patriotism.... or something like that.
Questions about BitRocket abound
News is coming in via digg commenters and posts on forum threads linked therein which seems to indicate and give evidence that BitRocket uses code taken from the Transmission.app source without giving any attribution as required by the MIT license under which Transmission is released. These accusations are further supported by the fact that the developer of BitRocket, Julian Ashton, previously developed XFactor, a P2P application, which was proven to take code from the Poisoned project, again without proper attribution. Update: Scott, our fearless leader, did some digging and found a post on the forum thread linked that I seem to have missed. According to at least one account, BitRocket does properly credit the source it uses.
Apple Matters launches Macitt, Apple-focused social news site
I knew something was up when I noticed my Apple Matters feed turn brown in NetNewsWire (that color means the feed hasn't been updated in over 60 days), and sho 'nuff, I was right. Today Apple Matters launched Macitt, an Apple-centric social news site (or: 'digg clone', if you wanna go that route). Logins for Apple Matters will also work for Macitt, and all the typical social news features seem to be present. A tabbed panel with a list of categories adorns the top right of the page, while accompanying tabs list top users, a tag cloud and a submit section. Yea, that's right: a big advantage Macitt has over digg's system is tagging, which other social news sites seem to be adopting more and more often.Ultimately, it looks like a strong offering that will probably be well-accepted as long as the word gets around, but I'm starting to worry about an overabundance of social news services. After all, a guy can only take so much socializing before he starts mis-tagging headlines and forgets to vote.
iUseThis
iUseThis is a new site which can be best described as an union between digg and MacUpdate. The front page of the site displays a listing of the most recent updates for OS X software. Registered users can click on the applications they use to, in a sense "voting" for them. The more people using an application, the higher up on the page it is. This lets visitors easily see the most popular software releases at a glance. iUseThis also has the handy feature of storing a list of the applications you use, providing a quick reference if you ever need to re-populate your Applications folder. The developers of the site are also working on an "advanced" recommendation engine that will suggest new applications based on what you currently use. Despite the seemingly complex nature of this idea, its really quite simple when you play with it, and could turn out to be quite cool.Via Phill Ryu
A fun way to stumble upon games online
StumbleUpon is a brilliant service that helps you find interesting websites online with the help of other people. Taking the form of a free Firefox plugin, it feels like a kind of web-wide Digg, where you vote on websites that you like which pushes up that link's popularity and increases the likelihood that another user will visit that page after clicking a Stumble! link in a toolbar. Read more about how it works here.Like Digg, StumbleUpon has a healthy contingent of users that play and read about games (incidentally, I stumbled upon StumbleUpon when I was glancing at Joystiq's traffic referral links), so the suggestions in the video games category are generally excellent. You can try out a demo of the gaming section by clicking the link tagged "online games" which will provide you with an endless stream of direct links to flash games that can literally take up your whole day. If you're looking for a more passive experience, the toolbar also allows you to browse randomly through video game links in categories such as news, video, photos and even Wikipedia pages. One moment you can be reading about the history of gamepads, the next you can be watching the latest footage from Crysis. Random selection at its best.
Inquisitor goes web-based
Inquisitor, the Safari and Camino plug-in that brings Spotlight to searching the web, has been ported to a web-based search engine. Upon entering a search into its pleasantly minimal interface, you will be presented with a list of search recommendations and a variety of search engines to focus on, including digg, Amazon and their A9 search, Flickr, Google, Technorati and Yahoo!. Neat.[via Daring Fireball Linked List]
HDTV on BitTorrent: Soderbergh's next film
Everyone's favorite day-and-date releasing director, Steven Soderbergh recently spoke at the Tribeca Film Festival and had some sharp words for Hollywood's current distribution model as noted in Wired. What they didn't mention was that his next project, a short film for a DVD monthly, will be distributed via BitTorrent. Is he going to be able to redesign Hollywood from scratch one torrent at a time? We don't know but we'll keep our uTorrent client at the ready just in case.[Via digg]
Superman Returns HD trailer available on Apple.com
Supes is back, June 30, 2006. Not really much else to say but...Marlon Brando? Batman made a worthwhile return to the box office last year, and even though we don't go to the movies much, we might have to make an exception.[Via digg]
Widget Watch: Digg Search Widget
Digg is everyone's favorite social news site (with a decided focus on all things tech). With all the things that get 'dugg' it is hard to keep up, and that's where the Digg Search Widget (for Yahoo! Widget Engine) comes in. The widget can search a number of different Digg categories and can display up to 15 items from any Digg RSS feed. That's not all that this little widget can do, so go check it out.Thanks, James.
Buyer's Guide: Graphics cards compared
Choosing a new graphics card can involve a difficult and lengthy hunt for comparative benchmarks to work out where to put your cash. Fortunately, Tom's Hardware Guide have put together a handy interactive comparison chart which can help reduce this problem to the simple act of staring at a few graphs. It may be reasonably old, but it's useful, with a few caveats; not all of the cards were tested on identical systems, so some of the results are a little surprising -- clicking on the individual bars of the results reveals the relevant system specs. Also, although it is "updated on a regular basis", several cards are missing from the list. Still, if you're in the market for a new graphics card, this should help simplify your search. [via digg]
Dolphin Stadium 720p HDTV (worlds largest) unveiled
A while back we told you the Miami Dolphins were building the largest high definition television in the world, They showed it off yesterday for the season ticket holders and now we have video. Even in this relatively low resolution video you can see the incredible clarity and detail present in the 720p LED screen. Although having high definition at the game may seem like overkill, we're sure many of you are buying Dolphins' tickets right now and with good reason.There are actually two of the screens, as you'll notice in the video, both high definition but one is bigger at a stunning 1750 inches. Is Dolphin Stadium going to be the first one where fans buy tickets for a better view of the big screen? Allow stadium jealousy for every other NFL team to begin now.[Via digg & IseWise thanks for the tip!]
Be the first on your block with an HD-DVD drive
If you're really ready for next generation DVDs, this guy on the CDFreaks message boards is selling NEC HD-DVD HR-1100A readers for your desktop PC. Not sure why you'd want one since we don't know when you'll actually have HD-DVDs to play on it and probably no software to play them with, but you would still be first. We've seen commercial Blu-ray players from Japan pop up on eBay before, but this may be the first opportunity to have HD-DVD technology all to yourself, and for only $120.Since you won't be playing HD-DVDs anytime soon, enjoy your stunning 32x CD/8x DVD playback speeds and wonder what might be ... someday. As soon as HD-DVD drives are available from somewhere other than some-guy-on-a-forum, we'll let you know.[via digg]
Battlefield 2142 allegedly confirmed by PC Gamer [Update1]
According to digg, this video trailer from the May 2006 issue of PC Gamer confirms the existence of Battlefield 2142 and its pending release this fall.Feel free to watch those warring mechs, but we'll hold off judgment until we hear the official word from EA/DICE. Do you believe a future ice age will precipitate a global war over arable land? You've been warned.[Update: Scans of the mag have surfaced online. Thanks, Iced_Eagle!]See also: Battlefield 2142 hinted at by Digital Illusions producer EA gobbles up the rest of Battlefield developer DICE [Thanks, Shaved Moose and Einhanderkiller; via digg]
1080i vs. 480p HDTV smackdown on Lord of the Rings
If you have a high definition TV this really isn't news for you, but for your friends and family who don't yet understand the difference this may be interesting. This guy took captures from Fellowship of the Ring, both on DVD and from a high definition broadcast to compare the two. On the first page is a mouseover comparison of the screens at DVD resolution, but if you click them, you can see the difference when the DVD is upscaled to match the high definition resolution.There's a lot to be said for additional visual information, but in the end, do you think this provides a powerful argument for upgrading to HDTVs (and high definition DVD's) or is 480p just fine for you?Thanks for the tip Tyler! [Also via digg]
Where's the Linux Media Center?
If someone has the time to cook up the excellent Xbox Media Center modification, why isn't there a killer media center setup for Linux PC's? Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols investigates, pointing out MythTV and a few others, but seems mostly unsatisfied.Also for the interested is a rundown on how to get MythTV up and running with Linux (via digg) thats a bit less complicated that the guide we previously posted.
