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Patch 3.2: Raid lockouts extendable
Man, what a crazy news day this has been, and the day's not even over yet. Blizzard just rolled out a new PTR build, so we took a quick trip to the Patch 3.2 PTR and discovered a whole new mechanic that Blizzard hasn't mentioned yet. It's yet another change to how raiding works, and it's pretty cool. We killed Venoxis in Zul'Gurub and, upon being saved to the instance, noticed that we now had the option to extend our raid lockout -- that is, to make it last twice as long or until the next week's lockout would end. This means that, if your casual guild is a scrappy bunch working on Ulduar, but you can only get to Mimiron each week before the lockout expires, you can extend your current lockout into the following week to get more practice on the bosses you don't get to see as often.Now -- ostensibly -- once you've done what you need to do with your lockout, you can actually remove the raid lockout extension and use your current week's lockout too. We haven't gotten to try it yet, but it looks like the functionality is there. Pretty cool!We'll wait to see what Blizzard has to say about it, but this is great news for smaller or more casual guilds who really want to clear instances and don't mind less loot per week.More shots of the functionality after the jump.
Extending your iPhone's battery
IntoMobile has a few good tips on how to extend your iPhone's battery life, and most of them involve the most obvious thing you can do to keep your iPhone running: cut down on any and all extra functions. They actually recommend to turn off 3G, but you don't have to go that far -- just by holding down the Home button, you can close any background applications sucking up juice. And by resetting your phone, you can do the same thing -- clear out anything running that you're not using.Actually, while I was in Los Angeles last week, I heard the great Leo Laporte mention a great tip on his radio show: turn off the "Ask to join networks" feature in the WiFi settings. If you're like me, you almost always know when there's a WiFi network around that you can use on your iPhone, and so it's pointless (and a waste of battery life) for the iPhone to be constantly searching for one. You can always flip it back on if you do want to do a little poking around, but leaving it off will significantly help battery life.In fact, when in extreme trouble, you can go even farther and just switch the whole thing into Airplane Mode. It'll make your phone useless, but when you really need it -- out on a trip, or waiting to make an important call -- the extra battery time might make all the difference.[via Apple Enthusiast]
