stats
Latest
Hyperspace Beacon: Examining the gear of SWTOR 2.0
The developers at BioWare turned a corner when they redesigned the commendation system for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Most players seem to welcome the simplicity and practicality of the new system coming with 2.0. Reducing the number of comms players have to track allows players to focus on playing the game and not on managing currency. Unfortunately, the gear progression is a bit more like separating M&Ms, making you wonder why there are more yellows than blues and whether there's really a difference between dark brown and light brown. Not to mention that SWTOR proves once again that MMO designers have no idea how to make a decent helmet. PvP gear also has me wondering what returning players are going to think about having to regrind again so soon after a major change with Update 1.6.
Android 4 use finally overtakes Gingerbread, Jelly Bean nears 17 percent
What a difference a month makes. When we last checked in early February, Gingerbread was still the most commonly used major version of Google's mobile OS despite having launched all the way back in 2010. As of the start of March, there's a different story to tell: variants of Android 4 are at last more popular, collectively representing 45.1 percent of active use versus Gingerbread's 44.2 percent. Most of those on the newer OS are still using the 2011-era Ice Cream Sandwich, although we have good news again when Jelly Bean has grown to represent 16.5 percent of current users. There's a long distance to go before any one version of Android 4 surpasses Gingerbread, but the gap is closing fast.
The Daily Grind: Should gender and race matter in MMO character creation?
Camelot Unchained, Mark Jacobs' upcoming RvR-based MMO, is dipping into the old-school well in more ways than one. One design feature that caught my eye is the promise that racial and gender choices will influence character stats. MMO players are pretty used to the ancient RPG idea that some races or species are going to be better at magic or archery or punching people in the face or pressing Will of the Forsaken than others, but non-cosmetic gender differences are something that very few MMOs embrace. Even accidental gender imbalances send players into a tizzy. The implication in CU is that these initial starting stats will be changeable based on what characters actually do, such that an Elf woman who does nothing but swing hammers will bulk up or Viking thug who practices his poetry will see that reflected in his charisma skill (I am making these examples up). But the idea that my character might start at a stereotypical disadvantage still bugs me and makes me wonder how many min-maxers out there will just play to those stereotypes because they feel they must, thereby homogenizing the character makeup of the whole game. What about you guys? Do you think that gender and race/species should matter in MMO character creation as it matters in certain other RPGs? 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!
NBA gives casual fans and armchair GMs access to the league's entire statistical history
The odds of rising from NBA stat junkie / forum poster to Houston Rockets GM like Daryl Morey did are slim, but thanks to the new NBA.com/Stats page fans have access to more data than ever before. Until now, only league and team personnel have had access to the NBA's complete official stats -- media got access last spring -- with box scores that go as far back as its start in 1946-47, individual stats for anyone who has ever played in the league plus advanced statistical breakdowns and rankings of best lineup combinations. Fan sites like Basketball Reference have filled in the gaps in the past, but this should bring a new level of accuracy and analysis to bear. Access to these stats means we can evaluate games at a much deeper level to know precisely why the Lakers are so bad this season, or which combinations of players are giving the Knicks their best advantage. SAP announced the project back in July as a part of its marketing deal with the league, as it gets to show off its database chops building a system that can handle such a large number of requests on so much info. Hopefully other leagues follow suit and encourage this level for interaction with fans, although we suspect it would take more than a few Moneyball-esque calculations to fix squads like the Bobcats. Hit the source link below to satisfy a jones for numerics or find the perfect angle for your LeBron vs. Kobe argument, although last night's All-Star Game may have given all the ammo necessary.
Chitika: All versions of iOS 6 now account for 83.1% of iOS traffic
The folks at Chitika have just released the results of a study looking at iOS version distribution post-iOS 6.1.1. The numbers are quite amazing; all versions of iOS 6 (6.0, 6.1.0, 6.1.1) now account for 83.1 percent of all iOS traffic. At this point, only about 12.2 percent of all iOS users are still on iOS 5, while approximately 5 percent of total iOS users are using earlier versions of iOS. Once again, this number points out the fragmentation that is rampant in the Android OS world. Google's numbers indicate that only 42.6 percent of Android users are running devices on Android OS 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich") or 4.1-4.2 ("Jelly Bean"). Android 4.0 hit the market on December 16, 2011, Android 4.1 on July 9, 2012, and Android 4.2 on November 13, 2012. iOS 6 has only been around since September 19, 2012 and has achieved about double the penetration of Android 4.x. Chitika's chart shows another interesting statistic; iOS 6.1.1 achieved about 1.4 percent of all traffic in its first day of release. The chart uses traffic data gathered on February 11 (the release date of iOS 6.1.1) and 12, 2013.
Jelly Bean now on 13 percent of Android devices, 45 percent still on Gingerbread
The beginning of another month marks yet another fancy pie chart on the Android Developers Dashboard consisting of the latest usage statistics. The Dashboard, which reports the percentage of users on each build of the OS based on Google Play Store traffic, indicates that a full 12 percent of Android owners are enjoying 4.1 Jelly Bean, while 29 percent are on Ice Cream Sandwich. This leaves a solid 45 percent of users still flaunting Gingerbread, and a mere 1.4 percent are taking advantage of the most recent build of Jelly Bean (Android 4.2) on a Nexus device. Diving a little deeper in the number crunching, it shows that 42.6 percent of all current Android users are sporting at least Ice Cream Sandwich or later. And to the 0.2 percent of you still clinging onto your Donut devices, we salute you.
Smart textbook maker Kno introduces Kno Me, adding stats to studying
Kno turns old-fashioned educational textbooks into interactive learning experiences. Adding links, multimedia and features like flashcards and quizzes, Kno already offers a powerful experience for students. Of course there are tools for adding notes, comments and such, but each student also has their own account, so those annotations and highlights are available across devices through Kno Cloud. Kno Me, launching today, adds a slew of metrics to help students see how much they are studying and can compare those stats to other students. That might sound a little crazy, but it's really quite useful for students to see how much time they've spent reading, using flashcards and more. Of course all of this looks great on the iPad. After a few minutes of playing with a Kno textbook (they partner with publishers to bring quality, approved content in) I was suitably impressed that this wasn't a CD-ROM fallacy of advancing education. Instead of a ton of flashy elements, Kno adds just enough to the experience to make the information intriguing and useful to students. Kno Me is a great addition to a strong contender in the interactive textbook business. Full press release below. Show full PR text KNO, A LEADER IN EDUCATION SOFTWARE, ASKS STUDENTS "ARE YOU STUDYING TOO MUCH?!?" Introducing Kno Me, a Visual Dashboard for Students to Review Their Own Study Engagement and Even Share with Classmates Consumer Electronics Show 2013, Las Vegas, NV - January 9, 2013 – Today, Kno, Inc., www.kno.com, a leader in education software, launched Kno Me, a personal study dashboard that helps students measure their engagement with each Kno eTextbook they use. Students can check-in frequently to see near real time stats on their study behavior, interaction levels, time management and personal progress. And with Kno Me social sharing, students can opt-in to share their results with peers and even follow the engagement levels of other classmates (perhaps the best student in the class). "The question we want to help students answer is 'How much am I really studying?' If you're a student, you don't know the answer until you get your grade, and if it's bad, it's too late," said Osman Rashid, CEO and Co-Founder of Kno. "Now, with Kno Me, you see near real time progress and get smart feedback on your own study habits, and you can compare results with your classmates. Kno Me is like a personal learning GPS that helps you locate where you are in your studies and see where you need to go." The study insights available from Kno Me are based on Kno's proprietary analytics platform, including the average time a student spends interacting with the textbook and time within specific chapters, the percentage of pages in the chapter the student annotates, and the percentage of glossary terms the student has mastered. Kno Me is available on all Kno interactive textbooks for iPad, Windows 8, and web browsers and will soon be available for Android and Windows 7. Kno is committed to making learning more engaging and efficient. Independent research shows that making content interactive promotes engaged learning and helps students retain information. And when students use features like highlighting, journaling, and flash cards, students no longer need to spend time preparing study materials-they can simply study. Kno offers interactive textbooks for K-12 and higher education students. At Kno.com, students can find over 200,000 digital titles from 65 leading textbook publishers. Kno's digital textbooks provide over 70 interactive features that are designed to increase learning efficiencies and engagement, saving students up to 90 minutes a week in study time per book. About Kno Kno, Inc. is an education software company on a mission to make learning engaging, effective, and social for students. Osman Rashid, the co-founder of Chegg, and Babur Habib, a consumer electronics veteran, founded Kno, Inc. in May 2009. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, FLOODGATE and GSV Capital and is based in Santa Clara, California. For more information, go to www.kno.com, or follow Kno at http://facebook.com/GoodtoKno and http://twitter.com/GoodtoKNO
One million players have completed Halo 4's campaign
The official Halo Waypoint blog has shared a number of stats and figures from Halo 4's first week, revealing that over a million people have already completed the new game's campaign since launch; six percent of which have finished the game on its "Legendary" difficulty setting.All of that campaign playing took up 13.5 million hours of gameplay; however, War Games was actually the most popular game mode, with four million users clocking 16 million hours of competitive multiplayer within the first five days of launching. 1.9 million hours were spent playing Spartan Ops, Halo 4's ongoing episodic co-op mode.And if you're wondering just how much overall death Halo 4 has caused, 343 says that 4,590,416,285 kills took place in all of the game modes within the tracked five-day period. That's over 4.5 billion kills, between fellow players, the Covenant, and the new Prometheans. With all of that killing, it's no wonder the planet is called Requiem.
Nexus 7 sales clocking in at close to a million per month
While it was pretty clear that ASUS' Google-partnered Nexus 7 contributed heavily to the Taiwanese maker's healthy Q3 results, there was no official confirmation on its exact sales figures so far. ASUS CFO David Chang has now come clean and told the WSJ that the 7-incher is close to touching the one million per month mark, just about double the rate of sales at its launch. While this number is a fraction of the iPad's sales (14 million in the last quarter alone), it could well go up due to the recent price drop and the addition of new 32GB models to the portfolio. On the flip side, the Nexus 7 is sure to face heat from close rivals, the Kindle Fire HD and the 7.9-inch Apple iPad mini, while the mega-spec Nexus 10 will also entice some buyers away from ASUS' reach.
Apple iPad sales topped 100 million two weeks ago
Just two and a half years after creating the product line, Apple announced today it has already notched its 100 millionth iPad sold. While we're still expecting to see a new, smaller model (get all the 4th gen info, including the new mini right here) unveiled today Apple is leading off its tablet talk with some chest thumping. According to its stats, it sold more iPads in the June quarter than any one PC manufacturers sold of their entire lineup, a hefty feat even if you take into account customers waiting for Windows 8. It's also referencing data that says the iPad accounts for 91 percent of web traffic among tablets. If that's not enough, there's also love for the education sector with a new version of iBooks author, which should get plenty of use with 2,500 schools in the US using them, and 80 percent of the curriculum available in iBooks. %Gallery-169061% For more coverage, visit our Apple Special Event hub!
Zuckerberg: more than 1 billion people using Facebook actively each month
Active accounts have become one of the hottest currencies online, especially for social networks. Previous boasts by Facebook have been quickly shot down, but this latest number is pretty hard to ignore. According to Zuckerberg himself the site now has 1 billion active monthly users. That's right, one in seven people on the planet logs on to the social network at least once a full moon cycle. The announcement comes via the site's official news blog, which if the numbers are true, could mean most of you have read this already. Zuckerberg broke the news originally in a Q&A with Bloomberg Businessweek, also claiming that the site now has 600 million mobile users.
How to choose between the same pets, but different stats
Something I was surprised to notice when I began collecting battle pets was that the stats were not always consistent within the same pet type. While Mr. Wiggles is always Mr. Wiggles, a rare Mouse does not necessarily have the same stats as another rare Mouse. The inconsistency of stats applies to both purchased pets, like Undercity Cockroaches, as well as wild pets, such as a Cheetah Cub. (Have you killed a cheetah so that you could capture her baby? I have. We are bad people.) At this time, many of us have more than three of quite a few battle pets. Extra quest pets, like Winter's Little Helper, can just be caged and sold (when cageable, of course), since they all have the same stats. but how do you choose which purchased pet you should keep? And what about the wild pets? I'll show you my favorite stat, and you can show me yours.
Pew Research finds 22 percent of adults in US own tablets, low-cost Android on the rise
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that more Americans than ever now own tablets, but if you'd ever wanted some quantifiable data to go along with that homespun wisdom, then the Pew Research Center is glad to help. According to its latest report, 22 percent of US adults now own a tablet of some form. While the iPad remains the dominant player in the space with a 52 percent market share, this figure starkly contrasts the 81 percent share that Pew reported in 2011. As you might expect, Android tablets have made significant inroads and now account for 48 percent of the overall tablet space. Leading the Android charge is the Kindle Fire, which alone accounts for 21 percent of all tablets sold. It's worth pointing out that Pew's survey was conducted before the release of either the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD, which means that even the most recent information is a bit behind the curve. You'll find a press release after the break that provides a much broader take on Pew's latest findings in the mobile space, but those who want to go straight to the meat should hit up the source link below.
ICS and Jellybean now on a quarter of all Android devices, but over half still stuck on Gingerbread
It seems like only yesterday that Google bundled Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 in its little biscuit layers and sent it off into the world (it was December, 2011, actually). That Android flavor has since climbed the charts rapidly, around four percent each month for the last while, and now occupies the ROM on 23.7 percent of robot-based devices -- up from 20.8 percent last month. That's in part due to new devices (like many in China) still coming out of the box with it, on top of older warhorses like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 finally grabbing some ICS. Meanwhile, its smooth-running younger sibling, Jelly Bean, made a slight gain to 1.8 percent of all Google-run slates and phones -- though that will likely change when the Galaxy Note II hits the market en masse and the Galaxy S III OTA 4.1.1 disseminates to all its owners. Meanwhile, Gingerbread still dominates Google OS installed devices at 55.8 percent, probably thanks to delays or denials of newer flavors to legacy devices.
Google Play hits 25 billion app downloads, holds celebratory yard sale with $0.25 games
Google Play crossed a rather significant milestone this morning: something to the tune of 25 billion app downloads. While the accomplishment is weighty enough on its own -- especially given that the store also offers books, music and movies, which aren't included in this tally -- Google is celebrating in symbolic style with a number of apps and games for sale at just $0.25 over the next five days. Among the mix of discounted titles, you'll find publishers such as Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Runtastic and Full Fat. Not to stop there, shoppers will also discover a curated collection of 25 must-own movies, 25 banned books, 25 albums that changed the world and 25 top-selling magazines. With today's announcement, it was revealed that 675,000 apps and games now live in Google Play -- a healthy increase when compared to 600,000 titles and 20 billion installs just three months ago. As you might expect, Apple still claims the largest selection with 700,000 titles in its App Store, although with such a thin separation between the two, we may see Google Play eclipse its rival in short order.
Sky Sports for iPad update brings second screen to UEFA Champions League, Ryder Cup
When you're rooting for your team, one screen is never enough. Sky Sports knows this, and knows it quite well it seems. Hence why the UK Satellite giant is rolling out more of it via its iPad app. Now, as promised, the UEFA Champions League and 2012 Ryder Cup get in on the action. As you would imagine, the update lets users dive into a bunch of stats, game info, live tweets and even allows watching multiple games split-screen stylee. The updated app is available now, in plenty of time for the build up, leaving you free to stock up on snacks and refreshments.
IHS iSuppli: PCs no longer command biggest share of DRAM market
Times change, this is an indisputable truth. But nothing reminds us of this fact as well as a landmark statistic. If there was ever any doubt about the shift towards of mobile computing, then let this be it: personal computers no longer account for the majority of demand for DRAM chips. With 49 percent of all new memory still headed for PCs, it's hardly time to book the hearse for desk- and laptops just yet, but the statistic from IHS iSuppli remind us of the increasing market share that mobiles and tablets are taking. In fact, even though total DRAM shipments for PCs continues to rise, it's estimated that the total share will slip another 6 percent, to 42.8, between Q2 this year and the end of 2013. Of course, this is good news if you have a vested interest in both, not so good if you don't.
Google knows what you did this summer, shares it with the world
What we wouldn't give to have access to Google's treasure trove of human wonderings. Every day millions of folk tell the search giant exactly what they are thinking about, without even realizing it. It's not all take take take, though, as Mountain View has just released some data letting us all know what we and our (geographical) neighbors did this summer. By compiling popular search terms used in Google Maps between May and September, we can see that, while Canadians and the Spanish were looking for the beach, Britons were more partial to a game of Squash, or a trip around Trafalgar Square. Back home, Death Valley, Redwood and Yosemite National Parks were earning the most interest, while Paintball was the top activity -- but we're hoping the two are unrelated. Want to see how the Dutch like to unwind, or how Indians like to cool off? Jump on the tour bus source link to find out more.
MLB At Bat 2012 app update brings new stats overlay, Ford SYNC integration and more
If you're a fan of the MLB At Bat 2012 app on iOS, a new update brings a few noteworthy treats. First of all, iPad users are gifted with a new overlay that puts live stats on top of the action, meaning you won't miss a swing of the bat. Also, Ford SYNC users can now hook it up via AppLink, and get scores, schedules and live audio on the move. There are a handful of other new features, such as social sharing of video highlights and a re-designed news headline (iPhone only). No word on whether Androiders will get the same treatment yet, but for those on the iOS team, strike out on the source link for the goods.
Choose My Adventure: Once more into The Kingdom of Loathing
Wow, how time flies. Here it is, the second-to-last Choose My Adventure for The Kingdom of Loathing. I have to admit I am surprised at how much I am enjoying the experience so far. The reasons I am enjoying it might be surprising, but it's possible that my time with KoL is nothing new. After all, the game is one of surprises and twists as well as options for play. I've also discovered that the world of KoL is a steady one. I really expected it to be much more loosely assembled because the variable pace and lazy artwork seemed indicative of a developer that doesn't care. It turns out that quite a lot of care has gone into The Kingdom of Loathing, whether the developers are aware of it or not. Judging by the podcast they host twice a week, I suspect they are too consumed by developer details to notice just how deep their own world goes. (Developers often get a bad case of tunnel vision.) I find the communication each week to be refreshingly different from what I see from many other developers. Most seem too afraid to say anything at all, much less to host a scheduled podcast on which they curse and discuss game mechanics. So in this last vote of the run, be sure to make your voice heard! Give me advice!
