validation
Latest
App allows citizen scientists to track monarch butterfly migration
If you've ever pulled out your phone to take a picture of a butterfly, researchers want your help. A team from the University of Maine is using an app that lets citizens scientists along the East Coast take photos of monarch butterfly migration sites and log details about where they're found. The responses will be compiled in an online database and help researchers determine if their monarch migration predictions are accurate.
EA and Origin plug up unintended game giveaway
EA hosted a survey this past weekend that, when finished, awarded a nice prize: A code to download one free game, under $20, on the company's digital distribution site Origin. Just a few things went wrong, however.It turns out the codes distributed weren't matched up to a specific Origin account; they could be used by anyone. Oh, and the codes worked multiple times, which means users could download as many under-$20 games as they wanted. Oh, and one more thing: Reddit figured all of this out.As you can imagine, all hell broke loose on Origin, as what must have been thousands of users downloaded games like Dead Space 2, Burnout Paradise, Sim City 4, and Mass Effect 2 for exactly zero dollars. The site went down, and when it came back up the codes (which were supposed to work until October 21) had been disabled. Not only that, but all promo codes have been disabled for the time being, apparently.There's no word on if EA will still honor the codes from the survey [see update: They will], or if there will be a new system in place at all, but we can almost guarantee that whatever solution EA comes up with, the IT team will probably have double- and triple-checked it for security, just to be sure. We've contacted EA for comment on what its plans are, and will let you know if we hear anything more.Update: EA has gotten back in touch to say that those users who completed the survey will be getting new codes via email soon, to provide the specified discount. In other words, no more stealing allowed.
ICANN has .xxx domain names? Yes!
The controversial step to approve .xxx domain names has today been taken by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, paving the way for a whole slew of new addresses suffixed by the famous triplicate x. Funnily enough, before the decision was made today, opposition to it was proffered by both conservative groups opposed to pornography and adult entertainment companies fearing they'd be more easily compartmentalized and potentially blocked by overzealous governments. Moreover, every popular adult website at present will pretty much be forced to buy its .xxx version, which, for an industry famous for its frugality, will be an understandably tough pill to swallow. We are surprised not to see the people of Amsterdam consulted, however -- their city's emblem features three Xs too, shouldn't they have a say in this? A further meeting is scheduled by ICANN for June 20th to discuss opening up all possible domain name suffixes to registration, pending the validation of a set of guidelines for approval. That's looking quite likely to be passed too, as the AFP sagely notes that there's a celebratory party scheduled for two days after the event. URLs are about to get a lot more varied, it seems; they're certainly going to feature a lot more of the (English) alphabet's 24th letter, whatever the case.
EpicWin aims to turn your real-life tasks into a social game
Given the amount of iPhone and iPad apps coming out these days, I'm not all that interested in getting excited about an app before it comes out. There's already plenty of games and apps available now, so worrying about not-yet-released apps isn't all that important. That said, this app called EpicWin is gaining quite a bit of attention -- it's a very originally designed to-do list masquerading as a game that gives points for accomplishing things in real life. If this idea sounds familiar, it's because we've seen it before -- Booyah Society was supposed to be a game that rewarded you for real-life accomplishments, and there have been a few other apps like it poking around. Most of them haven't worked very well -- the issue has always been that there's no validation, no proof that you've done what you said you did in real-life. But EpicWin has some solid developers behind it (the folks that worked on Little Big Planet for the PS3, and MiniSquadron for the iPhone), and a very intriguing art style and tone, so maybe it'll be more intriguing than what we've seen along these lines in the past. EpicWin is "coming soon" to the App Store -- we'll keep an eye out for it, and let you know when it's out.
Nokia N98 leak validated by N8, is there a QWERTY slider brewing up in Espoo?
Just gaze upon those curves up above and tell us what they remind you of. Yes indeed, the Nokia N98 -- which seemed so futuristic we were inclined to dismiss it as the product of a hyperactive imagination -- is today looking all too credible thanks to the obvious design similarities it shares with the officially released N8. Starting with the distinctive tapered edges with contrast coloring, moving through the black bezel-sporting display, and jotting down the positions of the Nokia and N00 logos as well as the Options menu, the viewer can't help but be convinced that this February leak came with no small portion of truthiness to it. Now, we don't live anywhere near Espoo, so we can't tell you whether this was just a precursor to the N8, which lost its physical keyboard and N9x naming scheme to become the beastly media phone we know today. But wouldn't it be lovely to believe Nokia's working on all cylinders and planning to introduce a 4-inch QWERTY variant of its new flagship?
WAR downtime and early retail key deadline
[Update 2] We're happy to report that Mythic has re-extended the deadline until the end of August 22nd for all customers of Amazon, GoGamer and the EA Store.Your first day-long binge of Warhammer Online is over and done with, so what's next? If you're Mythic Entertainment you've got from 9am EDT to 1:30pm EDT to get your servers ready for further beatings. Otherwise, four hours is a plenty of time to have some lunch and see a good matinee. It's not really a big surprise that there's going to be some extended maintenance today as the servers have been up and running since last Sunday. It's actually the game's first "weekly scheduled maintenance" in a way.The other piece of pertinent news is that if you didn't enter your retail CD key by 7am EDT today, then you won't be able to login to Warhammer Online until your account is properly loaded with that magical string of numbers and letters. No big deal for anyone who bought their copy in meat space but if you pre-ordered the game from an online store other than Electronic Arts' tiny online abode you may need to start killing in the name of Sigmar and hoping for the best. If you did make your order through the EA Store you'll be happy to know EA should be sending info on how to keep playing until your copy arrives. This is obviously bad good news for anyone who didn't overnight their game from a non-EA online vendor, but it's irrational to expect EA to force Amazon, Gamestop or any number of other stores to immediately validate every single online purchase.[Update] According to a post on the Warhammer Alliance forums, the original date for entering retail keys was Monday, August 22nd. That date has since been removed from the pre-order page and apparently changed to today. Swing and a miss? Definitely. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Safari Tidy plugin
The Tidy plugin for Safari checks websites for (x)html compliance using, what else, Tidy. It is based on an extension for Firefox, but some people like their browsers to have metal interfaces as nature intended. Not only does Tidy tell you if there are errors on the web page you are browsing , it also extends Safari's code view to show the errors/warnings (if any are present) in a nice list.
