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NBC's Peacock streaming service may be free for everyone
With the streaming wars heating up -- Apple TV+ debuted today and HBO Max launch details were announced this week -- there are still some services that have a few cards to play before they start to roll out. Among them is Peacock, NBCUniversal's offering, which might very well be free for everyone when it debuts in April.
Twitch is cashing in on your love for Overwatch League
The Overwatch League is blowing up and Twitch wants to make some extra money off its exclusive streaming partnership. To encourage viewership, you'll be able to earn Overwatch League Tokens (what you use to buy League skins). You'll pick up one token per live map finish, and a "percentage" of viewers of the "conclusion of the final map" during a live 'cast will randomly win 100 tokens.
Hulu Plus adds new and classic CBS shows, boosts Kids offering with Fraggle Rock spinoff
More than a year after CBS struck a deal with Hulu to stream its shows on the latter's subscription service, and the Tiffany Network has finally agreed to add even more programming to the mix. About 2,600 episodes, to be exact. The addition includes full-length videos from classics such as The Brady Bunch, Cheers and Happy Days, along with titles like United States of Tara and Everybody Loves Raymond. This arrives on the heels of last week's announcement that CBS agreed to an exclusive partnership with Hulu to stream complete past seasons of Sherlock-inspired Elementary along with police drama Blue Bloods. If you prefer something a little more kid-friendly, Hulu has plans to expand its kids programming as well. It just signed a deal to be the exclusive US distributor for The Doozers, a spinoff of the popular '80s children's show Fraggle Rock. It's marked as a "Hulu Original" even though it's already aired elsewhere in Australia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and will be available on Hulu starting April 25th. Hulu also recently announced a deal for the Pokemon franchise and plans to bring classics like Charlie Brown and Strawberry Shortcake on board as well. The year's barely started and it looks like the streaming service is already making good on its promise to add even more content to its library.
SK Telecom utilizing Multi Carrier technology to improve LTE service, roaming
South Korean wireless carrier SK Telecom has officially begun the commercial rollout of its Multi Carrier (MC) network. The technology, which will be available in twenty-three cities by the close of 2012, will allow equipped devices to seamlessly wander between the 800MHz and 1.8GHz LTE frequencies (while also adding 20MHz of uplink/downlink spectrum). Aside from improving throughput and coverage within the country, SK hopes the addition of the 1.8GHz frequency to its handsets' repertoire will provide customers with a better LTE roaming experience when abroad -- a handful of Asian and European nations have settled on 1.8GHz as their Long Term Evolution band of choice. New devices, with compatible radios, will be necessary to leverage the Multi Carrier goodness, although the carrier did note that Samsung's ever-popular Galaxy S III would support the hotness. We would like to raise our glass to SK Telecom and offer a toast to the bright future of multi-band high-speed wireless networks. Cheers!
iPhone 5th anniversary flashback: Welcome to 2006 and the height of Apple Phone predictions
Happy 5th birthday, iPhone. Looking back, 2006 was an awesome time to be rolling in predictions. The drumroll for the iPhone was steady, furious, and demanding. As the tempo grew as Macworld 2007 grew near, everyone was hoping for something amazing, and Apple delivered. Five years after the device finally debuted, and customers got their hands on this amazing device, we raise a toast to the iPhone. Cheers! Recent Apple patents for phone, PDA, new cube? Here we go with the Apple patent game again, and this time around it looks like we have blasts from the past and the future. Engadget first tracked down a patent filed by Apple yesterday (pictured... More Apple tablet rumors Here's the rumor that won't go away. United States Patent Application #20060026536 (which features the signature of Jonathan Ive) concerns "...Methods and systems for processing touch inputs are... Taiwan manufacturer gets order for Apple "iPhone" handset Hon Hai, aka Foxconn Electronics, won't comment or confirm, but the cat seems to really be out of the bag now. This latest batch of iPhone reports feels like less of a rumor than previous... Also of interest: Rumor: Apple iPhone could be sold unlocked? Rumors: Google and Apple sitting in a tree? iPhone not going to be called iPhone? Concept-iPhone Compendium Would you buy an iPhone? More 'evidence' of a looming iPhone uncovered TUAW predictions for Macworld 07
Overheard@GDC: The craft of mining
Minecraft creator and recent millionaire Notch held a fireside chat with Spyparty's Chris Hecker, seated alongside a pixelated fire roaring across a plasma screen in one of the large halls at GDC. Hecker and Notch kicked off the chat with two bottles of Sierra Nevada and a cheers, and for one hour, a roomful of fans and developers listened to the pair of them talk about the intricacies of Minecraft's development in some of the most riveting, "you had to be there" moments.But one thing Notch said applies to everyone, even those who weren't cool enough to be in the room:"There is one thing that hasn't been found," he declared, referring to the Easter Eggs and cool tricks buried in Minecraft gameplay. Grab a beer (or legally applicable beverage) and get diggin', folks.
Gearbox and Claptrap honor late Borderlands fan with eulogy, NPC in sequel
Michael John Mamaril was a huge Borderlands fan, until he died of cancer last month at the age of 22. His friend Carlo, also a Borderlands fan, asked Gearbox Software to have the game's snarky robot, Claptrap, eulogize Mamaril. Gearbox did, and it has also promised to include Mamaril as an NPC in Borderlands 2. You can hear the heartfelt eulogy from Claptrap and Gearbox on Soundcloud. Gearbox has established itself as a pivotal figure in the Borderlands community, outside of simply creating the game. In April, Gearbox had Claptrap help a man propose to his girlfriend, and now we've seen the deeper side of its indulgence. Cheers, Gearbox, Carlo and, most of all, Michael John Mamaril.
Amazon Prime Instant Video is adding CBS TV shows, including all of Star Trek
Looking for a Netflix alternative once the price for streaming and discs combined jumps in September? Amazon Prime Instant Video is becoming an increasingly appealing option, especially now that it announced TV shows from CBS are coming to the all-you-can-eat video streaming service this summer. The deal appears to be similar to one CBS reached with Netflix earlier this year, also including the complete Star Trek series among 18 "popular TV shows" with complete seasons available. Including the new selections from CBS Prime Instant Video is claiming over 6,000 movies and TV shows available, a number which is still dwarfed by Netflix's Watch Instantly library but does include those shipping benefits on purchases. Since we love free shipping and Frasier, it's a win / win for us.
Netflix signs up some TV shows from CBS' library for Watch Instantly streaming
Let's be honest, as much as we all like to play film snob, we're thinking more of you watch Family Ties, Star Trek and Cheers than the works of Bergman and Kurosawa. As long as that's the case, perhaps the pain of losing Criterion's content to Hulu Plus will be eased by word of a new deal with CBS bringing a slew of its older shows including the aforementioned plus Twin Peaks, The Twilight Zone and newer-but-not-new shows like Medium to the service for two years starting in early April. No word on how big of a check the now-20 million strong Netflix had to cut to pull this off, but the deal is non-exclusive, so you could see all of these on Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Redbox or... you get the picture.
App Store Lessons: App Emergencies
Bad things happen. Despite all your user testing, sometimes an iPhone app release hits the wild with unexpected results. I recently heard about one application upgrade that passed Apple review, but that crashed when run on handsets that had a previously installed version of the app. Another app experienced data corruption when incoming phone calls interrupted file write operations. So you're a developer, and this happens to you. What do you do? Developer Emanuele Vulcano issued some recommendations in a recent iPhoneSDK e-mail group post: First, brace yourself for user rage. Customers aren't going to be happy even though you're going to treat this situation as proactively as possible. Update your application description immediately. Explain what is wrong with the update and why users shouldn't upgrade. Put the word IMPORTANT in capitals. Submit your bug fix and then contact the escalation/approval team email from the developer help pages. Explain what happened. If your situation is critical, they can speed up the review process. Just take into account any time they'll spend before looking at your e-mail. This situation recently cropped up for TUAW reader and iPhone developer Mahmoud and his app BargainBin. "The 3.0 update made BargainBin the only app to monitor App Store price changes and provide push notifications to each user when the apps they care about went on sale. We were so preoccupied with making sure the push notifications and user watch list worked properly, that we overlooked a critical bug. How critical? Well, every time BargainBin was launched to any screen other than the 'Watch List,' the user was presented a screen that said 'no items' rather than the relevant price changes." Absolutely devastated by this error, Mahmoud and his colleagues immediately worked on a bug fix. "We updated the code in about 15 minutes to fix this critical bug. But now it was back to the submission process." This was an update that affected critical application performance. So after submitting his BargainBin bug fix on August 6th in the afternoon, he sent an e-mail to the escalation team. And he got results. Apple's iPhone Developer Program expedited the review, making a one-time exception to their normal process. By the evening of August 7th, the update went live in the App Store -- less than 30 hours later, rather than the 7-14 days for a normal upgrade review. As Mahmoud writes, "Kudos to Apple. This [should make] a nice change from the 'how broken [is] the App Store approval process' articles." TUAW agrees. Way to go, Apple. Want to read more about the story? Pop over to this write-up over at Mahmoud's company blog.
We Cheer track list revealed, features 30 'high energy' songs
Ready, ok! Hey, you waggle fans! Stand right up and clap your hands! Namco Bandai has sent along, the complete list of We Cheer songs! There, that can get us motivated to talk about anything. According to Namco, the over-cute cheer squad you see above will jump and shout to the tune of 30 "high-energy master tracks," including artists such as Boys Like Girls and Paramore, as you wave one or both Wii remotes through the air like "virtual pom-poms." Feel free to check out the game's entire 30 song catalog after the break as you wait for We Cheer to energize retail shelves with pep on September 30. And if this set list doesn't work for you, just remember to be aggressive. Be be aggressive.
Lessons in online gaming circa 1997 hold true today
A lot of things change with the passage of time, but something that hasn't is this post over at Lost Garden. Written by Dani Bunten Berry over then years ago as kind of primer for making sure your online social space was fun. Many of these little snippets of knowledge are perfect for the massively game-space. For instance, the "Norm" effect is a very important aspect of making players feel welcomed into any game. It's named after the character Norm from Cheers, who upon entering the bar is greeted by everyone saying his name in unison. It's a simple thing to do, but having some NPC characters who exist in the game world that will always greet players with their chosen name shouldn't be too tough to pull off. Beyond the Norm effect, there are several other golden rules to consider as well.
