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Yahoo is building a new calendar app with help from the creator of Sunrise
Yahoo has recruited Jeremy Le Van, one of the co-founders of Sunrise, to help design its new Day calendar app.
The Daily Grind: Should MMO nights be darker and different?
While some MMOs don't even bother with a proper day/night cycle these days, the ones that do have pretty well-lit nights. It's basically day with a blue filter overlaid for thematic purposes, but if you stub your toe, it's usually because you're not paying attention, not because you simply can't see the root in front of you. But there are those who would very much like a more immersive night: darker, different, and even more challenging. These nights might require a torch or flashlight to see what's in front of you, and they may also feature a different set of nocturnal beasts that emerge when the sun goes down. What if nights required warmer clothes to enable us to brave the colder environments? If you had your druthers, would you like your MMO nights to be darker and different? How so? 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!
iOS 5 features: Calendar
iOS 5 has arrived, and with it come some really nice updates to the Calendar app. There aren't a whole lot of new things; the app's basic functionality of saving events on dates and showing them back in various views hasn't changed, but there are a few new elements. First up are the new views. On the iPhone and iPod touch, you'll be able to see a week view where you can scroll all the way through from Monday to Sunday. On the iPad there's a new year view, where you can pick up a wide angle look of what your schedule is like. In the views where it's appropriate, you can now drag event borders around to set up the various end and start times for each event (dragging a meeting from 1 pm to 2 pm to last for an hour, for example). You can add, rename, and delete whole calendars right on your iOS device. And there are some subtle features that really make the app more polished. You can now see event times on the month view -- before iOS 5, you could only see that there was an event there, not when it started -- and when you turn pages, you'll get a nice iBooks-like effect. Calendar is better than ever in iOS 5. Whether you're a longtime Calendar user or are just setting it up to sync up with your standard calendar service, these new changes should be quite helpful.
The Guild Season 5, Episode 6: Revolving Doors
<a data-cke-saved-href='http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-5-episode-6-revolving-doors/y079whq8?src=v5:embed::' href='http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-5-episode-6-revolving-doors/y079whq8?src=v5:embed::' target='_new' title='Season 5 - Episode 6 - Revolving Doors'>Video: Season 5 - Episode 6 - Revolving Doors</a> The struggles of everyguild The Knights of Good continues as Codex tries to solve the game's problems, Clara wedges her way in with the steampunk crowd, and Tinkerballa dons a weird costume replica of herself. Vork and Bladezz continue their con pirate antics with a very special guest star, as their strategy continues to bring in business and Vork rebuffs celebrities. This episode felt much more transitory than the rest, bridging the two parts of the season together, as most of the first-half conflicts have been solved for Codex, and new revelations and priorities have gripped the guild at the gaming convention. Zaboo's seat saving business is eventually going to deal with some sort of consequence, which will be pretty fun to watch as his 48-hour no-sleep binge comes to a grinding, probably catastrophic halt. Oh, how we love watching the guild in conflict.
The Guild Season 5, Episode 5: Focus problems
<a data-cke-saved-href='http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-5-episode-5-focus-problems/y0yczxc7?from=us-Video&cpkey=fad91ee7-47a4-45df-8f80-d70d79232a12%7c%7c%7c%7c&src=v5:embed::' href='http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-5-episode-5-focus-problems/y0yczxc7?from=us-Video&cpkey=fad91ee7-47a4-45df-8f80-d70d79232a12%7c%7c%7c%7c&src=v5:embed::' target='_new' title='Season 5 - Episode 5 - Focus Problems'>Video: Season 5 - Episode 5 - Focus Problems</a> Episode 5 of season 5 of The Guild has our favorite guildies stuck in their hotel room doing their best to raid while the pressures of the gaming convention force everyone to abandon the game to be social. Felicia Day's character Codex makes some big strides this episode with maybe-real-probably-not love interest Zaboo, new plot points are set up for Tinkerbella at a superhero party, and Vork (Jeff Lewis) continues to be the funniest guy on the internet. The Guild continues to shine this season after hitting a great stride last season that continues on into season 5. Zaboo's Master Chief bodyguards are fun, and the Cheesy Pirate Internet Kid videos (especially the one with FemShep) continue to make the show hilarious. Clara's weird new obsession with steampunk also makes an appearance. Do you love The Guild? We love The Guild. The Guild airs every Tuesday on Xbox Live and Thursdays on MSN and Bing videos.
How the iPad and iPhone shift reading habits
Read It Later is an Instapaper-style platform for saving and tracking various things to read online, and they recently released some interesting information about iPad and iPhone reading over on their blog. The line for when people save articles is pretty constant no matter what hour of the day you're talking about -- we're pretty often browsing for and discovering new things to read all of the time. But when you look at the graphs about when people retrieve those articles on their mobile devices, you see some interesting trends. The iPhone graph, seen above, has lots of little peaks in it, but those peaks come at "in-between" times -- when we're eating some breakfast, traveling via commute or about to go to bed. That's fascinating -- according to this data, the iPhone is really a whitespace device, providing productivity when we don't have access to anything else. And the iPad graph is interesting as well -- as you can see on RiL's page, it sees most of its activity later in the evening, when we're on the couch just relaxing. And there's one more little bit of interesting data -- users who own an iPad are apparently doing less reading on their computers during the day. In other words, they're saving articles specifically for iPad time, because apparently they prefer to do more reading on the iPad itself. Remember, these are brand new categories of devices, and it's really crazy to see how they're changing our habits so quickly. [via TechCrunch]
We Rule hits a million sessions in 24 hours
Ngmoco CEO Neil Young tweeted on the official account that We Rule has reached a million app sessions in a 24 hour period, which means we can probably call their big freemium experiment an early success. We've seen quite a few people talking about We Rule and their accounts in our comments and on Twitter, so it's definitely out there and being played. But of course we have no idea yet just how well it's doing in terms of turning over in-app purchases and making money. Still, if his talk at GDC is any indication, Young doesn't really care: their main goal is to get lots and lots of people using the app, and a million sessions in a day sounds like they've either got that or they're well on their way. Which means you will probably see lots more of this on the store in the near future -- Godfinger is due out soon from Ngmoco (it's currently in their Canadian App Store "beta"), and of course we've heard that they've got no less than six iPad titles planned, undoubtedly some due soon after the April 3rd launch. Ngmoco's freemium model had its naysayers when the company first revealed their plans, but it looks like they've all quieted down -- they're off playing We Rule.
New Gran Turismo 5 trailer shows Toyota FT-86 concept driving through your dreams
It's time for another edition of Expensive and Awesome Stuff That You'll Never Be Able to Do! Over at the Tokyo Auto Salon 2010, Polyphony Digital showed off a "GPS-track day unit," which is a little box with a card slot in it that you install in a very expensive car like, say, the Toyota FT-86G Concept, as seen above in the new trailer for Gran Turismo 5. That unit will then record your likely very expensive real-life run around a driving track like the famous Nürburgring lap, at which point you'll be able to pull a card out, plug it in your PS3, and then see the real-life run simulated inside the video game itself, where you can watch or even ghost race against it. It was also mentioned at the Auto Salon that there will be a 3D version of GT5 out "as soon as 3D TVs become available on the market," so presumably later this year. Thanks for watching! Next time on Expensive and Awesome Stuff That You'll Never Be Able to Do: land your very own helicopter on your very own superyacht. [Thanks, Steliosco!]
Forum Post of the Day: Get your mum to draw the Lich King
Adding your mom's worldly wisdom to any situation always makes it better, and clearly the EU forums agree with this sentiment! Elbonio of the European WoW forums wants you to ask your mum to draw the Lich King, even if she's never seen him before. If she asks what he looks like, just ask her to draw what she thinks he'd look like. I'm pretty sure I've seen this meme before, on the SomethingAwful forums, replacing Arthas with Homer Simpson, but the results are still pretty hilarious. Elbonio's been kind enough to compile a gallery of the kid-tested, mother-approved images that resulted from the experiment. If you get your mom or significant other to do it, but don't have an EU forum account, feel free to post it in the comments below and I'll assemble them for laughs at a later date. What are you waiting for? Go ask! But be nice, because after all, she's your mum.
Breakfast Topic: How are you celebrating St. Patrick's Day in game?
Today is St. Patrick's Day, and I'm sure my Irish Catholic grandmother will be proud of me when I show her this Easter holiday that I've managed to write something up on this Irish celebration. In fact, pictured above is my Irish leaning main character Osullivan overlooking the green river in Chicago. My friends in Defenders of The Pass over on the Eldre'Thalas server have teased me for years with green beer, and today, I'm going to have one and salute them all. /cheers!While there isn't any official World of Warcraft holiday for St. Patty's Day, festivities are bound to be popping up everywhere. Perhaps some merry drinking, maybe a few kisses to a stone, or maybe everyone rolls a red headed female dwarven warrior and dances around a bit.Besides my real life green beer that I'll be enjoying (most likely a Budweiser Select with green dye), I'll have to saunter over to a tavern and pick up some sort of Potent Ale. I think I'll drink it right before I go off to pull Archimonde, no doubt causing everyone to yell in bewilderment over vent. What are you doing in game for this St. Patrick's Day? And if you can, share with me and tip back the ol' glass at 9:00 EST tonight!
Sony America drops ad agency of 13 years -- now?
Advertising Age reports Sony Computer Entertainment of America kicked their ad agency of 13 years to the curb yesterday. TBWA/Chiat/Day was eliminated from the review of the $150 million PlayStation account. After all the numerous incidents over the years and the disastrous PS3 launch ads, the company finally turned things around for this holiday season. Looks like it was a day late and $150 million dollars short.There's still some questions that'll probably be clarified when an official announcement of the new ad agency is made. For example, all information on the issue speaks directly to Sony America, however TBWA is also responsible for the twisted, disruptive, ridiculous, and sometimes racist, European ads as well. Sony has yet to comment.[Via GameDaily]
Extending the weather and seasons of Azeroth
We had two similiar comments drop in on the tipline in the past few days that both are pretty interesting ideas that WoW does all right with, but could probably do a lot better. Foxtir dropped us a note the other day voicing an opinion about the night and day cycle of World of Warcraft. As you may have noticed, WoW does have a night/day cycle already-- when it's midday, the light looks very different from the middle of the night (and my favorite zone in the whole world is Hinterlands in the evening). But Foxtir wants an even more obvious cycle-- during the day, Stormwind should be bustling, while at night, the weirdos could come out, and maybe even some Defias could be found in the city. It would be cool to see the day and night cycles have a gameplay effect as well-- in Warcraft III, they definitely did, but in WoW, I don't know that the day/night timing has any effect but the lighting.And Jasperwind sent another note saying basically the same thing about the weather-- we've got the occasional rain and snow, but what if weather affected gameplay somehow? Or even more extreme forms of weather, he suggests-- what if earthquakes scared mobs away for a matter of time?Let's give Blizzard credit where credit is due-- most games don't have a night/day cycle (much less a realtime cycle), and many games have no weather at all, or implement it badly (and anyone who's ever experienced a freak storm in Tirisfal will agree that Blizzard didn't do that). So WoW is already ahead of the curve in both cases. But in an MMORPG where we pay monthly, we can always expect more. And it would definitely be cool (and add a little more strategy to the game) to have these cosmetic changes affect the lives and actions of the characters we play.
All Mom wants for Mother's Day is a DS Lite
Chris Kohler's coverage of random stuff he sees while walking around in Japan continues with a note about Nintendo's latest DS advertising campaign. The sign says "Soon, it will be Mother's Day" next to a picture of a DS Lite playing Brain Age. We can't help but think that if this campaign works, it'll lead to a lot of disappointed moms this Sunday. We're not saying moms don't want DS's (some may not, but most people do!) The problem is that it's still pretty much impossible to get a DS in Japan, with the apparent exception of whatever store this was. Why would Nintendo even advertise the DS?
Play DS for a good cause
Not that "enjoying yourself" isn't a good enough cause, but this is for a good social cause. DSMeetup.org.uk, a group that gets together in London for DS multiplayer sessions, is holding a charity tournament on March 10, to benefit Comic Relief, who we had no idea still existed, and who continues to raise money for various causes in Africa.The event is being held to coincide with Comic Relief's "Red Nose Day", which is kind of like Britain's version of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, but with more comedians and novelty nosepieces. British readers, feel free to correct us.Participants pay £1 to get into the tournament, and all of the proceeds go to the charity. We admire the DSMeetup group for wanting to do something positive with their DS gaming sessions; the most charitable thing our Game Nights here do are keep us from debilitating, painful loneliness. And even then, only for a few hours.[Via Wonderland]
First Disaster: Day of Crisis screenshot
Nintendo released a single screenshot of Monolith Soft's Disaster: Day of Crisis, the natural-disaster survival game announced at E3 2006. We now have our first indication of how the game will play-- that arrow suggests a Quick Timer Event. Whether that means an action/adventure game with occasional quick-button-press segments, or a Dragon's Lair-style game, we don't know. What is surprising even to us is that we're kind of hoping for the latter. We miss those laserdisc games! Are we the only ones?
It's (technically) Virtual Console Monday!
And you know what that means ... new games! Unfortunately, it looks like Nintendo has one hell of a hangover (we can't blame them, we were up till 6 AM ourselves), and they only managed to spit out two rather inauspicious titles: Baseball and Urban Champion, both for the NES. After five hundred points each, we maintain that both playing baseball and punching someone in the face are both far more enjoyable in real life in Wii Sports.And by the way, fellow fanboys, Happy New Year! Did your megaton party involve raucous Wii-playing? As you know, there was a more important countdown in Times Square around a month and a half ago, so if you played right through midnight, wish yourself a happy belated 2007 and check the ball-drop on your TiVo. Just kidding. We know you've already erased that to make room for the next episode of Heroes.
Happy Turkey Day from DS Fanboy!
For us Americans, today is a day for football, food, and freedom. Younger Americans need not worry about school for the rest of the week and older Americans need not worry about work. We're free to pass out on the recliner with a plate of food on our lap during the last ticks of the first game. It's a wonderful day and we give thanks for being able to have it every year.We here at DS Fanboy would just like to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving. If you're not doing anything, why not enter our contest or help us decide on next week's Game Night game? If you've got the DS, we hope you enjoy the day with your handheld and have all of your gaming needs fulfilled. From the entire DS Fanboy staff, we hope you have a fun and safe holiday. Thanks for reading!
Disaster: Day of Crisis Interview
IGN recently interviewed Monolith Soft's president, Hirohide Sugiura about their Wii game Disaster: Day of Crisis. Sugiura had little to nothing to tell about the game and kept requesting IGN to wait for more information, be patient or ask Nintendo themselves. Hmm... Honestly the game sounds a bit like that movie that came out in 2004. The US is in danger of a lot of natural disasters and instead of watching people die or survive them, we play as someone trying to survive. Sounds interesting but we still don't know a lot about the game and all we are getting is:
