hours
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Amazon will deliver some same-day orders in just a few hours
We knew Amazon was considering making one-day shipping the default for Prime-eligible purchases, but now, the company is going even further. Prime members in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Orlando and Dallas can now expect their same-day orders to arrive in just a few hours.
Apple ordered to pay employees for time lost to bag searches
Apple broke the law in California by failing to pay employees while they waited for mandatory bag and iPhone searches, the state's supreme court has ruled. The fight began over six years ago, when Apple Store employees sued the company, saying they were required to clock out before being searched for stolen merchandise or trade secrets. The workers felt they were still under Apple's control during that five to 20 minute process and should therefore be compensated. Apple in turn argued that the employees could choose not to bring their bags or iPhones, thus avoiding a search in the first place.
Hours is a clean, useful time tracker for iPhone
I've been working from home for a few years now, and even though I'm a telecommuter, I occasionally take a side gig. There are many apps that will let me track by billable hours, including the aptly-named Hours by Tapity (US$4.99). I found Hours to be simple to use, legible and functional. Plus, you can export data to your computer via email. Handy! Here's my look at Hours. Looks Hours is very well-organized. The date and total hours worked are displayed at the very top of the screen. Calendar and preference icons are in the top left and right corners, respectively. The color-coded timers themselves show a running total as well as the project or client they're associated with. There's no guesswork about what's what or how to use Hours, and I like that. Use Starting a new timer is a piece of cake. Sweet, billable cake. Just tap the big 'ol New Timer button to open the edit screen. From there, add the name of the project your timer is for, as well as optionally adding client and task. Next, choose one of sixteen colors for the timer. It's pretty great that there are so many colors to choose from, as it helps keep track of things. Your timers appear in creation order on the app's main screen. You can reorder them at any time by tapping and holding, then dragging them into the order you'd like. To get a timer going, simply tap the clock icon next to its name. As time passes, you'll see that timer's color grow along the timeline at the top of the screen. This is so helpful, in that it provides at-a-glance information on what you've been working on. To stop a timer, just tap the clock icon again. The app's reminders function is also super useful. Have you ever forgotten to start or stop a timer? Now Hours can nag you. Set your work hours and then have the app prompt you if: 1) You haven't started a timer by a custom hour, 2) You've left a timer running after a custom time , or 3) You've gone [x time] without tracking any time There's another handy bit: have you ever needed to round hours up or down? You can tell Hours to snap timers to an increment of your choosing, and round up based on that same number. Finally, Hours lets you choose between a 12- or 24-hour clock. You can even use the decimal system, if that's your thing. The only thing that's left is to get paid! Just export your work hours to your Mac and create a sweet, sweet invoice. Conclusion Hours isn't a client tracker, project manager or to-do app. It's not supposed to be. Hours is a useful, legible and easy-to-use time tracker. If that's the functionality you're after, consider Hours.
The Daily Grind: How late do you play?
We all have different schedules, different timezones, different levels of engagement in our games of choice. But whether you're going to work at 5:00 a.m. or 5 p.m., you still have a schedule. Sure, you normally don't get home until 4:00 a.m., but if that's the case you should really have been in bed an hour ago but you want to get just one more dungeon run. It's not just about being hardcore or not. Some people will log in to World of Warcraft for a raid, run what needs to be run in an efficient two hours, and then be free for most of the evening. Others log in to Final Fantasy XIV and wind up roleplaying until hours past a more reasonable bedtime. So how late do you play? Do you tend to get on when you get home and stay on until bed? Do you generally play an MMO and then move on to other things, or do you make that your last stop of the night? 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!
Netflix users clock-in more viewing hours than ever: over one billion in June
Despite all Netflix's misgivings up until early this year, the service has got its users watching more video than ever. CEO Reed Hastings recently took to Facebook to announce that subscribers have watched over one billion hours of content in a single month, for the "first time ever." As Tech Crunch points out, that's about one hour of video-viewing per day against the five hours that the regular ole tube garners. Hastings also mentioned he's excited about the service's exclusive rights to House of Cards and Arrested Development, declaring that they'll help to "blow these records away." If you'll recall, back in January the company claimed 26 million streaming subscribers worldwide, compared to just over 10 million who opted for discs -- it'll be very interesting to see how these fluctuate given its newer takes on content.
EverQuest 2 leveling from 20 - 70 to become significantly faster
The designers of EverQuest II are planning to make radical alterations in Game Update 49 to the leveling curve for characters between levels 20 and 70. A post by Design Supervisor Noel Walling on the official forums details the changes. Whereas it currently takes on average around 164 hours for a player to advance from 20 to 70, it will soon only take around 100. To compensate for this change, Adept I spell drops will increase.Walling says these changes are intended to "get new players into the game faster." They're also a response to a low number of people in those level ranges. 1 - 20 and 70 - 80 are unchanged, but experience gains in the mentoring system are getting a boost to encourage higher level players to help new folks and alts level up. The benefits scale based on level, but players who are mentoring will gain between 50% and 300% extra XP from combat.This is an answer to a big problem in these types of games; they become top-heavy, and an insurmountable barrier to entry goes up. At this point, though, does it even make sense for it to take 100 hours to reach 70? Why not just 50? If it's not fun for 164 hours, it's probably not for 100 either, right?
Average Conanite will reach level 80 in 250 hours
Age of Conan game director Gaute Godager said at the launch event in Norway that reaching level 80 will take "on average 250 hours of gameplay," according to videogamer.com.The first few levels will come lightning fast, but the bulk of them up to 60 will be comprised of between two and three hours of gameplay. After that, it will get a bit slower, thanks to some input from beta testers. By our math, that leaves five hours per level including and after 60, but who knows how that will be distributed.Whether this ends up being faster than competing games like World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online by the end probably depends on your play-style. He said "on average," so does that mean the hardcore achievers will reach the top in 90 hours and the casuals will mosey on up there within 500 hours? There's been a lot of chit chat and speculation in the Massively office about this news. We suppose we'll get a good sense of it by midway through the summer.
WoW Xfire hours played drops 18 percent in September
Gamesindustry.biz is reporting a huge drop in /played time over the past month for World of Warcraft players. From August to September, Xfire users played WoW 18 percent less than the previous month.But it's likely not necessarily because of the oft-delayed 2.2.2-- the drop is probably just the difference between students out of school and in school. Over the summer, students were obviously able to play a lot more with all the freetime they had, but as school starts up again in September, there's more homework and less rep grinding to do. Still, 18 percent is a huge drop-- while school starting up is definitely a big part of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the slowdown in patch releases (even though it's since picked back up again) also had a hand in it.Though it can't be that big a difference-- both Guild Wars and Silkroad Online (the other two big MMO titles on Xfire) saw similar drops. It'll be interesting to see what happens next month. I wonder if Brewfest (and soon, Hallow's End and 2.3) was able to convince students to take their homework breaks in Azeroth.[ via Incgamers ]
Apple stores to close from 2 to 6 on Friday
Apple has just announced that its retail stores will be closed on Friday, June 29th between 2 and 6pm to prepare for the iLaunch. Many retail AT&T stores have announced they will also close between 4 and 6pm for similar reasons. Each store will start selling iPhones at 6pm local time, so we're expecting some great iPhone unboxing pictures for those of you lucky enough to live on the East coast.As TUAW reader Fred Manning points out, we fully expect people to run through the mall shouting "The Apple Store is DOWN!". What will really, really make it special though is, as TUAW reader Brian suggests, if someone puts a giant yellow Post-it on the store. Any takers? Any takers? Send us a link to your photo via our Tip form.Thanks, Jonathan.
How much WoW is too much WoW?
Today has a new podcast from the folks over at Taverncast, and it has my guild a-buzz with talk of WoW Addiction. We're a casual raiding guild, 3 nights a week, 4 hours a night. Sure, that's 12 hours of commitment a week, but still a low number compared to other raiding guilds. That would be well and fine, but a large number of our members play a lot outside of raiding hours - farming mats, doing daily quests, getting reputation, etc. So when the Taverncast After Hours #3 came up today, with the gang discussing gaming addiction, and one member going so far as to undertake a little experiment a la Morgan Spurlock, it really got us thinking - are we playing too much WoW? Some of the things on their list (about an hour in) of questions to ask yourself, I have had to say yes to at one time or another. How about you?So, go take some time out to listen (while you're playing WoW, of course) and then come back and let us know how much WoW you play each week, and what you think is a reasonable amount of time to commit to the game. Is 15 hours in a row of ANY activity too much? (listen to the whole podcast to get that one)
TUAW Tip: quickly adjust viewable hours in iCal
Today's tip is a quick one about iCal, and it hails from the ever-useful archives of MacOSXHints. iCal's preferences allow you to choose how many hours you see in a day or week, but you can easily and quickly change this setting with a simple shortcut key. If you have a scrollwheel mouse or a two finger scrolling trackpad, simply hold the option key and scroll up and down in iCal to increase and decrease the amount of hours you can view.
