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Breaking the smartphone mold isn't easy. Just ask Jolla
Jolla's got a big problem, and the company knows it. The small Finnish startup has grand plans to upend the smartphone paradigm with its modular phone and unique gesture-based OS, but that foreign approach has left some users confused. The MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS relies entirely on swipe navigation -- there are no soft keys onscreen -- and the current tutorial does a poor job of explaining how it all works. "Many people have difficulties because we suck," said Senior Designer Jaakko Roppola here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. "We're not very good at the first-time user experience." That candid admission may ring true for the startup now, but what Jolla is exceedingly good at is listening to and quickly addressing community feedback. That eagerness to please has not only led to recent improvements in battery life and connectivity for the nascent operating system, but also the integration of a user-created WiFi hotspot option.
Alt-week 12.08.12: The oldest known dinosaur, lighting up a space station and the black marble
Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. While some refer to it as a lonely planet, we prefer to think of it as unique. Where else can you find such diverse biology that dates back millions of years, that also has a space station hovering delicately above it. A planet where several millennia of human evolution gave birth to the comedy animated gif? Precisely. One of a kind. This is alt-week.
Alt-week 12.01.12: Bigfoot DNA, bombs on the moon and shapeshifting robots
Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. Science. We like to think of it as a force for good. But, in the wrong hands, this isn't always the case. Something we're reminded of all too well this week. As a counter to that negative vibe, we are also reminded that for every Yin, there is a Yang, and this comes in the form of some developments in med-science that could mean new technology options for the blind. Then there's the Bigfoot DNA and shape-shifting robots, of course. This is alt-week.
Alt-week 11.17.12: freestyle brain scans, hovering moon base and robot dolphin replacements
Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. This week we're all over the place. Sorry about that, but it's all for the greater good. We start things off right down at the quantum level, then head to the oceans, before a quick jaunt into space before landing back deep inside your mind. All in the name of science, of course. Science and hip-hop that is. This is alt-week.
Alt-week 11.10.12: the contagious smell of fear, finding Bigfoot, and the theory of everything
Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. There are some questions that have puzzled the human race more or less since the dawn of time. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? You know the sort of thing. While we might not have the answers to these just yet, thanks to science, we're getting there. In this week's instalment we discover that you can, in fact, smell fear. Meanwhile, one scientist pledges to launch an ambitious hunt for Bigfoot, and we get an early hint at what could be the start of an explanation for life, the universe and everything. This is alt-week.
Addon Spotlight Alternatives: Boss mods
Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. Did you know that there are multiple addons out there that can competently handle boss timers, cooldowns, and announcements? Did you know that not every one of those is named Deadly Boss Mods? By far the most popular, DBM has set the standard in terms of features and relative ease of use for a category of addons that has a high potential to overcomplicate things. Instead, the addon community has created niches and fanbases around its labors of love, creating the juggernaut boss mods that we have today. Deadly Boss Mods sits proudly in the Addon Kingdom with BigWigs and Deus Vox Encounters (DXE) as champions of letting you know that you're about to wipe the raid because you're standing in the wrong stuff.
The Daily Grind: What game would you play if it had an alternate gameplay server?
I'm a carebear, I admit. I find that getting ganked while I'm trying to figure out how to have fun in a game is a bit on the frustrating side. I don't mind organized PvP, but free-for-all PvP in an open world just isn't for this old man. At the same time, I love sandbox games, but I can't understand why so many great sandbox games have to also be FFA PvP. Let's take Darkfall, for instance. I would play that game in a second if it had a PvE server, but it doesn't. I also love Wurm Online, but if it were PvP-only, I would never have given it a second look. Whether it's RP, PvE, PvP, or whatever else you fancy, there's probably a game out there that you'd play if it had a ruleset you enjoy. So which one is it? 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!
Verizon CEO: 4G can be a 'substitute' for home internet and cable, will accelerate cord cutting
Sometimes, you have to wonder if these CEO types are being paid the big bucks just because they can believe their own outlandish claims. Latest to try and push the boundaries of credulity is Verizon's Ivan Seidenberg, who told an investor conference that he sees the company's newly unveiled 4G offering as becoming a "modest substitute" for premium home entertainment services as offered by cable and online streaming companies. He concedes that for now VZW's new LTE network will be viewed as an addition, rather than a replacement, to our connected world, but, over time, Seidenberg expects that its presence will be enough to convince more people to cut the cord. Perhaps those who'll find the $50 per 5GB levy easiest to swallow will be people with no cord at all -- the folks in rural areas for whom wired broadband isn't yet an option. As to the rest of us, we'll just wait until the economics start to look a tiny bit more appealing. Update: Speaking of economics, Fierce Wireless has another disclosure from the same conference. On the topic of LTE smartphone plans, Ivan said Verizon is still undecided on pricing, but he sees 10GB a month as the "floor of what people will do," going on to say that Verizon must "hold firm as best we can until the entire environment is mature enough." Listen to the webcast of his speech at the link below.
Toe Mouse!
You know what, the more we look at this thing, the less crazy we think it is. While the concept of mousing around your desktop on foot may appear foreign at first, we imagine we can get used to it after a while. Not that it's designed for lazybones like us anyway, as the wireless Toe Mouse concept is primarily intended to help out people with upper limb disabilities, who aren't able to navigate in the usual manner. Just to score some extra flair points, designer Liu Yi also points out it has a "streamline model that symbolizes the motorboat surfing the internet." So it's not just practical, it's also poetic. Click the source link for more pictures of this flip flop-inspired creation.
GDC09: Massively previews Huxley, a hybrid sci-fi MMO and FPS
Huxley: The Dystopia is a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS) in development at NHN USA. We haven't heard much about the title since mid-2008, so we were happy that NHN USA was willing to sit down with us at GDC 2009. We spoke with Andy Hong, Huxley's Project Manager, who showed us some of the basic concepts behind the game. Huxley is a persistent world built upon Unreal Engine 3 foundations and is a game that differs from many of the MMOs we cover at Massively. Like other titles entering the market such as Global Agenda, Huxley is a marriage of the twitch combat of a first person shooter with classes, skills, trading, banking, and player housing we associate with MMOs. "At the core of the gameplay in Huxley, at its heart, it's an FPS," says Hong. But the depth of the rest of Huxley's gameplay, not limited to its quest and crafting systems, makes it a title quite unlike any pure FPS. %Gallery-48874%
GDC09: Massively previews Huxley: The Dystopia page 2
Quests and PvP You can pick up quests in the city. Those are either story quests or instanced quests where you can either go solo or group up to wipe the map of enemy NPCs. Huxley's cities are large and while a player can navigate on foot, it's much faster to take a hoverbike, or travel by tram or train. The quests themselves often bring a player outside of the city (via train) or beneath the city, where they need to fight against the hybrids in the sewers. While the game's quests can either be handled solo or in squads, players can also advance in Huxley through PvP. "With PvP you earn experience points as with quests, but you also earn rank points which let you level up your rank, such as private, sergeant, lieutenant, and beyond. The benefit of higher rank is access to the most powerful S-type weapons and bragging rights. People see the symbol next to your name and see what rank you are," like a title system, says Hong.
LFG Armory uses Armory to match up characters and guilds
LFG Armory is a new site that's aiming to beat the official Armory at its own game. Blizzard's site, as complete as it is, is still occasionally buggy and slow, and LFG Armory is looking to give players an alternative. And it works fairly well -- while the FAQ claims that data may be a little behind (due to caching of Blizzard's information), both the guild and player profile pages look pretty good and load quickly (and if the site can stay up after we link to them here, that'll be a real sign that it's a stable server).But the real feature that makes LFG Armory something more than Blizzard's official site is that it has a guild and arena team matching system built in. Once you register your name and your characters, you can do a search for guilds and arena teams and try to find one that matches what you want -- percentage of level 70s, class makeup, and number of members. On the guild side, you can set your guild as looking, and then when you hit a match, LFG will match you up.It's an interesting system, but like all social networks, it all depends on participation -- when I looked for a guild for my Hunter on Cenarius (who could use a guild, by the way), nothing came up, because likely no one on the server was looking (for a Hunter at least). But as an alternative to the Armory, LFG is looking pretty good. If they can get people to the site and stay up, they might give Blizzard's official site a run for its money.[Via World of Raids]
Alternate kart universe
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Alternate_kart_universe_The_future_of_Mario_Kart'; Karts are cool, but they are so sixteen years ago. However, our favorite Nintendo racing franchise is evolving and expanding to include a whole new selection of vehicles. No longer are you limited to the archaic kart, the common carriage, or the pedestrian pipes-on-wheels. But how will the addition of bikes affect the future of the franchise? We've cooked up a few possible additions to the Mario Karts of tomorrow, and while we could have gone with the obvious, such as rideable Yoshis, or perhaps a water pack à la Super Mario Sunshine (but not this one), instead we tried to think outside the box ... or kart. Let's see if we can get those engines revving for the future of Mario Kart! Zip forward in our time machine!
DS Daily: Makeshift
We're willing to bet that, at one time or another, most DS owners at least temporarily misplace a stylus. If you don't have another one handy, that means you've got to wing it ... but what sort of makeshift objects can you use without damaging that precious screen? From a finger to riskier objects, we're sure DS lovers everywhere have used a stylus alternative at least once, and we'd love to hear what you chose.
