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Macworld Expo: Delicious Monster's Wil Shipley
His flagship application gave its name to an entire movement of graphical sophistication among Mac apps, so it should be no surprise that Wil Shipley's Delicious Monster booth at Macworld Expo carries Delicious Library's recognizable UI into the real world. Special care was taken to get bookshelves that matched the wood grain, the products on the shelves look unremarkably like themselves, and the leaves at the top of the booth are dead ringers for the ones on the DM site. The overall effect is a bit disconcerting, but still enjoyable. We took a few minutes to discuss the booth design with one of the "Delicious Librarians," then talked to Wil about his approach to an iPhone version of Delicious Library and his thoughts on the development challenges he faced in creating DL2. Videos in the second half of the post.
Adobe trimming Expo budget, 600 jobs [updated]
Macworld notes today that Adobe won't have a booth at Macworld Expo, but will still be offering training sessions at the conference. Traditionally, Adobe's booth has been a major presence on the show floor. The bad news might not end there: A tipster with purported connections inside Adobe told us that the company is considering laying off a significant fraction of its nearly 7,000 employees, including management. Update 4 p.m.: The axe fell a few hours ago at Adobe, according to two three former employees, but we don't know how widespread the damage is. Update 5 p.m.: Mike Downey, principal evangelist for the Flash, Flex and AIR products is "no longer with Adobe." Update 5:10 p.m.: Adobe issued a press release: "Adobe also announced the implementation of a restructuring program, and has taken steps to reduce its headcount by approximately 600 full-time positions globally. The restructuring will result in anticipated pre-tax charges totaling approximately $44 million to $50 million. The Company expects approximately $28 million to $30 million of the restructuring charges to be recorded in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2008." Read the full press release here. This points to some serious, knee-jerk cost-cutting at Adobe, since Macworld Expo has been so valuable to Adobe's relationship with the Mac user base in the past. "Adobe has decided to shift its focus at the Macworld trade show this year," the company said in a statement given to Macworld magazine. "Macworld [Expo] is a valuable industry show and we will still be an active part of it with members of our product team involved in Macworld tracks, including a full day of CS4 demo sessions with Adobe evangelists on Wednesday, January 7." Adobe Creative Suite 4 was released in October. [Via O'Grady's PowerPage.]
TGS 08: Sony's booth - reality vs fantasty
Click for bigger PlayStations Our statistics show that you, dear reader, are most likely to be of American origin. As a result, you probably don't have access to the Japanese Home beta. It's a shame, because it's the closest you were probably going to get to attending the Tokyo Game Show this year. The Japanese Home "Events and Media" space was updated, allowing those who were unable to reach the show to walk around in a to-scale mock-up of Sony's booth. But just how close does the in-game model come to the real thing? Scarily close. We've attempted to recreate the screenshots by photographing the booth from the correct angles. In each image, the top half shows the Home version and the bottom reveals real life. Thankfully, the real booth was nowhere near as empty as it is in Home. Perhaps a release of the open beta, timed to coincide with TGS, would've allowed even more people to check out their upcoming wares. Opportunity missed. Gallery: Sony's TGS08 booth: Home vs reality
Funcom announces its Dragon*Con plans
American readers: are you going to Dragon*Con this Labor Day weekend? Funcom (developer of Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, and The Secret World) is! Its specific plans have been laid out at the Age of Conan website.The company will have its own booth, of course, which will be open from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM Friday through Sunday, and from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Monday. More interestingly, though, Funcom will be hosting what it calls the "FunCon Event" in the Sheraton Capital Ballroom on Friday at 10:00 PM. The party will feature music by DJ Tarryk and visitors from the teams of all three Funcom projects.The following day, Funcom will present its two currently-released games -- Anarchy Online at 10:00 AM and Age of Conan at 7:00 PM. Somewhere amidst all these proceedings, fans will have the opportunity to win posters, inflatable swords, t-shirts, lanyards, custom PC cases, and "one special customized Anarchy Online PC." That's cool. It's probably not cool enough to go out of your way to go to Dragon*Con for, but if you're already gonna be there you might as well stop by. Check out Massively's complete Dragon*Con schedule for other events and booths to hit up, too.
E308: DS Fanboy's E3 Endgame Evaluation
In its second year as a diminished behemoth, E3 still manages to be packed full with news, media, and more. While there wasn't much from Nintendo themselves for the DS this year, third parties are still incredibly strong and we're faced with more games than we can possibly handle. We're also pretty sure we saw almost all of them at E3 this year. Relive the entire experience right from the convenience of this post! Check out our choices for show highlights right here, or hit the break for the full rundown of our E3 coverage. Of course, we're still adding things, and will be over the next few days; keep up by clicking the E3 graphic in the sidebar. GTA: Chinatown Wars shooting up the DS in winter! Transfer data from Animal Crossing: Wild World to new Wii game Highlights from Nintendo's keynote Rhythm Heaven bumped by Cammie Dunaway's wrist Konami booth tour DS Fanboy reacts to the Nintendo keynote Three DS news items you may have missed Chrono Trigger's controls explained (and hands-on) DS Fanboy enters the Retro Game Challenge Rhythm Heaven is the best musical microgame collection at the show
Tour all of Macworld 2008 in less than five minutes
Two weeks ago the world was a-twitter with speculation as to what in the world Apple meant by "Something is in the Air." Of course, if you tuned in to our talkcast, you heard a pretty good tip on that score, but the next day El Steve-O dropped a shiny-new, paper-thin, slightly-underpowered (depending on your needs) portable in our collective laps.So as we bid adieu to TUAW's complete Macworld 2008 coverage, we'd like to point out you can relive the magic in several ways. First there's the video in this post, with a frantic run-through of the floor, interviews, booths and more. Second, there's our Macworld 2008 tagged pages. And lastly, our Macworld 2008 summary page, nicely organized into manageable chunks so you can find what you need quickly. We're still uploading all these videos to the various video places around the web, and as we update individual posts, we'll update the Macworld 2008 page too.The next big event for us will be WWDC (whenever that happens to be, but last year it was June 11-15). Of course, TUAW will be there, interviewing developers and hopefully hosting another fun meetup. Stay tuned![music by cdk]
130 Great photos from Macworld and 2 ugly ones
%Gallery-14795%If you've got the time, we've got the pixels. Relive the glory of Macworld 2008 even if you weren't there with our 132 pictures from the show, featuring: Pics from the Ars Technica/Gizmodo party Pics of the Modbook Lots of show-floor pics featuring tons of vendors A shot of team TUAW in our temporary HQ at the Marriott Images of Mac luminaries, possibly one of them slightly inebriated Some are blurrier than an Engadget spy photo, and some are NSFW (where NSFW = Not Safe for Wallpaper). Enjoy!
Simplified WoW lore
The WoW community is growing ever larger, and for lots of people the entire Warcraft story is a puzzling maze of overlapping tales. I know if I were a new player and someone told me, "Oh yeah, you can go play this other stategy game to get some of the story... or you could read some books!" I might balk at the time commitment required just to understand the background story for this new game.Dawnbow has a solution though. This is the cliffs-notes version of WoW Lore. It won't keep you on the edge of your seat with spine-tingling suspense, but it'll give you a rough idea of what's going on behind the scenes of the game, without you having to spend extra time and money on other things.A few responders to her original post on the forums say that there may be a few errors here or there in her summary, but don't worry too much about that. Lore fans often disagree on details -- sometimes they're both right, sometimes both wrong, and sometimes Blizzard just hasn't been consistent. Either way, if you're looking for a quick catch up on the essentials of the WoW story, spend a few minutes with some simplified WoW lore, and then check out WoW Insider's own Know Your Lore column for some the juiciest character portraits you'll ever read about a game story.
Hulger's confessional booth lets sinners vent on luxury handsets
Hey, we know that purchasing one of Hulger's avant-garde handsets could very well leave you feeling guilty considering the lofty pricetag, but the company is looking to give you sinners a way out with its communication-enabled confessional booth. The bizarre setup will be erected at Designersblock Milan 2007, and is being constructed in partnership with "communications specialist Associate" to offer visitors the chance to "play the priest or the penitent." Of course, we've no interest in interviewing with a unordained minister, but so long as the unit features Hulger's latest ASTOR & SOPHIA limited edition handsets (pictured), we'd most definitely stop in for a courtesy chat.[Via Textually]
LGC Nintendo booth pics
To get you psyched for tomorrow's keynote speech from Nintendo, 1up has posted some early pictures and video footage from all over the show floor. Perhaps the venue isn't quite as grand as E3, but it doesn't seem as though any company is taking this event lightly. Remember, though, that no Wii games will be publicly playable...only behind closed doors to special invitees. Le sigh. Anyway, there are plenty of pretty shiny things after the jump, so enjoy the eye-candy.
LGC sneak peak: Nintendo's booth
To get you psyched for tomorrow's keynote speech from Nintendo, 1up has posted some early pictures and video footage from all over the show floor. Perhaps the venue isn't quite as grand as E3, but it doesn't seem as though any company is taking this event lightly. If you look closely above, you can see "Dual Screen" setups using large LCD displays. Especially cool is the tunnel walkway to reach Nintendo's booth...check it out after the jump.
"Just press the green button", I said
"Just press the green button" Oh, those fateful little words. How naive I was to think that they wouldn't affect the ability that my sister was soon to display in a casual game of Rockstar's Table Tennis.
News wrap-up from E3!
The industry's biggest event is now over, and while posting on the Joystiq mothership maybe have taken up all of our time, we can't forget about our Fanboys. We've got some post-E3 reflections on the way, so get ready. Here's an aggregate of the show coverage: Engadget & Joystiq's live coverage of Sony's PlayStation 3 E3 event PS3 impressions: Resistance Fall of Man PS3 impressions: Sonic the Hedgehog PS3 Impressions: Heavenly Sword PS3 impressions: Virtua Tennis Joystiq hands-on: new PS3 controller Joystiq Video: Resistance Fall of Man E3 Vox Populi: What are your thoughts on the PS3 prices? E3 Vox Populi: Will lack of rumble hurt the PS3? E3 Vox Populi: Who had the best press conference? E3 booth tours: Sony A look at EA's new realism tools The PS3 controller that might have been Sony's PS3 is still $600 Microsoft befriends Nintendo in fight vs Sony First look: The Club (Xbox 360 & PS3) The jacket that says "I can afford a PS3" Sony's Play Beyond campaign played up at E3 Extended 15-minute MGS4 trailer on the hour PS3 worth its weight in Uranium Dual Shake functionality tacked on at last minute Anatomy of shame: Dual Shake vs. Wiimote Sony steals motion idea, but not from Nintendo New PS3 controller loses DualShock vibration PS3 investing in tangible user interfaces PS3: A tale of 2 SKUs Clash of the Consoles: a sneak peek! PlayStation 3 in its final form The real PlayStation 3 controller revealed Final Fantasy XIII announced for PS3
NCsoft's E3 booth tour
NCsoft's booth was mostly about the games, with banks of PC stations set up for passers-by to play at. There were plenty of knowledgeable staff on hand, and plenty of t-shirt giveaways. However, the booth's main attraction was its stage -- when we visited, The Mutaytor was helping to create the post-apocalyptic atmosphere appropriate to Tabula Rasa. At other times in the day, Guild Wars tournaments took centre stage, with large crowds gathering to watch top PvP teams face off. Between this and the pyrotechnic dancing, we really managed to get a feel for the atmosphere of NCsoft's game offerings, something which few other booths managed to convey.
E3 booth tours: Magic the Gathering
These guys were almost hidden in the West Hall near our blogging setup on the show floor. But as you can see, Magic the Gathering has quite an interesting setup. During the time I checked it out, they were having a tournament for their multiplayer game.
Competitive Brain Age: Joystiq pwns
At the Nintendo booth, people have been constantly queueing for Brain Age. Calculating by yourself is fun, but it doesn't come close to the competitive thrill of remembering your times tables faster than the next guy.We're proud to say we won our tournament, coming in with the respectable (for day three of E3) time of 28 seconds. Interestingly, the runner-up (with a very close time) was also a girl, with the two guys taking over twice as long to finish -- draw what conclusions you will from that.
E3 booth tours: Atlus
They're not as big as Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft, but Atlus has a cool booth construction definitely worth taking a quick peek at.
E3 booth tours: Sony
In an ongoing attempt to bring E3 as close as possible to you, the reader, here's a brief look into the Sony booth. Enjoy!
Gamer/pianist makes sweet music at BradyGames
And blindfolded, no less! Apparently they were short on blindfolds though, considering that they had to use a T-shirt. Either way, this brave musician tapped out tunes to Super Mario and many others in front of an audience.
E3 booth props from day 2
We have some more images from the show floor that speak volumes about the energy here at E3 (and the money these companies are spending). I've seen more than one attendee make a strange face at some of these, so hope you enjoy.
