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Blockchain gets its first test with international trade
Some financial gurus are convinced that blockchain (the underlying tech behind bitcoin) is the future of business, and they might already have some proof. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Wells Fargo have conducted the first international, inter-bank trade deal to use blockchain for the transaction. It was a relatively modest experiment that shipped $35,000 in cotton from Texas to China, but it demonstrated the advantages of taking humans out of the equation. The deal included smart contracts that automatically sent payments and transferred ownership as the cargo reached certain locations. The companies involved didn't have to waste time sending documents, processing money or worrying about potential fraud.
Hasbro wants you to add a word to Scrabble's dictionary
At one point or another, all of us have probably argued about a questionable word or three during our Scrabble careers. Hasbro wants to make that easier (or harder, depending on your view) with a contest to add a word to the game's official dictionary. Simply head over to the contest's Facebook page to make a suggestion. Early submissions include "photobomb" and "amazeballs" -- surely you can come up with better by the March 28th deadline. From there, contest officials will put the 16 best words into an elimination bracket, and they'll tally your votes and announce a winner come April 10th. Remember: vote often. After all, you don't want something silly like "dingledorf" to go down as the first player submission, do you? [Image credit: Logan Sakai/Flickr]
Bolstering and brackets get a revamp in SWTOR's Update 2.0
Star Wars: The Old Republic's Update 2.0 is on its way. A new developer post takes aim at some of the changes it'll be bringing to PvP. To be clear, these are PvP system changes that we're looking at, not class changes. Those apparently merit their own post. Who knew that players kept up with class changes, huh? SWTOR's current Bolster system bumps up the stats of players who are below 50 to put them on an even playing field. The new system will look at the Item Rating on player's gear and base the stat bonus off of those numbers. The purpose of this is to put an emphasis on player skill over stat stacking and itemization. Update 2.0 will also change the current brackets and replace them with a bracket each for levels 10-29, 30-54, 55, and 55 Ranked.
Adobe Edge swells to include Tools & Services, streamlines the designer web
Adobe really wants web designers to kick things up a notch. Not satisfied with where Edge has gone so far, it just released a full-fledged Edge Tools & Services suite to cover the bases for polished desktop and mobile pages on most any modern platform. Motion tool Edge Animate (formerly Edge Preview), automated previewing tool Edge Inspect (formerly Shadow) and mobile app packager PhoneGap Build have all arrived in the suite as version 1.0 releases, and come with both Edge Web Fonts as well as TypeKit to spruce up text. A pair of pre-release utilities, Edge Code (Brackets) and Edge Reflow, are also joining the group to tackle the nitty-gritty of editing web code and layouts. Any of the apps will readily cooperate with third-party software, although they won't always be cheap: while most of the Edge suite is free to use in at least a basic form as long as you have a Creative Cloud membership at any level, Edge Animate is only free during its initial run and should eventually cost either $15 per month or $499 in a one-time sale. For pros that want to burnish their corner of the web to a shine, the result just might be worth the expense.
The first Saga tournament is player-run
You may be familiar with the MMO called Saga, by Silverlode Interactive. You may even be a member, and are currently lamenting the fact that there is no official Saga tournament in which you can test your PvP skills. Don't despair! Sagaunits.com and sagatraders.com have teamed up to offer prizes for the first Saga tournament, held by saga.scratchplace.com!The tournament starts at 9 AM PST on April 19th, and it's completely free to enter. There are four brackets for ranges of levels beginning with 10 - 14, and ending with 25 - 30. If you fit those ranges and want to compete, better get yourself set up! For more information, go visit the site. [Thanks, Casey!]
