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Caption Contest: HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang drops by Apple's Palo Alto Store
So what if Apple might be suing your company for millions and billions of dollars? You're Cher Wang and Cher Wang shops wherever she damn well pleases. HTC's co-founder and Chairwoman was recently photographed taking a leisurely gander at Apple's wares, with husband Wen-Chi Chen -- who just happens to be CEO of VIA Technologies -- tagging along as well. The Palo Alto Geniuses look to have been their usual friendly selves, though their failure to put an iPhone in Mrs. Wang's hands qualifies as a major missed opportunity in our eyes. Thomas: "In Taiwan, iPhone means horse." Josh F.: "Go ahead, cuff me if you can." Dana: "A stylus! You know. You hold it like this." Vlad: "Cher Wang thought impersonating a zombie would help her blend in with the Apple Store patrons. As we can tell from the unperturbed employees, she was right." Brad: "If you can guess which hand the candy's in, you win!" Terrence: "...and this is my trusty servant Patsy." Amar: "I'm sorry, Mrs. Wang, we're all out of dirtbikes."
YouTube brings human-enabled closed captioning to live video for Google I/O
If you were glued to your computer during the live broadcast of the Google I/O keynote yesterday morning, you might have noticed a new feature accompanying an otherwise recognizable YouTube video. The online video provider used this morning's conference kickoff as the springboard for its live captioning feature, which brings human input to the transcription process. According to Google's Naomi Black, a team of stenographers banged out translations during this morning's keynote. The resulting captions were then displayed on the conference floor and delivered by an "open source gadget" to the I/O YouTube channel. This new feature apparently prevents the inaccuracies experienced using Google's automatic captioning function, which, if you'll recall, provided us with at least a couple hearty chuckles when we took it for a spin. The code behind the new live captions will be available to YouTube's partners and competitors on Google Code. You can check out tomorrow's keynote to see how the humans fare.
Funcom's Age of Conan version 2.2 patch detailed, delayed
Yesterday we told you about two new group dungeons in Age of Conan's Paikang imperial city, and later tonight you should be able to experience them for yourself. Yes, it's patch day in Hyboria, and version 2.2 is in the process of being pushed live to the game's American shards. European servers received the update earlier this morning, and there are a few issues, judging by a feedback thread on the EU boards. What's in the patch other than the previously mentioned Ai and Tian'an District dungeons? Quite a lot of stuff actually, starting with tweaks to the endgame faction grind. Funcom has made a significant number of adjustments to faction quests, faction quest rewards, and Marks of Acclaim distribution. Combat, in particular crowd-control abilities and counters, has also been tweaked in the 2.2 update, and the official patch notes have a complete breakdown on the changes by class. As of press time, Funcom's Age of Conan launcher indicates that the patch has been delayed by five hours, with an estimated up time of 6:00 p.m. EDT.
Caption Contest: Samsung hires David Beckham as a global brand ambassador
David Beckham is a man that needs no introduction. Indeed, Samsung hopes he'll be the one making the introductions, as it's just signed up the English footballer to act as its global brand ambassador. Mr. Becks will be responsible for disseminating the news that Samsung is one of the major sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics, and we can see he's already received the first tranche of his remuneration in the form of a Galaxy S II. Lucky him. Thomas: "I'm sorry, I got the Spanish version, this one says 'Sii' on it." Vlad: "At 8.49mm, this phone's almost as thin as my wife!" Tim: "I don't know who you are or what this is, but I'm sure Victoria will love it." Amar: "Finally, a Galaxy that won't bench me!" Darren: "Man, this thing crushes my Aura." Richard Lai: "As part of the deal, Samsung will also be announcing the Galaxy S Beckham. OK, it's just a golden dual-core." Myriam: "So you want me to drop-kick this in front of the cameras, right?" Zach Honig: "Maybe in this Galaxy I can win a World Cup."
DOFUS introduces Rogue and Masqueraider classes
Class-based fantasy games aren't unusual these days; in fact, they're the standard. It's rare that such a title has more than a handful of classes, though. Then there's DOFUS. The six-year-old free-to-play title recently added Masqueraiders and Rogues, bringing the game's class total to a whopping 14. Rogues function a bit differently than the rascally backstabbers you may be used to from other games. Rogues effectively dictate actions on the battlefield through the use of bombs and walls, which direct enemy movements and function as a form of crowd control. Masqueraiders take their power from a variety of wearable masks, which allow the player to adopt several fighting styles. Three masks types are available: the cowardly mask (ranged damage), the psychopath mask (close combat damage), and the classic mask (crowd control). Finally, Masqueraiders can also avail themselves of several buff-type spells including plastron, tororuga, and trance. Head to the official DOFUS website for all the details.
The Queue: A fel dilemma
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I walked into today's edition of The Queue fully intending to be a counterpoint to Adam's Queue yesterday -- I would walk in, say mages are awesome, and mages everywhere would herald me as their redemption. I would be carried off into the sunset as a hero. The problem is ... I can't do it. I just can't lie like that. Mages are awful! Warlocks are also awful, though. I would say that shadow priests are obviously the best casters, but then I would be stroking Fox's ego, and you people do that enough already. Warriors need a caster spec, obviously. Faltor asked: As a new tank learning in the Cataclysm era, what is the most common standard for marking? I know almost everybody uses skull for first kill and sheep for moon, but everything else seems fair game. I know the right answer is just "explain what you use to the DPS" but I want to use something close to standard if there is one (like, does X really usually mean kill second).
Addon Spotlight: LoseControl
Each week, WoW Insider 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. This week, take back control of your life with LoseControl. Give me an A! Give me a -ddon! Give me a Spotlight! What's that spell? A half-assed attempt at an engaging introduction for this week's Addon Spotlight! Does that lame joke make you want to charge my office and do physical harm to me? Well, good, because this week's addon is a PvP-centric tool that can help you regain control of your character and potentially your sanity. One of the worst feelings is losing control of your character. In fact, as a design decision, many MMOs including WoW limit the amount of player abilities that cause a player to lose control of their avatar. No one likes losing total control for a long time -- it just isn't fun! Balance reasons aside, there is a reason that most stuns, CC options, and other abilities are on short timers.
Lichborne: 3 things death knights need in patch 4.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. Join World of Warcraft's first hero class as we head into a new expansion and shed the new kid on the block label. Now, before you get too excited about the title, we still don't know when patch 4.1 is dropping, much less when it's coming to the PTR, so don't think this is any sort of announcement. That said, it's never too early to wish and speculate. I won't deny it, I love death knights and I love balanced classes, but not everything I want for death knights is ironclad. A lot of what I want would probably turn them into horribly overpowered machines of death and destruction, powered by the tears of lesser classes. That said, as I've played my death knight day by day, there are a few things I've noticed time and time again, quality of life issues that could really use some TLC from the dev team -- things that I am relatively sure wouldn't overpower us if fixed up. This week, I'm going to discuss three death knight issues I've noticed in Cataclysm and how I think Blizzard should fix them with the next major content or class balance patch.
Caption Contest: Obama has dinner with tech industry CEOs
Barack Obama is a president well known for being in touch with technology, so it's no surprise to see him wining and dining the industry's biggest decision makers. Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, Carol Bartz, Mark Zuckerberg, and yes, even Steve Jobs joined el presidente for an informal dinner on Thursday to discuss important things like jobs, education, and research spending. We're not here for that, though, we're here to drop zingers about one all-powerful dude and his big-time CEO buddies. Thomas: "Here's to project Soylent Green." Joe: "This sure beats the Four Loko Summit we held last summer on the White House lawn." Chris: "So let's just jam through this dinner real quick." Josh T: "I hope no one authorizes a 'kill switch' on this party." Paul: "At this very moment we're millions of miles from a doomed planet Earth!" Nilay: "Gentlemen, Ballmer has neutralized the Finnish threat." Richard Lai: "Drink up, kids -- it's Dance Central time!" Tim: "Zuck, it's like Final Club, except with the President."
Arcane Brilliance: The mage survival guide, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we continue our discussion of ways to avoid dying horribly. This week's tip: Roll a death knight. Yes, the sad reality of being a mage is the ever-present threat of a swift and ignominious demise. We're like every character in The Walking Dead: We could go at any time, and our only consolation is that God willing, we'll be able to blow up a few zombies on our way out. Last week, we discussed a few methods for surviving to pew pew another day, namely aggro drop and damage mitigation. This week, we turn our attention to two other lifesaving techniques: movement and crowd control. Just remember as we go forward that every time a mage survives a fight, an angel punches a warlock in the face. Have I used that joke before? I may have. Doesn't make it any less true. Angels hate warlocks. So does Jesus. And me. And, I pray, all of you.
Age of Conan 2.1.2 patch goes live
Hold on to your bloodied, battle-scarred, and barbarian-themed helmets, kids, it's patch day in Hyboria. Yes, the 2.1.2 update has come to Age of Conan and brought with it a few tweaks to the game's classes. The Guardian, in particular, is the recipient of quite a lot of developer attention, and reaction on the official forums seems to indicate that the rich just got richer. Also of note is Funcom's apparent addressing of long-standing issues relating to silences and other crowd-control abilities that have heretofore been immune to damage breaks. According to the patch notes, the unintended immunity should no longer occur. Another welcome change sees increased XP rewards from the new Call of Jhebbal Sag PvP minigame, as well as increased tick rates. You can view the full patch notes, and the resulting discussion, on the official boards.
WoW Rookie: Effective crowd control basics
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking new areas, new styles, and new zones. Ladies and gentlemen who run dungeons in 2011, if I could offer you only one tip for the successful instances, crowd control would be it. The healing and tanking benefits of crowd control have been proven by thousands of PUGs and guild groups, while the rest of the internet's sea of elite advice is the theoretical ravings of armchair quarterbacks. They will dispense that advice daily. Some is true, some is probable, but not all of it is absolute. But trust me on the crowd control. There is very little you can do to improve your dungeon experience than execute crowd control and not stand in fire. Today, we will focus on crowd control. In the days of yore, crowd control mostly meant Sap and sheep (which is to say, Polymorph). But as content patches and expansions grew over the years, the concept of crowd control has grown as well. Now, you have slows, snares, traps, debuffs, fears, and every combination you can imagine. Every class has some form of crowd control. Essentially, the job of crowd control is to slow down or keep a mob from doing the damage it wishes to your group.
Spiritual Guidance: A guide to Mind Control for shadow priests (and tanks)
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. The shadow-specced Fox Van Allen returns every Wednesday to denounce the evils of truth and love (and healing) in an overwrought effort to extend his reach to the stars above. And yes, that makes our healing priest columnist Dawn Moore Jessie. Cast Mind Blast on targets afflicted with Vampiric Touch. Keep Shadow Word: Pain refreshed by casts of Mind Flay. Cast Shadow Word: Death as a finishing move. Rinse and repeat. I love shadow priesting, but it can get a little repetitive at times. It doesn't have to be, though -- shadow priests hands down have access to more abilities than any other class in the game. How is that possible? Through Mind Control. It opens up an entire world of new abilities to shadow priests. By controlling our enemies, we can control what they do. Sure, you've cast Devouring Plague. But have you ever cast Disease Breath? You've boosted your tank's maximum health through Power Word: Fortitude, but have you ever done it through Renegade Strength? Like some kind of shadowy blue mage, we have access to hundreds of our enemies' abilities through Mind Control. Mind Control is the most misunderstood crowd control ability in the game. It's also the most powerful, hands down. Shadow priests and tanks, take notice -- if you're not utilizing Mind Control, the way you run Cataclysm heroics is about to change forever.
Arcane Brilliance: A friendly introduction to mage crowd control
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, a public service announcement: An open letter to the guy who keeps breaking my sheep: Please stop. Sincerely, Christian P.S. -- Listen. I know it's Christmas and I should probably be doing a puff piece on things I want for my mage for Christmas or something like that. But I Simply can't stay quiet. We wiped 20 times in that heroic Grim Batol run last night, and though I know not everybody who plays this game reads this column, I have to do what I can. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, or something like that. I know The Burning Crusade happened like two years ago. I'm well aware that there's a distinct possibility you started playing the game during Wrath. Perhaps you either don't remember or don't have any idea what a "Polymorph" is or why it's not in your best interests to immediately begin whacking whatever I just cast it on as hard as you possibly can. I'm willing to allow for ignorance. Mages, I can even understand it when you don't sheep things. Polymorph doesn't do any damage; in fact it heals its target! Why would you want to use a spell that doesn't blow things up when there are so many other delightful spells in your spellbook that do? It seems counter to everything we got into magecraft for. Wrath was a long expansion. For the better part of two years, we spent the majority of our time chain pulling and AoE-farming our way through every instance in sight, concentrating on one thing and one thing only: DPS. Recount gave us a number at the end of every boss fight, and if that number was higher than the warlock's number, we had done a good job. Sure, the fights sometimes had mechanics we needed to pay attention to, but they mostly involved moving from one place to stand and shoot to another place to stand and shoot. We forgot a very important part of our jobs as mages. We forgot how to sheep.
Arcane Brilliance: Things I'm thankful for
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, Arcane Brilliance is feeling especially festive. Pyroblasting a turkey will do that. So apparently it's the holiday season. I'm still burping up cranberries and stuffing, my wife has started forcing Christmas music upon me (and frankly, if it's not Mannheim Steamroller, I don't want to hear it), and I've reached the point in the year when -- for my own mental well-being -- I refuse to look at a bank statement until February. To those of you who survived yesterday's annual gladiatorial bloodletting and emerged victorious from the front doors of Walmart or Old Navy, hoisting your hard-won set of hand towels above your head like a trophy: I salute you. To those of you who, like me, stayed home and bought stuff on Steam and Xbox Live: I also salute you, only I do so from my chair, by typing in an emote. Because, really, we're all pretty lazy. But damned if I don't feel well rested. In deference to the spirit of the season, we here at Arcane Brilliance thought it might be nice to spend a column thinking about the things we're grateful right now. You'll find the mage-related stuff behind the jump, but here's my non-mage-related short list of awesome things: flatbread chicken sandwiches getting randomly tagged on Dragon Quest IX while walking through the airport Tuesday night troll druid cat form The Walking Dead Mumford and Sons discovering the brilliance of Arrested Development and Friday Night Lights on Netflix Taco Bell, Netflix, Square Enix, etc. ... feel free to make any and all endorsement checks out to Christian Belt, care of WoW Insider. Also, screw you, AMC, for canceling Rubicon. I was just starting to enjoy that one. And screw you double, FOX, for putting Fringe on Fridays, where all good FOX shows go to die.
Caption contest: publicity stunt generating publicity
We do hate to play into wily PR folks' attention-grabbing campaigns, but when they're quite so nutty, we can't help but admire them. UK network Three is trying to promote its hotspots (we think) by having dudes wearing full-body underwear running around with "Human Hotspot" signs and what looks like part of the Engadget logo throughout London. We don't get it, but we do love it. Thomas: "I can look up your WEP." Vlad: "Please note, dressing up as a Trojan won't protect you from actual trojans." Nilay: "Touch my junk and I'll have you arrested." Darren: "I'm probably working... even if the tube drivers aren't." Richard Lai: "My SSID is quite well hidden, if I may say so." Carlos: "I'm hot... or not?" Tim: "I knew that Fantastic Four movie was a bad career move. Time for a new agent." Ross: "Ask about where I keep my SIM card." Myriam: "Spot the hotness." Sam: "The Blue Man Group member that never was." Josh T.: "Due to his drug habit and carousing, the Invisible Man had been forced into a number of demeaning jobs."
Caption Contest: Steve Ballmer goes on kill-crazy rampage at Microsoft Store
In the photo above you see Microsoft's Steve Ballmer performing a ribbon cutting at the company's new store in Bellevue, Washington. Shortly after finishing with the ribbon, Ballmer proceeded to rampage the store and patrons, leaving 17 dead, 6 wounded, and a stunned Miley Cyrus wondering if she had made the wisest career decisions. Ballmer was finally subdued by Dave Matthews, who knocked the CEO unconscious with an 8-foot bong. Josh: "I'm a PC, and I'm going to mess up your insides so bad, you'll pray for death." Ben Bowers: "Anyone else want to claim Windows 7 was their idea?" Chris: "To the cloud! With Windows 7 and Windows Live, Microsoft can mix and match its CEO's best faces until it's able to piece together a photo it's proud to share." Ross: "Using the power of Control-X while mobile is just one of the many superpowers Ballmer has and Windows Phone 7 users don't." Darren: "Moments before this tremendous occasion, Ballmer begrudgingly confirmed a prompt questioning his true intentions to dismantle a red ribbon." Nilay: "Touch my junk and I'll have you arrested." Don: "There can only be one!" Vlad: "I love this company! I love it so much I'm gonna cut it up into little pieces and eat it!" Joe: "Clearly event organizers hadn't planned for every possible emergency." Thomas: "Baby Ballmer cuts his own cord thankyouverymuch." Myriam: "Developers! It's time to get cut and paste into Windows Phone 7..."
Arcane Brilliance: Things I've learned while dying in Cataclysm heroics, mage edition
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, weekly mage column of choice for dress-wearing, warlock-hating Frostbolt slingers the world over. Also, fans of the short musical films of Journey, Short Imagined Monologues, and the sublime, video game-based synth and fretwork amalgams of Sixto Sounds. Seriously, listen to this one. Holy crap. So over the past few days, I've found myself a broken corpse lying in a spreading puddle of my own bodily fluids a bit more frequently than I'm used to. The reason for this is simple: heroics. No, not the ones on the live servers -- where you can throw together a random group consisting of a ret pally tank, a six-year-old playing a hunter his mom bought him on eBay the day before, a feral druid healer who for some reason came into the instance suffering from nine more minutes of resurrection sickness, a mouth-breathing rogue who may or may not be a serial killer, and an AFK shaman farming badges while auto-following the healer -- and still blast through the place. I'm talking about heroics in the Cataclysm beta. They're absolutely brutal, guys. Now, granted -- it's still early. The testing process for these beauties is still in its infancy. We're tackling them using premade characters with talent builds we threw together by looking at the talents and thinking, "This looks nice." We're wearing gear that's barely entry-level for heroics (if we're lucky) and using spell rotations that we're basically making up on the fly. We're going into instances we've never seen before, doing boss fights nobody knows the mechanics for, and dealing with crippling, often game-breaking bugs. These places simply aren't finished, not by a long shot. But then again, that's why we have a beta. We go in, throw our soft, cloth-clad bodies against the long claws of some horrifying beast or another, use the final droplets of our blood to scrawl feedback for the developers ("Landmines ... everywhere ... can't feel ... legs ... fading to black ... tell warlocks ... hate them ... so ... much ... "), and then come back for another round. Blizzard takes the data it gathers from our gruesome deaths and uses it to construct a better game. Still, there is much we can learn -- even in this unfinished state -- from the first incarnations of these heroics. Join me after the jump, won't you?
Kevin Rose demos Square payment system for iPhone
Digg's Kevin Rose is the newest investor in this Square iPhone payment system that we've been seeing lately, and as you can see above, he's demo'ed the unit for everyone over on YouTube. It works as we've heard: there's just an addon that you plug into the iPhone's headphone jack, and then an app takes information from the swiper, and transmits it out for an actual credit card payment, with a finger doing the signature. The app, as Kevin says, will even upload GPS information, so you can make sure that payments are happening in the right place. Unfortunately, what he doesn't mention is the actual price to get payments up and running. Square's website says that there's "no contracts, monthly fees, or hidden costs," but they've got to pay for the system somehow, so you'd expect there to be a fee for setup, for the accessory, and then a fee per charge through the system, but we haven't heard what any of those will end up being yet. Depending on how steep they are, this could be a gamechanger -- accepting payments anywhere, any time, with an online record and receipt for each one, no cash involved. Would be incredible for small business owners, and probably a lot of other sales folks, too.
Testing of Crusader's Coliseum starts tomorrow
I was just bemoaning that we haven't gotten a chance to see patch 3.2's new raid content yet. It looks like that chance will come sooner than I expected: tomorrow night! Daelo has just posted a testing schedule for Trial of the Crusader (a.k.a. Crusader's Coliseum). North American realms: Lord Jaraxxus, Thursday, July 9, starting at 7 PM EDT European realms: Eydis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane, Thursday, July 9, starting at 19:00 CEST Both of these fights will be available in normal mode (10 or 25) only, not heroic. The new 5-man, Trial of the Champion, will be open "later in the PTR cycle." He also notes that Koralon, the new Vault boss, will be up, and you'll be able to access it if your side has Wintergrasp. Tanking and DPS Patchwerks will make a return. Unlike the patch 3.1 PTR tanking Patchwerk, this one just hits really hard ("as hard as Algalon"), all the time (instead of ramping his damage up over time). Oh, and one more thing: there is, apparently, no trash at all in this raid. Woot? Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
