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Commenting on Massively for new users
Do you all love this new site or what? We love it (we're biased, of course, but still), and one of the things we love most about it is that we've got a brand new, state-of-the-art commenting system. If you've ever commented on Joystiq, you'll probably have it all figured out already, but if not, here's a short guide to get you up and commenting (and moderating-- oh, the joys of comment moderation) with the best of them.Your first commentYou've read something interesting, you've got an opinion on it, and you want to comment. Great! Click on the comments link below the post to go to the comment entry form, put in your name and email under "New Users" (your email is only used for verification-- we'll never spam you, ever, and the email is never shown publicly), look over the options listed and choose your preferences, and start typing. Then hit "Add your comments," and... your comment won't appear just yet.We'll send you an email to verify that you are who you say you are, and then when that email shows up, you click a link inside it, and your comment will appear. There may be a short delay, but sit tight, it'll show up. Congrats! You made your first comment! But getting that email has another very important purpose, and that is that it will help you...
The truth about Catz and Dogz, as told by EBGames commenters
The issue of which pet-care game is the best is much too divisive to solve here. Even splitting them up into categories: horse, cat, hamster, etc. (as well as the non-pet care games involving human babies) is just much too controversial for us to make our own call.GamesRadar's staff, hoping to put this issue to rest, turned to the EBGames user comments for each game to determine which was the best. Using this resource, they were able to get expert reviews, like this one for Nintendogs: "this is wat i said to my mom when it came out! " o.m.g i really need to get this game." she said ok." To be fair, a lot of the commenters, especially for these games, are children, and probably don't need to be made fun of. But some of the comments run a little psychotic: "I had my nintendo ds for a while now and i have been ready for this moment," a commenter said about Imagine Babyz. What rituals must one go through to prepare for Imagine Babyz?
RSS feed has errors, will be fixed soon
Just wanted to thank everyone who has sent in tips about the error messages on our RSS feed (which you can find right here, when it's working, which is most of the time). We are aware the feed is broken, we have forwarded every one of your notes on to our technical guys, and hopefully the error will be fixed soon.And while we're at it, I'll take this opportunity as well to remind everybody about our tips form, ready and willing to receive any news you have for us. If you've heard or seen something big about the World of Warcraft that we haven't posted yet, feel free to drop us a note. Unfortunately, due to the volume of tips coming in, we can't answer everything you send (although we do try to-- some folks have sent technical questions about the game to us, which we try to answer to the best of our ability, as well as on our Ask WoW Insider feature). But we do read each and every note sent through that form, and there's no better way to contact us with tips, feedback, errors like the RSS feed problem, or anything else you'd like to tell us.Thanks for reading and letting us know what you think. We appreciate it!
Digg releases official iPhone interface
We've come full circle on the iPhone software merry-go-round-- the first app we saw for the iPhone was a mockup built with Digg's API, and now Digg has released their own iPhone application.And it works pretty well, even if you're not using an iPhone. You can log in right there in the interface, and even browse topics through a drop-down menu. Perhaps the biggest new feature is a "mini-permalink" page that will automatically grab the top 5 moderated comments from the regular Digg page and only show those. That right there is almost enough to make me browse the iPhone Digg rather than the regular Digg, even on my desktop-- the fewer and more useful Digg comments I can see, the better.Kevin Rose also promises a way to see the top stories in the iPhone interface is coming, and since there is no way to actually add comments yet (you have to go to the main Digg page for the article to do so), they may work on that in the future as well. After all this app was supposedly thrown together in 48 hours-- Rose promised coder Joe Stump that if he did it in two days, he'd get an iPhone, and apparently he did.
Enter to win a signed WoW TCG playmat from WoW Insider
The other weekend, I went out to Schaumberg, IL to meet up with the guys from Upper Deck at the WoW TCG Darkmoon Faire. And not only did I walk away with a couple of interviews and a lot of pictures, they also hooked me up with these two rare playmats, which we're giving away to two lucky readers!The one on top was given away to everyone who participated in the main tournament at the Darkmoon Faire events, and the one on the bottom features art by none other than Gabe of Penny Arcade. Oh, and you can't see it in the picture, but both mats are signed by none other than Mike Hummel, head of Upper Deck's R&D, and co-creator of the WoW TCG.To enter, just leave a comment (one comment and only one comment) on this post right here. As usual, the contest is only open to US residents age 13 and up (rest of the official rules here). Tomorrow morning at 11am EST, I'll close the comments and we'll choose two at random to each receive one playmat each. Good luck, comment away!Update: Contest over, comments closed. Thanks for entering everyone-- check your email to see if you won.
Japanese hardware sales, May 21 - May 27: Step by Step edition
Some of our readers wonder exactly what they're supposed to do with the Japanese hardware sales every week. To promote enlightenment and worldwide harmony, we've taken the liberty of creating a step-by-step walkthrough of a proper response to the weekly figures. Adhere to these rules whenever possible, and if you must deviate, remember to at least properly remove all semblance of standard English grammar from your comments.1. Look for any obvious outliers in the sales data, such as the Nintendo DS falling out of first place. This will never occur; advance to step 2.2. Statistical variation causes slight fluctuations every week. Immediately look for numbers that come close to dividing evenly into one another; this enables comments such as, "lol, wii sold 5x of PS3s this week, pwnage."3. Should any Nintendo systems suffer a decrease in sales, come up with reasons as to why they dropped. The usually accurate "supply is unable to currently meet demand" excuse is no longer sufficient in most cases. Come up with creative replies like, "redirected shipments of software caused a temporary instability in the retail market," or "lol ghost of kutaragi put a curse on teh DS kekekekeke."4. There will invariably be a Sony or Microsoft troll, defending his or her own system while attacking your own. Henceforth, we'll be posting IP addresses and relevant contact information*; please take it upon yourselves to attack and/or maim the aforementioned troll, preferably with some kind of mace that grants +7 strength while fighting trolls.*Really.**- DS Lite: 127,461 16,248 (14.61%) - Wii: 58,644 6,451 (12.36%) - PSP: 26,097 1,408 (5.12%) - PS2: 11,311 430 (3.95%) - PS3: 9,627 968 (11.18%) - Xbox 360: 2,044 18 (0.89%) - Game Boy Micro: 407 21 (4.91%) - GBA SP: 288 42 (12.73%) - Gamecube: 256 20 (7.25%) - DS Phat: 81 55 (211.54%) - GBA: 17 16 (48.48%)[Source: Media Create]**Not really.
To comment or not to comment...
I certainly hope that you'll decide to comment -- especially since we've got a swanky new comment system running now. One of my own pet peeves about commenting here in the past was the need for e-mail confirmation, which was handy for keeping spam out, but was slow and potentially annoying when you wanted to leave comments. With this new system, you can set a password linked to your e-mail address and use it to make comments -- sans confirmation e-mails -- on sites throughout the Weblogs, Inc network. So set yourself up in the system and feel free to speak your peace -- sans e-mail confirmation.Update: To answer a few frequent questions:Yes, you will be able to change your password; our developers are working on the tool that will allow you to do so. In the meantime, we are hard-pressed to think of any modern browser that will not automagically remember your password for you -- please use this as a temporary solution!Extraneous http:// links inserted in some name links will be fixed very shortly.The "E-mail me when someone replies" function is only going to email you when someone replies to your specific comment -- not to the post in general. Let this be a hint to you that we will be rolling out Engadget-style comment threading in the future , and this is where that feature will come into play. However, currently our comments are not yet threaded, so you shouldn't actually get any email reply notifications -- yet! Stay tuned... Rome.com wasn't built in a day.
A Joystiq firmware update: new comment logins and site search
After countless firmware posts, it's always nice to bring you news of a Joystiq firmware update. We're calling this one the "Winter Update" and it includes not one, but two new features that have long been requested. First: comment logins. We know, our comment activation emails have long promised the ability to plug in a password to magically bypass the onerous activation system. Now, you can take that password and plug it into our new and improved comment field, bypassing onerous email activations forever! This password works on all Weblogs, Inc. sites including Joystiq's seven daughter sites and even our buddies over at Engadget.Second: we've also improved the stiq's long suffering search functionality. Multi-word search? No worries! We've got all your "wii injuries" right here. In fact, we're liking it so much, we recommend rolling your very own Joystiq Firefox Quick Search. We'll be fine tuning things based on user feedback (no, you can't change your password; yes, we're working on it), so be sure to let us know how everything works in the comments.[Big ups to our devs!]
Japanese hardware sales, 11 Dec - 17 Dec: ARG edition [update 2]
Update 2: Congratulations to Kurifurisan, Mr. Scolex, Oro, and Jennifer for successfully completing the ARG! The clues are explained below. Clue 1: As you can see below, the word Wii and the numbers 10 and 29 are highlighted in bold. This obviously refers to the Wii Fanboy blog in particular, on the date October 29th. Only one article was published on this date: Toys R' Us nonsense. Clue 2: In this post, we can immediately see that the post picture has been altered. It features four DS games: Spyro: A New Beginning, Contact, and Nintendogs (presumably the newer Dalmatian Edition). These games were all released on the same week, and thus, should have led you to the DS Fanboy post DS Releases for the Week of October 16th. Clue 3: This post had an extra final line added: "4 leaves take 5 4 good, 6 feet under. A shame, really." Silly numbers games aside, the death and departure of four leaves refers to the untimely dissolution of Clover Studios, makers of such fine games as Viewtiful Joe and Okami. This should have referred you to the final destination post, Clover Studios Goes Six Feet Under on Nintendo Wii Fanboy. If you found the cross-linked post on DS Fanboy, there was a message saying you had the wrong blog. We hope you enjoyed the game, and if you failed to complete it, you'll have some chances next year to prove your mettle. If you gain any, that is. Hah!For the uninformed, ARG stands for "Alternate Reality Gaming". That's really just a silly hype-word, we think, but here we go. Your task: follow the sequence of clues to various past posts in both Nintendo Wii Fanboy and DS Fanboy. Should you manage to defeat our ingenious riddles, post a comment on the final post to declare your victory to the world. Heck, we'll even go back and give you a star for doing it, too ... the feature is temporarily out of service, but our tech guys should have it back up and running soon.Below are the sales figures for this week, and contained therein, the first clue.- DS Lite: 319,708 10,078 (3.25%)- Wii: 108,237 22,798 (26.68%)- PS3: 70,942 20,771 (41.40%) - PSP: 48,962 20,032 (69.24%) - PS2: 37,730 7,270 (23.87%) - Xbox 360: 17,168 18,175 (51.42%) - GBA SP: 1,867 29 (1.53%) - Game Boy Micro: 1,491 64 (4.12%) - Gamecube: 1,152 583 (102.46%) - DS Phat: 158 9 (5.39%) - GBA: 42 25 (147.06%) - Xbox: 3 3 (50.00%)[Source: Media Create]
Reminder: send us your tips!
We TUAW bloggers use a variety of methods and resources to track down the news, tips, tricks and other forms of Mac interestingness we post, and among the most important of them are the tips from readers like you. However, we've noticed an increase in questions in post comments on how to send us tips, so we thought it might be a good time to post a reminder.Our tips form is linked at the bottom of our category list (pictured here, though yes: it's tiny and hard to find. Rest assured, we're working on it), and its URL is located in the same place as virtually any other blog in the Weblogs, Inc. network: tuaw.com/tips gets you to our tips form, while DVguru.com/tips will let you drop our sister blog on all things digital video a line as well.So if you've found a hot piece of news, a killer tip or someone who turned their PowerMac into a mailbox, be sure to send it our way, and your name just might get emblazoned in the TUAW archives with our post.
Thottbot will be fine
Just in case you were worried that all the comments you had put into Thottbot were gone, don't be. We've heard from the man himself and everything is going to be fine.In an email, Thott says "Some of the back end stuff lost its mind and kept reporting threads as non-existent. The site calmly accepted this and created a new thread start each time someone posted a comment. Now there are multiple thread starts for each page. Once I write something to merge them all it'll be back to normal."Great to hear that one of the best WoW resources on the Internet is safe and secure. Where else could you learn how Goblin Rocket Fuel can lead to online romance between an engie and an alkie? (second comment)
Comments wiped on Thottbot
Sometime today, it seems as though the comments on Thottbot.com were wiped. Maybe. Some Thottbot entries, like this one for Atiesh, have plenty of old comments still on them. But others which definitely used to have comments, like the Bad Mojo Mask, seem to be wiped clean.Which is definitely trouble, because while there are a lot of WoW resources out there, Thottbot was well known not only for its completeness (they even had spells in there that were only used by NPCs or objects), but for the player comments on each quest. Not only could you find out where a mob spawned, but you could see players telling you how hard it was, how they had beaten it with their 49 lock by chain fearing, and whether the rewards were good or bad. Without the comments, Thott's just not Thott.There's a few rumors floating around as to why this happened-- it could just be a server mistake, or it could be an attempt by Thott to clean out the gold sellers that were advertising in the comments. Some of the comments may have disappeared and come back, so it could be just a temporary thing (unfortunately the site news doesn't provide any clues because... it was wiped, too). I've dropped a note to Thott himself to see if he can give us any feedback on the subject-- I'll let you know if we hear any moreSo if you've ever used Thottbot in the past, now's the perfect time to give back-- leave a comment on a few quests or items you know well to help rebuild the database. I'm sure a site like WoWHead would love to take advantage of Thott while they're down, but Thott's the first and original. I would hate to see them go down like this, especially if it's a tech mistake of some kind.Update: Comments are now back on the Bad Mojo Mask entry, as well as on the site news. Whatever the problem was, it looks like it might have been only temporary.
WoW Insider Contest: Win Character Art!
My post last week about immortalizing your character with custom character art grabbed the attention of one Jay "Mig!" Mcleod. Jay's an artist who often does custom character art on eBay-- he offered me a nice sketch, but then I figured, why keep his talent for myself-- why not give it away to one of you, loyal readers?So that's exactly what we're going to do. Thanks to my selflessness, one lucky WoW Insider reader is going to be getting hooked up with a free 8x10 pen and ink sketch (valued at $30) from Jay "Mig" Mcleod. That's his art up above, and you can check out his online gallery for more samples of his work (I've put a few more after the jump as well).Entering is as easy as we could possibly make it. Just reply to this post with a comment sometime between now and 24 hours from now (contest ends 12:01 am Eastern on Wednesday, August 23rd), and we'll randomly choose one of the commenters below to win a custom made 8x10 pen and ink Mig! sketch of the character of your choice. Make sure to enter with a real email that you can check, because that's how we'll be contacting you. And once we contact you, we'll ask you to send a few screenshots of your character to Jay so he can know what to draw. Don't bother entering more than once-- we'll be watching, and anyone who comments more than once will be automatically disqualified. Tomorrow night, we'll randomly Need roll one of the comments (with /roll, of course-- this is WoW Insider), and we'll post the winner's custom character art when Jay's finished making it.Good luck!Update: Time's up, comments closed. We'll be emailing the winner, so be sure to check your inboxes, and when we get the art done, we'll post it here for all to see. And don't worry if you didn't win-- I'm sure Mig! would be more than happy to draw your character for you-- for a small fee, of course. Thanks to everyone who entered!
Sunday survey results: FM Transmitters - yea...not really
This past Sunday I ran a survey to see what y'all thought of iPod FM transmitters - the good, the bad and the ugly. I figured that since I weeded through all the comments, I should let you guys know whether you gave this particular category of iPod accessories a thumbs up or down.The greater majority of you really weren't that fond of FM transmitters, the two largest reasons being signal unreliability and overall audio quality. Many of the FM transmitter haters recommended going with solutions like cassette adapters, FM modulators or a full-on dedicated stereo with iPod-friendly inputs.Among the still-healthy pro-FM transmitter crowd however, there were three clear favorites: Kensington, Griffin and Monster. This was really helpful in narrowing down my options, and I think I'm going to do some more digging on those and what all this FM stuff is about before dropping another ~ $70-80 or more on something like this.Ultimately, since my wife always beats me to the Matrix anyway (and she already made me sleep on the couch for dropping $80 on an iPod accessory), I opted to go with a $15 cassette adapter for now (on a side note: it's hilarious what accessory makers can get away with by slapping iPod branding on cassette tape adapters these days). I know, I know: a cheap and simple solution for all the awesome feedback you readers offered, but until AOL (remember: they bought Weblogs, Inc. last year. You're reading an AOL blog! Mwahaha!) sends the 6-figure job offer my way, I'll have to wait on the pimped out touch-screen iPod + Car Borg™ adapter (heck AOL, I'll even take a 5-figure job!). When I do get around to finding that perfect iPod/Borg/accessory thingy, trust me: you'll be the first to know. Resistance, after all, is futile.
Comments are back!
That's right, comments are back everybody! And we didn't leave you hanging for no good reason. We hope that week off of the comments will prevent those silly trolls and spammers from comin' round anymore. But since we know it won't, we have some new anti-spam systems on the backend, and a new feature for you guys to use: comment reporting. Next to everybody's comment, you'll see a little exclamation point. Click that, and the comment will be immediately reported to our staff. Please, only report offensive posts, or spam! We don't like spending our days at work looking at a bunch of falsely reported comments.We've also made a couple of changes: no more numbering comments (they just got way too confusing), and no more stars (we never turned 'em on anyway). However, the big news here is that Engadget is getting an entirely new comment system in a few weeks, so be on the lookout. We're expecting to finally provide persistent user profiles, advanced moderation, and other neat stuff we should have had, like, forever years ago. Thanks for your patience everybody, and happy commenting![Big ups to Gavin in our tech team!]
Widget Watch: CSS Tweak!
CSS Tweak!, as you might imagine, can optimize and clean up your CSS code with the drag and drop of a file. The widget will report how much smaller your file is going to get, and its description states that your new file is "saved in the same location as the original", so I'm pretty sure this means it doesn't overwrite the original, but proceed (and backup!) with caution.CSS Tweak! appears to be free and is available from Andy Peatling at his site, CssDev.
Joystiq readers are environmentally friendly
Claims that the majority of Joystiq readers are harmful to the planet's health have been disproved, as the results from our do you leave your console on standby? poll proves. Out of the 8,500+ respondents that took part in the poll, 53% make a conscious effort to turn off their consoles once they're finished with another 10% occasionally forgetting to do so. We can only assume that the remaining 36% who leave their consoles on standby all the time are part of the North American SUV drivers for simultaneous use of air conditioning and heating lobby group. The comments thread provided some excellent commentary on the responsibility we have to conserve our energy so we've highlighted some of the most interesting ones after the jump.
iComment 4.1 adds comments, trackbacks, webstats to iWeb sites
iComment, as we've mentioned before, allows you to add trackbacks and detailed webstats to iWeb sites, and even comment systems to iWeb sites hosted somewhere besides .Mac. Implementing some of these features can be a bit clunky, as you have to sign up for external services to help drive some of them, however, if you just gotta have comments and webstats the latest version of iComment (4.1) is probably the best way to get the job done.A demo is available, and a license will cost a mere $9.95.
Joystiq: How the star system works
Have you been a long-time poster at Joystiq or one of its awesome network-affiliated sites, only to see others have stars placed next to their name (or negatives) and wonder what exactly dictates that rewarding or stripping of star(s)? Well, Joystiq's Vlad Cole has broken down the star system to show you exactly how it works. These guidelines apply to all the Joystiq network sites: Value: Does the comment enhance the topic at hand and add new perspective to the discussion? Is it a good question or interesting insight? Impartiality: This is hard, especially for Fanboy sites such as this, but as much as we loudly proclaim this system to be the superior, it detracts from the discussion at hand. It's OK to be touched with Fanboyitis, however try to curb it as best as you can as to not damage the topic at hand whilst commenting. Civility: This is just common sense. We all have opinions and want to share them, however as human beings we have the ability to exercise civility, even during the most heated debate. Other: Humor, wit, and bribes of cold, fresh chocolate milk. We like chocolate milk. As such, these are the guidelines followed when hiring Bloggers for the network (you have no idea how much chocolate milk it took for me to get the job), so keep that in mind should you one day wish to kill me and take my place. Vlad is answering as many questions as he can over at Joystiq, but if you post any questions here, we'll try as best we can to answer.
Review: iWeb's enhancements are exactly what it needed
In the most recent iLife '06 software update that Damien mentioned, iWeb understandably received the largest bump of new features and bug fixes; after all, it is the latest to arrive at the iLife party. Considering that I've been pretty vocal about my gripes with this otherwise fantastic addition to both iLife and .Mac, you can imagine my enthusiasm for Software Update to work its magic asap.After tinkering with the new features in iWeb 1.1 like blog comments and drop-dead simple photo album page creation, I thought I'd post a quick review of what's new, as I think iWeb is finally starting to fit into its role of a strong, WYSIWYG 1.0 application from Apple.
