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Team Fortress 2 meets World of Warcraft
Yo dawg, we heard you like Arenas, so we put an Arena in your Arena! Behold, WoW's Circle of Blood Arena map, transformed into a Team Fortress 2 map. Sure, it might not have the subtlety of Dustbowl or Well, but as a reproduction, it looks terrific. They even got the starting areas working right. And look at that sky!You can download this map for TF2 and a very similar one for Counter-Strike: Source over at the creator's blog. I doubt it'll jump to the top of any major playlists any time soon, but if your usual group of TF2 friends also have spent some time in the Arenas, they'll probably get a kick out of it.
CSS Animation to replace need for Flash in MobileSafari? Not likely
New nightly builds of Safari's bleeding-edge doppelgänger, WebKit, are getting some new support for CSS animations -- support that's already available in MobileSafari. The animations, which include a falling leaves effect, a way to simply animate objects sliding across the screen, and a "pulse" effect (described as "the new <blink>") are all supported by WebKit. The WebKit blog shows code examples about how to use these behaviors in your own sites. MacRumors's Arnold Kim suggests that Apple may be looking to obviate the need for Flash on the iPhone and iPod touch through the implementation of web tools like CSS Animation. I would argue that while CSS is powerful, getting Flash on the iPhone is about one thing and one thing only: Games.
DVD Forum's latest standard, DVD-Download for DL revealed in licensing specs
It's been months since the DVD Download DL logo surfaced, offering little info for anyone trying to figure out how this might play into Toshiba's post-HD DVD anything-but-Blu-ray plans, but now that it's available to licensees we got a peek at the details behind the spec. Approved by the DVD Forum, it's a standard for content providers to send deliver movies as a disk image that can be burned onto a DVD complete with CSS encryption, Qflix-style. That includes print to order service providers like CustomFlix CreateSpace or even home users downloading a legitimate flick over the Internet. The net benefit? It's guaranteed to play on any standard DVD player, although given the ease with which nearly anyone can download and burn less-legitimate copies nowadays, the biggest potential plus we see would be an in store kiosk that burns discs while you wait, saving SKUs and packaging costs for suckers who bought the special edition. Check out the conformance guideline PDF straight from the Forum for more details, we'll let the BDA know they can stop holding their breath, if they ever were.[Via Format War Central]
Dell offers up Qflix drives to burn CinemaNow movies to DVD
It's been almost a full year since we first saw DataPlay's CSS-compliant DVD burner, so let's recap the model -- you download a DRM-protected movie to your PC, grab a piece of specially-keyed blank DVD media, use the DataPlay burner to commit the movie to disc and then enjoy your oh-so-legal fun on the run. For all of you who want to live that dream right now, Dell has brought out its $120 Qflix drive bundle so you can save your CinemaNow movies to Qflix DVD media using the included drive, software and two pieces of media (in case one coasters). Seriously, what else are you going to use for long-term archiving of your movies -- hard drives or something? [Via Electronista]
CSS trick mimics sideways-flicking behavior in MobileSafari
Ajaxian has posted a ridiculously simple way to enable web apps to mimic the iPhone's side-to-side flicking behavior using custom CSS supported by MobileSafari. If you're creating a web app specifically for iPhone and iPod touch users, you can get a similar feel to a native application with MobileSafari. MobileSafari includes some CSS 3 support, including advanced DOM selectors and support for animations and transitions. Chances are, other browsers will have limited support for CSS 3 draft standards, and whatever you write probably will only work in MobileSafari and Safari 3 on the desktop. The test application in this movie shows how it tracks finger movements across the screen, and performs actions based on the distance "swiped." Very nifty. [Via Cameron.io.]
Blizzard's splash screen changes for June 26th
The saga of the icy splash screen continues, as the newest splash screen has just gone live on Blizzard's sites under the file name ice4.jpg. This time, the ice has cracked away even further, revealing more of the night sky, and what looks to be a face coalescing from the ice flecks and vapor in the middle of the picture. The identity of the face isn't clear, although Alex thinks it may be a Protoss Archon. We've also received this very intriguing picture from tipster Pact, which shows the face overlaid with a picture of Diablo from the Diablo 2 box. Of course, it's worth noting that it could simply be Arthas' eyes as well, peering out from his helmet. As expected, a new rune has appeared as well, bringing the tally to four. This rune, located to the lower right of the cracking ice, looks like nothing so much as a miniature solar system model -- perhaps related to this model seen during April Fool's? Diablofans.com has suggested it may be a top-down view of an Arcane Sanctum from Warcraft 3 and WoW (You can see one at the Scryer's base in Shadowmoon) as well. As also expected, a new piece of the strange purple monster has appeared as well. It appears to be the hindquarters of the beast. So far, I'm still sticking to my belief that it's some sort of purple penguin. This file was named 16.jpg, which, if we follow the alphabet conversion method we've been using for previous pieces, gives us the letter "P." "Powd" is the best I can get out of that. Does that mean this picture is that of a new mascot named "Powder the penguin"? As usual, you can see all of these graphics in our splash screen speculation gallery, which is constantly being updated with new speculation and analysis as the WWI draws nearer. %Gallery-25975% There's more analysis to come after the break.
Blizzard's icy splash screen changes as Diablo 3 and WoTLK speculation intensifies
We reported yesterday about the new icy splash screen which has appeared on many of Blizzard's corporate and gaming sites. There's already tons of speculation speeding around the web about it, and of course the pot was only stirred all the more this morning when the picture changed slightly: the light in the middle of the cracked ice became brighter, and there's some new detail that can be seen through the ice, including a rune of some sort just to the upper right of the center. we can probably assume that the picture will change more each day until something is announced at the Worldwide Invitational. However, the question remains: What is being announced? Right now, there's two major schools of thought about it: One school says that this will lead up to the announcement of the WoTLK Beta, while another says that this will be the announcement of Diablo 3. Each side has some pretty passionate arguments, and are bringing the analysis to back it up. Let's look at what we have after the break. %Gallery-25975%
Safari 3 allows styled form controls
This was included in WebKit builds beginning several years ago, apparently, but is something I recently stumbled upon. Historically, Safari has been pretty insistent on making sure web page form fields (like drop-down menus and buttons) retain the Aqua look-and-feel. Web designers, on the other hand, have gotten used to choosing colors and font sizes for those controls, so they fit in with their site's design. Hopefully everyone can now be happy: Safari 3 allows web designers to style form controls with CSS. The results are pictured: instead of a glossy, Aqua-like control, Safari displays a matte-finish control in the color and size of your choosing. You can even apply background images to form controls. If you don't apply styles to your controls, then Safari retains the Aqua look. This shouldn't require any changes to code that's already written for other browsers: Safari 3 should pick right up on the formatting, and display it as the designer intended. It does, however, open up WebKit-specific CSS to your form controls.
Set custom iPhone CSS signatures
Here's a great how-to that I've been meaning to post for a while. Blogger David F. Bills posted a tutorial for adding custom CSS signatures to your iPhone email defaults. The process involves copying over your preferences file and adding the CSS code to the SignatureKey preference. This gets very interesting when Bills shows you how to add a custom image to your signature. You actually have to encode the image directly so it arrives with your message. Otherwise, spam blockers may block the image download if you just use an HTML link. It's a really easy to follow method and I had very little trouble getting it set up to include the signature shown here. My biggest obstacle came from my tendency to paste everything in TextEdit. For this project, PropertyListEditor works better and more reliably due to the length of the pasted key.
iPhone Web Development book debuts
August Trometer's new PDF book, Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari" just debuted. I am not much of a web designer myself but I may cough up the ten bucks to pick up a copy of this ebook. Topics according to the web page include Mobile Safari detection, Webkit-specific CSS attributes, and how to use iPhone-specific features via web tweaks. iUI, Joe Hewitt's iPhone-specific webpage design kit, doesn't appear in the write-up, and I'm not sure if Trometer covers using it or not. Full disclosure, I have worked with AW/Pearson and will be doing so again.
New iPod touch ad was created by student, reuses Zune tune
As many, many readers noted, a new iPod touch ad appeared on TV over the weekend, and Apple has now posted it on their site. There's a long story behind this one that I hadn't heard yet, it would seem that the ad is a product of TBWA/Chiat/Day, just like most of Apple's ads, but the idea actually came from an 18-year-old English guy named Nick Haley. Nick created the ad (his original cut is above) back in September as a homage to Apple's new iPod, and it looks like someone in Cupertino noticed (or at least someone on Madison Avenue).This might be old news to most of you, but I hadn't heard it and it's a good story. Apple has a reputation for getting their advertising from other sources, and it's nice to see them acknowledge an ad that came from someone who really loves their products.Special thanks to reader running for figuring this one out for us: the song used in the ad is actually the same one used in this super weird Zune ad from last year. Even when Apple is completely upfront about the origin of their ad, they can't seem to keep from colliding with competitors in the same space.Update: Calling it the iTouch was completely accidental, and I apologize. You guys are right-- it's the iPod touch, and I'm sorry for mistaking it. I guess the word was sitting in my brain and just wanted to come out.
DataPlay unveils CSS-friendly external DVD burner
Just a week after the DVD CCA approved an unexciting (and incredibly restrictive) download-to-burn scheme, DataPlay has unveiled what it calls the "world's first CSS-managed recording DVD burner." Of course, this isn't the first time we've heard about this type of setup, and as it turns out, DataPlay is actually "participating in the Qflix technology and IP licensing program." The aptly-named MovieWriter is an external USB 2.0 device that is "capable of writing CSS encrypted content for playback on standard DVD players," but alas, you'll be forced to pick up the presumably expensive CSS-MR pre-keyed recordable discs through Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden before any burning can take place. Currently, no pricetag is being listed, but we are told that the outfit is already planning an internal version for OEMs to integrate into pre-fabricated machines. [Warning: PDF read link]
Hypercard's history
SiliconUser takes a short look at ye olde Hypercard technology, Apple's precursor to the concepts that eventually became HTML and the World Wide Web. The project was originally created in 1985 as an easier way to create programs on the Macintosh-- it consisted of a "cards and stacks" metaphor, as in you created one card that linked to another card in the stack, and so on. Early Hypercard stacks just worked as organized information databases, but eventually Hypercard ended up doing more and more-- cards could work as applications in themselves, and the links between them served as a precursor to hyperlinks and what we know as the Internet today. Personally, I only used Hypercard very minimally, and it's hard for me to imagine as much functionality coming out of Hypercard as we've got with CSS, HTML, and PHP today. But Hypercard faithful (of which the numbers seem to be not quite known), held onto the application for a long time.Hypercard's downfall came arguably not because it failed to stand up to new concepts, but because Apple, in a blunder, passed the program away to Claris, who tried to sell it rather than include it free in Macs. By the time Apple took it back, in 1993, the momentum was lost, and after a short period with Apple's Quicktime division, Hypercard was discontinued in 2004. Previous to that, Hypercard 3.0 was shown at WWDC 1996 (including the ability to display Hypercard stacks in a web browser, which might have been the key to keeping Hypercard alive), but that release never came. There are a few traces of Hypercard left on Apple's site, but as a technology, it's as dead as dead gets.Thanks, Thomas!
Finnish court rules CSS DVD protection "ineffective"
A Finnish court in Helsinki has made a ruling that confirms what we've all known for a long time now; that CSS is completely ineffective as a copyright protection method for DVDs. Legally this adds an air of sanity to the previous European Ruling that banned the "the circumvention of 'effective technological measures.'" This early court decision (it could be / probably will be appealed) places CSS outside of this definition, removing the illegal aspect of circumventing CSS in the EU. If the decision of the entry-level court stands, then there are implications for other copyright protection methods, which will no longer be considered effective protection methods if software which undermines it becomes widespread -- certainly the case with CSS, and potentially the case with HD-DVD and Blu-ray. As the case is currently developing, we'd suggest you keep the champagne energy drinks on ice for now: not that the legal status of backing up your DVDs was an effective deterrent in the first place.
RapidWeaver 3.6 released
Realmac Software today has released the much-anticipated new version of RapidWeaver, their powerful WYSIWYG software that does a great job of filling the gap between iWeb and Dreamweaver. This new v3.6 ushers in a significant list of new features, such as: Themes Styles - no more digging in HTML and CSS to customize your theme (unless you really want to) 6 completely new themes Snippets - manage chunks of frequently used code instead of copy/pasting or constantly re-typing New Flash Slideshow - completely rewritten and can now pull images from a Flickr feed Improved blog, including tags and inline comment support Easy creation of Lists Detailed Publishing And much, much more Also, due to RapidWeaver's "skyrocketing" popularity, RealMac Software introduced a redesigned website today that includes a full-featured add-ons section where users can browse themes, plug-ins and code snippets, which of course also means 3rd parties nowhave one central RapidWeaver community where the can highlight their products. With everything involved, I can completely understand Realmac Software's decision to make v3.6 a paid upgrade - current users (including MacHeist owners) can purchase a v3.6 license for $25, while a full license costs $49. A demo is of course available, so head over to the shiny new Realmac Software site to see everything RapidWeaver has to offer.
CSSEdit 2.5 brings tabs, X-ray Inspector and more
MacRabbit has released CSSEdit 2.5, a significant update to their fantastic CSS editing and manipulating application. As if CSSEdit 2.0 didn't bring enough cool features, v2.5 is almost like sneaking a peek at your v3.0 birthday presents that are stashed away in your parent's closet the day before your party. There is a list of what's new on the MacRabbit's blog.Quite the update, but a free one for registered owners of v2.x. Users of 1.x can upgrade for $14.95 instead of CSSEdit's regular price of $29.95, and of course a demo is available from MacRabbit.[via Nik Fletcher's Twitter]
BackupHDDVD creator speaks out
Just about everyone and their respective grandmothers have now gotten a whiff of this whole "BackupHDDVD" thing that's been floating around, as muslix64 was able to break down the HD DVD content protection and allow folks to sidestep the AACS boundaries. The folks over at Slyck sat down to chat with the infamous hacker about his motives, his work, and the obligatory "hopes and dreams," and as we expected, he's simply yet another (albeit intelligent and determined) individual that's frustrated with the limitations that DRM presents. He refers to himself as simply an "upset customer" looking to "enforce fair use," further explaining that he wasn't able to appropriately play back an HD DVD film that he purchased "on a non-HDCP HD monitor." He also said that his success with HD DVD led to his shared efforts while taking down Blu-ray's content protection, and noted that any stronger protection to limit the abilities of purchased media would likely be "too costly to manufacture." Lastly, he showed a bit of humbleness by admitting that he "probably wasn't the first to do this," and suggested that the ones before him probably just kept quiet, but his overriding purpose with all of this is to simply "enforce fair use, not piracy" and to "benefit the consumers." Sure, there are certainly polarized camps when it comes to breaking down content protection, but before jumping to any conclusions, be sure to hit the read link and read the full dialogue.
Qflix brings CSS to download-to-burn DVDs: a new day has dawned
It's been a long time coming, but the major Hollywood studios have finally agreed to amend the CSS (content scrambling system, found on store-bought DVDs) licensing restrictions to include support for both commercial and private download-to-burn options. First mentioned last summer, this new agreement uses technology from Sonic Solutions called Qflix (initially adopted by Movielink) to slap that good ol' digital lock on discs that consumers burn either on their PCs or at in-store kiosks like the ones Wal-Mart and other big box retailers have been planning for some time now. Of course you can already burn downloaded flicks to DVD through CinemaNow's aptly-titled "Burn to DVD" service, but compatibility issues have relegated this option to merely a stopgap solution. While Qflix burns should be readable by any old player that supports CSS, the downside is that new media and -- in some cases -- new drives will be required to perform this neat little trick (some current burners can apparently be made Qflix-compatible through firmware upgrades). Besides the studios, other companies that are down with Qflix include disc manufacturer Verbatim, video-on-demand provider Akimbo, your friendly neighborhood Walgreens, and of course, Movielink. It's not clear when consumers will start seeing this these new devices and kiosks in the wild, but rest assured that you'll soon have a way to spend those 10 to 15 minutes waiting for your prescription that doesn't involve sitting next to a bunch of sick people in a germ-ridden pleather chair.
CSSEdit 2.0
I'm not a designer, heck I'm hardly a writer, but I do know good software when I see it (and a cute company logo). CSSEdit is a good piece of software, and it has only gotten better with version 2, released today. But what is it, you ask? CSSEdit is the premier CSS editor (that's Cascading Style Sheets to you) for OS X. Version 2 is faster, can save CSS from a remote website better, and auto saves your work. The big ticket feature is previewing CSS for dynamic applications (think blogs).A demo is available while a full license will cost $29.95.
Xbox 360 HD DVD playback: Maximum 1080i via component, 1080p VGA-only
We still don't know the US price or launch date, but we've got a bit more specifics on how the Xbox 360 HD DVD player add-on will work when it hits store shelves later this year thanks to a post by Microsoft insider Amir M. on AVS Forum. When Microsoft revealed yesterday it will support 1080p HD DVD and 1080p DVD upconversion we were surprised because it's commonly accepted that the CSS (DVD) and AACS (HD DVD & Blu-ray) copyright provisions wouldn't allow that (although some manufacturers have looked the other way before) via unprotected analog connections. We were right, sort of. Even after the software upgrade this fall, via component cables, the Xbox 360 will still only upconvert DVDs to 480p, and will play HD DVD movies at a maximum resolution of 1080i. To get 1080p output for movies, you must use a VGA cable, which is not subject to the same copyright restrictions. This just means the Xbox 360 is just like every other HD DVD and Blu-ray player on the market, but you wouldn't know that by reading Microsoft's press releases yesterday. If you ran out and bought a 1080p HDTV yesterday don't return it just yet, you should be able to get equal picture quality to 1080p if your TV processes the incoming signal correctly, and if it supports 1080p via component you can still play upconverted and native-1080p games . We're still waiting to hear exactly how HD DVD's advanced audio capabilities will be handled by the 360 and oh yeah...a US price, please Microsoft?.Update: Added list of supported resolutions after the break.
