day one
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Tumblr’s staff is reportedly reduced to a skeleton crew
Tumblr, a flailing social media site from a bygone era, may be run by a skeleton crew from now on. An alleged internal memo from parent company Automattic has made the rounds on social platforms, stating it has “not gotten the expected results from our effort.”
Apple is reportedly working on a health-led journaling app
It would use tracking data to suggest writing topics.
‘The Falconeer’ will be an Xbox Series X launch title
The aerial dog-fighting RPG 'The Falconeer' will be a day-one Xbox Series X release title.
IRL: Keeping a journal with Day One
Trying to keep a journal has always been difficult for me. Before the age of smartphones, I tried to rely on text files or a physical notepad. If I wasn't forgetting to write down my thoughts, I was losing the file or my handwriting was so bad it would make a doctor jealous. I did the LiveJournal thing, too, except it fostered too many passive-aggressive entries. Finally, while browsing the App Store I come across an interesting-looking piece of software called Day One. The features, design and presentation prompted me to give journaling another go. And I'm glad I did.
Tales of Hearts R nets day-one edition, pre-order bonuses in Europe
PS Vita-ported JRPG Tales of Hearts R will arrive in Europe next month with a collection of in-game bonuses for pre-order customers, publisher Bandai Namco announced this week. Players who pre-order Tales of Hearts R in Europe will receive three exclusive DLC costumes inspired by previous series entries Tales of the Tempest, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, and Tales of Graces F. Pre-order the day-one Soma Link Edition and you'll also get a trio of costumes ripped from 2008's Tales of Vesperia. Bandai Namco has yet to announce pre-order incentives for the game's North American release. Tales of Hearts R premieres digitally and at retail in North America on November 11, and a European release is set for November 14. [Image: Bandai Namco]
Day-one patch adding Challenge Mode to Hyrule Warriors
Hyrule Warriors who are looking for a test of skills that goes beyond the game's Adventure Mode will be glad to hear that, as reported by Nintendo World Report, developer Koei Tecmo will be releasing a day-one patch that adds Challenge Mode to the game when it releases in North America on September 26. So just what is Challenge Mode? According to members of a Nintendo Treehouse stream made earlier this week, it's basically "Adventure Mode on steroids." So ... it's tougher and angrier, but also has some acne problems and premature balding? Whatever you say, Nintendo. Obviously that's a joke, but the truth of the matter is we won't know what Challenge Mode has in store for us until later this month. Remember warriors, patience is a virtue. [Image: Nintendo/Koei Tecmo]
Menote is yet another diary app
Your iPhone or iPad can make remarkably handy devices to chronicle your life with. Diary and note taking apps can make the process easier and perhaps even fun. But not all diary apps are equal. Menote is YADA-Yet Another Diary App. It's free, relatively good looking, but awkward to use and has limited features. Menote requires iOS 7.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The app is free with In-app purchase for premium features for $2.99. I am a strong advocate of keeping a journal or diary. It's a very useful exercise, and not just for writers. I have the 100 year old line-a-day journal that one of my great uncles kept and it's a fascinating piece of family history. I keep my own on my desk and write in it every day. There are lots of options for keeping a diary using iOS devices, including the built-in Notes app. You can use heavy-duty apps like Evernote, or purpose-built diary apps like the award-winning Day One. The promise of these apps it to make it easier to keep a diary because your device is with you and you can also capture images, location information, and more. As I gave Menote a trial run I found that it didn't offer special features or a significantly different or better experience than using other apps. In fact there were more than a few frustrations with using Menote. The app looks nice on the iPhone, but on the iPad it's just blown up for the bigger screen. That's disappointing. The app doesn't allow a switch to landscape in the main view and when creating or editing an entry and you switch to landscape the app removes the menus and controls. You are required to turn your device back to portrait orientation to save, add pics, or return to the main view. Syncing in Menote is not automatic or easy. I created an entry, with photos, using my iPhone and then checked my iPad. Nothing there. I opened and closed both apps repeatedly and eventually the entry sync'd over. There is an option for manual syncing and it's more reliable, but that's a poor substitute for reliable automatic syncing. On top of all that I am also not sure just how "free" the app is. Menote uses proprietary storage, limited to 50 MB. You'll need to purchase the premium option at $2.99 to gain an extra 1 GB. I am uncertain how many entries and photos the initial 50 MB represents. Purchasing the premium features will gain you that 1 GB extra storage, password protection for individual notes, notifications, and a night mode theme. I did not test the premium features. If you are committed to keeping a diary or journal I'd recommend Day One. The app is $4.99 for the iOS app and $9.99 for the Mac OS app. I find it to be really well thought out apps for both iOS and Mac. Day One also syncs with iCloud, not proprietary storage. Menote might be worth a try if you don't require a Mac version and use only a single iOS device and you're looking for a free option.
MLB 14: The Show misses first pitch on PSN for PS4 [Update: Resolved]
MLB 14: The Show was expected to be available on PSN as a day-one digital download for PS4 this morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern. Those that pre-ordered the game have not been able to download it at all however, as indicated by a 70-page PlayStation Forums support thread. Sony San Diego acknowledged the issue via Twitter, noting it is "aware that some users are unable to download the PS4 game from the PS Store. We're working with the PS Store team to resolve asap." This is the series' first crack at the next-gen console following MLB 14's launch on PS3 and Vita at the beginning of April. "Thanks for your patience, we won't rest until you guys are playing," the developer added in another tweet. We've reached out to Sony for more information on the issue and a timetable for its resolution, and will update as we learn more. [Thanks to everyone that sent this in!] Update: Sony added a note to its launch announcement post on the PlayStation Blog, which reads: "Due to unforeseen technical issues, MLB 14 The Show for PS4 is not currently available for download via the PlayStation Store. All parties are working as quickly as possible to remedy the issue. We'll update this post as soon as a resolution is reached. Thank you for your continued patience." Update #2: In another update, Sony says the "PlayStation Store download issue regarding MLB 14 The Show on PS4 has been resolved. We apologize for any frustration this caused, and thank the community for its patience and understanding." [Image: Sony]
Day One launches Publish, adds social networks to the mix (updated)
Tomorrow, the Day One iPhone app (US$4.99) is going to get a big update and today Paul Mayne and the Day One team unveiled a critical part of that update -- Publish. Update: Actually, the Day One update to version 1.13 is already live today, March 11. Note that Publish is still only available for the iPhone version of the app. What Publish enables Day One users do is take selected journal entries and publish them to a private website. That website is hosted at http://dayone.me and the web address for a published entry is provided only to the Day One user and people that the user wishes to share it with. That distinction is important to me as a Day One user: I use the app on an almost daily basis to keep a private journal, and there are many of my entries that I do not want to share publicly. For those of you who are familiar with the Day One iPhone app, you'll find a new item in the list that traditionally shows a count of posts, photos, tags, etc... That new item? Published. A tap on that button shows just the items that you have chosen to share to the Publish website. The first time you use Day One to send an entry to Publish, you'll be asked to set up a free account. Those entries are tagged with whatever data you have chosen to add to your usual Day One entries -- things like the time and date, "gold star" for special occasions, weather, and activity. Yes, Day One makes use of the activity data stored on your iPhone 5s and can be used as a private -- or now public -- activity tracker. Once you've logged into the Publish website, you see a rather plain website (see image above) that focuses on your content. There's a place for a profile displaying your name, email address (I'm not fond of that feature...), a short bio, and a link to any other website you're associated with. Another menu link on the website points to a list of your published entries, while a third shows your linked social network accounts. At this time, Publish supports Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, with more to come. What's nice is that with a single tap, you can publish your entries not only to your Day One account and the Publish website, but to all of your social networks as well. The social network entries include a link to the specific Publish website page so your followers can read a full post. At the bottom of those Publish pages are stats on how many people have viewed the page, retweeted or favorited your tweet, and so on. The update will be available for iPhone tomorrow, and turns Day One from a personal journal into an incredibly easy-to-use blogging tool as well. For me, that may mean that I'll finally start up a personal blog again.
Daily Update for November 14, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Xbox One launch day update expected to take 15-20 minutes to download
You may need to set aside 15 to 20 minutes of fidgeting time when you get your Xbox One on November 22. Chief Platform Architect Marc Whitten told IGN. Microsoft expects the day one update to take around that long to download for most users. Day one updates are becoming part and parcel of game launches, let alone consoles, so 20 minutes or so seems reasonable - even if it might frustrate some. Of course, others will be too excited to care.
Pre-order GTA 5 on PSN, receive 75 percent off another Rockstar game
Grand Theft Auto 5 is available for pre-order on PSN now. The "Day 1 Digital Version" will be available for players to download the day the game launches, September 17. By pre-ordering GTA 5 on PSN, players also receive 75 percent off any full Rockstar game, such as Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto 4. We in the business call that a "really good deal."
Day One for iOS updated to 1.10, adds PDF export option
Day One, the award-winning journaling app for iOS (and Mac) has been updated to version 1.10, adding PDF export and printing support. With the update, the entirety of your Day One journal can be exported as a single PDF or you can choose custom entries for export based on tags or date range. TUAW's own Steve Sande did a comprehensive review of Day One for iOS and Mac and had many positive things to say about it. Certainly, if you're in the market for a cross-platform journaling app for Mac and iOS, you should definitely check out Day One. Day One for iOS, available for US$4.99 on the iOS App Store, is a universal app and syncs seamlessly with its Mac counterpart, available on the Mac App Store for $9.99.
Wargaming.net buys Day 1 Studios, plans 'unannounced console title'
Wargaming.net has has acquired Chicago-based Day 1 Studios for $20 million. The latter firm will be rebranded as Wargaming West according to a blurb on its official website. The new studio will also "focus exclusively on the development of an unannounced console title," according to a Wargaming press release. Day 1 previously worked with Microsoft and Sony on a console port of the original F.E.A.R. shooter before going on to develop F.E.A.R. 3. [Source: Wargaming.net press release]
Apple announces the Mac App Store's Best of 2012
Just as they did for the iOS App Store, Apple has announced the best Mac apps of 2012 in the Mac App Store. The App of the Year award went to Day One (US$9.99), the popular simplified journaling app. The first-person role playing game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Ultimate Edition ($39.99) took home top honors for Game of the Year. The runner up Mac App of the Year went to CameraBag 2 ($14.99), the desktop photo editing app with numerous filters, tools and controls. The runner up Mac Game of the Year went to Splice : Tree of Life ($9.99), the artistic puzzler that finds users splicing different microbial strands to see how they react with one another. Apple also lists the next top 20 Mac apps and games of 2012. Keep an eye out for "Best of" lists of 2012 throughout December from TUAW writers.
Interview with Paul Mayne, developer of Day One for iOS and Mac
For people who want to keep a journal of their everyday lives, Salt Lake City-based developer Paul Mayne's Day One app is a godsend. The app stores journal entries in the cloud, runs on iOS (US$4.99) and OS X ($9.99), and is highly regarded in the Apple universe. The Verge published an interview with Mayne today, accurately describing him as "one of the rare developers who can effortlessly create a powerful yet minimalist and refined user experience." In the interview, Mayne notes that the runaway success of the app may be primarily due to the minimalist design of the user interface. "It's capturing personal thoughts and ideas in a way people are already familiar with, without having to share these writings publicly. It's focused, it's designed in a way that's clean and not overwhelming, and it's easily accessible in a way that makes the idea and motivation of keeping a journal fun," says Mayne. Mayne points out, "People today are busier than ever and rarely take even a minute to stop and reflect on the day. Formalizing the direction in one's life is generally a trait of geniuses, and having a medium to do so is useful. Keeping these things private and expressing them without filters is liberating." The interview is a great read about the developer of an app that many of us here at TUAW use each and every day.
Day One 1.8 adds photos, geotagging, more
My favorite app for both iOS and Mac, Day One (US$4.99), has received an update to version 1.8 that adds a number of features to inspire your imagination in personal journaling. The iOS version is now available, while the Mac edition is still in progress. What's new in Day One? The app now adds photos to your journal, a great way of adding memories of a special day or person. On the iOS app, photos can be pulled from the regular Photo Library or snapped on the fly, and there's also integration with the awesome Camera+ app. The Mac app allows images to be dragged and dropped right onto an entry, or loaded through the standard Finder Open dialog. Any one of your journal entries can now be geotagged as well. The iOS app uses Foursquare for check-ins at your favorite places, and a small map with a pin showing your current location is added to the entry. Want to comment on the weather? The iOS app has the ability to automatically add a small color icon showing the current temperature at your location courtesy of HAMWeather -- when viewed in the current beta version of the Mac app, that information appears as a line of text. For those who like to add rich text to their entries, Markdown buttons are now available in the edit bar in case you forget your Markdown shortcuts. Version 1.8 also adds a word and character count feature to the edit bar in case you have set a personal goal to write a certain number of words per day. I'm still totally in love with this app and have used it daily since February 27. Day One makes it incredibly simple to keep a personal journal, and the new features turn a good app into a great one. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Gamesplanet Lab: Kickstarter's 'crowd-creating' competitor
As Kickstarter has taken off like – well, a popular Kickstarter project – over the past year, especially in the gaming sector, backers have noticed a few inconsistencies with the platform. For one, projects aren't vetted for plausibility or quality outside of a standard registration form; your grandmother could accidentally promise the world 500 pounds of brownies if she raises $5, and there's nothing holding her to following through or using that money for brownie-related purposes.For another, Kickstarter is US only. Creative ventures outside of the US can't begin a crowd-funded project, though anyone with a major credit card can donate to a project and watch its success with yearning in his heart. Also, Kickstarter caters to a wide range of products and ideas, making its reach broad but its expertise in handling any one industry dim.Gamesplanet Lab is a new crowd-funding platform that handles only gaming projects, has a strict vetting and follow-through contract, and is based in Europe but is able to host projects from around the world. Yes, that does sound like everything you ever wanted in Kickstarter. The only thing Gamesplanet Lab needs now is proof that it can work – it needs a breakout crowd-funding success.
Day One: A beautiful and functional cross-platform journaling app
Have you ever kept a journal or diary? For writers, it's almost a given that you're going to keep a personal log of what you do during each day, how you feel, or interesting things that might create that prize-winning book some day. For others, it's a way to keep track of health issues, emotions, relationships, the growth of a child or the decline of an aged parent. Day One (US$9.99 for Mac, $1.99 for iOS) is a well-designed and implemented journal app for Mac OS X and iOS. Day One for Mac First, let me describe the Mac app. It's available through the Mac App Store and loads quickly. When launched, Day One recognizes whether or not you have Dropbox installed, and asks if you wish to use that service for syncing with the iOS app. Day One also supports iCloud for syncing -- it's easily enabled through the app preferences. The next thing the app asks is whether or not you want to enable reminders and quick entry in the menu bar. Reminders will prompt you daily to update your journal, while quick entry makes writing an entry as easy as clicking an icon in the menu bar and typing your words. The user interface of Day One for Mac is spare and functional. On the left side of the app window are five buttons -- one to add a new entry, one to show your entries in a list format, one to show your entries on a calendar, another to display "starred" or favorite entries, and a final button for setting reminders. %Gallery-148775% Clicking the add entry button opens a blank page. Since this app is Lion-friendly (it runs on OS X 10.6 and later), it can go full screen, although that simply puts the fixed-width app window into the center of your screen. That works great on an 11" MacBook Air; it looks absurd on a 27" iMac. I found that once I got the general idea of how the app worked, I just used the quick entry button on the menu bar to write my entries. All entries are time and date stamped, of course, making Day One useful for situations where you might want to keep track of what you're working on -- a contemporaneous work log. Day One supports both Markdown and MultiMarkdown in the edit and read modes, so if you're familiar with Markdown it's simple to add emphasis and links to an entry while typing away. Any entry can be emailed, exported as text or Markdown, or printed. There's a gem of a feature built into the Info button on each post -- a word and character count. That's great if you're trying to write Twitter-length entries, so let's hope that developer Paul Mayne adds Twitter support to the next version of Day One. At the present time, Day One doesn't support the addition of images to journal entries. However, that is on the to-do list for the app along with tags and categories, encryption of entries, and location data if desired. I think the last would be incredibly powerful for doing a trip log, as travelers would be able to write entries marked with their current location, and embed photos. One other handy addition would be the capability to store multiple journals -- for instance, one for work, one for personal, one for a vacation, etc... My biggest love of this app is the simple and clean interface. Anyone can be up and running in minutes, and Day One makes keeping a journal a pleasure instead of a chore. Now let's take a quick look at the iOS version. Day One for iOS The iOS version of Day One is universal, so you only need to purchase the app for iPhone or iPad to have it run on both devices. Paul Mayne has done an awesome job of optimizing the user interface for each device. On the iPhone, the entry method is simplistic and similar to the quick entry mode on the Mac. On iPad, there's the luxury of more room, especially in landscape mode. %Gallery-148776% Remember that Info button I talked about in the Mac version? On the iOS version, you just pull down a journal entry to reveal the current word and character count. And remember my comment about wanting to be able to send a short journal entry as a tweet? It's possible with the iOS version. Syncs through Dropbox are almost instantaneous. I didn't try syncing through iCloud, although it should work in a very similar manner. Mayne does note that there are some performance issues with current versions of the app doing first-time syncs over iCloud with large journal libraries. Conclusion For keeping a private journal, I can think of no better solution at this time than Day One. Being able to make journal entries anywhere, anytime is a powerful way to keep the log of your life up to date. The similarity in the UI between the apps makes it easy to switch platforms at the drop of a hat, and the support for Markdown / MultiMarkdown provides a decent level of formatting. While the app currently doesn't have the power of Mariner Software's single-platform MacJournal ($39.95), Day One is ultimately a much more user-oriented app that makes keeping a journal a pleasure. With the changes that developer Paul Mayne has planned for Day One, a great app will only get better.
Activision: Black Ops tops Modern Warfare 2 day-one sales record, with 5.6M sold in US and UK
According to Activision's early "internal estimates," this week's launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops is the series' largest -- financially speaking -- of all time, accruing $360 million in sales thus far between the United States and the United Kingdom. Accounting for all that money is an approximate 5.6 million copies landing in customers' hands solely on November 9, compared with 4.7 million moved during last year's Modern Warfare 2 launch. In case you needed further proof that the vast majority of the millions of Call of Duty players out there don't have any idea about that whole Infinity Ward debacle, or don't have any hangups over which studio makes the year's CoD, here it is.
