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PSA: Last chance to grab Spelunky and more on PS Plus
Heads up, would-be explorers: today is your last chance to pick up a free PlayStation Plus copy of Mossmouth's roguelike platformer Spelunky for the PlayStation 4, PS3, and Vita before it returns to full price tomorrow. The rest of October's freebies also expire tomorrow, making today your final opportunity to grab Batman: Arkham Asylum, Rainbow Moon, Dust: An Elysian Tail, and Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara. Make sure to check out Pix the Cat on the PS4 and Vita, too -- it's an oddly compelling mixture of Snake and Pac-Man Championship Edition, and it's the one game I've played the most out of last month's PS Plus additions. November's featured games, including The Binding of Isaac Rebirth and SteamWorld Dig, will be available to PlayStation Plus subscribers when the PlayStation Store updates tomorrow. [Image: Mossmouth]
This iOS app predicts your death with HealthKit data
Apple's latest push is to make you as healthy as possible -- or at least give you the tools to do so -- but a new app will read your newly available HealthKit data and use it for a more sinister purpose: predicting your death. The app is called Deadline, and it uses health statistics, along with your own personal readings to make an educated guess on when you'll meet your demise. Once your numbers are crunched, the app produces a rather grim timer which ticks down by the second. It's a bit creepy, to be honest, but the good news is you can push the date back by being healthier. Lose a few extra pounds, get more sleep, and ditch the ice cream for some fresh fruit and you'll notice that days, months, or years are being added to your life. It's a strange bit of motivation, but if it works for you, go for it!
Twitch Plays Pokemon given deadline to beat their former god [Update]
Twitch Plays Pokemon, a social phenomenon in which thousands of Twitch users simultaneously wrestle for control of an emulated Pokemon game, may be nearing its end. The host of the stream has given the channel a deadline of next Friday, March 21. If they can't beat a certain trainer by that point, the host has declared there will be no stream of the next game in the series, Pokemon Emerald. That's not the only surprise waiting for those just tuning in, however. After besting Pokemon Red in just more than two weeks' time, the stream team moved to Pokemon Crystal. Those familiar with Crystal know that at the end of the game, it's possible to challenge the trainer from Pokemon Red. Indeed, this is precisely the trainer that the TPP host challenged the stream to beat. Normally, Red has a Pikachu, Charizard, Blastoise, Venusaur, Snorlax and Espeon as his team. In the TPP version of Crystal however, he's been coded to have a Zapdos, Omastar, Pidgeot, Venomoth, Lapras and Nidoking - the same team that the TPP collective created and used to defeat the Elite Four in Pokemon Red. The running theme of TPP's runthrough of Crystal has been "No gods. No kings. Only 'mon." Fitting that now Twitch Plays Pokemon must destroy the gods they created. Update: Well, that didn't take long. Twitch Plays Pokemon have defeated Red and completed another poke-journey. Or have they? While there are still legendary pokemon out in the wild to find, capture or defeat, Crystal is, for all intents and purposes, beaten. Yet the stream, for now, remains online. Players seem lost, confused, directionless. It's almost as if thousands of voices could not agree on what to do next. Update 2: A countdown timer to Pokemon Emerald has been added to the stream. Looks like TPP will move to the Hoenn region on March 21, at 9:00 p.m. EST. [Image: Twitch]
Smash Vote for iOS makes it out just in time
Back at 360iDev in Denver earlier this year, I met a guy named Tate Jennings, an indie developer behind a company called Mighty Bits. Jennings was working on a game called Smash Vote, which he described to me as a political fighting game. It was literally a game featuring versions of famous politicians like Obama and Romney fighting it out Mortal Kombat-style with each other. I joked to Jennings that he'd better hurry, because he'd have to get it done by November 6, and he replied with a sort of exasperated shrug. That, it turned out, was exactly his goal. I'm happy to announce that he made it: Smash Vote arrived on the App Store yesterday, sliding through Apple's approval cycle just in the nick of time. Of course, I'm not telling you about it until today, which is technically a day after the election. But it's still a good bit of cheesy political fun. You can choose to fight as either of yesterday's opponents or other famous faces like Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, and "debate" it out with punches and kicks. There's not a lot to it, but it's a completely free app, and if you want to take out some aggression on a politician (perhaps either because you lost or won), it's worth the download. Jennings says there's updates coming soon, to add voiceovers, special moves, more characters and all of the other features he wasn't able to sneak in before the Election Day deadline. Congrats to Jennings on his hard work. All indie developers on the App Store are of course working hard, but he gave himself a hard deadline on a pretty ambitious game, and while not everything made it in to the current release, Smash Vote showed up right on time.
Pressure-sensing PC technology knows when you're busy, blocks notifications accordingly
We know better than most that when you're working to a deadline, constant pop-ups, notifications and pings can be a real pain. Our frustrations might soon become a thing of the past, however, with some help from boffins at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan. They are working on technology which monitors keyboard pressure and silences those distractions until it deems you're not busy, showing over 80 percent accuracy during volunteer testing. Understanding that quiet time is also appreciated for other tasks, they plan to use similar techniques to spot when you're staring intently at that report or -- more importantly -- attending to a beverage. It's still early days for the project, but if the stress-saving tech ever spawns a product, we'll take two please. [Image Credit: Getty Images / Jean Louis Batt]
Atari updates rules and deadline, adds judge to Pong developer contest
(Disclaimer: I am serving as a judge in this contest for Atari, though I'm not getting paid or compensated in any way for contributing my time.) After Atari announced a recent contest to encourage iOS developers to come up with new ideas for a Pong-style remake, there was feedback among the iOS community in general that the terms for the new contest were a little too limiting. Specifically, Atari is basically offering a share of earnings from the final published app as prize money (in addition to a series of cash prizes, including $50,000 for first place), and some developers have said that's a bad deal to take. Now, Atari tells TUAW that it has updated the rules on the contest, and as Atari says, "are intended to offer developers larger incentives for participation and increase their potential revenue as a result of their winning Pong submission." The biggest change is that winning developers will now share revenue with Atari for a longer period of time, from one year up to three years. That should provide a extra revenue for devs who win, and maybe encourage anyone turned off by the initial rules to reconsider. Additionally, Atari will be putting all of the winners in a "Developer Spotlight" page on its official site, so everyone can see the fruits of the contest when they're announced in June. And finally, David Whatley (of Critical Thought Games, maker of Tiny Heroes and geoDefense) is going to join the judging panel, which also includes Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Pocket God's Dave Castelnuovo, and me, TUAW editor Mike Schramm. Entries are now going to be accepted until April 15, 2012, so if you have an idea for a new take on Pong, be sure to submit it over on the official site. Yes, for experienced developers who already have the experience and ability to publish and promote apps on the App Store, this might not be for you -- aside from the Pong trademark itself, why go through Atari when you can do it on your own? But for devs with a great Pong-centered idea and not a lot of resources to back it up, joining up with Atari in this way could be a real windfall. Good luck to everyone who enters.
Apple: developers now have until June 1 to sandbox apps for the Mac App Store
Back in the fall, Apple gave developers an ultimatum: sandbox your applications, or see yourself out of the Mac App Store and sell your apps elsewhere. Originally, devs had until March 1st to make the change, which limits the resources apps can access, thereby making a malware infection less likely. Still, sandboxing inherently means less control for developers: the fewer resources an app can use, the less it can actually do. Well, code monkeys, you've now got a few more months to decide which camp you'd rather be in: Apple has extended that deadline to June 1st. As MacRumors notes, the move comes amid mounting concerns from developers, who have been complaining of bugs and other issues associated with the sandboxing process. In a statement on its developer site, Apple gave a pithier explanation, saying it wants to give devs more time to make use of new sandboxing entitlements available in OS X 10.7.3, along with new APIs in Xcode 4.3.
Sprint grants LightSquared six-week extension for FCC approval
As Carl Icahn prepares to take the wheel, buttressed by a cushion of distressed LightSquared debt, Sprint appears close to ending its ill-fated dance with the upstart LTE provider. After granting the Falcone-backed company a 30-day extension earlier this January, the Hesse-led co is taking one last stab at making that 15-year resource sharing agreement work, giving the beleaguered network an additional six weeks to garner regulatory approval for its controversial spectrum. As it stands, the fate of LS' wholesale 4G operation lies within the FCC's hands and with no hard date for a final ruling in sight, it's easy to read this last lifeline as the end.
Boxee delays Netflix integration again, cites security requirements as the culprit
We hoped Boxee would surprise us at the eleventh hour and announce it had finally added Netflix to the service -- technically making good on its end of January deadline. Instead, the company's blog is now reporting that the service is "anticipated soon." Apparently, the service is running fine on the device in the company's offices -- which, mind you they said back in December too, -- but it still failed to satisfy Netflix's security requirements. While that sounds like a big thing to miss in our books, a comment by Boxee's VP of Marketing, Andrew Kippen, suggests the company just discovered the issue only an hour before midnight. This marks the second time users have been asked to re-adjust their expectations for when the big red box might pop up on their favorite media manager, but to Boxee's credit, we were glad to see the company come right out with the situation instead of leaving us all on pins and needles. Now, let's just hope this whole incident gets sorted out pronto, so we don't have to break bad news to our Watch Instantly lovin' hearts ever again.
Additional Split/Second DLC revealed; 'Survival at the Rock' out now
Some Split/Second DLC is pulling into the left lane -- wait, we can't do this. It's not fair to you and it's not fair to us. We're better and more capable than pulling these types of shenanigans. Let's put it in park, take a second to collect ourselves and take another lap around the track. ... Okay, now that we've got that out of our system: today, fans of Black Rock Studio's racer can download some additional content with the Survival at the Rock DLC pack. Within you'll find the Minepit Park track and a new game mode called Survival Race -- it's a take on Survival mode where instead of lapping semis beneath the shadow of the looming clock 'o doom, players will be tasked with simply completing a set number of laps. Survival at the Rock is available for download right now on Xbox Live and PSN for 400 MS Points and $4.99, respectively. Throughout the next month, however, Disney will also be dishing out two more DLC packs. On October 19 you can download the Deadline pack, which adds four new vehicles -- the Ryback Coyote Special, Cobretti Centaur, Ryback Javelin and Hanzo Kanobo -- and Deadline mode, a clock-based race mode where players can freeze the timer by picking up items on the track. Finally, on November 2, you can snag the Quarry Onslaught pack, adding the titular Quarry track and a new game mode, Onslaught -- a single player and multiplayer-compatible mode where drivers dodge "waves of missiles from a circling helicopter." This game mode will be compatible across nine different tracks in the game, including Deadline. These packs will join the currently available Elite Vehicle Livery and the High Octane Supercar packs. The Deadline pack will set you back 400 MS Points ($4.99), while Quarry Onslaught will cost a bit more: 800 MS Points ($9.99). Head past the break for a trailer showcasing Survival at the Rock. Heads-up: it in no way involves Sean Connery. Yeah, we were kinda bummed about that too.
UAE says BlackBerry is now compliant with regulations, free to rock on
The latest thrilling installment in BlackBerry's Middle East saga has turned out not to be so thrilling after all. Having set an October 11 deadline for RIM to comply with its "telecommunications regulatory framework," the United Arab Emirates is today reporting that the BlackBerry maker has managed to make the necessary changes with plenty of time to spare. Consequently, there'll be no state-ordained curtailing of email, web, or BBM services within the UAE, which mirrors similar agreements that BlackBerry has managed to finagle with India and Saudi Arabia. Of course, the grand purpose of the UAE's ultimatum was for RIM to allow the state access to encrypted messaging communications, and while the current announcement is pointedly missing details on what's been done to appease the Abu Dhabi decision makers, we can't imagine them giving up the fight without RIM making some type of concession. And the shady, undisclosed concessions happen to be our least favorite kind.
Last day for non-Battle.net accounts to log on
Okay, guys. You've had plenty of time to do it, and now the countdown's just about over. As of tomorrow, only Battle.net accounts will be able to log into the game. If you merge your account before the deadline, you get Mr. Chilly, the adorable penguin pet, but if you do it after the deadline, all you get is a permeating sense of failure. Just go and merge your account(s) while you're on your break and reading this! It takes almost no time, the process is painless, and you get a small flightless bird that serves no useful purpose. If you don't take care of it now, don't say we didn't warn you when you log in tomorrow and you're spending an extended amount of time with Roary McFrostwyrm. We're not legally liable for the damage that might cause. We've done our part. The rest is up to you. The account management page is over here. For those of you who've already merged your account, just read the next post. Don't stare. These guys were just busy, that's all.
Cable companies miss tru2way deadline, insist it's no big deal
Remember that tru2way-related Memorandum of Understanding that was all the rage about this time last year? It appears the 6 cable companies haven't lived up to at least one part of their agreement, collectively missing the deadline of July 1 to have 100% of their digital cable headends compatible. No word on how close they got, but Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House still insist it's "not that far off" though we don't see how missing important milestones is helping move the technology forwards.
Watchmen MMO coming out for the iPhone
I love massively multiplayer online games, I love my iPhone, and I love Watchmen, the genre-defining graphic novel series of the late '80s (of which, I'll brag, I have a whole set of first edition copies) that's very soon to be the first movie blockbuster of 2009. That's why the news, over at our sister site Massively, that all of my loves were coming together in what's meant to be a Watchmen-branded MMO game for the iPhone made my day.Watchmen: Justice is Coming will have 3D environments, customizable avatars, and thousands of players interacting in the game at the same time. Massively's got some video from G4 showing off the app, put together by the apparent newcomers Last Legion Games. Unfortunately, while the concept is lofty (they've got a long-term vision for improving the game based on player feedback), the gameplay itself looks like clunky adware -- the kind you might expect from Warner Bros. and the iPhone deals they've come up with so far.So we're reserving judgment on this one until we can give it a try, and fortunately we won't have to wait long -- the devs say they've lined up the game for release later this week, right along with the movie. That timing doesn't impress us either -- usually, when a game and movie release simultaneously, one's been hurried to make the deadline, and trust us, it usually isn't the movie. It's Watchmen on the iPhone, so it's hit two of three bases with us already. But it'll need to bring a good game, too, if Last Legion is hoping for a home run.
491 stations still shutting off analog TV next week
Though the prez still hasn't signed off on the delay, the FCC has already compiled a list of 190 TV stations going / gone all digital prior to February 17, plus 491 more that will go ahead with the shutoff as previously scheduled. The four major networks promised their stations will stay on analog until the new June 12 deadline, however that guarantee only extends to the 100 or so they own. If that's not confusing enough, the FCC could still influence broadcasters to keep analog signals going whether they want to or not based on "the public interest," for example if it's necessary to keep at least some stations on in any given market. As it stands, the linked PDFs below will reveal which, if any, of your local broadcasters are switching on Tuesday; hopefully you've followed our advice so far and continue to avoid any predatory schemes.Read - Appendix A (List of all stations ending analog service before or on February 17)Read - Appendix B (List of all full power TV stations, with the 681 stations ending service on or before February 17 indicated in bold)
Deadline puts brakes on Faith and a .45
The .45 may have a brimful of Asha, but that's not enough to keep things spinning. That's the word from developer Deadline, whose CEO Chris Mottes told Eurogamer that work on actioner Faith and a .45 had stopped on all but a "negotiation level," due, he says, to the team's focus on Watchmen: The End Is Nigh.The Danish developer made no mention of the game's lack of a publisher, but let's be honest with each other: It's probably not helping. Joystiq is also embarrassed to announce that we'll be reporting a publishing agreement with some variation of the headline "Publisher X has got to have Faith," in case you want to conserve a groan or two until then.
HTC sets Window Mobile 6 upgrade deadline for October 31st
Back in April of last year, HTC came clean with its Windows Mobile 6 upgrade plans. Fast forward to now, and the very same company is getting official with the cutoff plans. October 31st will be the very last day (no tricks, folks) for select Windows Mobile 5 users to get a free upgrade to WinMo 6 via HTC's website. More specifically, October 31st at 12:00PM GMT -- after the clock strikes 12:01PM, the download link will be removed for eternity. The affected handsets are the S621, S620, P4350, P3300 and HTC Advantage, and while we'd typically encourage you to stop procrastinating and get on with the upgrade, we know in our hearts there's no way you're still rocking WinMo 5. Right? Right.[Via phonescoop]
Microsoft may extend Windows XP "downgrade" deadline by six months
First off, we'll warn you that these reports are currently unconfirmed by the suits in Redmond, but word has it that Microsoft is working with at least one OEM to have the Windows XP "downgrade" deadline pushed out from January 2009 to at least July 31, 2009. That's according to an e-mail sent from Microsoft to an unspecified partner company, which purportedly details a plan to work with other buddies in pushing that deadline out another half year. Given the results thus far, we suppose we're not too surprised to hear that firms are still clamoring for the XP option, but one wonders when this madness will ever end. Will folks really be opting for XP on new machines after Windows 7 is out? [Via Download Squad]
EA deadline for Take-Two passes quietly
Wire service AFP reports that last night's deadline for Take-Two shareholders to agree to EA's takeover bid passed without a peep from either side. Take-Two commented earlier Friday saying that the issue "is in [EA's] court." EA would not comment on the situation.In non-business news, the AFP could've probably used an editor on staff who plays video games while reporting this story. Forget the semi-understandable error that it called GTA IV, a game with one of the best retail launches of all time, Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City Stories. Focus more on the fact that the AFP in reporting about GTA IV says, "Players score points with acts such as carjacking and killing prostitutes or police officers." Looks like Rep. Lee Terry and the AFP are getting their info from the same source.
EU to call out carriers not offering cheaper roaming rates
Time's up, dear European carriers! If you haven't made known your plans to offer up cheaper roaming rates by now, you're about to be called out. Reportedly, the European Commission is readying a web site that would "include the names of operators from all EU countries, whether they have offered the Eurotariff, which kind of Eurotariff they have offered, and those who haven't done anything." Additionally, it was reinforced that the new rates were "not a recommendation, but a regulation," and that customers who were unable to receive their Eurotariff could take their operator to court. 'Course, we highly doubt the legal fees would make this approach worthwhile, but let's not forgot to point and laugh at the nonconformists when the telling site goes live.
