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Guitar Hero alongside bands at Download UK
There's something about playing Guitar Hero that appeals to the exhibitionist in all of us. This year, the UK's Download Festival will cater to that by allowing Guitar Hero players to take to the Third Stage in between acts -- although there will be limited walk-up opportunities, they'd like you to register in advance.This might not seem like quite such a good idea when fifteen consecutive rockers fail to finish Bark at the Moon on expert, as events like this often lead us to overstretch ourselves in an attempt to show off. However, it's a clever marketing move for RedOctane as well as a great chance to break some of gaming's stereotypes -- or at least the one about us all being self-conscious tone-deaf nerds.
Girls 'n' Games event: this news is so old
While E3's keynotes were kicking off last week, several academics, developers and advocates of women in gaming gathered at UCLA to discuss girls, games and everything relating to the two. However, from Gamasutra's account of the event, nothing new was really discussed. Some of the key points brought up: Girls play games. (Well, duh.) Developers shouldn't try to focus on "girl game design" -- stereotyping game design by gender leads to missteps. Player-generated content is popular amongst girls, as is social gameplay. "Cuteness" in games, like anime and manga culture in Japan, encourages girls to get involved in gameplay. Women gamers and girl gamers are different; women and teenage girls have different demands on their time. Girls and women shouldn't just be gamers, but developers too.
MMO players convene after E3
Those of us heavily invested in massively multiplayer games are part of a community, just as FPS clans have a brotherhood borne out of hours of playing together. Events like BlizzCon provide an opportunity for MMO guilds and players to meet up -- for the unknown to meet the infamous.E3 may have been over, but that didn't stop NCsoft arranging a player get-together last Saturday. Over 400 players signed up, some travelling from as far as Arizona for this one evening. While NCsoft had rented out a LAN centre for the event, players spent just as much time talking as they did playing, with a sizeable contingent of developers and community managers on hand to help the event along. NCsoft celebrities including Richard Garriott and Matt "Positron" Miller attended the event, showing a pleasing commitment to the player base.
Competitive Brain Age: Joystiq pwns
At the Nintendo booth, people have been constantly queueing for Brain Age. Calculating by yourself is fun, but it doesn't come close to the competitive thrill of remembering your times tables faster than the next guy.We're proud to say we won our tournament, coming in with the respectable (for day three of E3) time of 28 seconds. Interestingly, the runner-up (with a very close time) was also a girl, with the two guys taking over twice as long to finish -- draw what conclusions you will from that.
WoW Moviewatch: The Darkmoon Faire trailer from E3
This is the first part of a series of press release videos from E3; this one spotlighting the events at the Darkmoon Faire. It probably doesn't contain anything that most of us haven't seen, but it's a nice little video, in any case...although it could really use one of those carnival barkers yelling "Sunday, SUNday, SUNDAY!". Enjoy...
E3: All your news under one roof
Looking forward to E3? This year's E3 is going to be one to remember, but the sheer amount of news coming out of the show extends beyond the world of WoW. Courtesy of the Joystiq E3 team, we bring you one source for all your information: http://e3-2006.joystiq.comKeep your eyes glued to that page -- as well as your favourite World of Warcraft blog, WoW Insider, of course! -- to stay on top of the manic mayhem that is the Electronic Enterainment Expo 2006.
Quicksilver plug-ins for Google Calendar and Gmail
While tinkering in Quicksilver's plug-ins panel this morning I came across two new plug-ins that should fit right in with my new Borg Google-infused daily activities: a Gmail Module and a Google Calendar Module. Both are actions that allow you to type in a string of text, then select either of these modules as an action, and off you go.The Google Calendar module seems to use their Quick Add syntax for adding events. For a quick tutorial on this: invoke Quicksilver and then hit period so you can begin entering plain text. Enter something like "Apple Store Opening Saturday 10 am," then hit tab to move to Quicksilver's second pane to chose an action. If you have the Google Calendar module installed, the action is titled "Google Calendar Event" (using 'gcal' works just fine for me). Hitting enter will send the event, and for bonus points, if you have Growl installed and Quicksilver using it to give notifications, you'll receive a Growl alert upon successful completion.The Gmail module (pictured) allows you to compose a message (or at least part of one) using the same method as both the Google Calendar and Mail.app compose actions. Once you type some text, tab over to chose the Gmail action, you'll receive a 3rd pane that allows you to specify an Address Book contact to send to. Hitting enter will create a Gmail compose window with all the information you chose from Quicksilver already inserted. Awesome.
Create events and todos from Mail.app messages with Event Maker
Event Maker allows you to create iCal events and todos from Mail.app messages, or simply from scratch. It looks like it has a more navigable UI, especially for keyboard junkies like myself, and a side drawer allows for adding alarms.Event Maker is available right now from Mac Update, where the author has posted a request for server space to enable an automatic update feature. Also, the app's author, Mike Abdullah, has requested help with drawing some toolbar icons, so head over to Hawk Wings for the details and contact info if you can lend an illustrative hand.
Sex talk: conference agenda released
The agenda for the Sex in Videogames conference has been published, and there are some interesting topics up for debate in San Fran this June. From the cultural to the technological, the conference will cover such diverse topics as cybersex, emergent behaviour, technology for realistic simulation and MMOEGs.This will definitely be one to watch; sex is becoming part of gaming as a specialist genre, as well as becoming integrated into our everyday gaming lives with emergent behaviour. As with other media before it, the human interest in sex is likely to fuel some interesting developments in games -- and not just in the field of "jiggle physics".[Via Sex & Games]
So long iCal, hello Google Calendar
Call me crazy, but I think Google is using some kind of mental suggestion on me while I sleep, as I am slowly falling for their products one by one (maybe I should shut my Mac off at night so they can't get to me?). I've been hanging out at Google News more often, I haven't started Mail.app in almost a week in favor of Gmail, and now iCal has been kicked out of my Dock in favor of a Quicksilver trigger that takes me straight to Google Calendar.That's right, as a .Mac customer and lover of 3-plus years, I am tossing iCal and its syncing ability aside for the innovative and ultimately easier to use beauty that is Google Calendar. Sharing calendars and events is so much simpler on the gCal side of the fence, especially since the invited guests can leave comments on the event right at Google Calendar without the need for some obnoxious service like Evite.More to the meat of the matter, Google Calendar's 'Quick Add' takes the chore out of adding an event to my schedule, inviting me to do it a little more often to make I stay all the more on top of things. In gCal, I can hit the letter 'q' to open a small dialog box into which I can type an event name, time and date almost as if I were telling someone about it in an email: 'dinner with Jessi 6 pm 4/22' adds the event right where it should go. As icing on the Quick Add cake, date spanning works too: 'Half Life 2 Therapy Camp April 22-24' creates an event that spans properly. No obnoxious tabbing around to set dates and times right, and no mousing to drag little event boxes. Call me crazy, but I'm starting to believe that some desktop app developers could learn a few things from this kind of simplicity that is found in many of today's web-based apps and services.Google Calendar's multiple and customizable notification features sealed the deal for me. Email, SMS and popping up the browser window (if gCal is open) are all available for various notification types like events, new, changed or canceled invitations, replies to invitations and even a daily agenda email reminder that sends you a roundup of the day's events. Hawk Wings points to a blog post by Jeff Hobbs who puts it quite nicely: "it’s like Google just hired a personal secretary for everyone on Earth." Sweet, I've always wanted a secretary. Unfortunately, there is one seriously lacking feature in Google Calendar's 'secretary factor': as of yet, there is no 'pick up a latte from Starbucks' option. Maybe someone can whip up a Greasemonkey script or plug-in?Caffeine addictions aside, you can top this all off with the 'access and edit from anywhere' factor since Google Calendar is web-based, and Gmail automatically parses email for events to add to Google Calendar (*ahem* iCal/Mail.app engineers!), and I'm already forgetting what iCal looked like.
Noblegarden ultimately disappointing
The quality of the various ingame events seems to vary a lot. Some cause a lot of excitement and make their presence well known by infiltrating the capital cities -- Greatfather Winter and the Lunar festivities (a well known Azerothian rock band) are examples. However, some tend to just quietly happen, without barkers or much fanfare at all.I went egg hunting for a couple of hours yesterday; I missed Noblegarden last year, so I had little idea what to expect. After a few false starts looking in the capital cities (as the official website implied) I ended up running around Elwynn and Teldrassil on a couple of characters. In all my searching I found about ten eggs, and ended up with a bagful of lollipops and chocolate squares giving 61 health; I managed to find a pair of Black Tuxedo Pants, identical to a craftable item, though I was angling for the formal attire.I didn't run into any other egg hunters, and most of my guild didn't know the event was running, despite the EU launcher promoting it. Although I'm reasonably pleased I had the trousers drop, meaning I got something for all my effort, I spent a lot of time looking for eggs and finding none at all. Perhaps my time would have been better spent at the regular ingame events taking place yesterday, getting a pet chicken or painting an egg; how was your Easter Sunday?
Shouldn't they be called Noblegarden Bunnies?
Well, the latest holiday event from Blizzard proved to be considerably less...eventful than the rest. In fact, aside from a few scattered eggs about Ellwyn Forest, I didn't even really notice an even going on at all.Then again, I wasn't lucky enough to find one of these little guys...a real live Easter Bunny! Ok, it's not real or live, but it's still pretty cool. But still, my question stands...why aren't they called Noblegarden Bunnies?
Noblegarden comes to Azeroth on Sunday
If real-life chocolate eggs aren't enough for you, you'll be able to find some in Azeroth on Sunday thanks to the feast of Noblegarden. Themed as "bringing communities together", there will be an egg hunt across the major cities with festival attire and goodies to find.Of course, the regular world events are still going on: the Darkmoon Faire is in Elwynn until Sunday (if you haven't been lately, mini tank races are a fun minigame), the Gurubashi Arena Booty Run goes on daily and there should also be the weekly Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza this Sunday. It's also an Alterac Valley "Call to Arms" weekend; more reasons to log in this Easter!
Make iCal automatically email people at a specific time
I've been on a productivity kick ever since I found that kGTD plugin for OmniOutliner, and I thought this script/app would be a nice addition to the collection of anyone who works in a collaborative environment, especially for those who live and die by email or just can't seem to remember to do X at X o'clock.iCalMail 1.3 sets up a new calendar into which you can add events that will automatically email anyone you want at the event's time. iCalMail is clever too, allowing you to use different fields of the iCal event to compose each email, and the breakdown works like this: event name -> subject location -> attachment attendees -> recipients notes field -> message text I haven't tested this yet, but it seems like a great idea, especially since there is a method for including attachments. Check out the script at ScriptBuilders, as well as more information at Chris J. Shull's site.
Widget watch: Reminder
For all those times when adding a quick reminder to iCal is too cumbersome, or you might not be online so the Backpack widget can do its thing, the Reminder widget might be right up your alley. As you can see, the widget has a simple interface allowing you to add some type of a reminder name/message, along with a reminder time. As an added bonus, this widget actually adds events to its own iCal calendar.The Reminder widget is, of course, free and available from DashboardWidgets.com.
Valentine's Day in Azeroth
"Love is in the air," proclaims the official website, and it's true; for the past few days a touch of romance has hit the capital cities with a vengeance. If you're the sort of player who likes to avoid in-game events, or who finds the overwhelming slushiness of Valentine's Day too sickly-sweet for words, look away now...Today's the day the NPCs in our cities finally get a starring role--or a bit part, at least. We've long overlooked the patient guards and vendors who litter our streets, seeing them only as convenient human signposts or shops; now they're in need of some love, and all it takes is a small token. The Valentine's event is reasonably low-key but enjoyable nonetheless. All the cities are decked out with hearts and candles; that's all there is to it, if you wish to bypass the Valentine's content. If you want to get involved, however, head to your local innkeeper and avail yourself of some perfume, cologne and Love Tokens--let your systematic seduction of every NPC in sight begin!
Virtual worlds' selective reflections of reality
The announcement of Valentine's Day events for both City of Heroes and World of Warcraft comes hot on the heels of a debate around virtual identity sparked off by a LGBT-friendly guild. The creation of in-game events that reflect popular world holidays is increasingly fashionable; it seems no week goes by without some new festival being celebrated in WoW's capital cities.However, by first stamping out discussions of sexuality, and then opening up the floodgates by theming an event around love, what are Blizzard thinking? Will players be able to flirt with same-sex NPCs or will they be instantly banned for even venturing a hug? We hope that there will be some procedures in place to help stop harassment, as it can be difficult to throw off determined admirers at the best of times. As for those gamers who prefer their MMOs with a dash of escapism, it seems to be a dying trend, especially amongst popular Western games.[Image from the Alter Ego project]
Automate shutdown and restart processes
Yet more apps that have made my "why doesn't OS X do this natively?" list are Mac Shutdown X and Mac Restart X. The concept of Mac Shutdown X is simple: shut down a Mac automatically based on various kinds of events, such as a download finishing or a file disappearing. While the list of usable events is slim at the moment, the developers state on their product site that they're very open to suggestions. Mac Shutdown X can shut down on a schedule, just like OS X's Energy Preference Pane, but you can also use a calendar and clock to specify a specific date and time in the future for shutting down. Conversely, Mac Restart X does exactly what you might think: it allows you to set a schedule or specify a date (but not events - yet) for automatically restarting your Mac.While I'm sure some people could find these separate apps handy in various ways, the fact that they sell for $10 each makes me think they should simply be combined into one utility for one price. Regardless, it's a good niche to have filled by a simple little to-the-point app.[via MacNN]
