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Uber makes changes in California to brace for new gig worker law
Late last month, Uber and Postmates sued California in an attempt to block AB5, the law that would reclassify many gig economy workers as employees. While that fight is not over, Uber is also preparing for the event that AB5 takes effect. The company sent an email to over 150,000 drivers and millions of passengers, letting them know of several changes the company is making in California.
The NBA counts more than a billion likes and followers
Ahead of tonight's NBA All-Star Game, the league proclaimed it's the first pro sports association with over a billion combined likes and followers on social media. It's debatable how many people that figure actually represents, but it apparently comes from combining likes and follows for the league, teams and individual players across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tencent and Sina. However you count it, there's no doubt that the NBA encourages interaction online, claiming nearly 90 percent of players have an account at least one platform. Unsurprisingly, LeBron James leads players with 66.3 million likes and followers, while the Lakers are the number one team despite racking up an 11 - 44 record this season.
Twitter tests emoji reactions for the times a heart won't do
Still bummed that tapping a heart is the only way to show your appreciation, sadness or any other reaction for a tweet? Well, that may change. Twitter user @_Ninji stumbled across emoji reactions in a jailbroken version of the social media app. Despite being included in the developer build, the feature still needs a lot of work, but it does allow users to employ the frown, party noisemaker and 100 emjois (just to name a few) to get their point across. The discovery comes right on the heels of Twitter swapping stars out for hearts when a tweet is favorited, much to the chagrin of most of the internet. Facebook recently added animated options for more appropriate reactions than a simple Like as well. Since the Twitter emojis appear to be a long way from finished, we'd surmise we'll hear more about the tiny pictures in tweets soon enough. Here's to hoping the taco and poop emoji make the cut. We've reached out to Twitter for more information, and we were sent the monkey with its hands over its mouth emoji.
The Daily Grind: Why do you love your favorite game?
Yes, we know what's coming. But we don't want the next few days to be a cavalcade of sorrow because this is a site and a community built around our shared love of MMOs. So let's spread some cheer today. Why do you love your favorite game? I make no secret about my affection for Final Fantasy XIV, obviously. It's a great game that fuses progress organically with stuff that you'd have fun doing anyway and gives you no shortage of freedom in what you want to do in the game. It's a great time. But my favorite game might not be yours. So let's share. No bashing, no whining, no complaining; let's make this a positive time for everyone. Why do you love your favorite game, be it a critical darling or a title you feel doesn't get nearly enough love? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Twitter: Yes, you're all going to see tweets from people you don't follow
Remember when tweets started appearing in your Twitter feed from people you weren't even following? Well, it's no longer an experiment. In a post outlining Twitter's "spirit of experimentation", the social network says it's happening across all accounts now, in the interest of surfacing tweets it "think(s) you'd enjoy." While many of Twitter's power-users might sigh collectively, Twitter is likely hoping it'll offer up faster follows, a richer experience and (possibly) boost activity, especially for those users that aren't already following hundreds of accounts. Alas, it's not an optional thing, and is now an integral part of everyone's Twitter timeline -- alongside those occasional promoted tweets and retweets.
iOS 8's Favorites & Recents: A fast way to get in touch
In our countdown to September 17 -- the day iOS 8 will be released to the public -- we've been covering a lot of the features of the new mobile operating system. One of my personal favorites so far is "Favorites and Recents", a fast and easy way to get in touch with your friends and family from your iOS device. Let's take a look! Say you're in the midst of doing something on your iPhone or iPad, like creating a song or editing a photo. You decide that it would be a good idea to contact a friend to get some details on an upcoming party. Rather than dump all the way out of the app to get into Messages or maybe jump into Contacts to get an email address, all you need to do is double-tap your home button and you'll see all of those people you've recently contacted peering at you from the top of your screen in small circular buttons. If those people have a photo associated with their name, you'll see their actual face -- a great way of recognizing a person's button at a glance. Tap that button, and a myriad of little white buttons appear, providing one tap access to phone numbers (indicated by phone icons with the type of phone number -- home, work, etc... below them), messages (a voice balloon icon), FaceTime Video (a video camera icon) and FaceTime Audio (a phone icon with the word FaceTime beneath). But where are your favorites, those people who you've tagged by opening the Contacts app and tapping "Add to Favorites"? They're just a swipe to the right away. As with the Recents, tapping the image of one of your buddies will display all of those little white buttons for instant contact. Favorites and Recents in iOS 8 are just two ways that iOS 8 can save you time and make you more efficient. Be sure to check out our other iOS 8 feature articles before Wednesday.
Twitter is officially putting tweets from strangers in your timeline
You know how Twitter started inserting others' favorites and follows into your timeline? As it turns out, it's not an experiment -- it's official policy. We now know that the social network recently updated its timeline explanation to confirm that it's adding tweets from strangers, new accounts to follow and other "popular" content to your feed. Like you might have suspected, the company is trying to make your stream "even more relevant and interesting" by showing you material you might not otherwise have seen.
Twitter tries sharing your favorite tweets with others
Have you recently noticed people commenting on your Twitter favorites, even when you didn't (intentionally) share them with the rest of the world? You're not alone. The social network has started putting your favorites and following activity in your followers' timelines, whether or not you're mentioned -- if you really like an article, others may know right away. It's not clear whether this is an experiment or a permanent feature, and we've reached out to Twitter for the full scoop.
Here is Club Nintendo's favorite Wii U and 3DS games of 2013
Nintendo compiled a list of 20 games that Club Nintendo members noted as their favorites from 2013 recently. Nintendo featured ten games for each for 3DS and Wii U, with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate as the lone game that landed on both lists. Among the Wii U games selected by Club Nintendo members are the obvious Nintendo-published choices in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, Super Mario 3D World, The Wonderful 101 and Pikmin 3. The best-of list also includes Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Rayman Legends and Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, the latter being the single eShop-only game of the Wii U group. The list of 3DS favorites are marked by both Pokemon X and Y, Fire Emblem: Awakening, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Head past the break to see the full Club Nintendo-selected Wii U and 3DS list of favorites from the year.
The Daily Grind: What's your least favorite thing about your favorite MMO?
My favorite MMO -- for the moment -- is DC Universe Online. That doesn't mean it's perfect or that it's my favorite MMO ever, mind you. It's just that for now, it's the one I'm playing and enjoying most often. What it would take to elevate DCUO from current favorite to bestest ever? That's hard to say, but we'd have to start with that consolized UI, chat system, and inventory. Yuck! What about you, Massively readers? What's your least favorite thing about your favorite MMO? Or if you're feeling especially contrarian, what's your favorite thing about your least favorite MMO? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Community Blog Topic Results: Favorite class and spec
Last week, we asked "What is your favorite class and spec?" We got many answers from altoholics who couldn't choose to enthusiastic odes. Here's what everyone had to say, listed in order of popularity. Hunter AlternativeChat over at ALT:ernative says If it's Hunter shaped, I'm going to play it. She favors the Beast Mastery spec due to its utility in soloing and farming as well as its pet buffs granting access to all DPS and crowd control abilities.
Breakfast Topic: What's your favorite quest zone in today's game?
Here at the Breakfast Topic breakfast nook, the question of favorites is a favorite. A year or so ago, we ran through your thoughts on your favorite quest zones. Later, we dug into your favorite Mists beta zones. Now that we've all had time to loop back with enough alts to see most of the Cataclysm zone revamps (both Alliance and Horde) and then get cozy with Pandaria, it's time to rethink our favorite zones. Has another zone captured your heart? As much fun as I've had nudging my way around the new zones and tracing criss-crossing storylines, I find that I still prefer atmospheric zones with self-contained storylines. To me, these zones feel more like places and less like transparent attempts to level me up or fill me in on an overarching story. Duskwood does a great job of making me feel as if I'm actually exploring a dynamic, populated region. Playing through it on a realm with an Alliance guild that uses Duskwood as its roleplaying base is like tossing dark chocolate chips into the brownie batter -- mmm. In today's game, what's your favorite quest zone? Are you still in love with a classic, or is your favorite a revamp of an original zone? Do you find yourself irresistibly attracted to a brand new zone in Pandaria?
aTV Flash 2.1 (black) offers very specific favorites, TV shows in playlists
It's not hard to find a media app with some type of favorites system. It's tougher to find one that lets us be very specific on just what a favorite can be. The new aTV Flash (black) 2.1 update, however, will let Apple TV modders be as exacting as they'd like: they can favorite individual videos, whole seasons and even broader search terms. Catch-up viewers get their own treat in the form of TV show playlists that simplify watching episodes back-to-back. A slew of further tweaks are inside, including iOS 6 support, so there's every incentive to upgrade for those who rely on not-quite-official firmware for Apple's living room hub.
The Tattered Notebook: A 'Top Gear' look at mounts
Previously, I've been writing about the weighty topic of free-to-play vs. live subscription servers in EverQuest II. This week, I'd like to switch gears, both figuratively and literally, to talk about speed. I've recently become a fan of the show Top Gear, a British program(me) that is completely devoted to the love of cars. I don't know why -- I'm not really into cars, and my Volkswagon Passat Wagon hardly qualifies as a car with a soul. But I was watching a recent episode, the one in which Jeremy was driving an Aston Martin across country, and I thought about how far EQII's mount selection has grown. Gone are the days when your choices ranged from a horse with brown spots to a horse with white spots to the really impressive horse with brown and white spots. The only unique mounts back then were the Paladin and Shadow Knight "fun" mounts. Today, there are dozens of different types of mounts that run, leap, glide, and fly. And they're not all just marketplace quick hits; several are easily attained from simple quests or live events. In this week's Tattered Notebook, I'll look at a few of my favorite mounts with an ode to Top Gear.
Three years of Massively: A few of our favorite things
Three years ago today, Massively cartwheeled into the MMO blogosphere, providing fresh fields on which its writers could ruminate (and a credible reason for its editors to go prematurely grey). If you don't remember those earliest days, it's probably because you were too busy "actually gaming" to "read about gaming." But if you're here reading this now, then you understand the unavoidable, irresistible lure of the gaming meta and why we writers do what we do (protip: it's really, really not for the money). To commemorate the occasion of our having existed three whole years without being thanklessly defenestrated, dethroned, or otherwise decommissioned, we asked the Massively staff members to reminisce about their past articles and offer up their favorite posts from the site for your amusement. Join us after the break for a retrospective of our very best work -- funny, sad, ranty, weird. Then hit the comments and let us know which of our posts really made a splash for you this year. Happy birthday, Massively! Let's eat internet cake!
TUAW's Daily App: Texto SMS Favorites
There are a lot of weird texting applications for the iPhone, and some of them are pretty hinky in terms of design or function. But Texto is probably the best looking SMS app I've seen -- it doesn't do any weird non-SMS text messaging or have all kinds of neon graphics running around. All it does is hook up with your iPhone's standard texting service to let you get quick shortcuts to your most commonly used people and messages. Thanks to LA traffic, I'm often running just a little late for meetings, and with Texto, I can just tap a few buttons to send an "I'll be there soon" to my friends and colleagues rather than trying to type the whole thing out as I frantically drive across town. The app's only 99 cents, but I'll admit it's not for everybody. If you don't text a whole lot already, you probably don't need a whole other app to handle your most frequently-sent messages. And obviously, sending a pre-written message is a little impersonal. Your significant other might realize you're blowing them off the fifth time you send a "Sorry, I'm busy, call you soon," message to them. There's one other caveat: you can only use this one in iOS 4.0, due to the way it interacts with the SMS app. For the right user, Texto can be really helpful, and it's got the bonus of having a great and simple interface that's free of ads and clutter.
Best iPhone games of the year picks start to roll in
Gamasutra wins the award for being the first (that I've seen) to pick awards for their best five iPhone games of the year, and the list is respectable, if a little short for such a huge set of possibility. Unfortunately, they don't win any TUAW points for going with Skee-Ball over our preferred Ramp Champ, but Rolando 2 was a worthy sequel to a worthy game, Edge (now Edgy) and Eliss are both great games (too bad you can't play the former, but the latter was underrated for sure), and Space Invaders Infinity Gene deserves to be on almost any end-of-the-year iPhone game list. Good picks in there for sure. DigitalTrends also has a long list, though strangely, they tend to stick to big names and brands. There are a few gems in there -- Spider, UniWar, and Vay may be a couple good choices that you haven't heard of yet. And here's another top 10 list with some repeats from the ones above and a few more nice picks. I guess with the end of the year upon us, we'll probably have to choose TUAW's favorites of 2009, too, eh? Stay tuned.
Breakfast Topic: What's your favorite raid boss?
Here's a good question from the official forums: What's your favorite raid boss, and why? The original poster chose C'thun, from classic WoW's second-hardest raid, AQ40; Bornakk agrees. I haven't actually seen C'thun, but from what I hear it was both incredibly frustrating and incredibly awesome. Crygil picks Doomwalker, but he might be a little biased. As for me, picking out of the fights I've done, I'm going to say Hodir. I don't remember classic raiding very clearly, and I only got through Karazhan and most of Zul'aman in BC. Ulduar is probably my favorite raid instance out of all the ones I've done, and the Hodir fight is really fun and demands a good amount of coordination from your group. What's your pick?
My favorite Mac apps: Giles' picks
Everyone else has had just three choice Mac apps, but I'm going to claim four because two of my choices live in the Menu Bar, and are therefore very small. Only you and I need to keep count, though, eh? Bean This marvelous little rich text editor is an excellent tool for writing to word counts, something I have to do very often. Bean packs in a lot of great features, and the developer is responsive to feedback and suggestions. Either TextMate or BBEdit When I'm not writing to word counts, I'm usually using Markdown to write for the web. Until last week I'd been using TextMate for this, exclusively, for a couple of years. Now, with the release of BBEdit 9.0, I'm wavering between the two. Both are wonderful, and writing with Markdown just isn't the same without one of them to help me out. I Love Stars I'm one of those weirdos who likes to keep the Dock out of sight most of the time. I don't use it for launching or switching apps, and I don't use it to keep minimised windows in either. But there are some functions that I like to have in easy reach from anywhere, and that's why I'm a big fan of Menu Bar applications. That said, there's not a lot of Menu Bar to be had on a little MacBook screen, so I'm very picky about which ones get the honor of a place up there. I Love Stars earns a spot. It does nothing but let me assign ratings to songs, but in my opinion it does it very well and, most importantly, sits in the best place for doing it. Jumpcut Another one from the Menu Bar, and this time it's a clipboard history utility that saves my backside 27 times every week. At least. It only saves text, but that's fine for me because that's what matters most in my line of work. With Jumpcut running (and it's always running), I can merrily copy umpteen things from a dozen different places and be sure of pasting them easily, and in the correct places, in the text document I'm writing at the time (see Bean and BBMate raves above). OK, that was five. Sorry.
Favorite iPhone apps: Giles' take
We're all taking turns at this. My turn: SMS - the built-in SMS app has changed the way I use text messaging, and for the better. My contract with O2 includes 600 text messages per month, and in the UK where everyone texts everyone about everything all the time (and no-one gets charged for incoming messages), that's extremely useful. On old phones, even using predictive text software, I found composing messages too long-winded and dull, and consequently didn't text much. Now I can compose as fast as I can tap-type, and my friends are all wondering why I've suddenly become so flippin' chatty. Cube Runner - Andy Qua's super-simple game is the only one I keep returning to time and time again. Nothing beats it for speed, simplicity, and fun. When I say simple, I mean simple: you pilot your triangle between the cubes. Hit cube, game over. That's it. There's not much that can improve it, except perhaps handlebars. Face Melter - A cheesy bit of fun, but everyone deserves cheesy fun every now and then. Face Melter just lets you mess about with images, pulling and dragging facial features into amusing shapes. Hardly a new idea, but it's great fun to have in your pocket. Good for amusing kids while waiting in restaurants, and for amusing fellow geeks in the pub. I've also been exploring its potential for experimental photography. Weather - I'm English. Need I say more? I should stress -- and I suspect I speak for all my TUAW colleagues in this respect -- that this list of faves is merely a snapshot. These faves might change within days, even hours. The App Store is still only an infant, and holds many surprises for us in the future. I'm looking forward to discovering new faves as time goes on.
