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The Soapbox: Translating Elder Scrolls Online dev speak
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Language is a pretty fascinating thing, and studying a second one is something I've long intended to do. Aside from entertaining thoughts of learning Korean to play ArcheAge, though (seriously, I looked into it), I haven't gotten around to much beyond college-level Deutsch. But as I watched last week's interview with The Elder Scrolls Online creative director Paul Sage, I realized that I already have some pretty good second-language skills. I'm fluent in both English and MMO dev-speak, so as a public service, I'm going to translate some of what Sage said into the former.
HP ships Swing motion controller hardware with Pavilion PCs in India
The vaguely kidney bean-shaped device above is actually, believe it or not, yet another motion controller. Details are scant, but apparently the HP Swing is being bundled with HP Pavilion desktop PCs in India (starting at 29,990 Rupees, or about $670). The thing will not be available separately, and as far as we know there are no plans to release it in the states. We're not saying that it won't be released in the US, but we are saying that we probably don't care. Either way, we'll let you know when we hear more.
Pingdom posts insight into latest Mobile Me outage
Despite the server-side updates Apple detailed last week, the company's beleaguered Mobile Me service is still problematic for many users. Yesterday, we received a number of e-mails complaining that Apple's Me.com domain was reporting 404 errors. Today, the fine folks at Pingdom.com (which monitors website uptime), posted some details about what was going on. It appears that there was an issue with the Me.com redirect. If a user directly typed in http://me.com/mail, he or she could successfully access the server. Trying to access the Me.com domain, however, led 404 HTTP error response with the words "Not Found: Resource does not exist," appearing on the page. This outage lasted nearly seven hours, from 2:29 AM EST - 9:25 AM EST on November 3, 2008. Because the outage occurred at night in the continental United States, most affected users were from Europe, where the outage lasted for most of the work day. If this was a simple redirect error (which it appears to be), why did it take seven hours to fix? My guess is that no one at Apple was alerted to the problem until someone came into work at 6:00 AM PST and started seeing error request e-mails or had problems accessing the domain. This is a problem. If Apple is truly dedicated to making Mobile Me a service it can be "proud of by the end of this year," the company should really consider having either dedicated 24-hour Mobile Me IT support (or more support) or figure out a way to resolve errors like this in a more timely matter. Redirect errors or glitches are not uncommon, but any company trying to run an international communications service needs to get on the ball. Despite my vocal misgivings about the service, before it even launched, I signed up for a 60-day trial in early July -- so I could "eat my own dogfood" -- as they say. And even though my service was extended for free until December, I canceled in September. Why? Because the service proved it wasn't reliable enough for any sort of e-mail communication, its calendar syncing was complete junk, and it seemed like every time I tried to access the service, it was either slow as all get out or unavailable. Free or not, that just isn't worth the hassle. At least with Google, it apologizes when it has an outage and if you pay $50 a year, you get actual phone support that doesn't just go to a random Apple Care person with no knowledge or information about the issue. Are you still a Mobile Me subscriber? Sound off in the comments!
A month later, it's still Mobile 'Meh'
Yesterday, Mobile Me was down again, underscoring how little the service has improved since its introduction last month. Pockets of users have been affected regularly by outages and slowness since the service first came online. MacRumors calculates that Mobile Me has been up 96 percent of the time (that is, down for 13.5 hours) over the last two weeks. As a Mobile Me subscriber, I wonder if the opening-day trial subscriptions will matter in yet another month: that's when, for many (but not all) the 60-day trial period expires. If those disappointed with the service choose to flee, then perhaps the server load will decrease, and performance will improve for the rest of us. Of course, we all read Steve Jobs' leaked email, and surmised that he gave many more expletive-laden tirades before the memo was released. We have a promise from the top that service will improve by December, and that's some solace, but what of the meantime? And what of the blog? Your friend and mine, David G., hasn't posted a thing since July 29, promising an update post that never arrived. Until then, I suppose all we can do is watch the support page, keep calm, and carry on.
Top 5: Nintendo's Biggest "Mehs"
As the fallout of E3 rests upon the public, Nintendo finds themselves pelted by fierce criticism. Forum posts and blog comments have been predicting the assassination of the Wii core gamer. Not surprisingly, the most ominous declarations have been coming from within Nintendo's ranks. A civil war has been declared, and the fanboys are ready to revolt against the casuals. Though this core gamer is not ready to take sides, I will admit that Nintendo's press conference was quite underwhelming. It wasn't a complete and utter failure; the bigwigs at Nintendo made no bones about their intentions. Additionally, one can argue that the financial foundation of the casual gamer endows Nintendo with more capital to support first party efforts. And by having the most successful console, third parties are likely to focus resources on Nintendo's magnificent machine. Certainly, all parties had impressive titles associated with E3, such as Dead Rising, The Conduit, NHL 2K9, Wario Land: Shake It!, Mega Man 9, and plenty to be excited about on the DS. Though Nintendo didn't close with a Jobs-esque "one more thing" slobberknocker, they accomplished what they set out to do. Yet dissatisfaction remains: the definitive description of Nintendo's E3 presence is a resounding meh. Here is a look at some of the most famous "mehs" in Nintendo history. Not utter failures, mind you. Rather, items that were simply met with indifference. 5. The Super Scope - The Nintendo Entertainment System was offered in several different "bundles," with the most successful bundle containing the successful NES Zapper. The light gun was a relatively new concept and simple to use. Plus, my cousin's friend said you can totally shoot the dog if you get to the 50th level in Duck Hunt and enter the Konami code on the second controller. Like many successes of the NES, Nintendo tried to transfer the idea of gun play to the SNES. Thus, the Super Scope was created. While the Zapper was similar in appearance to a revolver, the Super Scope was shaped more like a bazooka. This proved to be uncomfortable and not nearly as cool as the original. Plus, the device relied on infrared instead of light flashes, which was found to be less precise. The nail in the coffin was that the Super Scope went through AA batteries like I go through cheesesteaks: in ridiculous numbers.
