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Huawei wants people to dive into London's River Thames for a Watch GT 2
How badly do you want to get your hands on a Huawei Watch GT 2? Enough to dive in to the murky waters of London's River Thames? Because if that's your weird flex, you're in luck. Huawei has opened the world's first "Dive-Thru" on the Royal Victoria Dock, which will hold free watches for swimmers bold enough to dive underwater to collect them.
Facebook's head of PR leaves amid ongoing crises
Facebook is seemingly bouncing from crisis to crisis. It might not be happy, then, that the company's leading communications exec is heading for the exit. Recode has learned that Technology Communications VP Caryn Marooney (pictured at right) is leaving Facebook after eight years at the company. There's no mention of why Marooney is leaving, although she painted it as an amicable departure. "I have more faith in Facebook than ever," she said.
Junk technology: A ridiculous history of fast-food PR stunts
Who doesn't love a good, over-the-top marketing stunt? Recently we've seen a lot of those, including Pizza Hut's Pizza Parka, a coat made out of the same insulating materials as its delivery pouches. Because why not? That ridiculous product from Pizza Hut shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, this is the same company that made shoes that can order a pie for you. But Pizza Hut isn't the only one trying to get creative using technology to promote its brand.
Zuckerberg plans to tour all 50 states to meet Facebook users
Given how often Facebook was in the news last year (and very rarely for anything positive), its commander in chief Mark Zuckerberg has a pledge for 2017: Mix it up with commoners. In a post on the social network, Zuckerberg says that his personal goal for 2017 is to "have visited and met people in every state in the US" by year's end. By his count, he has 30 states left. Man, he travels fast.
Where Trump and Clinton stand on tech and science
I know what you're all thinking: "Thank god this election is almost over." Regardless of your political affiliation I think we can all agree November 8th can't come fast enough. But in the final days it can't hurt to make sure you're pulling the lever for the candidate that best reflects your beliefs and priorities. So take a few minutes and check out Engadget's election guide to see where Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson stand on the most important tech and science issues for 2016 and beyond. We pored over their records, speeches, etc... and laid out the candidate's positions in their own words and then gave them a grade based on their demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. If you have questions about how we grade or need a quick primer on the issues, check out this quick rundown. Obviously there are plenty of other issues to consider too, but we're willing to bet few other guides to the issues will spill as many words on cyber security and broadband infrastructure. Click here to see all the candidates' report cards.
The Puerto Rico blackout, from space
A fire at a power plant in Puerto Rico left almost 1.5 million homes and businesses without power on Wednesday night. On the ground, businesses were forced to close, and traffic ground to a halt as lights went dark. Around 340,000 people were left without water, and millions were without air conditioning and fans in 90-degree heat. A huge number of Puerto Ricans are still affected, and the scale of the problem is visible from space. NASA's Earth Observatory shared before-after images of the island, taken by The Visible Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite. The first image, taken at 2:50AM local time on Wednesday, shows the island bathed in artificial light, especially concentrated around the capital city of San Juan in the northeast. The second, captured at 2:31AM on Thursday, paints a very different picture. While San Juan is still fairly lit, surrounding urban areas are not, and many rural areas are pitch black. The southern city of Ponce is almost entirely in the dark. The images were captured using VIIRS "day-night" band. Earth Observatory explained that this band "detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as gas flares, city lights, and reflected moonlight." Moonlight is the reason that the shade of the ocean shifts between the two images. Power had been restored to just under 400,000 homes and business by Thursday night, but millions are still without electricity. The island's government-owned power authority AEE said it expected more than half of its customers to have power by Friday morning, and 90 percent are hoped to be connected by Saturday.
Apple activates its Twitter account ahead of iPhone event
Apple has activated its Twitter account and redesigned the Newsroom just days ahead of its iPhone 7 event on September 7th. The company has had a Twitter account since September 2011, but has never tweeted anything and, until now, had a generic "egg" avatar. That's now been replaced by the Apple logo and a background with the same design as its event invitation. It still has only 50,000 followers, but that will change very quickly if it starts to tweet regularly.
Pornhub wants to help you get fit
If there's one thing that Pornhub is good at that doesn't involve a satisfying break from work, it's getting people to pay attention to its plans. The company's latest attempt to remind everyone where to get their action from comes in the form of Bang Fit, which purports to be a smartphone-based sexercise platform. The idea, as far as the site is concerned, is that getting down and dirty is a better way to workout than whatever your personal trainer can tell you to do. Plus, it has the added benefit of keeping you relaxed and connected with yourself and your significant other(s).
Wikipedia's volunteers are no match for PR agencies
Wikipedia's goal to create the world's finest free encyclopedia is being undermined by the separate but equal forces of volunteer apathy and PR agencies. A long report by The Atlantic reveals that the site's issue with interested parties tweaking articles to better suit a private agenda is proving difficult to combat. In part, this is due to the dwindling number of unpaid editors that help to shoot down what's known as "undisclosed paid editing." In addition, this process of firefighting is drawing the site's curators attentions away from other, more substantial work to improve Wikipedia's overall quality.
The Crew accidentally erases player stats
Whoops: It seems as though The Crew's launch wasn't without a few speed bumps after all. Ubisoft admitted that the game's servers had been erasing or showing incomplete player statistics due to a minor issue. Before you get frightened that the game has erased your identity and progress entirely, know that the good news is that "major data" weren't affected at all and that a patch is coming to fix the problem. The Crew launched on Tuesday, December 2nd. Ubisoft refused to provide the media with review copies of the game.
Bungie's COO thinks Destiny and games like it are hard to review
Bungie continues to hype its Destiny shooter post-launch, with the latest bit of messenging courtesy of COO Pete Parsons and an interview at GamesIndustry.biz. "The launch of Destiny was the starting line," Parsons says, before going on to explain how Bungie's Destiny operations center "looks like a NASA control room" and how "it's very difficult to sit down for nine hours, 11 hours, and write up a review of game like Destiny." Parsons takes that notion a step further and asks how similar titles will be reviewed in the future when game journos face "a nearly impossible challenge" due to an inability to experience PvP, the campaign, and endgame activities on a deadline.
Ubisoft's The Crew: Not pre-screened for critics
I used to love reading movie reviews in the local paper when I was a kid, though sometimes it puzzled me when a film was listed as "not pre-screened for critics." Generally these were B-movies that critics were prone to savaging, so the distribution companies figured they'd make more money if prospective customers didn't see Siskel and Ebert ripping a film up one side and down the other. Fast-forward 20 years and Ubisoft is doing something similar with The Crew. According to the latest company blog post, the open world MMO racer won't be given to media outlets in advance of its December 2nd release, ostensibly so that reviewers can experience the game in "optimal conditions" that include lots of other players. "The Crew was built from the beginning to be a living playground full of driving fans, so it's only possible to assess our game in its entirety with other real players in the world," the company says. "And by other, we mean thousands and thousands and thousands of players – something that can't be simulated with a handful of devs playing alongside the press." Ubisoft goes on to say that any reviews that do appear on release day will be built around media preview sessions from the title's beta phases and thus will not "reflect the finished game."
Far Cry 4 promotional contest could send you to Mt. Everest
If you're so excited for Far Cry 4 that you'd risk death by avalanche, blizzard or grumpy yeti just to play the open-world shooter a few weeks early, Ubisoft has launched a PR stunt that may be right up your alley. Officially dubbed the "Far Cry 4 Quest for Everest" contest, the promotion asks fans to submit a YouTube video explaining why they would be the best candidate to trek to the Mt. Everest base camp for a private, early hands-on session with the game. Ubisoft urges entrants to "be creative" with their videos, and cautions that only those in "very good physical condition" will be eligible to join the expedition. Further, the winner must have a valid US passport and be willing to travel to Everest during the month of October. Assuming you meet all of these qualifications and can record something pithy and clever (but no more than two minutes in length), you can find details on where to submit your YouTube clip at the official contest website. Before you dash off to submit your entry though, keep in mind that the world's highest mountain has been particularly lethal this year. [Image: Ubisoft]
Watch Dogs PR stunt empties Sydney news office
A well-intentioned promotional effort went horribly awry as a copy of Watch Dogs sent to Australian news site Ninemsn prompted a mass evacuation of its offices and summoned the local bomb squad. Though Ninemsn is not in the habit of covering video games, Ubisoft's latest massive-budget effort was issued to the site anyway, inside special packaging consisting of a faux metal safe which would reportedly beep periodically. Immediately concerned by this unexpected, beeping package, Ninemsn staffers contacted their local colleagues, only to find that they had been the only recipient of this mysterious gift. Rather than risk personal injury of the explosive variety, Ninemsn contacted the local authorities who evacuated the building before sending over four police cars and a special police rescue unit. "The PR company no doubt got carried away with their creativity and ended up sending us something the bomb squad had to open up," Ninemsn publisher Hal Crawford told the BBC. Ubisoft was quick to offer a diplomatic apology. "As part of a themed promotion for Watch Dogs, our team in Australia sent voicemail messages to some local media alerting them that they'd receive a special package related to the game," Ubisoft said. "Unfortunately, the delivery to Ninemsn didn't go as planned, and we unreservedly apologise to Ninemsn's staff for the mistake and for any problems caused as a result." [Image: Ubisoft]
Unleashing the tech show hype beast
There's a technological revolution going on; innovation is at an all-time high; and we've seen it all before. While many of the devices we've seen this week are new and even exciting, the unending hymn of hyperbole that echoes through the halls of the LVCC is an old standard. For months leading up to the big show, small startups and tech giants flood the inboxes of tech journalists, attempting to catch their attention with bold and often ridiculous claims. And on the show floor, sprawling booths from the likes of Samsung and LG boast laundry lists of "world's firsts." Each year, we put all of that aside to bring you only the freshest goods CES has to offer -- until now. It's time to unleash the hype beast!
The Daily Grind: Do you get annoyed when game devs communicate via Reddit?
I loathe Reddit. I won't go into the hows and whys because that's better saved for a Soapbox, but suffice it to say that I roll my eyes when game companies including SOE, ArenaNet, and countless others take to the service to communicate with their fanbases instead of using their own forums or Twitter accounts. I understand why they do it -- salesmen always need to speak to a larger audience, of course -- but it still rankles. What about you, Massively readers? Am I alone here or do you also get annoyed having to go through a third-party community to learn about your game of choice? 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!
Here's an Elder Scrolls PvP Ask Us Anything
Ask Me Anything question-and-answer sessions are a good idea, in theory. But, like any other Q&A format in the publisher-controlled game journalism field, they're specifically designed to showcase the game in question as opposed to providing potential customers with complete or completely accurate information. Live AMAs are of course more challenging for devs and their PR handlers than email or forum questions, and it's the latter approach that ZeniMax takes with its latest Elder Scrolls Online publicity push. The AMA -- or really, AUA, for Ask Us Anything in this case -- focuses on ESO's PvP. Pre-screened questions include bits on bottlenecks, siege weapons, ranking systems, and the effectiveness of low-level players.
The Perfect Ten: Obnoxious studio buzz words
So say that you write for Massively. Or say that you work for another news site while wistfully refreshing Massively's front page hoping to see a "we're hiring!" notice pop up. Or say that you're a two-headed frog that has a respectable blog that one head writes for while the other one eats flies. The important thing for this example is to imagine that you write news. Because you write news, a good chunk of your day is spent prowling for stories. Some of them you find while browsing. Some of them are sent to your email. Once in a great while your cell phone registers a call from California and a way-too-peppy voice tries to sell you on the notion of writing a 2000-word feature on a game that only the mole people have heard of. In all of this, you are exposed to a great amount of PR-speak. You see the same phrases pop up, again and again. You understand how words can be hollow shells wrapped around a complete lack of meaning. You start to go mad until your other head tells you to snap out of it and eat some more flies. So today you're going to join me here on this side of the news desk as we look at 10 of the most obnoxious buzz words or phrases that studio PR and devs like to toss our way. You could get really cynical reading this list, but I suggest that you make a bingo sheet instead to turn this into a fun game that never, ever ends!
Riot: League of Legends Mac client ready 'within a month,' and why it's so late
As promised, I went by Riot Games today in Los Angeles, and got the lowdown on the long-awaited (but soon-to-be-released) Mac client for the company's popular game League of Legends from PR manager Chris Heintz. Heintz told me that the Mac version of the game is already up and running on the Public Beta Environment, and that it should be available as an Open Beta on the live servers "soon. Not 'Soon (TM)'," he told me, "but soon. I would imagine within a month." So what happened? Why did we hear about a Mac version years ago and then see Riot shut it down without releasing it? "When we originally developed the Mac client, we developed it with a partner, and it was a port, effectively. Our service model and how rapidly we patch wasn't really compatible with that approach, and also the performance and stability of that client wasn't up to our players' expectations, and so we killed it," says Heintz. But this new version, developed internally at Riot, is set to run the game natively on OS X. "As soon as we closed down the earlier Mac beta, we had always planned from that moment to develop a native Mac client that would actually be able to serve the needs of Mac players. We knew it was going to take some time, but we wanted to do it right." In the meantime, Riot even saw a group of players develop an unofficial Mac port of the game, and Heintz says those players were used during the beta test of this new version. "The beta crew that we went after was the iLoL community. Instead of trying to recruit a new community we already had that group of tens of thousands of dudes. And so we invited them." Heintz says that Riot doesn't have any major expectations for what the new client might do to its already impressive 12 million players a day. He says the company already knows the community wants to play the game on Macs. "We think that alone justifies the Mac client. There's already demand -- there was a Change.org petition just for us to treat Mac users the same! And so we're sorry it took a while, but we're here."
Ask Massively: Missives from the Massively yacht
So here we are, lounging on the deck of our yacht, sipping cool drinks out of fake coconuts while lifeguard cosplayers -- they're cosplayers, right guys? -- gently wave palm leaves at us. Later, of course, we'll dock somewhere and whip out our laptops and dash off some posts about video games before we get back to enjoying the titillating payoffs we earn as members of the gaming journalism front lines. Hopefully you've guessed that Massively doesn't have a yacht. We don't even have an office. The Massively yacht is a mythical destination, a running joke that's only mildly funny and then only to the people who work here, since only we know what we're paid, how insanely strict the Joystiq network is about accepting items on the spectrum between gifts and bribes, and how that strictness both hurts and helps us and you. That's something worth talking about in light of the Eurogamer debacle.
