priority
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Google Drive 'Priority' AI monitors your team to surface the right files
Google's 'G Suite' of apps and services has been applying machine learning everywhere over the last couple of years, and the latest update it's testing for Google Drive goes a bit further. Two years ago it launched the machine learning-enhanced Quick Access feature to put files it thinks users need right in front of them before they even start searching. Google said users have reported that feature saves about 50 percent of their time.
Raid Rx: Why healing rotations spell death for your raid
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. Are you going through your healing rotation properly? No question has raised my wrath more than that. The idea of a healing rotation is my ultimate pet peeve. I once had a ret paladin ask me what my healing rotation was. Not even his bubble could protect him from my stony glare that penetrated his monitor. Healing is all about a priority system. It's about who needs what healing spell when. So as you're progressing through all the normal and heroic modes that Dragon Soul has to offer, learn to cultivate smarter healing habits. Find out what you need to focus on. Figure out what crappy habits you need to break. Coincidentally, Mike Gray wrote about the DPS side of spell priorities just the other day. He goes into great detail about the history of the DPS rotation and what developers were witnessing from the players. With healing, though, no real rotation exists. It's all about priorities. Two types of priorities exist: spell choices and healing targets. For players who are just getting started with healing, let me go into further detail about each type.
Gmail Priority Inbox now available on iPhone
The official Gmail blog has announced that the Priority Inbox feature, which uses an algorithm to mark what it thinks are important emails in your inbox, is now available on the web version of Gmail for the iPhone. If you've set up the service to work on your usual browser, it'll now also work on Gmail for Mobile, which is up and running in HTML5 on iPhones everywhere. I use Gmail almost exclusively for all of my email, yet aside from a short trial when it was first released, I've never really had much interest in Priority Inbox. I do a much better job of sorting my email than Google's algorithm, and I'm too worried that I'll miss something important that should have been prioritized if I depend on the formula. But a feature is a feature, and since Gmail is free anyway, those of you who use Priority Inbox will probably be happy to see it the next time you log into Gmail from a mobile device. [via MacStories]
TiVo granted patent on recording Season Pass subscriptions by priority
It's been a ten year process, but TiVo just won a patent on managing DVR recording schedules and resolving schedule conflicts using a list of shows ordered by priority. US Patent #7,665,111 covers "recording, storing, and deleting of television and/or web page program material" by generating a prioritized list of shows that contains both shows chosen and ranked by users and shows the DVR think you'll like, matching that list against the program guide and available recording space, and resolving conflicts based on priority. Yeah, that's what essentially every DVR on the market does now -- but before you run off screaming into the woods, remember that this was all basically uncharted territory when TiVo applied for this patent way back in 1999, the same year it launched one of the first DVRs. Now, TiVo has been anything but shy when it comes to suing over its other hard-fought DVR patents, so we'll have to see how the company decides to use this new bit of IP leverage; patents that have been pending for this long aren't exactly secrets to anyone, and we're sure TiVo's competitors have been thinking of clever ways to design around it. (One bit that jumps out: the priority list has to contain both "a viewer's explicit preferred program selections for recording" and "inferred preferred program selections for recording," so DVRs that don't auto-record like TiVos could potentially be excluded.) Of course, we'd rather just see TiVo retake the lead in the DVR space with some entirely new ideas -- we'll see what happens next month.
Are the forums necessary?
Here's something I'd like to hear all your thoughts on. Glue from Nagrand quotes the fact that "only a small portion of the playerbase read the forums," and he claims that those people are the most important players Blizzard has-- they care enough about the game to visit the forums and voice their opinions. But I'd like to play the devil's advocate on this one. What if (and stay with me here) Blizzard deleted the official forums completely?Do we really need the official forums? They do help-- besides giving us all kinds of fun reads and, yes, occasional insight, they're the main link between the CMs and the player base-- patch announcements and upcoming changes all are made known mostly through the forums, and day-to-day player feedback and questions are centered there. But they don't have to be-- Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot actually runs a daily blog featuring community news and game updates and changes. And it would be just as easy for Blizzard to announce things on their own website, and get player feedback and questions from sites just like this one.And getting rid of the forums would wipe out all of the lunacy that appears on there-- all the insensitive comments, the jeering and rickrolling, the flaming, the drama (well, actually I'm down for keeping that one), and all of the other wackiness that goes down there every day. If the CMs didn't have to deal with that stuff, wouldn't they be able to spend more time communicating player ideas to the devs? If Blizzard didn't have to pay Timbal to ban rickrollers, couldn't they use that money to come up with a new 5man, or Heroic Deadmines, or any number of other ideas they've had but couldn't carry out? If we lost the forums, wouldn't we have a better game?Food for thought. It's highly unlikely (at the very least) that Blizzard would ever shut down the official forums. But, even though they may have been necessary in the beginning, WoW's community survives in many other places now. Are the forums really necessary?
