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Windows 10 may soon tell you which apps are using your microphone
Microsoft is testing some privacy and notification features in its latest Windows 10 Insider preview for Fast Ring users. A previous build added an icon to the notification area that tells you when your microphone is in use, and the newest update will let you see which app is using it when you mouse over the icon. If more than one app is using your mic, the icon will tell you how many. It's a useful privacy enhancement, especially if you're concerned about eavesdropping.
BBC iPlayer will let you 'restart' live shows on your phone
Sometimes you'll race home and boot up BBC iPlayer, only to find that you've missed the start of your favourite show. Fiddlesticks. It's an important week on The Great British Bake Off. Never mind, at least you can press "restart" on a laptop, PC or smart TV, rewinding the programme in an instant. Now, wouldn't it be nice if you could do that on a smartphone too? Well, soon you will. The BBC says the feature is coming to its iOS and Android apps "shortly," complimenting its new pause and rewind buttons.
Perfect Ten: What Titan's death means for the industry and you
Blizzard's fans are in mourning this weekend and its competition is no doubt rejoicing after the World of Warcraft developer finally cancelled its seven-years-in-the-making Titan MMO. Word on the street is that Titan was a little too similar to what Bungie came up with in Destiny, although all the studio itself will say is that it ultimately wasn't fun. So Titan joins Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures in the Blizzard graveyard. It's a loss for those who were hoping to see what Blizz could do outside of World of Warcraft in the MMO space. But what does this cancellation mean for Blizzard, the industry, and us as MMO gamers? I have a few thoughts, although I'll pre-empt them by predicting that your life will most likely go on just the same it did before this momentous announcement.
Dungeon Fighter Online returns from the dead
It was a about a year ago that Dungeon Fighter Online closed up shop in North America, but the scrappy MMO might be back for round two. The resurrected version of Dungeon Fighter Online is being run by developer Neople, not Nexon. The studio plans to begin the alpha test of DFO tomorrow, May 15th. This will be an open alpha test requiring players to use their Facebook accounts to access. "As some of you rightly mentioned, this is an alpha test, not a full re-opening of the game," Neople cautioned on its Facebook page. "So there might be bits and pieces that don't go as smoothly as we want, and we sincerely hope the DFO community understands this." [Thanks to everyone who sent in this tip!]
iOS 7 video tip: How to kill a frozen app or restart your iPhone
On occasion, a single iPhone app might lock up and make that app -- or your entire iPhone -- unusable. Today's video tip looks at how to kill a single frozen app, as well as how to fix an iPhone that has locked up completely. As with all of our video tips, this one can be resized to full screen for more detailed viewing.
Blizzard removes Titan from careers page
Here are the facts: There is a career page for Blizzard Entertainment. The mysterious project known as Titan used to have job listings there. Now there is no mention of Titan on this page. Here is another fact: The man up there represented the beginning of Blizzard's cinematics department. This picture has nothing to do with Titan, but it amused us to include it. What does this mean for the project? There are many possibilities: Blizzard is abandoning it, Blizzard has enough people working on it already, or Blizzard is regrouping on it. Considering that the studio said back in May that it was scrapping its development on Titan to start over, we think that the latter could be quite likely.
Rumor: Blizzard's Titan has fallen, won't be getting up until 2016 [Updated]
Are you looking forward to Titan? It's a bit odd, since the game hasn't had so much as a screenshot released yet, but we can understand it. If that's the case, though, we've got some bad news for you, as the project is rumored to have been completely restarted. According to an unnamed GamesBeat source, the project has had 70 people taken off its previously 100-strong workforce, with the title's release delayed until at least 2016 as a result. Those who have followed Blizzard Entertainment for a while will remember that the last project restarted more than once was the ill-fated Starcraft: Ghost, which doesn't bode well for the future of Titan. With World of Warcraft's subscription numbers in decline, it's possible that the company is moving in a different direction. No official statements have been issued regarding the development of Titan or any expected release window for the game. [Update: ZAM reports that Blizzard has responded to that site's queries with the following statement: "We've always had a highly iterative development process, and the unannounced MMO is no exception. We've come to a point where we need to make some large design and technology changes to the game. We're using this opportunity to shift some of our resources to assist with other projects while the core team adapts our technology and tools to accommodate these new changes. Note that we haven't announced any dates for the MMO."]
Pixelmator announces big bug with OS X 10.8.2
Ouch. You know it's a bad day for Pixelmator Team when they have to publicly announce a major bug in their marquee app. The bug causes some Macs to "restart when intensively using Pixelmator" -- like right when you're in the middle of a major project. The issue also causes other nice side effects, such as "the app would stop responding without restarting a computer, or just cause some graphical glitches." Well, the Pixelmator Team has posted a huge apology to users on their blog, and they've found out what's happened. Apparently, the issue is caused by NVIDIA GeForce graphics card drivers and not by Pixelmator's code. The team notes that they've tried various workarounds and nothing has worked, but the hardware engineers at Apple are on the job trying to figure out a fix. If you have a Mac with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, GT 320M, GT 330M, 9400M or GT 9600 graphics card and use Pixelmator, you may want to use another image editing app for a while until this gets resolved. To find out what graphics card is in your Mac, pull up OS X 10.8.2's System Information Utility and it will be listed in the overview.
The Road to Mordor: The reset scenario
At this juncture of my Lord of the Rings Online career, I have zero interest in starting over. I've attempted two fresh characters over the past six months, and while the "newness" was enough to sustain me for a while, I simply didn't have the time or energy to get them through the long, long, long journey of content to meet up with my Captain. So I've made peace with the thought that my main will be my only character through the completion of the game, barring Turbine releasing an incredibly compelling new class or severely streamlining the leveling process. That's OK, really. I'm content. Yet I also like to engage in mental hypotheses in which I am forced to restart -- a reset scenario, as it were. If I woke up tomorrow and found that my account was completely blank, or if I were thrown back in time and had to start all over again, what would I do? Would I choose differently or the same? So here we go: the reset scenario. Let's assume the game is more or less how it is now and I have all of my current knowledge. If I had to start from scratch, how would I forge a different path in the game?
The Road to Mordor: A fresh start
I don't know about you, but sometimes I fall into the trap of forcing myself to do something in a game because I feel internally obliged to do it. Somewhere along the line, "setting a goal" became a Bataan Death March that absolutely had to be accomplished before I'd allow myself to do what I truly wanted. In my case, it was the stubborn determination to get through the remainder of Rise of Isengard's content even though I had slowed to slogging through it, feeling burned out on my Lore-master after well over a year of constant play on the character. So I sat back and re-evaluated. My reasoning for finishing Isengard was to make sure I was at the top of the game and could evaluate any new high-level content that came along for you guys, which was a noble reason. But the truth was that in so doing, I was playing something that was leeched of enjoyment for the time being and really needed to be put aside. Once I realized that, the solution was obvious. A fresh start. That's what I wanted: a completely fresh start to the game. Hey, it's still (sort of) a new year, so why not? And once I gave myself permission to do that, my adventures in Lord of the Rings Online brightened up considerably. I might be weird in this, but I absolutely love starting over from scratch in long-term games from time to time, even though it means scrapping (or putting aside) a whole heap of achievements and the effort spent acquiring them. This week I'm going to look at my fresh start with LotRO and why it has me buzzed to log in for the first time this year.
Japan won't allow Sony to turn PSN back on until it's assured it's safe
Sony may be busy flipping the PlayStation Network switch back to the "on" position around the globe, but one locale where it won't be doing so just yet is its homeland of Japan. The Dow Jones newshounds report that the Japanese government refuses to allow Sony to reactivate its ailing network until satisfaction is reached on a couple of outstanding issues. The first is that the company's promised counter-hacking measures announced on May 1st have not yet been fully enacted -- though details of what has or hasn't been done yet are understandably unavailable -- and the second is that Japan wants to see further preventive measures taken to ensure users' credit card numbers and other private data won't be exposed through their use of Sony's online services again. These sound like rational demands to us, and Sony is already in talks with the authorities to make sure it lives up to their expectations.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Shuttie
Ever wanted to leave your Mac running unattended at night, but don't want it running all night long? Today's Daily Mac App will help you do just that. Shuttie allows you to bind one of six actions to a countdown timer, allowing you to shutdown, restart, sleep or logout of your Mac, or fire off an AppleScript or an alert. You select the action you want, the countdown time and hit the activate button. Shuttie will provide periodic Growl notifications as it counts down to zero, as well as a timer on its dock icon, and then it will initiate whichever activity you've got selected. Loading an AppleScript is a drag-and-drop affair while your desired alert text is entered into a text box. Sure, there are other ways of doing this kind of thing, but Shuttie is a good way to set up these tasks to be performed remotely. It's US$1.99 in the Mac App Store.
Champions Online gains profits and players as a free-to-play [Updated]
Since Champions Online's relaunch as a free-to-play title a little less than a month ago, any player who has logged into the game has undoubtedly noticed the sheer number of folks running around Millennium City and environs. There are spandex-clad super-people everywhere you look, and groups are significantly easier to get. These are all good things for MMO players! Today we're also treated to the first official word on the success of the relaunch from Cryptic Studios and Atari, which both declare that the move to free-to-play has been -- as we suspected -- a huge success. To celebrate, they're offering all players, both subscribed and free-to-play, a thank-you gift for helping to make the game's reboot so great! The present offered is a free experience-boosting item that can be picked up from the Champions Online C-Store for at least the next little while. While the companies have not released any specific subscriber or traffic numbers, they have noted that unique logins, concurrent users, and revenue totals have increased by "over 1,000 percent" since Champions Online went free-to-play. As John Needham, CEO of Cryptic Studios, stated in the release: "We're extremely proud of what the Champions team has accomplished with the Free for All launch. It's a pleasure to thank our fans and welcome new ones with this gift." As for how long the gift will be around and whether it is one per account or one per character is currently anyone's guess as the item does not appear to be in the C-Store as of this writing. The gift appears to be a one-hour, 20% experience boost that you can acquire once per account. They also appear to be tradable! [Update: We've updated this post as the gift is now available in the C-Store, and we've also added the most recent trailer behind the cut. Enjoy! And guys... remember to keep the comments clean and on track with our CoC!]
Earth Eternal showing signs of life
We'd heard about Sparkplay Media's issues with raising further funding to continue its independent anthropomorphic MMO, Earth Eternal. When the game and overall site dropped offline a few weeks ago without any further official statement, we figured that time had run out, and it was simply the sunsetting of another MMO. That's why we were surprised to see both the Earth Eternal Facebook and Twitter accounts light back up, if only to let us know someone's still there -- and that there's still hope. The message on Facebook notes, "...our ISP pulled the plug for non-payment, which was expected. I wasn't able to give you any warning, unfortunately, because I was at Burning Man and completely out of reach for the week that it went down. Full backups of all the data exist and the company that is in the process of buying Earth Eternal will be starting it back up again in the nearish future." As to what company is seeking to purchase the game and how fast this process will be moving, we have no idea. However, we're certain that this nugget of reboot hope is welcome news to those who were enjoying this kitschy, yet fun, title. With any luck we'll be hearing something from a representative of Sparkplay before too long.
Rolling restarts for January 23rd, 2010
It looks like we have some quick play disruption coming our way this Saturday morning, as Blizzard has announced rolling restarts for all realms at 5 AM pacific, or Noon pacific for Oceanic Realms. Judging by Ghostcrawler's words in a recent thread, this is likely meant to jump start the resilience hotfix. Either way, if you're one of those folks weird enough to get up early on a Saturday morning, you may as well grab another hour or sleep or so, since you may not be able to jump on WoW for a 15 minute window. There's still no word on Tuesday's downtime, so maybe we were spoiled by the past couple of weeks. Then again, maybe they're just seeing if they can get that minor patch ready for a release this week too. Either way, keep it here, and we'll keep you informed.
Large Hadron Collider reboots, makes first protonic bang!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that most epic triumph of human engineering and physics research has finally taken place, and strangely enough our planet's still in one piece too. The search for the Higgs boson particle resumed yesterday, somewhere under the Franco-Swiss border, with the CERN research team successfully executing what the LHC was built to do -- accelerating proton beams to nearly the speed of light, then filming the wreckage as they crash into each other. Having encountered a number of bumps in the road, the researchers have had to significantly scale down the energy at which their early collisions will take place, with the very first ones said to have happened at 900 billion electron volts. Still, plans are afoot for an imminent shift up to 1.2 trillion electron volts (TeV), which would be the highest energy level any particle accelerator has achieved yet, before a ramp up to 7 TeV over the coming year if all goes well.
China bans corporal punishment in internet rehab, UK and USA open up their own clinics
China's, how to say this, unorthodox rehabilitation methods, which involve "beating and confinement" of internet addicts, have finally been fully outlawed. Following the death of one teenager due to the treatment he received at an addiction camp, the Chinese Health Ministry has come out with a statement to say corporal punishment and methods restricting personal freedom "are strictly forbidden." In the meantime, the UK and USA are playing catch-up by opening up their own computer addiction camps, which have been described as residential internet detox clinics. Their genius ploy to get you off the web juice has been to go cold turkey and teach people to do chores as a distraction (really, chores and boredom are the cure and not the disease?). The British version even has a 12-step program, but we advise doing what we all did -- if you find yourself spending most of your time on the internet, just become a full-time blogger. Read - China bans tough treatment of young Web addicts Read - Britain's first computer rehab clinic opens Read - Clinic for internet addicts opens in US
The best of WoW.com: September 8-15, 2009
The World of Warcraft is brimming with anticipation lately, from next month's anniversary activities (the game is almost five years old) to next year's expected Cataclysm expansion. Whether you're a Northrend veteran or still haven't seen Elwynn Forest, Joystiq sister site WoW.com has you covered. If it's in Azeroth, we can tell you all about it.
WoW.com interview: Dr. Hilarie Cash of reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program
We've talked about Internet addiction before a few times here on the site, but it's always been through the lens of the media. Certainly there are players of WoW and other games out there who play the game so much it's affecting their lives, but most of the cases we've heard about have been a little over the top -- parents crying that their children are lost, kids playing nonstop and picking up bad health and social habits from this horrible game.And so, when we heard that there was a new center opening for Internet and gaming addiction in Washington State, we decided, instead of just listening to the media reports, to sit down with the co-founder herself and have a more thoughtful conversation about gaming addiction: how and why it happens, how they're trying to fight it, and how it's portrayed, from both a media and a gamers' perspective. Dr. Hilarie Cash has been working with Internet addicts for 15 years -- she's the cofounder of two different addiction clinics, including the new reSTART Center, and the co-author of "Videogames & Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control." You can read our exclusive interview with her by hitting the "Read more" link below.
WoW.com Interview: Dr. Hilarie Cash continued
One of the thing we continually see whenever the media talks about Internet addiction and how this all works is this tendency to say it's the game's fault. Well because the government is so worried about this whole thing, the government has -- obviously a completely different kind of government, and a different kind of culture and society than we have, but because the government's worried, and because, the way I understand it, the game developers in China don't want to get in trouble with the government, they've created things like if you keep playing beyond a certain point you start losing points, and things like that.
