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Blue Microphones sells to Logitech for $117 million
As the market for equipment needed by podcasters, streamers and other content creators grows, Blue Microphones has become a trusted and well-known name. Now Logitech has stepped in to acquire the company for about $117 million in cash. Both companies make headsets, but adding the microphones to Logitech's set of cameras is a natural fit. Said Blue CEO John Maier: "So here's the deal: all of us here at Blue will keep creating cool stuff for professional musicians, gamers, podcasters, YouTubers, and streamers; Logitech will help us conquer the world. It's a great partnership full of possibilities." As usual, the promises are that everything will be good, better and best, but we will have to wait and see if all of the products involved continue to maintain the quality customers (and listeners/viewers) have come to expect.
ICYMI: Cockroach torture, an app for Parkinson's and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-567613{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-567613, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-567613{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-567613").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It: A cybernetic cockroach how-to describes how to use an Arduino to control where a cockroach goes, which makes all of us uncomfortable.
Amazon's Snowball is a smart box for shipping tons of cloud data
It seems paradoxical that you'd have to ship cloud data, but plenty of companies do -- it's sometimes faster for them to send a courier than to wait days for a massive upload to finish. And Amazon knows it. The internet giant just revealed the Snowball, an odd but unassuming storage device that shuttles up to 50TB of data to Amazon Web Services the old-fashioned way. The box is not only tough enough to survive the bumps and jostles of a courier, but has everything it needs for power and networking. There's even an E Ink control panel on the side that doubles as an automatic shipping label.
Snowball wants to be your Android phone's universal inbox
These days, all of the messages we get on our phones live in separate little boxes, destined never to mingle... unless some crafty developers and entrepreneurs force them to. As it turns out, that's exactly what a Google Ventures-backed startup called Snowball just did -- its creators made an Android app that pulls all your disparate missives into a single, simple inbox that you can scan at a glance. Facebook messages? Fine. Whatsapp texts? No worries. Snapchats? You get where we're going. Co-founder Anish Acharya says the aggregating app works with the 10 most popular messaging services out there right now (including good ol' SMS, Line, Hangouts and Slack just because they like it), which means there's a very good chance it'll be right up your alley. Sounds a lot like the universal inbox we've been clamoring for, doesn't it? Well, it's close.
WoW Archivist: The crashin' thrashin' history of Winter Veil
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? This month we celebrate the tenth annual Feast of Winter Veil. The holiday is almost as old as WoW itself. Winter Veil was the first ever holiday to be implemented, just after the game launched in November 2004. Blizzard patched in Winter Veil along with the Maraudon dungeon, the option to turn off cloaks and helms, and many other changes in patch 1.2 on December 18. Since then, Winter Veil has enjoyed a long evolution over the years into today's version. Let's spend a few minutes with the Ghost of Winter Veil Past! The first Winter Veil Given how early this holiday was added to the game, it's not surprising that there wasn't much to it compared to today. The holiday came with a few quests, including the original, short Greench questline. The first few days of the holiday saw a swarm of activity in Hillsbrad. The Tarren Mill vs. Southshore battles moved a few leagues north, as players battled friend and foe alike to tag the Greench and get quest credit. Completing the questline awarded you with one of several crafting recipes, such as Gloves of the Greatfather, the Winter's Might enchantment, or the coveted Snowmaster 9000 schematic.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Wealth and power in League of Legends
Although it's nothing unusual to see commenters complain about something I wrote in the Summoner's Guidebook, last week I noticed a trend. A lot of people explained things like "Karthus is good with a Tear," which led me to believe that there were some bad assumptions that were held by some of you. Sometimes we take certain things we know for granted. It's why people say League of Legends is an easy game when it's actually very difficult and complex. In the same way, I mostly assumed that people understood the basic idea of using wealth to get you ahead in the game. However, it seems like for the most part people do not. Everyone understands the idea that getting gold gets you items and items make you stronger. However, it doesn't seem to be widely understood that because you can turn wealth into power, you want to turn it into as much power as you can right now and leverage it to put you ahead. Power now is always better than power later.
Linaro member boards get accelerated builds of Android Ice Cream Sandwich
Remember Linaro? How could you forget, right? The non-profit engineering organization that formed back at Computex 2010 has been plugging away for over 1.5 years now, and its most recent development involves everyone's fav-o-rite build of Android: Ice Cream Sandwich. The company has just released ICS builds supporting accelerated graphics on two of its member's low cost development boards: the Samsung Origen and ST-Ericsson Snowball. The outfit already displayed videos of Android 4.0.1 running on TI's PandaBoard and Freescale's i.MX53, and the accelerated graphics support that has been made available today makes use of the ARM Mali-400 processor. For those unaware, developers are able to create optimized Linux-based devices with the support of Linaro, and if you're in one of those member groups, you'll also enjoy DS-5 with Gator and libjpeg-turbo support. Head on past the break for a smattering of videos.
The Achievements of Winter Veil
Looking for our 2010 Winterveil Guide? You'll find it here! The Feast of Winter Veil is almost upon us. The festivities kick off on December 15th, and will run until January 2nd. There are plenty of achievements to be had, as well as the title "Merrymaker" for completing them all. If you can complete every achievement from all of the holidays in a year, you will also be eligible for the achievement, What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been, which rewards you with a Violet Proto-Drake. You can refer to this guide for information about completing each achievement for this holiday, including links to maps and our usual comments section that should not be passed over if you're looking for tips. %Gallery-12195%
Lord Ahune's loot table
Like Halloween's Headless Horseman, the Midsummer Fire Festival's summonable boss Lord Ahune offers a nice selection of epic loot, as well as some really fun vanity/joke loot to keep the mood light. Most of the epic drops from the Frost Lord are duplicates of old Badge of Justice loot to help save you a fair amount of badges, but there are also a few new, completely unique drops.From completely awesome scythes to the Frost Lord's personal booze, we have a full listing of Lord Ahune's known drops. Even if you're geared to the teeth from Sunwell Plateau, Ahune has something for you, though it might come in a form a little sillier than traditional equipment. Take a look behind the cut below to see it all!
All the World's a Stage: Top ten ways to roleplay the holidays
All the World's a Stage performs for you every Sunday evening. Reserve your tickets early! This is a season of holidays for many people around the world, and indeed many of you may be faced with the peculiar situation of logging on to WoW only to discover that your entire guild is off with the family instead of playing online. So there you are, thinking of what to do, not entirely excited about joining a PuG with some random elf, and suddenly the idea comes to you: why not roleplay the holidays away? Even if your friends are online during their vacation time -- do you really want to just kill the same old monsters? Why not roleplay as a form of celebration?In this edition of All the World's a Stage, we bring to you the Holiday Roleplay Top Ten. Some are serious and some are silly; some are great for spontaneous fun with random strangers, while others can be a bit more theatrical and planned out with trusted friends. Read and discuss them all, then add any of your own ideas in the comments! Let the countdown begin: 10. Have a friendly snowball fight: Any snowy region in the game has these handy [Snowball]s just lying around for you to pick up and throw at each other. I myself have enjoyed running around trying to hit my friends with these things while at the same time dodging their tosses by hiding behind walls. You can count hits if you're feeling competitive, or else just toss recklessly and have a blast. Be sure to express your playful glee with /giggle and /rofl, and say things like "Ha ha! Gotcha!"
The Matrix Online: Bug fixes and the Winter Event
Recently, Daniel "Walrus" Myers popped his head out of The Matrix (or into, depending on which side you think this is) to give all the Redpills out there some great information on what's been planned for The Matrix Online in the upcoming month. Most of it, for those of us who play MxO, know that it involves evolving the storyline as we move from Chapter 8 (which just ended on November 15th -- hooray chapter and arc rewards!) to Chapter 9. Also included in the next batch of updates is the fix for Bullet Time animations and finishing moves. Also returning to The Matrix Online is the third annual Winter Holiday Event. More hats and snowballs (and new clothing pieces) please! We've been extra-good Redpills this year, we promise.
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The snowball griefing era has come to a close
And what a glorious era it was! Tigole has announced that Blizzard has applied a hotfix which will accomplish the following: Regular snowballs will no longer knockdown groupmates in the battlegrounds. Why? Well, with forced grouping, Blizzard doesn't want you to get stuck with a team-hating type who will constantly knock you on your butt via a well-placed snowball. Hardpacked snowballs may now only be used against the enemy. This should hopefully stop the griefing, which was apparently pretty annoying for those trying to rack up some honor. I can't think of many people being too unhappy with these changes, unless they enjoyed the thrill of annoying their teammates. Actually, there is quite the spirited discussion in the hotfix thread in the forums, as some folks will dearly miss those snowballs.
WoW Moviewatch: Alterac Valley snowball tactics
As a follow-up of sorts to yesterday's AV video, here's one showcasing the new AV-only Hardpacked Snowballs. I've been in there for the past few days grinding honor for Lei of the Lifegiver, and have yet to see anybody use them, but that's probably just because we're all too busy zerging to pick them up. Hats off to you, Doobsan. Traitor. [Thanks, Nelson]
Today's coldest game video: WoW AV snowball
Tis the season for snowball fights in Alterac Valley! There's nothing like pelting a passing dwarf with a chunk of tightly packed snow, is there? In fact, we're surprised no one has released a snowball fight game for one of the consoles. We'll continue to hope and dream for that one day, but in the meantime this World of Warcraft video will tide us over.Check it out after the jump, and be sure to watch your back out there.
