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TiVo's StopWatch to offer up precise viewer statistics
TiVo's transformation from a ad-skipper's best friend to an ad agency's biggest asset is nearly complete, as the firm's StopWatch system is aimed to provide "second-by-second" viewing data which Nielsen has refused to offer thus far. While the company went public about its intentions to become an ad-friendly platform awhile back, it looks like the time has come for its voyeuristic service to go live, as it begins marketing a system to carefully watch its 4.5 million or so customers whiz through commercials and schedule season recordings. This indeed marks the "first time a syndicated ratings service has detailed live and time-shifted viewing data on a second-by-second basis," which advertisers should absolutely drool over. Notably, Starcom has already signed on as TiVo's first taker, and with the amount of critical data now available to media agencies, we hardly believe it'll be the last. So the next time you crank up your TiVo and cruise on by every single costly commercial on your favorite recorded drama, take comfort in the fact that Big Brother is taking notes on a moment-by-moment basis.[Via PVRWire]
LiveEye keeps track of your gaming habits
Ever wanted to see what games you played, when, for how long, and what you achieved? The fellas over at 360FriendSpot whipped up a website that does just that called LiveEye. You'll have to sign up for the service, but once you do you'll be able to see all your stats in bar graph form and even other LiveEye users. Now you have an accurate representation of how many days you've spent (or wasted ...) on your favorite 360 game. Enjoy.[Via Digg]
WoWEconomy.com tracks the AH online
Curse points to an interesting new site that's taking on an idea a lot of players, I'm sure, have considered, if not hoped for: WoW Economy is a site that tries to finally monitor, and mirror on the web, real-time prices in the AHs on the different servers.Unfortunately, they're going uphill trying to implement something like this-- first and foremost, prices are different all over the servers, and that means that even if they come up with a price for something, there's no guarantee it'll sell for that on your server. They say they scan all the auction houses every day and provide information for trends, but if they only scan all the houses every day, the small collection of info they have is still pretty close to useless. (Not to mention the site is full of ads and a few spelling errors, but we'll give them a pass on that one-- buy any jewelry or mess around with a Flash paper doll lately?).On the other hand, I do have to give it to them: if you search for an item, they'll give you a price, right or not. They've even got a list of Most Traded and Most Valuable items (and it's kind of close to Blizzard's list... kind of). And they'll even track an item's listing over a period of time.But while it's the not most complete or worthwhile resource, it's one of the only resources we have on auction items on the web, so if you haven't yet installed the Auctioneer alpha, you might get a little use out of it. I'd like to see a few fewer ads and a few more pieces of valuable data, but I'll give them a B for effort... so far.
+Damage and healing: what do you mean "up to"?
+Damage is one of every offensive caster's favorite stats, and +healing likewise for healers. Items possessing +damage say something like "Equip: increases damage done by X spells and effects by up to N", where N is a number and X is one of the schools of magic: Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow, Arcane, and Holy; +healing items say "...healing done by spells and effects..."; and +damage/healing items say "...damage and healing done by magical spells and effects..." (I'm not sure why only +damage/healing specifies that the spells have to be magical).Let me address one common misconception right of the bat: there is no such thing as simply +damage to all schools. The only items that affect all schools of magic are +damage/healing. This comes into play when people argue that a DPS healing class shouldn't get such an item, as they're not getting full use out of it since they can't heal (this argument is also commonly used to say a healing class shouldn't get the item, since they don't DPS much).
Breakfast Topic: Weird Stats
You've probably seen the new stats page-- Blizzard has made numbers available for created and gathered items, most dangerous mobs, most auctioned items, and even most completed quests. To be sure, it is a little useless (three warlock pets are in the top 20 of most dangerous mobs, which doesn't tell us much besides the fact that warlocks are overpowered).But then again, there's interesting stuff if you poke around a little. Of the top auctioned items, almost the top 200 are all mats for crafting. The first actual equippable item i could find was Hillman's Shoulders at #142 (look for them on this week's Phat Loot Phriday). And while most of the created items are pretty self explanatory (raiders and PVPers alike are creating Heavy Runecloth Bandages like nobody's business), just what exactly is Roasted Boar Meat doing at #28-- I had no idea that many players were into Cooking. And while I laugh at the fact that Drek'Thar has killed more people than any mob in the game (and he only kills Alliance, which means he's killed a lot of Alliance), I'm puzzled by who's pissing off all the Gadgetzan Bruisers (they come in at #17). Haven't you all learned that if you start a fight in Gadgetzan, they'll end it for you?What other strange stats have you found hidden in those charts? I haven't even started looking at trends from day to day-- do the raid totals for bosses fly up on the weekends?
Medal of Honor hype on IGN
IGN has a huge blow-out on the upcoming PSP Medal of Honor Heroes. They have one written-by-a-marketing-team write-up that features profiles of the in-game characters: Generic McAmerican, Jimmy Paterson, William Holt and John Baker. Snore... The other is an interview with the game's producer, Peter Choi. It very similar to a previous interview, but it's great to know that he understands some of the things PSP fans are looking for from a game: 32 player online (Infrastructure) multiplayer. I can't stress enough how awesome that sounds. "The game is also optimized to have very short load times, which is hugely important for gamers on-the-go." (Yes!) "User Hosted Server feature along with official EA Nation Server games, are both fully customizable and have very detailed leaderboards and stat tracking." (Yes!) If all that hype wasn't enough for you, then you might want to check out the newest trailer for the game. It looks a lot like the previous videos, but with even sharper, prettier graphics.
Smash Bros. most popular game on Game Stats
That's right Halo 3, go take a walk!Over at Game Stats, today's (and yesterday's) most popular game is next year's Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Besides the previously-mentioned, alien-exterminating cyborg, the game has some seriously stiff competition, a majority of which are on the Wii. The console, and obviously its games, are getting major buzz, and for good reason. Face it, we all, Nintendo fanboys or not, want to take Snake into the Smash Bros. arena (namely Hyrule) and kick some ass. Link vs. Snake, or Samus vs. Snake...oh we cannot wait.See also: Rumor: Ubisoft character making Super Smash Bros. Brawl roster Smash Bros. Brawl: who's in, who's out
Xbox Live is "Bringing It Home" in numbers
In case you didn't know, Xbox Live is kind of a big thing.As a matter of fact, it has officially been christened "the world's largest platform for high-definition on-demand content," having topped 24 million downloads. That's a huge growth spurt from its humble beginnings in November last year. During the "E3: Bringing It Home" event, over 1.5 million people logged on to download 5 million nuggets of content. That's 600 terabytes of data in only 7 days, for those of you interested.Here were the top downloads during E3: Bringing It Home:1. Halo 3 Game Trailer2. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Playable Demo3. Test Drive Unlimited Playable Demo4. MotoGP '06 Playable Demo5. X-Men: The Last Stand Pack6. Gears of War Game Trailer7. Call of Duty 2: Skirmish Map Pack8. Spiderman 3 Game Trailer9. Fable 2 Trailer 10. Uno Xbox Live Arcade GameDid you participate in the Xbox Live frenzy during E3?
WoW Druid Simulator for Excel
Ok, I'll admit that I have no real idea what this thing does, or if it's even useful, but I figured I'd let you guys be the judge of that. FileFront.com is hosting a user-created Druid Simulator for MS Excel that allows that allows "druids to test their gear setups. It should allow them to determine which gear to aim for."So, I guess it's a spreadsheet kind of thing? Personally, I don't get into the minutae of stats & all the numbers when I'm playing an MMO...or any game, for that matter...but I know there are plenty of folks that do, so maybe some of you will find this useful. You can download it from this link.
