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RIFT's Spoils of War update deploys
It's a heady day for RIFTers as Trion Worlds has released the game's second major update. Titled Spoils of War, patch 1.2 includes several exciting additions to the game, most notably a Looking for Group tool, a cosmetic appearance system, and 10-man raid Slivers. The LFG interface will also offer daily dungeon quests with increased rewards as incentives to boost instance runs. The full patch notes are up over on the RIFT forums, and they're a doozy to read (but one has to have some way to pass the time while the game updates, right?). In addition to the headlining features, there is a metric ton of changes, tweaks and sparkling gems to absorb. Spoils of War will make the game's expert dungeons more attractive to run, and players who love tinkering with RIFT's soul system should rejoice at the addition of a fifth role. Trion's also added a lot more love for social media with increased integration between the game and Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr. There's really too much to cover in a few brief paragraphs, so after you read the patch notes, make sure to check out our larger coverage of this impressive update from a couple of weeks ago! If you haven't had a chance to get your hands on RIFT, Trion's also launched its seven-day free trial and Ascend-a-Friend programs for one and all.
Post pictures to Tumblr Quickr
Quickr is a $0.99US iPhone app to take pictures and quickly post them to your Tumblr account. Here's the simplest explanation I can give for how Quickr lives up to its name: Steps necessary to take a picture and post it through the Tumblr app: launch Tumblr app tap post (assuming you have the dashboard shown by default) tap photo tap "take new photo" take picture Steps necessary to email a picture to Tumblr from the iPhone camera app: launch camera take picture tap button to see photo library tap arrow at bottom left tap "email photo" (wait for Mail to launch) tap 'to' fill in email address for your Tumblr Steps to post a picture using Quickr launch Quickr take picture Quickr will let you decide if you want to store the picture in your iPhone's library or not (you can set a default yes/no and then change very easily it for individual pictures from inside the app). As of v.1.0 posting to "sub-Tumblrs" is not supported, but I spoke with the developer and he is planning to include support for that in the future. He also mentioned that a bug exists in 1.0 which prevents the app from running on an iPad. A fix has already been submitted to the App Store. (Even though the iPad doesn't have a camera, Quickr will eventually allow you to upload pictures from your photo library on the iPad.) The bulk of the pictures that my wife and I take with our iPhones are intended to be posted to Tumblr, so Quickr is going to get a lot of use in our house.
MarsEdit 3 adds rich text editing, enhanced media browsing
In the "send an email, post a blog entry" fun and fast-paced world of tomorrow, services like Tumblr and Posterous make it exceedingly simple to prepare and post to your blog; meanwhile, Twitter, Facebook and AOL Lifestream push past the article metaphor to 140-character status snippets. Delightful as they all may be, sometimes it's nice to have a well-rounded Mac app that supports more reflective and considerate writing for your online outlets -- not to mention one that saves your drafts in case your browser picks that particular moment to crash. For a lot of bloggers, including many TUAW veterans, Red Sweater's MarsEdit (US$39.95) is that app. It allows you to write, edit and schedule posts offline at leisure, with full preview capability so you know what you're getting when you hit the Publish button. It will happily upload your images and files alongside your posts, and it works with scores of popular and obscure blog back-end systems (WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Squarespace, etc.). If you prefer to edit elsewhere but still want the uploading savvy MarsEdit delivers, it plays nicely (via the ODBEditor scritping suite) with other text editors like SubEthaEdit and TextMate. MarsEdit has just hit version 3.0. At long last, WYSIWIG rich text editing is included, alongside the traditional HTML/text edit window that has cheered experts but may have intimidated novices. Other new features include better syntax highlighting in HTML, support for WordPress static pages, media browsing from iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom libraries, and more. You can download a 30-day trial of MarsEdit and see for yourself if it works the way you do. Upgrades for previous owners are free if you bought MarsEdit in 2010, and $14.95 for all earlier purchasers.
The iPhone app showdown
This was an intriguing experiment undertaken over at Minimal Mac: Patrick decided to play a little Homescreen Survivor with his iPhone app icons -- he cleared everything off his homescreen, and then only let those apps back on which he used more than once throughout the course of a week. The result? You can see here which ones made it back on. Contacts, Calendar, Camera all showed up, not surprisingly. Photos did as well -- I don't use that one much, but I can see why. Everything else seems to be his own personal use: Tumblr's app, two different Twitter apps (Birdhouse and Tweetie), and then Simplenote and so on. But the real point here isn't what apps he used, it's just how different his homescreen looked when he only put what he used on there. I'll admit it: my iPhone is a mess -- I've got icons all over the place, and they don't seem to stay organized even when I try to organize them. But organizing according to actual usage is a great idea, and undertaking the same experiment on your iPhone might actually clear some things up for you. It's also worth pointing out all of that empty space on his homescreen: he has four more slots there that aren't used at all. Apple, are you listening? I'd guess Patrick's usage is more common than Apple may think -- there's plenty of room on the homescreen for other functions and information.
Mars Edit 2.3 adds Tumblr support
MarsEdit has long been one of my Mac apps and save my writings for TUAW and Download Squad, it's what I use for almost all of my online publishing. For almost two years, I've been embroiled in a love/hate relationship with Tumblr. I love the idea of the service, but until recently, the simplicity it offers has come at the expense of features I really, really need. This week, I've come one-step closer to making Tumblr a bigger part of my digital life, because MarsEdit now supports Tumblr blogs!MarsEdit 2.3, which was released on Tuesday now supports Tumblr, in addition to WordPress, Movable Type, LiveJournal and other blogging platforms. Daniel Jalkut, the developer of MarsEdit, announced that he was planning support for Tumblr back in December, after started working with Tumblr's Marco Arment on improving the Tumblr API.After a brief beta period, official Tumblr support is finally here, and it is good. To my knowledge, MarsEdit is the only blog client, for Mac or Windows, that supports Tumblr. Sure, there are some great iPhone (and even a BlackBerry application), but there hasn't been any support for an actual desktop client.Inevitably, some users will question why Tumblr needs client support at all. After all, isn't the whole point of Tumblr to be fast, easy and simple? Sure, but when composing longer entries or when you want to write drafts, an external client is still superior. There's nothing worse than having all of your hard work erased by a misbehaving web browser, or wanting to access a draft or an old post while on a plane or some other place without Internet access. MarsEdit 2.3 supports text, photo, quote, link and chat post templates (though you can easily use HTML to embed video and audio in a regular text post). You can also easily add tags to a post. Image posting is extremely easy, just drag an image from the web, your own library or a folder into the image button at the top of the post. If I had any real request, it would be that the "tweet this post" toggle be included as a MarsEdit option. Otherwise, my Tumblr needs have been addressed.MarsEdit 2.3 is a free upgrade for existing users and news users can snag a copy for $29.95. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5.
Widget Watch: Tumblr widget version 3
Here's something for everyone who uses Tumblr. Version 3 of the Tumblr Dashboard widget is available with some cool new features. It can publish posts, links, quotes, and web photos. Also, it puts a dash (-) in front of the source on a quote, which looks nice on your post. I've tried it out and it works well. I'd like to be able to drag and drop photos into the body field, though. Maybe next time.[Via Dave Chartier]
Widget Watch: Tumblr widget 2.0
Tumblr is a unique 'tumble blog' service that gives users a no hassles, no frills blog, and a simple bookmarklet with which to quickly post text, videos, pictures and even chats. For those who feel Blogger or WordPress are a little much to manage, or if you simply don't feel like you have that much to say but you find as much (if not more) cool stuff across the web as the typical dorm-bound student, Tumblr's services might be right up your alley.If Tumblr's official bookmarklet isn't always your blogging tool of choice, however, there are a few other options on the table, including the recently updated Tumblr widget 2.0. Offering a simple title + body UI, this widget should make it easy to send off your quotes, links (the widget accepts HTML) and chat quotes.
Tumblr now has Dashboard widgets, Quicksilver add-on
Tumblr is a unique new tumblelog service that employs a KISS philosophy: offering a very streamlined, one-column layout and a clever bookmarklet that is smart about what you're trying to share on your Tumblr blog. While the minimalist templates can be edited by hand to include just about anything you want, Tumblr's concept is to be a sort of blogging scrapbook; a place to toss all those unique things you find across the web that might not fit at any of your other blogging venues, or that you simply don't have much to say about. Take a look at the Tumblr Radar to get an idea of how others are using the service. Now that introductions are out of the way, a recent update to Tumblr, as well as a how-to post from our sister Download Squad blog, has highlighted some Mac OS X-specific features that should make it even easier for Mac users to jump into the service. First, Alex Hung (Windows developer for ecto, by the way) wrote up a great how-to at Download Squad that explores the construction of a Tumblr Dashboard widget with Apple's Dashcode. A DLS reader was even inspired enough to go through with it, creating theTumblr Widget that is hosted on Google Code. This widget also became one of two that Tumblr just highlighted in a recent blog post, with the other being more of a basic test widget that Tumblr cooked up themselves. The second Mac Tumblr tool is an AppleScript for Quicksilver by Andrew Lilja. Andrew provides the AppleScript code and instructions for some unique syntax you can use to specify things like titles, quotes and links for your Tumblr posts, all from Quicksilver's handy UI.It's great to see these kinds of tools appear for Tumblr, as it makes an already simple service even easier to use.