While the Dominion expansion for EVE Online has been focused on changing how alliances claim and hold territory in New Eden, CCP Games has also given the game quite a facelift. We've mentioned the updated starry backgrounds and shown you a bit about how the planets have changed before, but we came across something new today.
While the footage put together by the players was great, CCP has put together a "Planet Tour" video that's quite stunning. It flies the viewer past the different planet types that players can now encounter -- lava and ice, planetary rings, green continents and swirling clouds. We've got a video embed of the EVE OnlineDominion Planet Tour (check out 3:34!) for you after the jump.
Nowadays it seems like a newly released MMO has an estimated lifespan the length of a bag of chips left open overnight. That doesn't leave much hope for older MMOs, right? It appears that way, but games like EverQuest and EVE Online are doing well enough and they've been around for years. Sure, they may not be massive subscription behemoths, but they play home to thriving communities -- which is a lot more than I can say for the sunset titles of yesteryear.
Finally, a third party has confirmed what many have been saying for a while: Xbox 360 failure rates are much higher than the three to five percent Microsoft claims. Though not quite as high as the 30 percent some retailers have suggested, the 16 percent failure rate reported by SquareTrade is way beyond an acceptable rate.
SquareTrade is an independent warranty provider, covering products after the manufacturers warranty has expired, so its numbers don't include 360s that fail while still under Microsoft warranty. Microsoft recently extended the warranty on Xbox, leading SquareTrade to suggest that the failure rate is actually much higher than 16 percent since customers may have been bypassing its reporting system and going straight to Microsoft.
The infamous Xbox 360 failure has been colloquially called the "Red Ring of Death," because the console displays a red ring upon startup (like the photo above) to let its owner know that it's time to dial Microsoft 911. Causes are unconfirmed, but the most recent reports say that poor component choices in a rush to get the 360 out to market are to blame.
SquareTrade's study tracked 1,040 Xboxes over six to ten months after Microsoft's warranty expired. In that time, 171 claims were filed.
The critics weren't kind to Damien Hirst's latest collection, which was exhibited at the Wallace Collection. It doesn't seem to have mattered. All news is good news in Hirst-land, as evidenced by the sales of his most recent effort. Hirst opened a new show yesterday at White Cube. Even if the media isn't crazy about his, the artist's collectors haven't ended the love affair. Five of the seven largest pieces in his new "Nothing Matters" collection sold before the show opened, with the highest-priced piece hitting $15.7 million, despite an initial point of only 235,000 pounds.
The show runs at White Cube through January 20, 2010, but you'll have to accept that you'll be checking out what is now other people's property. Hirst collectors are nothing if not loyal.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will award contracts to design and build an unmanned spy plane they've dreamed up that will stay aloft for for an amazing five years. The pseudo satellite will circle the globe for years at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, gathering photos, communications, and generally watching everything you do.
The craft will have to answer a number of design challenges, not the least of which is how to keep this thing powered for such a long period of time. The sub-orbital satellite will also have to carry a 1000-pound payload in extremely high winds (and become airborne in the first place).
DARPA would like to have the craft built ASAP, but you know how these things work, the government will be lucky to have non-functional scale model by the year 2020.
The Spike TV Video Game Awards were the source of a lot of new game announcements and reveals but they were not the only major news items in PC gaming this week. Let's look back at the past seven days at Big Download: Exclusives
Big Versus: In our latest look comparing games we pit Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare against Modern Warfare 2.
Nobody wants to pay for iPhone apps, and some people simply don't. The good news is, you don't really need to: For almost every paid app, there's a free app that's nearly as good. Here are the best of the best.
A lot of these apps will be familiar to anyone who's checked out our Essential iPhone Apps directory before, and yeah, there is a lot of overlap. What we've done, basically, is strip out the dollar signs from list, then fill in the gaps with more free.
With the new list, you can turn a fresh, untouched iPhone or iPod Touch into a decked-out powerhouse without spending a single dollar.
(To view the following gallery as a single page, click here.)
What counts as an essential iPhone app changes all the time, and so should our guide: If we've missed anything huge, or you've got a much better suggestion for a particular type of app, let us know, or say so in the comments. We'll be updating this thing pretty frequently, and a million Gizmodo readers can do a better job at sorting through the app mess than a single Gizmodo editor. Enjoy!
It was Independence Day for AOL (AOL) on Thursday as the company was formally spun off from Time Warner (TWX), but the stock's debut on the New York Stock Exchange was something less than fireworks.
Shares in AOL -- DailyFinance's parent company -- spent almost the entire session in the red, but finished down just 0.6%, or 15 cents a share, at $23.52. Time Warner, meanwhile, gained 4.3%, or $1.24 a share, to close at $30.45, helped by positive analysts reports from BMO Capital Markets and Collins Stewart, among other brokerages.
Thank heavens for Google Translate! Not only did it allow us to track our family genealogy and find our Cousin Balki -- who we then brought to America for a series of screwball adventures -- but it also taught us that Earth No More, a 3D Realms-published game being developed by the ex-Remedy staff at Recoil Games, has been put on hold. As near as we can tell from the translation of this eDome report, the studio is currently focusing on smaller, more manageable projects.
Balki says we should try to force them to release the game by ... well, it's a whole plan he's got, but it involves dancing with a goat and a poultice recipe his sister Yanna sent over from Mypos. Honestly, we should let him tell you. It's better with the accent.
While it's most often lauded for its PvP, not everything in EVE Online is about shooting people. Research and manufacturing are two of EVE's most popular PvE professions because of the small time commitments they require. A lot of things in EVE are built from blueprints and through research, you can be one of the people supplying those blueprints. Whether you want to improve your own blueprints to increase manufacturing profit margins or make blueprint copies for sale, it's worth looking into doing your own research. Jobs can be set up to run for days on end, taking you as little as a few minutes per week to manage. This can augment your income from active sources like mining, trading or mission-running.
In this article, I look at the basics of tech 1 blueprint research, the skills required to make the most of your time and how you could run your own research labs in the relative safety of high security space.
Google Voice, which lets users consolidate all their phones under one number, archive your texts and voicemails, and much, much more, is two things to most people: vaguely promising, and totally confusing. Here's how to make the switch, in plain English.
The Pitch
It doesn't really help to describe Google Voice in terms of what it is—a bizarrely fragmented hodgepodge of different telecom and internet technologies, drawn together by Google—so you just have to start with what it does. In short, it can completely change how you use your phones, more or less for free.
⬢ It can give all of your phones the same number for incoming calls. Google will assigned you a new, Google Voice-specific phone number for free, which you can forward to as many phones as you want. What always drives the point of Google Voice home for people is when I have them call my number, which causes three of my phones to ring at once. You can keep this number forever, too, without ever having to worry about porting it from carrier to carrier. ⬢ It can give your phones the same outgoing number as well, with which you can make free domestic calls (well, sort of—more on that later), and very cheap international calls. Since Google Voice routes your calls through their phone system, they can connect you directly to cheap VoIP services to the rest of the world. It seems like you're just making a regular call, but behind the scenes you're doing something more akin to Skyping. End result: money saved. ⬢ You can send and receive unlimited text messages for free. To make things even better, they're all all archived in your online Google Voice account, where they're fully searchable. ⬢ It's got the best voicemail system in the world. Leaving a message at a Google Voice number is nothing like leaving your voice on a regular voicemail service—that is to say, it's not like sending your voice into a barely accessible technological horror pit where it might get listened to, but will probably be ignored. No, Google Voice is different: It stores your messages online, and converts them to text (which can then be sent to you as an SMS or an email). You can archive, forward, delete or save these messages from a simple interface on your phone or computer. Think of it as Gmail, except with voices. Plus, it's flexible in lots of little ways—you can change your voicemail greetings on a per caller basis, for example, or opt to listen to voicemails as they're being recorded. ⬢ This voicemail system isn't just for Google Voice numbers, either—you essentially replace your carrier voicemail with Google Voice voicemail, without using a new number. It's brilliant. ⬢ You have full control over your calls. You can record them for later listening, and have them transcribed into text. ⬢ You can screen callers. You can block numbers, or have callers record their names for your approval. You can have certain contacts only forwarded to certain phones,
Each of these features is compelling enough on its own—together, they'll totally change how you use your phones, changing you from a mere mobile customer to a full-on switchboard operator, self-spy, info hoarder and telco executive. It's like you run your own little phone company, just for yourself. For free. Spectacular.
The Catch(es)
Now that I've got you all riled, it's time for me to pour an icy bucket of water down the front of your pants. Google Voice, as incredible a concept and service as it is, isn't perfect. In fact, there are a few things you need to know and accept before taking the dive, and they might be dealbreakers:
⬢ You can't use your own phone number. At least, not in the way you wish you could. In an ideal world, you'd be able to port your old cellphone number to Google Voice, and have that—the digits people have been using to get in touch with you for years—be your new all-inclusive point of contact. You can't do this yet. For now, the closest you can come is to port your voicemail to Google Voice. That means that your T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon or Sprint number's voicemail can be outsourced to Google, but not its calls. You can unify all your phones under your new Google Voice number, but that means you have to switch. Along with the basic inconvenience of telling everyone about your new number, you're trusting an awful lot in a beta service, the terms of which could change quickly and without notice. It's not something I worry about, but it's not nothing, either.
⬢ You can't record calls that you've placed, just calls that you've received. And every time you initiate recording, Google Voice notifies the other person on the line. This is all makes perfect moral and procedural sense, but just in case you had the impression that there were no limits on your recording abilities, well, there are.
⬢ The mobile app situation isn't ideal. There are apps for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and iPhone via jailbreak, and they all work. That said, they're not perfect—they can be slow, poorly integrated, glitchy, or hard to figure out. And since they're supposed to replace the dialer on your phone entirely, this isn't wonderful. The online mobile interface is a good fallback for placing calls and sending texts, but navigating to that adds an extra step to any call or text that can get tiresome after a while.
⬢ Lastly, the way American phones work, you're still going to end up paying for your minutes, somehow. Just because Google Voice says you can make free domestic calls and cheap international calls doesn't mean that you actually can: in both cases, you need to dial out to Google Voice's external system in the first place, which means you're still using your monthly minute allotment. There are ways around this which I'll discuss later, but Google Voice, as good as it is, isn't magic.
Discouraged? Don't be. Google Voice is still well worth you time and effort, and it's only going to get better. Now, for God's sake let's get started already.
The Process
Signing up. This is simultaneously the easiest and most irritating part of Google Voice: It's still invite only. Lucky for you, "Invite" in this case doesn't mean you actually have to wait for an individual to select you from the masses; it's just Google's way of saying their keeping the signup pace down at manageable levels while the service is still in beta. Just submit your address, after which Google "anticipate[s] that it will be a short wait before you receive your invitation."
What's a short wait? My invite took about four days. Some come within 48 hours. At worst, they take about two weeks. Lots of you will have already received your invite, and just not done a whole lot with it—you guys can keep reading—while the rest of you should just bookmark this post, and come back to it once you get your invite. Protip: check your spam filters.
—
Ok, hello again, people I was talking to anywhere between two seconds and two weeks ago! How are you? Now that you've got your invite, you can log in to your Google Voice Dashboard. It'll look familiar if you've used any Google Service before:
Logging in. Follow your confirmation link, or navigate here. Click around for a while to get a feel for the interface. This is how you'll manage your phones from now on. It's liberatingly simple.
Picking your number. You'll be given a choice of numbers, which you can choose from practically any available area code. Choose wisely: this will be your primary number from here on out. Choosing your first number is free; changing it in the future will cost you $10. Boo, waah, etcetera! But really not a huge deal.
Adding your phones. This is assuming you want to forward a single number to all your phones, which is kind of the point here, so: Go to the Google Voice settings page (up in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. In the first section, called "Phones," click "Add a Phone" or "Add Another Phone." Give it a name "My iPhone" and enter its phone number. That's it.
Now you'll be given a passcode, which you'll use to authenticate your existing phone. Clicking "Connect" will call your phone from your Google Voice number, and a friendly robot will ask for you code. Enter it. That's it!
Setting up your voicemail. Now that the phone is added, it can accept calls directed to your Google Voice number. If the call is ignored, it will forward the voicemail to Google Voice, where it will be stored online. Alternately, if you only want to use Google Voice for voicemail, you can disable the calling feature (by unchecking the box next to the phone), and set up the service to hijack your actual cellphone number's voicemails—even when the call didn't get routed through Google Voice.
This is much easier that it sounds: Just click "Activate Google Voicemail" next to your newly-added phone, and enter the number they give you exactly as it's written, symbols and all. Once you "call" that number, you'll get some kind of message on your phone. On the iPhone, it looks like this.
Your voicemail has been switched—all you need to do now is set up a quick bookmark in your mobile phone to Google Voice, which provides a functional, if sparse, interface for your Google Voice messages. It's like visual voicemail, except through your browser. (Or a mobile app, which I'll get to soon.)
Choosing the rest of your settings. Now you'll see your phone listed under the "Phones" settings tab. The other tabs contain a few pages of settings for your Google Voice account. How you toggle these is up to you, but here are the most important ones: If you want to forward SMSes to email, you'll have to enable that in the "Voicemail and SMS" tab; call screening settings are located under the "Calls" tab; and international call credit can be added under the "Billing" tab, from a credit card. Finding your feet. Take some time to experiment with some of Google Voice's core features now. Place a call using the button at the top left of the Google Voice homepage. Enter your recipient's number, and choose which of your phones you'd like to place the call with. Google Voice will call your phone first, which upon answering will immediately call your recipient's phone, which will think it's getting a call from your new Google Voice number. It might sound odd in writing, but once you see it work, it just kind of clicks. You can also place these calls from the mobile web interface, without a computer. Texting is more direct—you can send those directly from the web interface without any intervention from your phone.
Placing calls. The aforementioned methods is the most obvious, and it will reliably work. It's a little cumbersome, especially if you're used to just tapping on a contact and placing a call. Thankfully there are a few more ways to place calls from your phone, and have it routed through Google Voice:
⬢ Apps: This is by far the best way to use Google Voice. Android has an official Google Voice app, as does BlackBerry.These automate the dialing/texting out process, so you don't need to mess with a web interface—you just opt to make some or all of your calls through Google Voice, and the app takes care of the rest. Windows Mobile has unofficial clients that do the job pretty well, as does the Pre, in the App Catalog. iPhone clients are available, but they're not approved by Apple: You'll need to jailbreak your phone and install them from Cydia.
⬢ The call-in method: Simply dial your new Google Voice number from your cellphone or landline, press 2 once it's connected, then enter the number you want to dial. This is less convenient than the web interface method, even, but it's vital to the next one:
⬢ The contact method: This is a little cheat to automate the aforementioned process. What you're doing, basically, is saving your Google Voice number, a pause, the number 2 (which selects "call another phone" from the Google Voice automated menu tree), a pause, then your recipient's number.
Adding a pause is different on each phone—on the iPhone, for example, you need to save a number as a contact, and in the number editing screen, press the "+*#" button at the bottom left of the keypad. The zero will be replaced with a "pause" button, which when pressed inserts a comma into the number. Google is your friend for this one, though most smartphones make the option available in their respective contact editing screens.
⬢ The 406 method: Have the person you want to text send a message to your Google Voice account. When you receive the message, it will be from a number you don't recognize, with the area code 406. It will be labeled with the sending contact's name, and any replies to that number will return to the person who sent them, but the number is completely new. This is a Google Voice alias, which you can use forever: Just save it as part of your friend's contacts—perhaps as a secondary cellphone or a work number, whatever you can remember—and use it as their primary contact number when call through GV.
Sending Texts. Again, using the web interface is a great way to send texts, as are the mobile apps. But the best solution? The 406 trick listed above works for SMSes too.
The Hacks
As you've probably noticed, Google Voice is kind of a loose system—and a system that's ripe for a little gaming. There are two methods that currently work for getting truly unlimited, free calls over Google Voice. This is where things get really interesting. Interesting in a good way for you; interesting in a terrifying way for the phone companies.
⬢ The Calling Circle Method: You know how some carriers let you designate a few contacts that don't count toward your monthly allotment of minutes, like T-Mobile MyFaves, or the AT&T A-List? By making your Google Voice number one of your friends, you can filter all your calls through Google, whether they be free domestic calls or cheap international calls. Once your Google number is added to your circle, making free calls is simply a matter of dialing into your Google Voice number and, using Google's audio menu system, dialing through to your recipient. (The contact method listed above will work too.)
To make incoming calls—including outgoing calls initiated from the Google Voice web interface—free, you'll need to change your Google Voice settings under the "Calls" tab. Select "Display my Google Voice Number" under the "Caller ID (in)" setting, and you're good to go. A full setup guide for the calling circle method can be found here.
Note: Designating Google Voice as one of your preferred contacts may be against your carrier's user policies—check with them if you're concerned.
⬢ The VoIP method: By signing up for a number with free VoIP service Gizmo5 and adding to to your Google Voice account as a phone, you can place unlimited free calls from your VoIP number to landlines. You can also forward the calls through to Skype, if you'd prefer. This isn't a solution for mobile phones, but it's a great way to make yourself an effectively unlimited VoIP landline for free. Lifehacker's got the whole rundown here. UPDATE: Registrations for Gizmo5 have been closed. Sorry!
Easing the Transition
Lifehacker has assembled a fantastic guide for easing the transition from many numbers to one, covering everything from how to convince people not to call your old numbers, to coping with voice latency.
That's pretty much it! If you have any tips to tricks for getting the most out fo Google Voice, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides.
And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy Voicing, folks!
Never mind the best books, comics, movies or TV shows of the last ten years, which new character made the biggest impact in your hearts and minds? We want to know what you think, and I have my own suggestions...
In this era of franchises based on pre-existing... well, franchises, really, it should be tough for brand new characters to make any significant impression, but I feel like we've been spoiled for choice in some ways; beyond the five mentioned below, I could've also gone for Y The Last Man's Yorick Brown, Scott Pilgrim's Kim Pine (Because, really, it's all about Kim. Admit it), Fringe's Walter Bishop or Dollhouse's Adelle DeWitt, to name just a few more. I'm not talking about the most important characters of the last ten years, or even the most popular, please understand; this is purely a (selfish and subjective) question of quality, for once. These, however, are my top 5:
Benjamin Linus Color me one of those people who drifted in and out of Lost throughout the first two seasons of the show... Well, until Ben entered the picture. Michael Emerson's smarmy, knowing performance as "Henry Gale" brought something that the show had needed since the beginning: A Bad Guy. Or, at least, someone who we didn't know much about, but were pretty sure we shouldn't be trusting nonetheless. As we've learned more about the character since then, it's been Emerson's performance that's led the way, convincing us about a control freak who likes to think that he's one step ahead of everyone even though he's lost sight of the bigger picture. In a show filled with great characters - Locke was so close to making my top 5 - Ben stands apart as the best of them all.
Thaddeus S. "Rusty" Venture Cynical, selfish and entirely delusional when it comes to his importance in the world, The Venture Bros.'s patriarchal figure may be one of the most oddly complex, nuanced character on television these days. On the surface, he's a self-centered coward emotionally scarred from a childhood as a Boy Adventurer who resents his life, his family and pretty much the rest of the world, but the longer the show goes on, the more we see a different Rusty: The father who's grooming Dean in his image - because there's no way that could go wrong - excited about sharing his passion for prog rock and science (and, surprisingly, offering support and advice in times of need), for one thing, or the man who's so pissed off by trouble ruining his plans that he ends up doing heroic deeds just to make his own life easier. Never mind that he's also genius enough to successfully clone his kids for years, replacing them if and when they died... Rusty Venture isn't the kind of man you could rely on, but he certainly makes for entertaining viewing.
Gaius Baltar And talking of people you can't rely on, Battlestar Galactica's Baltar may have been chosen by God/The Gods/Some Higher Power/Ronald D. Moore to lead humanity towards its new home, along the way discovering a spiritual side, falling in love and growing as a human being, but that wasn't why we loved him so much. No, with Baltar, it was all about the weasel. Whether he was trying to maneuver himself into even greater positions of power, trying to stay alive after surrendering the colonies to the cylons on New Caprica or just trying to seduce whatever character had caught his attentions that week, Baltar was never better than when he was being weak and giving in to his worst impulses. James Callis' performance was one of the best things throughout the entire series, giving us a character that we Loved To Hate To Love, as well as some of the few moments of genuine comedy throughout the entire run. You just know that he'd have given up that whole farming thing within a month of the finale, don't you?
Donna Noble She didn't fall in love with the Doctor. It's worth repeating: She didn't fall in love with the Doctor. After Rose and Martha, that fact alone made this particular Doctor Who companion feel like a breath of fresh air, but there was so much more to her than that: Her enthusiasm, and heart. Her ability to say the wrong thing in almost any occasion. Her self-confidence, misplacing in many ways, but making her feel like the Doctor's peer and friend instead of someone who believes everything he says and puts him on a pedestal (Catherine Tate deserves all credit for making that charming and irritating at once). Given her (intentionally) annoying first appearance in "The Runaway Bride," it's surprising that Donna turned into the companion I'll miss most from this new run, but it's definitely true; her exit was heartbreaking, entirely fitting and proof that Russell T. Davies loved her too much to kill her off. I'm selfishly hoping she survives "The End Of Time," too.
Kate Kane/Batwoman Still relatively new, there's something fascinating about DC Comics' latest Batman spin-off. Under writer Greg Rucka's control - and, given her few appearances elsewhere, only under Rucka's control - Kate Kane is at once a reminder of, and refusal of, Bat-cliches. Yes, she was born of family tragedy, but her response wasn't to focus her entire life towards justice, but instead run off the rails in self-destructive behavior. Like Batman, she sees herself as a soldier, but she actually approaches her missions in that mindset, no doubt helped by her father and their shared military background. Most refreshingly, Batwoman is wonderfully fallible - Misunderstanding a prophecy to be about her own death in the recent "Elegy" storyline - and, at times, unlikable. Given her relatively few appearances since her debut in 2006's 52, it's surprising that she comes across as so rounded and real a character, but she does - and we hope her career is as long-lived as her male counterpart.
But enough about our love of Dr. Zachary Smith updates and redheaded women - What're your choices for the character who's made the greatest impression on you after appearing for the first time at some point during the last ten years? The comments are there for a purpose, after all...
Easing concerns over global credit problems and more signs of corporate dealmaking are giving stocks a moderate boost. Major stock indexes rose less than 1% in late afternoon trading Monday following news that Abu Dhabi had extended $10 billion to Dubai to help the Middle Eastern city-state stay afloat. Markets had been worried in recent weeks that debt problems in the struggling former boomtown could send ripples through global credit markets.
Investors were also encouraged by Exxon Mobil's (XOM) $31 billion purchase of XTO Energy (XTO), which sent energy stocks sharply higher. The deal will help Exxon tap into the growing supply of natural gas in the U.S. and could signal more consolidation in the energy industry.
CCP Games releases video tour of EVE's new planets originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
It was Independence Day for AOL (
Picking your number. You'll be given a choice of numbers, which you can choose from practically any available area code. Choose wisely: this will be your primary number from here on out. Choosing your first number is free; changing it in the future will cost you $10. Boo, waah, etcetera! But really not a huge deal.
This is much easier that it sounds: Just click "Activate Google Voicemail" next to your newly-added phone, and enter the number they give you exactly as it's written, symbols and all. Once you "call" that number, you'll get some kind of message on your phone. On the iPhone, it looks like this.
Placing calls. The aforementioned methods is the most obvious, and it will reliably work. It's a little cumbersome, especially if you're used to just tapping on a contact and placing a call. Thankfully there are a few more ways to place calls from your phone, and have it routed through Google Voice:
Sending Texts. Again, using the web interface is a great way to send texts, as are the mobile apps. But the best solution? The 406 trick listed above works for SMSes too.
Easing concerns over global credit problems and more signs of corporate dealmaking are giving stocks a moderate boost. Major stock indexes rose less than 1% in late afternoon trading Monday following news that Abu Dhabi had extended $10 billion to Dubai to help the Middle Eastern city-state stay afloat. Markets had been worried in recent weeks that debt problems in the struggling former boomtown could send ripples through global credit markets.