My last post mentioned that Minecraft 1.8 was released just two weeks ago this Wednesday. Now in a slightly saddening way Microsoft announced it had bought the company behind it - Mojang.
Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, just a worrying thing (there is no way to tell which way it will go at the moment). Minecraft has been nice as an indie game, albeit a very successful one, but now it will just join another collection of games Microsoft produces.
I have written numerous times that Microsoft try too hard to enter every marketplace and product range out there.In my opinion, they ruined some of their best products out there such as integrating Windows Live Messenger with Skype, Nokia by giving them Windows Phone and my personal favourite, Rare or "RareWare" back in the day by transforming them from a small company to one that works for Microsoft.
Analysts have said that Microsoft should break up into smaller companies but unfortunately they are still not going that way and obtaining more and more smaller companies.
I just hope that Mojang and Minecraft are not consumed by Microsoft and become a tiny little project nobody works on.
Although it was some few days ago, on the 2nd September Minecraft 1.8 was released! I just wanted to mention this on my blog!
Links are now fully working as demonstrated in some of the other posts that have links. This works with updates and new posts. Here is a nice link: apple.com. The update page is also fixed now meaning that posts can be updated properly.
Coming soon:
- Multi-blog post (inspired by the fact I post JBlogs posts on two blogs)
- Delete a post from admin pages
- Create user page
- Subscribe page
- Install page
- Better information architecture
- Better image support
- Banner photos from the post page
I'm afraid that I am having some issues with TinyMCE and links at the moment. I will have this fixed soon, hopefully. The problem appears to be related to the links in both the update section and new post section.
The update section is also not working, regardless of links. I have spent too much time looking into this tonight so I will try and fix this tomorrow.
Today a couple of significant photos were posted about the full character roster in Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U. The photo confirmed characters not featured on the Smash Bros website but apparently a Japanese demo was released with the full character roster.
To me the proof of this is found on the Smash Bros wiki. This seems to have a collection of all the characters confirmed.
The characters Nintendo has not yet confirmed to be returning to the new Smash Bros game from Brawl are as follows:
- Falco
- Game and Watch
- Ganondorf
- Jigglypuff
- Ness
- Wario
Also returning is the Melee favourite Dr Mario! What a surprise this was too! Also note, the Jigglypuff and Wario both do not appear in Mashable's picture, but others have posted pictures of them.
New characters that have apparently leaked include:
- Dark Pit (!)
- Duck Hunt Dog
To see an outline of all the characters, the Wiki is best for this.
This photo was taken from a Japanese copy of the demo
To see the whole post have a look at this post on Mashable.
After Apple's launch of the new Apple Watch, they have chosen to update their website.
You may already know that the iPhone 6 and iOS 8 were shown off tonight. Another major release was the much speculated iWatch known as Apple Watch.
A bit about the last few years
Tim Cook gave the show to Phil Schiller to tell the audience about how Apple has innovated some incredibly new features as well as mentioning that there are 1.3 million apps on the App Store. That's an incredible amount of apps!
1.3 million apps!
iPhone 6
The first thing to note is that there are two iPhones being released - the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. The Plus is a larger version of the iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 is 6.9mm thin whilst the iPhone 6 Plus is 7.1mm thin. The iPhone 6 has a resolution of 1334 x 750 whilst the Plus has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The iPhone 6 has an improved camera has an improved camera, particularly with video and better wireless technologies - both better LTE and 802.11ac wireless (like current Macs). One final note about the new iPhone 6 is that the capacities have changed with it still being priced at $199 for 16GB, but there no longer exists that 32GB option at $299 but instead the 64GB model. So for $299 you can now get the iPhone 6 64GB. Both are available from the 19th of September and can be preordered from the 12th.
The two variations of iPhone 6
Apple Pay
One of the most interesting features coming to the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is Apple Pay. Apple Pay allows paying using the iPhone rather than a credit or debit card. It uses NFC technology and whilst this has been in a lot of other phones for a long time, I'm certain Apple will do a better job than their competitors would.
Apple Watch
The iWatch concept that has now become Apple Watch was pretty much a shock. Most predictions were totally wrong about this one.
The Apple Watch formerly known as iWatch
The Apple Watch smart watch is designed like the Samsung Galaxy Gear to be a companion device playing a sidekick role to the iPhone. It is designed to function with the iPhone 5, 5s, 5c and both iPhone 6 models. It features some clever innovations such as using pressure clicks to perform a secondary touch as well as the digital crown (the rotatable bit for adjusting the time and date on a watch) to perform specific tasks, including going home.
The Apple Watch also features some specific apps and workarounds, as Tim Cook stated, they didn't just put iOS on it.
Although impressive with a wide range of new innovations and features, I do not think the Apple Watch is for me, and this comes from the fact I have a lovely watch as it is.
It is set for an 'early 2015' release.
The Apple Watch is set for a 2015 release
What I thought
I thought the event had a lot of momentum to start with but there is only so much that can really be brought to these devices now. Sure the Apple Watch was a new innovation, but it may be one of those ones that just doesn't interest me massively due to having a nice watch currently anyway and I'm sure it's the same with other watch owners.
Generally, it was a good event, but I'm not one of those who is interested in a smart watch.
All photos were taken from the live stream.
I will be covering tonight's Apple Event via Twitter and my blog. At the moment my blog is not fully equipped to do live blogging so I will not be using for that. As a matter of fact, that is one of the features I will be working on next.
The plan for this is to allow live posts which are posts that update when a user is reading them. This may not happen, but I'm hoping it will. The next few days will also allow me to create a subscribe button for this blog. I am also thinking about adding RSS to the blog, but as this technology is not used very often these days it may seem a bit pointless, but maybe.
JBlogs now uses the MySQLi driver to add improvements to MySQL performance. This post is merely testing this. :)
I am mainly posting to test out JBlogs, but also to inform you of some great features of it. I particularly like:
- the easy setup
- the integration
- the email on post system
- the edit post tool
Coming next: delete a post, edit a post from the admin panel, mysqli_ and much more.
