Month: August 2010

Dofus is an MMORPG from French developers Ankama. It comes in a free-to-play version, and a premium which is much larger. Massively popular in France, it has beautiful cartoon art and an original fantasy setting (yes that is allowed, World of Warcraft!).

Of all the bigger MMORPGs, Dofus is one of the more unusual. We talked to English Content and Community Manager Izmar and Marketing Manager Ingrid about the game, follow up title Wakfu, and its adaption from French into English.

Dofus is very humorous. Was it difficult translating jokes into English? How did you deal with cultural references?

Localization is always a challenge, but our translation team has that great combination of cleverness and creativity that keeps the game text lively and relevant, just like the French version. The translators always try to maintain cultural references when it’s possible for our English-speaking players to enjoy. If the French contains a reference that simply can’t cross the language barrier for whatever reason, they’re not ashamed to draw on American, British, or Canadian sources to make the players smile.

Continue reading “Interview: Dofus, the MMORPG that dares to be different”

As the major music labels slowly continue to wake-up to the fact that the future of music lies online, more and more services are offering music streaming. Rdio, from the makers of Skype, is the latest offering and enables users in the USA to listen to a catalog of 7 million songs for around $9.99 a month on their desktop and mobile device. However, there are still plenty of applications out there that deliver music for free. Here are 5 of the best – note that all of the basic versions of these applications are free but most have a premium version which offers ad-free listening or other enhancements:

Spotify (Europe only) The moment I tried Spotify, I was blown away by its ease of use, elegant interface and most importantly, enormous back catalog of music. That’s not to mention the excellent streaming quality, mobile integration and most recently, social networking features that make sharing music on Twitter, Facebook and via e-mail easier than ever.

Last.fm Last.fm was one of the first free music applications on the net and its still going strong. Last.fm is a radio application that delivers songs to you based on your own music interests. It’s similar to the Radio function in Spotify which was clearly inspired by the Last.fm concept. You can also use it to listen to your own music and as it “scrobbles” what you’re listening to its server, it suggests other songs and artists you might like.

Pandora (USA only) Pandora was another early innovator in free online music distribution and offers listeners free music from their favorite artists as well as suggesting other music you might like. Started as part of the Music Genome Project back in 2000, it works via a series of “channels” which you can refine and modify according to your music tastes.

Grooveshark With still only around 400,000 users, Grooveshark is often overlooked by music fans but its popularity is still growing as more people prefer the concept of a web application to a desktop one. Grooveshark Radio is one of the things that continues to attract users by allowing them to find music that other like minded users are listening to using a “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” feature.

Hypem An MP3 aggregator rather than an application, Hypem (full name The Hype Machine) is one of the best ways to find the latest cutting edge music that you won’t see heavily featured in any of the above apps. The reason is because Hypem monitors music blogs and those writing about music that have uploaded music online and brings them all together so you can listen to what’s hot.

If you like online shopping, you’re going to love Product Observer, a new Firefox add-on that monitors your favorite products and alerts you when the price has dropped below a certain level.

Product Observer doesn’t limit itself to price, however. You can also choose to be notified if an unavailable product becomes available or, in the case of certain websites, if the number of product reviews reaches a certain level. Currently, the add-on supports Amazon (.com/.ca/.co.uk/.fr/.co.jp/.de), BestBuy.com, Newegg.com, Zappos.com, Borders.com, Overstock.com and Argos.co.uk.

Amazon users will be doubly pleased to find out that Product Observer also supports Wish Lists. Just fill in the URL of the wish list, and Product Observer will automatically fetch the list and allow you to tweak notification criteria for each and every item.

You don’t need to register for Product Observer – instead you’ll be given a randomly-generated ID that you can use to identify yourself. If there are lots of products you are interested in, setting up the notifications can be a bit of a chore, but once it’s done, it makes chasing a bargain easier than ever. Obviously we’ll need to give the add-on a longer trial run to see how it really performs, but I definitely like the look of it and will be installing it on my laptop as soon as I get home.

Happy Shopping!

This little game was originally a Windows-only download that I really liked and finally it’s been ported over to Flash so we can all enjoy it. Presented in glorious Gameboy-like green monochrome, along with a great chip tune soundtrack, Tower of Heaven sees you attempting to reach the top of a tower. Your journey is made more challenging by the malevolent god who is watching your progress. You’ll be given a ‘Book of Laws’, which adds more and more rules to the game, vastly increasing your chances of dying!

It might be tough, but Tower of Heaven is great fun, and the retro touches are just perfect. Head over to Newgrounds to check it out.

This week, RIM showcased BlackBerry OS 6 running on its gorgeous new Torch 9800 touch/QWERTY smartphone. The new operating system was described by RIM President Mike Lazaridis as “not only fresh and exciting but also familiar”.

Familiarity is something that we’ve seen a lot of from recent BlackBerry OS updates and it often gets interpreted as a failure to innovate. However, there are enough changes in BlackBerry 6 to back up Lazaridis’ promise of something a little more different this time out.

The new operating system features a WebKit browser, designed to provide a quicker and more reliable web browsing experience. It will also support tabbed browsing for the first time, making it easier to flick between pages on the web. The browser will include an auto-wrap text zoom feature that reformats articles to fit the size of the screen.

Other features of OS 6 that Lazaridis highlights in his presentation of the Torch include the new Universal search and Universal inbox. The new search system will allow you to search feeds, email, contacts and settings all from one place, simply by typing keywords. Continuing the theme of integration, Universal inbox pulls together both email and feeds from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook into one place. Open a piece of communication and it will open instantly in its native environment. Click on the Back button and you’ll be taken straight back to your inbox. Continue reading “New features of BlackBerry OS 6 explained”