This week, Beyonce released a visual album called Lemonade, Babymetal partnered with Super Mario Maker (to the glee of many Engadget staffers), thousands if copies of Uncharted 4 were stolen and we got the first glimpses of the Snowden trailer.
In community news, I’d like to give a shout out and a proper thank you to the folks who have volunteered to be moderators. We’re doing a whole lot of work to make improvements to the system and getting our ‘mod squad’ properly geared up. This week, I got a preview of the new tools and I’ve been testing the beta of the new features. Once the tools are rolled out to the mods, we’ll be posting some refreshed rules of engagement for the comments section. So, if you have suggestions or thoughts on the kind of community rules and guidelines you’d like to see here on Engadget weigh in and let me know. After all, it’s your comments section, right?
Over in Public Access, our community content section, more stories are going up than ever before: We’ve seen new posts go up almost every single day this month, with many days boasting four or five stories (except for Sunday. For some reason no one posts on Sundays…) Last week we had nearly 30 posts go up — the most posts we’ve ever had in a week’s time! That’s amazing, truly, so thank you to all the Public Access contributors and give yourselves a pat on the back because that’s some great work.
Nice going Public Access members!
Looking for something to read? Check out:
One of my very favorite posts to go up on Public Access this past week was this post from Richard Starr about in-game advertising in sports video games. Read it, read it now because you’re not going to want to miss a story that nearly made me spit out my coffee laughing.
People are sharing less and less about themselves on Facebook — and that’s a problem for the company. As the site grew bigger and bigger, people became more and more guarded. Meaning, essentially, that most Facebook users are sharing YouTube links or news stories but not birthday party photos or vacation updates so nobody’s really talking anymore. An interesting look at the evolution of a social media service.
When I’m watching TV at home, my S.O. will often mention something about an ad we’ve just watched — and I will often have no damn idea what he is referring to because ads wash right over me without even registering for the most part. So, I’m not raising any eyebrows over YouTube’s decision to put six-second bumper ads before videos (hey, content’s gotta monetize, right?). Others… are having different feelings.
Looking for something to write about? Mull over:
Speaking of TV, we just started subscribing to the PlayStation4’s Vue service. Does anyone else have this? Do you like it? Are there neat tricks I should know? Your thoughts/opinions/reviews, give them to me (in the form of Public Access stories. Obviously).
The FTC ruled that Amazon is liable for in-app purchases incurred by children in ‘free’ apps making it the third company to be found culpable (after Apple and Google). Some in the comments are saying people need to take personal responsibility and keep their kids off the internet; others point out that apps and pop-up messages are designed to appeal to kids who don’t understand what happens when they click the buy button. What are the best practices for kids and mobile apps? What kind of features should smart device makers start including on the devices software (or hardware) to prevent this kind of issue?
On one hand, you can have my 3.5mm headphone jack over my cold, dead body. On the other…the reasoning behind the switch and some of the arguments in the comments make me believe it might be time to upgrade the standard. What do you think – is the 3.5mm headphone jack done for? Is it well past time to retire this particular analog technology? What should replace it, and what is the best way to make the switch for consumers?