Month: June 2019

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  Behold, EverQuest—looks a bit different than it did in 2000, eh? [credit: Daybreak Games ]

Twenty years ago, a company in Southern California launched an online game that would go on to serve as the model for many more titles to come in the massively multiplayer online RPG (MMORPG) space. And unlike many games that sought to replace it over the years, this one is still going today.

No, this isn’t about World of Warcraft—that game only turns 15 in 2019. Before there was WoW, there was the MMO pioneer EverQuest. This sword-and-sorcery-based game was developed by a small company, 989 Studios, but it eventually reached its pinnacle under Sony Online Entertainment after SOE acquired that studio roughly a year after the game's launch. Today, EQ marches on with a dedicated player base and another developer, Daybreak Games, at the helm.

I’ve been a dedicated player since the early days, and others like me would likely acknowledge the game peaked early. A variety of factors have whittled down the once mighty player base since: many just simply walked away, either busy with life or quitting because it took up too much time. The impact of World of Warcraft over time is also undeniable.

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  Google Trips! Get a good look at it while it is still around. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

Google's wild ride of service shutdowns never stops. Next up on the chopping block is Google Trips, a trip organization app that is popular with frequent travelers. Recently Google started notifying users of the pending shutdown directly in the Trips app; a splash screen now pops up before the app starts, saying "We're saying goodbye to Google Trips Aug 5," along with a link to a now all-to-familiar Google shutdown support document.

Trips was a well-received app with over five million downloads on the Play store and a 4.1 rating. Usually when you schedule a trip, a plethora of reservation emails arrive in your inbox for things like the plane flight, hotel, and/or car rental, and Google Trips would automatically suck up all this information and create a basic outline of your trip. From there it leveraged Google Maps information, displaying nearby attractions, things to do, and other planning information. When you needed to quickly reference something, it was a lot easier to open Google Trips than it was to start digging through your email inbox. Trips also had a focus on offline information access, downloading all this reservation information and even prompting you to download your destination area in Google Maps for offline access.

The death of Google Trips is part of Google's big travel revamp. The company recently launched the Google Travel website, which in addition to most of the Trips information, also serves as (wait for it...) a search engine for hotels, flights, and travel agency-style combo bookings. Google Travel is full of advertisements—the site is probably 50 percent ads, and these are very poorly labeled and look like the core user interface. Entire UI elements like "Check Availability" and "Select a room" just have "Ads" next to the main title, indicating the entire section or page is an advertisement. The point of interest information seems to be organic information from Google Maps, but I think every actionable item (like booking hotels and flights) eventually leads to a list of exclusively paid ads.

Enlarge / SAN FRANCISCO, CA - MAY 18, 2013: A sign in a Starbucks coffee shop warns customers that coffee and baked goods sold at the shop and elsewhere contain acrylamide, a chemical known to cause cancer and reproductive toxicity. (credit: Getty Images | Robert Alexander)

Coffee is now officially free of cancer warnings in California. But the secretive organization that first brewed the legal dispute over the beloved beverage vows to keep fighting.

On Monday, June 3, state officials finally approved a new regulation declaring that coffee poses no significant risk of cancer, thus exempting it from having to carry cancer warnings. The regulatory move follows lengthy lawsuits from a little-known nonprofit called the Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT).

Back in 2010, CERT sued around 90 coffee roasters and brewers, including Starbucks, Folgers, and other big names, claiming that coffee poses cancer risks. That's despite the fact that no conclusive scientific evidence supports the claim and some data contradict it. Nevertheless, in its legal filings, CERT argued that every cup of joe should be served with cancer warnings, as required by California's controversial health law, Proposition 65.