Web Fed News Yearbooks - May 2004

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

In Fed II, the Galactic Traders Guild brought the exchanges online for the first time. This was only for testing purposes: since promotion to Trader was not going to be implemented until the game went live, no players could actually do anything in the exchanges other than stand there and stare at the scrolling prices.

The Venus shuttle started operation, allowing players to visit the mines and find out how they had changed. The 'WAIT' command was not implemented, much to players' disappointment!

Some of the boring but important commands were added to the game, to let you do such things as change your password or your registered email address.

Much more exciting: Fed II finally got moods so whether you're in the mood for dancing, in the mood for love, or just in the mood, you could now show it to everyone.

Plus-sized clothing for the bigger-boned player in Fed II was introduced, now able to cater for aliens of any size... in other words, the number of characters in your description was increased.

The 'RANKS' command was introduced, allowing players to see the new names for the planet-owning ranks.

And Hazed regained some of her demi-goddess abilities, specifically the ability to lock players out. Ah, power!

Hazed expanded the documentation for Fed II, adding a guide to mapping, and a list of how things are different from classic Fed.

The classic Fed Easter puzzle planet was solved by Fancy.

PEGASUS BREAKS OBJECTS, BELLA MENDS THEM AGAIN

That damn horse, Pegasus... he was always a menace in classic Fed, and now his malign influence can even be felt in Fed II, even though he's been reduced to the status of a statue!

If you've explored the museum on Venus in Fed II, you will have found the exhibit depicting the villainous winged horse. Unlike all other objects in the new version of the Fed, Pegasus' name starts with a capital letter. This was a problem, because the game was very sensitive about case - it thought that a capital P was very different from a lower case P, so in order to examine Pegasus, you had to type "examine Pegasus" with a capital P.

Eventually, Bella decided it was time to do something about this, so she did a bit of work on the code so that the game wouldn't care whether Pegasus's P was upper or lower case. This worked fine. Unfortunately, we were suddenly unable to examine any object EXCEPT Pegasus - the game couldn't find any of the others, whether we typed the name with an initial capital or not. Whoops!

Bella has fixed things now so that the game knows about the objects no matter how you type the names... but what a palaver. And it's all the fault of that damned winged horse!

PLAYING FED II ON YOUR MOBILE PHONE

I had an email from a Fedder called Daverz, who had just bought a whizzy new mobile phone, and was able to play Fed II on it. The phone is called a Sidekick, and comes with a full keyboard and color screen... and it includes a telnet client. So he was able to log into Fed II and play, while out and about.

You can take a look at this marvellous gadget at http://www.danger.com/consumers.php.

REAL LIFE NEWS: CREATIVE USE OF A MOBILE PHONE

So this California high school dude was, like, totally phased when looking at his exam paper. He was, like, "I can't answer these bogus questions."

Ok ok, I'll drop the pathetic attempt to mimic the slang used by today's yoof before I embarrass myself any further...

Anyway, the student took out his camera phone and took a photo of the exam paper, and was trying to send it to a friend when he was caught. His flagrant attempt to cheat spurred a complete ban on mobile phone use at the school, Everett Alvarez High School.

This isn't the first time mobile phones have been used by exam cheats in the US. Six Maryland accounting students in Maryland admitted texting each other for help during an exam last February.

Meanwhile, in the UK it has been discovered that mobile phones have been used to cheat on something much more important than exams: pub trivia quizzes. The pub quiz is a very popular pastime in the UK. Show up on your local pub with a few friends, form a team, buy a few rounds of drinks, and answer some questions. The winner team usually gets some free beer or something similar.

But it seems that trivia lovers are using text information services to cheat. One information provider, RE5ULT, says it noticed that 83% of questions came in between 8.00pm and 10.00pm on Mondays and Tuesdays - the favorite time for pubs to hold quizzes. Naughty, naughty!

One pub landlord said, "We though it was slightly odd that the same guys were winning every week. It looks as though we're going to have to ban mobiles in order to ensure a fair game."

Actually, if they would ban all mobiles from pubs all the time, we'd be spared overhearing one-sided loud-voiced conversations!

REAL LIFE NEWS: DRINKERS BENEFIT FROM NEW TECHNOLOGY

News of two great new technological advances which will delight beer drinkers everywhere.

The first is the Beer Robot, a truly wonderful invention.

Remember reports of the Internet fridge? We all scoffed, and asked what possible reason there could be for connecting a refrigerator to the net. Well, here is the answer: a Beer Robot, kind of like a fridge on wheels, called Koolio.

Koolio is the brain-child (brain-bot?) of clever people at the University of Florida. It has a Wi-Fi link, and some sensors to help it navigate about, so if you suddenly decide you are thirsty, you can contact Koolio over the network and request a beer. Your request will relay your location to the beerbot, it consults its internal maps, and trundles off to find you and deliver a cool beer from its refrigerated insides. How refreshing!

And as if that isn't enough, beer lovers have another innovation to make their eyes light up: self-chilling beer. At least, the can is self-cooling and that cools the beer down just when you want to drink it. The inventors claim this magical gadget can cool a beer to the perfect temperature in just a few minutes.

Here's how it works. The can is slightly longer than a normal beer can. The top half is surrounded by a layer of watery gel. The base contains a water-absorbing material in a vacuum, and a special heat-absorbing chamber. Twist the bottom of the can and a seal between the two halves breaks. The vacuum draws the gel, and the heat, into the base. The gel is absorbed by the material, the heat is absorbed by the chamber - and the beer gets cold.

The manufacturers are talking to several British brewers and hope to have the cans on sale before the end of the year.