Did you like our April's Joke? It wasn't really as obvious as I thought since people are still complaining about the stats -- it's so bad that Cavendish is just as good in mountains as Sastre is! ;) So, once and for all: The publically released PCM.daily 2008 DB was a joke and does not by any means represent the official DB. In fact, the released DB was based on the Sattlerei DB ;)
Anyway, let's get started with the 56th edition of the Weekly News.

Beta tests have started
No, not the PCM 08 beta tests, you fool :P The PCM.daily 2008 DB is currently being tested by a handful of testers, both from the Spanish community and from PCM.daily. Bugs are being found and corrected, and we hope that it will soon be ready for the public. Nonetheless, we can promise that it will be released before PCM 08 ;)

Invitations to the PCM 08 beta
As you know, Cyanide opened up for beta applications during last week. A lot of people applied, and a lot of them have been taken in. Those who've been invited have now received an e-mail with a Non-Disclosure Agreement which you have to sign. The beta test is still yet to start, but it's expected that it will start very soon - practically any minute now. From PCM.daily, you will find me (CrueTrue), Dankan, Waghlon and AaB-ern among the testers. Of the registered and active members of PCM.daily, there's also Setzel, Chuck, MichelinR, PepsiLight, Wanka - and probably more. So, PCM.daily is widely represented ;)

Guidy to story writing + new editing tips
 Crew-member Crommy is not only busy with the Management Game - he has also found time for a new series of articles which will go into detail of how to write a good, succesful story. This first article is an introduction to the article series, explaining why it's needed to read his articles, why stories are needed in general, etc.. It's funny, it's well-written and it's absolutely useful. Go read it right here, and stay tuned for next week's article.

.. speaking of articles, matt493 has submitted his first article which explains to change the fitness levels with Hannes Converter. You can read that one here. He also begun a series of his own database reviews and started off by reviewing the Pack Complet 2008. For some reason, he decided to quit reviewing database reviews after that review ;)
(Keep in mind that his review is not an official PCM.daily review)

Jape about to release a save game editor
Jape has been surprisingly silent since the release of PCM07. He's known for his Save Game Editors for PCM06 which made life a lot easier, but since then we haven't really heard anything. However, now he's back, better than ever before with his new tool "PCM Dashboard". It's an advanced (but easy to use) save game editor which will make it possible to change a whole lot of things, including the riders' morale, form, injuries, fatigue, the teams' finances, etc. He's also working on implenting a tool which makes it possible to extract data from PCM, such as the top 10 of all races, and more. That would make story writing even easier.
Jape himself has estimated the release to be in about 1-2 weeks, and you can read more and see the first screenshots in this thread.

Sponsorkits by Roadie - he's alive! ;)
It's been a while since we've last seen Roadie release anything for PCM07, but it seems like he's back to his roots now with the release of two sponsorkits: one for Tirreno - Adriatico and one for Milano - Sanremo. Both of them changes the sponsor barriers and other "sponsor spots", so they are true-to-life - and knowing Roadie, he has studied every single race photo very carefully to regenerate the barriers as detailed as possible ;)
Go ahead and download them by clicking the race name above.

More 2008 stages
For those of you who like to play with 2008 stages, I have good news: A new (and probably) better version of Milano - Sanremo has been made by "famous" stage designer, Jaap90. It's very detailed and looks very good on the screenshots - it's worth downloading, that's for sure. Remember that it's also included in the Milano - Sanremo Sponsorkit made by Roadie (mentioned above).
The 2nd "surprise" is the Tour de Suisse 2008, made by the NCL Stage Team (Bilbo Baggins and Jaap90 - and I suppose Tourdedoping made the jerseys). In the package, you also get the leaders' jerseys and a few other things. Download it here.

Update for Hannes Converter 2.0
This is not exactly "news", but we haven't really mentioned it before, so here goes: Hannes68 has been working really hard lately, and that has resulted in an update for his Converter 2.0. I'm not sure what exactly he has changed, but you need this update in order to open the Sattlerei DB. I don't think he has added any special functionality, but obviously he has fixed some stability bugs. You need to download and install the Converter 2.0 before installing the update which you can find here. 

Hannes Editor 2.0 released
... by "really hard", I really meant it. Hannes has also released a 2nd version of his much discussed Editor which has been said to be a "database destroyer" and filled with bugs. This 2nd version, however, should be a lot more stable, "bugfree". It doesn't contain any new functionality (the thing about a Stage Editor was a April Fool's joke), but most people will be more than happy with just a working, simple editor - and here you go, Hannes Editor 2.0 - download it here.

New "cycling"-section
You've probably already noticed it, but here at PCM.daily we have decided to put more spotlight on cycling in general. Therefore, the sport of cycling is now a seperate section in the navigation menu. As always, you can read articles written by crew and members of PCM.daily, and you can find photos, submitted by the members. But as a new thing, you can now also find a Cycling Dictionary which explains all the basic conceptions of cycling. You can find it in the left navigation menu.
If you've any ideas for words to add, feel free to private message one of the crew members (in particular, Crommy ;)).

It doesn't happen too often, but I can now proudly present a new feature here at PCM.daily -- a Database Viewer. It's coded entirely by our crew member, AaB-ern, and has been in use at his own site, PCMScandinavia, for a while, but now it's also available to PCM.daily members.

It's a quite simple tool. It makes it possible to view the contents of a database (riders, stats, etc.) without having to download it first. At the moment, we only have a few databases in the DB (Bernth's 1996 DB, Titan 05, Wanka 08 and Sattlerei 08), but we will add more eventually.
It should be pretty self-explanatory, but here's a short guide:
1. Choose the DB you want to view
2. Choose whatever details you want to see
3. If you're looking for a specific rider, you can activate the filter. If not, skip this step.
4. Write the number of riders you want to see
5. Choose what you want to sort the information by -- if you want to sort it by highest mountains stat, choose "Mountain", etc. "Descending" shows the best first, "Ascending" shows the weakest first.

You can find it in the left navigation panel just below "Database Review". Enjoy, and thanks a lot to AaB-ern! :)