Archive for September 2007

It doesn’t matter how long the Internet has been around anymore… the argument of what makes a good link continues. Often when I write a blog post and want to reference another blog, site, resource… sometimes, I struggle to figure out what text to use as the link and what it should say. Plus, I try to avoid having too many links or else the reader becomes overwhelmed.

For instance, if I reference an article from an ezine — here’s what I’d write:

Are your sales people trusted advisors? “What Trusted Advisors Do that Others Don’t” from Professional Services Journal describes what it takes to be a trusted advisor and why you would want them in your organization.

So do I link to the article AND the newsletter? It’s not unusual for me to have more content and links in the same entry. Is it overkill to refer to both article and resource? There are no right answers or rules of thumb. When thinking about what text to link, consider the following:

1. Does the linked text tell your reader what to expect? “Click here” is lousy. While it tells people what to do, scanners won’t know what it is and screen readers will say “Click here,” but a person with a visual impairment won’t know what that means.
2. The number of links used (to avoid overwhelming the reader or not giving enough links because you worry they’ll leave your site).
3. Does the link need to be spelled out? What if people print the article and discover they want to visit the link? An underline or bolded link won’t tell you anything. Not everyone knows they can change their print settings to print URLs. Even those who do might forget to turn on the option.

One reader commented that he thinks it’s better to underlink than overlink. You also have to watch for terms and references. Rather than explaining a tech term, linking to its definition might work better to avoid straying from the article’s point and making it longer. Of course, if your blog or Web site targets geeks, you can skip the link.

I tell ya — coming up with your own company’s brand is a killer task. I admire many companies’ logos and branding, but can never figure out what I want or like. Over five years in this business hasn’t helped it find itself and its identity.

The current logo looks sharp and professional, but doesn’t translate well to other media. Layers Magazine challenged three talented designers to share their processes for creating a logo. The resulting logos didn’t resonate and each felt like something was missing.

The nice and talented folks at Logo Design Works decided to take on my very difficult case. Here are the three comps (click the images to see larger):

Meet contestant #1, what I like to call “The Warhol.” This contestant enjoys wearing pop art style designs and features the face of the person behind the name and company. Since the company is a one-person business with no plans to expand, it makes sense to reflect the Content Maven’s identity. I think this is the best non-photo image of me I’ve ever seen.

Next up, contestant #2, Ms. Waxy. She lovingly represents traditional communication, which reflects meryl.net’s desire to provide traditional and professional services to clients with a personal touch. I remember receiving a wax kit as a kid and loved watching the candle wax drip and then pressing the impression into the soft wax leaving a little of me behind.

Coincidentally, I ordered a handful of shirts with a similar initial design that use a ink blot instead of wax. Could that be a sign? I just used the service’s create a logo and wanted to use red, but the service only had pink.

Finally, meet contestant #3, Ms. Silhouette. I love the idea, but I don’t translate well as a cartoon, do I? You’d think curly hair and slight dimples would be a good candidate for a drawing likeness.

Looking over the three contestants and examining their brains and talent — I think “writing * editing” needs to be dropped. It doesn’t work.

Watching Ms. Warhol do her walk. I like the font in #1. Surprisingly, I prefer that font to the one in 1.1 that looks like a typewriter font. Figured as a writer — typewriter would fit well. I also like the line and the Content Maven in scripty red as shown in 1.1. It looks more balanced to have the logo before the text — I think. I never admitted having a good design eye. How would the face look on small media like favicons and business cards?

I like Ms. Waxy. I wonder how well she’d translate to other forms and sizes. Perhaps, for a favicon, it’d be best to use just the M instead of the whole circle of wax. The meryl.net logo has undergone many changes, but has used the calligraphy-style font. I like the font. Can’t decide if maybe it’s time for a change to do with something modern like in #1 or stick with tradition.

Ms. Silhouette would do better for small things than Ms. Warhol. How could we perform a little line art surgery to make her more lighthearted? Her font is my least favorite.

Whew. Some tough choices here. Input anyone? Or we’d love to hear your story about your company’s logo and branding. How did you arrive at the logo you have?

I wasn’t impressed with the Foleo when Palm first announced the product. The company believed it was introducing a new line of products known as the mobile companion. The Foleo is a $499 laptop for a smartphone. Well, Palm wised up and canceled the Foleo — a move that came a little too late.

Surprisingly, a few third party developers already created applications for the Foleo. If porting to Linux is easy, let’s hope these companies didn’t spend much time creating a Foleo-compatible version of their software.

I’m not against Palm and I hope the company survives the disaster. In fact, I still prefer Palm OS devices to Windows Mobile and am rooting for the company to come out with a new device to take Palm to the next level.

Venice Mystery starts slow, but gains momentum the first time you explore the world beyond the solitaire mah jong game. Playing solitaire with power ups quickly bores, but that changes when maps, paintings, clocks and a mystery enter the picture. The game opens with a little information about the mystery that comes together a few rounds and two maps later. It takes time to learn and understand how the game works, what the power ups do, and what to do in certain situations.

The mystery: Find 13 lost paintings to solve a puzzle, to learn a secret and to prevent Venice from sinking. The paintings provide the clues to the secret by revealing passages and blueprints for a doomsday machine.

Unlike solitaire mah jong, you can remove any tile as long as it doesn’t have any part of a tile on top of it. A tile with another on the left, right or both sides of it is playable. Instead of matching pairs on the board, you get a hand of tiles for finding matches on the board.

You can match multiple tiles to one from your hand as long as you keep clicking on the available tiles one after the next. This gets tricky at times since clicking an unavailable tile (that you may not be sure about) stops the succession. It doesn’t take much to trip up the mouse and lose multiple tile clicking progress. While this is a neat feature, it might be a problem for people with mobility impairments and tired hands.

In Venice Mystery‘s version of mah jong, you play until you find all of the keys within the time shown on the timer. Empty boxes on top of the screen indicate how many keys you need to find to finish the level. Some might find the mah jong part of the game too easy. After completing the level, a map of Venice appears showing your progress in finding the missing paintings. When you get close to finding one, it’s time for the first mini-game.

The screen shows the missing painting with circles below the painting. Each circle represents a spot on the painting, but they could be upside down or sideways. You must find the spot on the painting and turn the circle — if needed — until it appears exactly like in the painting and then click the spot on the painting where it belongs. This one is also a timed game and a hard one especially in the advanced levels where the colors all look the same in the painting. The painting puzzle mini-game is the hardest as I lose the most lives here.

Completing the painting puzzle leads to finding an object that requires visiting the clock tower for another mini-game. In this one, you rely on a blueprint with Roman numerals and symbols. The blueprint provides the needed clues for turning the dial to unlock another part of the puzzle. I get a little impatient with the dial game since the dial moves too slow for my taste.

I am not crazy about the design of the mah jongg tiles. They could be better in terms of graphics quality and design. The power up tiles have a neat transparent effect and flash without becoming an annoyance. Power ups do anything from revealing the location of the keys and swapping tiles to exploding tiles and morphing them. It takes time to get the hang of the power ups, but once I do — I enjoy using them. Joker tiles also appear with different numbers. These numbers indicate the number of tiles you can remove from the board regardless if they match.

With over 70 puzzles, Venice Mystery lasts a long time. I don’t believe all games must have at least two game modes, but this one would do well with regular solitaire mah jong for a second game mode. It is a great way to add replay value since not many want to replay a story.

Some may want to play the solitaire only game because they enjoy the game and power ups. It would be great to see a solitaire mode that doesn’t just copy the story mode and remove the extras. Instead, consider making it a little different in terms of rules and features. Venice Mystery blends all of the elements nicely to create a nice package. One hour of free play is plenty to decide whether the game is for you.

Download and try Venice Mystery.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista
• 600MHz or faster processor
• 128MB RAM

Mac version coming soon.

Smashing Magazine provided a wealth of expert tips, advice and suggestions in its popular and valuable 35 designers x 5 questions article. To celebrate its one year anniversary, the magazine found more experts and asked new questions. The result is 50 designers x 6 questions, which contains over 170 new tips answering the following six questions:

• What is one typical myth about web-development (which is not true)?
• What is one bulletproof method to get over creativity block?
• What is one thing you wish you knew before you’ve started programming/designing/… ?
• What is one thing to do before starting a new project?
• What is one common mistake you should always avoid developing web-sites?
• What is one device/tool or/and service you can’t imagine your life without?

Freelance writers, editors, and anyone involved in any aspect of Web design or working with projects will benefit from the responses.

Samantha Krieger of Just Say Yes asked if editors prefer to receive press releases by e-mail or by mail. The following is my response:

It depends on the editor. My recommendation is to create a column in your editor contact list for “Preference” or something like a “Notes” column. Then go to their Web sites to see if their About or submission information page says anything about how they prefer to receive news and press releases. Note this in the new column.

If this information doesn’t appear — editors do accept releases in e-mails — but typically, they prefer it in the body of the email instead of as an attachment. So I believe you’re fine in using e-mail pending you enter the right text in the Subject field and put all of the contents in the body.

I’ve received news and press releases both ways. Honestly, it doesn’t impact my decision. It’s the content that matters. If someone sends me something about cats, that’s an guarantee reject. After all, where have you seen me cover cats?

The casual games industry has spoiled me with the diversity of games with beautiful graphics, varied puzzles, and complementary music. So card games don’t appeal to me as much as in the past … that is, until Jewel Quest Solitaire. The card game blends Golf solitaire, match three / color match, a good story, great sound effects, and crisp graphics to create something atypical of card games.

I have not played any modern card games with a twist, but I’ve played Golf — the solitaire game — thousands of times. It’s a simple game (are games simple anymore?), but somehow it gripped me for many hands. In Golf, the object is to remove all cards from the stacks by pulling cards that are one higher or one lower than the face up card on the pile.

The building block for this solitaire comes from the popular Jewel Quest, a match three style-game with an adventure theme. Here you step in the dirty shoes of Indiana Jones look-alike’s nephew. Hey, the game uses the Indiana Jones font style. The Indian Jones here is Professor Percy Pack, a scholar who passes his worn brown fedora to you, provides you with his journal, and shows you how to play the homemade card game.

The game tells the story in a cool office setting with an old style slide projector with pictures appearing black and white complete with old-time radio sound narration. Open the journal to begin playing solitaire with cards having jewels and stones on them instead of aces, clubs, spades, and hearts. Unlike Golf and most solitaire games, the layout changes every time you successfully complete a layout.

The original Jewel Quest enters the picture in your second layout. While you play solitaire, jewels appear in a small match three grid in the corner of your screen. Depending on the cards you play and your progress, you earn jewels that appear on the grid. If a match occurs, then the tile turns gold. The primary goal is to clear the cards followed by the secondary goal, which is to turn all tiles into gold.

You won’t likely turn all the tiles gold while playing solitaire — however, you’ll earn “swaps,” or turns, for playing the match three part of the game. The more swaps you win, the more moves you can make in turning the tiles gold. You play match three as soon as you clear the cards off the board. Each swap represents a move, so aim to turn all the tiles into gold within the number of moves you have available. The game rewards bonus points if you don’t use up your swaps.

I thought I almost finished the game when I got a pleasant surprise, but I won’t spoil that here. Let’s just say the game play lasts a long time. Jewel Quest Solitaire comes in two modes: Quest, the adventure part where you make matches; and Just Cards, where you play solitaire without the color matching part. However, while you play solitaire in Just Cards mode, the color match grid will appear and your moves can turn tiles into gold. You just won’t get to do any swapping.

The developer and publisher missed an excellent opportunity here to convert solitaire fans into Jewel Quest fans. There should be a third game mode along the lines of “Just Color Matching” where you play the color matching game without the solitaire. This consists of the original Jewel Quest. Considering Jewel Quest II exists, it could lead to solitaire players taking an interest in the two Jewel Quest games.

The surprises don’t stop there. The game takes care not to spoil players with power ups in the form of wild cards as they appear every so often. A regular wild card works as any card of your choosing. Another wild card adds another pile so you can have more than one foundation pile for matching cards.

There’s even a good / bad wild card where you can choose any card to discard, but also it erases any wild card rules in effect. In other words, if you have two or three piles of cards, this wild card gets rid of the two piles that you’re back to one pile. The neat thing about power ups and this game is that you can’t use the same strategy throughout — it requires adjustment.

Jewel Quest Solitaire single-handedly renewed my interest in solitaire games — not an easy task considering all the superb games available in the casual games market. After playing the game for over a week, it still surprises me. Jewel Quest Solitaire II is available for those who want more.

Download and try Jewel Quest Solitaire and Jewel Quest Solitaire II.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/98/2000/XP/Vista
• 800MHz or faster processor
• 512 MB RAM
• 16 MB video card (32-bit graphics)
• 50 MB hard drive space
• DirectX 7.0 or later

Someone interested in breaking into information design contacted me to ask about the field, whether a degree or certificate would help, and the tools and skills used. It’s a very broad question as information design covers everything including print. But I answered the question from the online perspective and thought others may benefit from this information.

This field include information design, user experience, web design, publication design, graphic design, information architecture, etc. Looking at the Web sites and locating a nearby chapter in the following organizations makes a good starting point:

• STC (Society for Technical Communication) — www.stc.org
• UPA (The Usability Professionals’ Association) — www.upassoc.org
• SIGCHI — www.sigchi.org
• ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology) — www.asis.org/SIG/ia.html
• IA Institute (The Information Architecture Institute) — iainstitute.org

STC, for example, has different SIGs (special interest groups) that could also provide valuable information. But of course, you want to narrow down your interests before joining SIGs or else too much information will come your way.

The following sites provide conference proceedings:

• www.upassoc.org/conference/2007overview.html
• stc-on.org/id/
• www.stcsig.org/usability/
• www.asis.org/SIG/ia.html
• www.sxsw.com/interactive

What would you recommend to someone interested in the field? What do people need to break in the field? How valuable (or not) is a degree or certification? What area should the degree or certificate be in?

Thanks to Elisa Miller for her input into the response.

Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of Spooky Manor completely captivated me from the first puzzle. This kind of game is what I’ve been looking for since reviewing Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst and Azada. Both games contain puzzles where players pick up or move pieces to make something happen. In these games, the puzzles are more of a guest star. In this one, the puzzles become the star. Only one drawback: It’s too short!

Players take over the role of Mortimer Beckett whose eccentric uncle has disappeared. You receive a letter from Uncle Jerome explaining that someone stole his device and you need to come to his haunted manor to find parts of the device’s starter to re-assemble it.

Each puzzle requires finding hidden objects — but not the normal way you see in most games. And this is NOT yet another hidden object game. Instead, you must find the pieces of the hidden object. A clock, for instance, could have four pieces for finding in the scene before the object appears in your inventory. Every scene hides the pieces of four objects, which boosts the challenge and cuts the predictability.

After reuniting all the pieces to recreate the objects, you can either go to the other rooms to find the rooms’ objects, try to solve the puzzle or place an object that belongs in the scene such as a putting a chess piece back on its chessboard. While nothing happens in object placement, it keeps the boredom away and makes solving the puzzle more challenging as you can’t easily figure out which piece goes where.

Some objects belong in other rooms or the current room needs something from another room. For example, if you see an object needs turning off or on and your inventory contains nothing to fix this, it’s obvious the needed object hides in another room. So, I hunt down the missing objects in all of the rooms; do the item placement followed by puzzle solving. However, you might run into situations where this won’t work because you need an object from another room before you can find all the objects in the current room. The thing to do, for me anyway, is to just seek out all of the objects within a reasonable time and work from there. You interact with ghosts in some of the puzzles. These aren’t your typical ghosts like Casper the Friendly Ghost or the dude on the Ghostbusters cover, but people who look transparent.

When the one-hour free trial ended, I was over halfway through the game. I thought there was more to it and I hadn’t seen it yet, but that wasn’t the case. I forgive a shorter game because of the effort that goes into creating something with little repetition — but a Mortimer Beckett game can stand to last longer than two or three hours.

Creating a game with a variety of puzzles takes more time than simply throwing objects into scenes for hidden object games. Nevertheless, I hope the Mortimer Beckett and the Time Paradox, its sequel (no date announced anywhere), will last longer and provide as much delight as Secrets of Spooky Manor. Heck, I hope the developer plans at least two sequels! Unless you don’t like puzzles, finding things and solving things — download Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of Spooky Manor ASAP.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/98/2000/XP/Vista
• 800MHz or faster processor
• 128 MB RAM (512 MB for Vista)
• DirectX 9.0 or later

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Writer Mama provided a great discussion topic in asking readers if they are rule breakers or rule followers in terms of working as writers. Plus, my family ran into an issue where someone who may have broken rules that affected an entire team. Breaking a rule can be a minor thing that only affects the rule breaker (cheating on a diet) or it can be huge and hurt many (Enron).

Of course, the kind of rule matters in whether you even think about breaking it. A rule could be:

• a law (no stealing)
• moral/ethical (disrespecting a parent)
• organizational (must work at least eight hours a day)
• non-spoken (don’t bombard an editor with e-mails)
• self-imposed (no eating meat)

Most of us (I would hope) abide by laws. Breaking them means punishment. Moral and ethical — depends on person’s influences that could include religion, family, friends, and environment.

Organizational rules — many people break some of the less harmful rules (no personal e-mails from work computers), but follow the standard of working the required hours. Non-spoken rules prove tricky as some of us learn them the hard way by breaking them and getting called on it, learn about it from someone else, or don’t know about it and haven’t broken it.

Self-imposed are rules of our choosing. If we break them, we only affect ourselves. Following them, however, can help us become a better person (depending on the rule) such as reading for one hour daily, exercise four times a week, and sleeping at least seven hours every night. Well, of course, the latter rule comes from medical recommendations. But that’s just it — it’s recommendations not a rule.

The Writer Mama question had me thinking about rules on a broad scale and how it affects our lives. In the discussion about breaking rules, they’re not hard and fast rules, but more self-imposed or non-spoken. In this case, we’re talking about rules that are OK to break.

For example, I tried to write a news release using a different approach from the standard release. The final version of the release turned out to be a standard one. Many articles for writer suggest doing something unconventional and grabbing the reader. But some people won’t like it while others will love it. What rules did you break that worked and didn’t work?