Archive for November 2007

• Six Brilliant Ways to Get More from Outlook… vanity link
• The title of this book is why editors are important [Thanks, Nick]. Anytime you need a writer or editor… drop me a line. Hey, had to take advantage of the opportunity. (I must’ve read this line 100 times because it would’ve looked bad if I had messed it up.)
• Prepare Your Business for a Great ’08
• Creative Copywriting: Techniques for high tech products
• Christmas lights in a microwave oven: WOW! Kids, please don’t try this at home.
• AnySoldier.com: Everything you wanted to know about what soldiers need, where to send, how to send, etc. It has a lot of content. Remember the soldiers can’t see our flags hanging, ribbons on our cars, bumper stickers showing support…

If there is a game that compels the kids to sing, “Old MacDonald had a farm” repeatedly, Farm Frenzy is it. Its fun, colorful, and cartoon-style graphics easily catches the attention of my sons ages four and eight. For me, the game keeps me up late as I’m keen on earning at least a silver star in every spot as I work my way around town.

Those who have played Chicken Chase can’t help but recognize the similarities between the two games. I enjoyed Chicken Chase, but I like this one better because it has more variety and the Farm Frenzy‘s bears are less annoying than the Chase‘s ravens. I also don’t feel as panicky around the bears. Those ravens just made me nuts.

Every level of the 45-plus level game contains goals to meet to conquer the level and move on up to the next. Do it fast, and you can earn a gold or a silver star. What is just ducky about this one is that you can’t lose. If you take too long completing the goals, you simply don’t get bonuses or stars and you can move on. That’s one of the things about the casual game industry — it’s not always about winning — it’s about having fun and challenging yourself to earn stars and trophies.

Farm Frenzy involves taking care of the animals by ensuring they have plenty to eat. While keeping their tummies happy, you also purchase machines, upgrades, and more animals. But you may not have enough money on hand, so go to the market and sell up to nine products including eggs, cupcakes, wool, milk, and cheese.

Your truck and product storehouse may not hold what you need, so upgrade them to gain more space to hold more stuff. The game requires planning and strategy to find the right balance in feeding your animals, having the needed funds, and meeting your goals for the level.

You also buy and upgrade manufacturing buildings that can turn eggs into egg solids, egg solids into cupcakes, wool into thread and so on. Products sell for various prices, but of course those made from other products go for bigger bucks as it takes more time and processing to make them.

The trophies provide another challenge. Since you can play any level again, you can try to capture a trophy by playing the right level. There’s a trophy for never picking up a product. This means you need cats to do the work for you and they’re not always fast or reliable. So find the level where you can quickly buy cats or it comes with cats. One caveat, if you don’t earn a star for the level on the second time around — you lose the original star, if you had one.

The bears? They do what you expect them to do… steal your animals. Boy, it bugs me when they steal my more expensive animals like the $10,000 cow. It’s all in the name of eggciting fun, though. Can’t bear to deal with them? Count on farmer’s best friend, the dogs, to help hold off the bears. They’re not free, though, unless you’re lucky the level comes with them.

While my sons love watching the game, it would be too hard for them to play even for the eight-year-old. It’s a frenzied game (Gee, I wonder how they came up with the name, Farm Frenzy?) and involves multi-tasking and many steps.

Farm Frenzy is an eggcellent all around game that mixes arcade with management without the stink or picking up after the animals. It definitely milks the money you pay for the game for all its worth. Those who are sheepish about buying games can milk every dime with Farm Frenzy‘s long lasting game play. All right, I’ll stop with the farm puns already!

Download and try Farm Frenzy.

Updated: 16 November 2010 (100+ resources)

I had planned on putting this list up ages ago, but kept adding more. It could take a long time to capture many resources, so this is a living entry that I’ll update as soon as I get new resources.

Blogs

1. About Freelance Writing
2. All Freelance Writing
3. Be the Story
4. The Blood-Red Pencil
5. Bob Bly
6. Book Marketing Bestsellers
7. The Book Sistah
8. C. Hope Clark
9. CatalystBlogger
10. Christina Katz
11. Confident Writing
12. Copyblogger
13. The Copywriter Underground
14. The Copywriting Maven
15. Copywriting That Sells High Tech
16. The Creative Penn
17. Crime Fiction Dossier
18. Daily Writing Tips
19. Diary of a Wordsmith
20. Evil Editor
21. Freelance Parent
22. Freelance Writing
23. Freelance Writing Jobs
24. Get Paid to Write Online
25. Grow Your Writing Business
26. How Not to Write
27. I’d Rather Be Writing
28. Inkwell Editorial
29. Jane in Progress
30. Joel Falconer
31. Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog
32. JohnAugust.com
33. PoeWar
34. Macabre Ink
35. Mad Young Thing
36. Men with Pens
37. Michael Hyatt
38. Mike’s Writing Workshop
39. Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
40. Paul Conley on trade journalism
41. Publishing Careers
42. Problogger
43. Robust Writing
44. Quiet Rebel Writer
45. Quips and Tips for Freelance Writers
46. Rachelle Gardner
47. The Renegade Writer
48. Remarkable Communication
49. Rogue Ink
50. Sites and Soundbytes: Library blog that began as a list of cool places online now features many resources and online references that would prove useful to writers.
51. StoneWriter
52. Storytellers Unplugged
53. The Struggling Writer
54. There Are No Rules
55. Tumblemoose
56. Urban Muse
57. The Wealthy Freelancer
58. The Web-Savvy Writer
59. Web Writing Info
60. The Well-Fed Writer
61. WOW! Women on Writing
62. Words for Hire
63. Words on the Water
64. Word Sell Blog
65. Write from Home
66. Writer Beware
67. Writer Dad
68. Writer’s Digest Writing Blogs
69. A Writer’s Words, an Editor’s Eye
70. Writer’s Helper
71. Writer’s Notes
72. Write to Done
73. Write Well Me
74. The Writing Journey
75. The Writing Life
76. Writing on the Web
77. Writing White Papers Blog
78. Written Road

Resources

1. 100 posts and articles worth link love: Great selection of articles and content related to writing, business, blogging, and freelancing.
2. 150 Writing Resources: Organized by categories.
3. A to Z of Alternative Words [pdf file]: Why “utilize” when a simple “use” will do?
4. AbiWord: Open source Word
5. About Freelance Writing: Job postings, articles, and more.
6. AbsoluteWrite: The first place I recommend to wanna be writers. Of course, it’s great for experienced writers.
7. Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts: Collection of about 14,000 “classic” public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.
8. American vs. British Grammar: Differences go beyond color vs. colour, optimize vs. optimise.
9. Authors of Historical Fiction resource
10. Bartleby: Resource has been around for a long-time that contains reference and verses for writers, researchers, and the “intellectually curious.”
11. A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing: From creating a business plan to dealing with taxes.
12. CARRIE: Internet’s first full-text online electronic library.
13. Community Mottos and Nicknames. Great info for stories and inspiration for names.
14. Confusing Words: Over 3000 troublesome words.
15. Digital Library of the Commons: An archive of full-text articles, papers, and dissertations; the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons; a Keyword Thesaurus, and links to relevant reference sources on the study of the commons.
16. Disability Writes: Site to help people with disabilities overcome barriers in getting support and encouragement to write.
17. e-write: newsletter, courses, articles, tools, resources, challenge.
18. Etymology: Study of word origins.
19. For Copywriters Only: Articles and newsletter.
20. The Free Dictionary: Dictionary, encyclopeida, thesaurus, and more. Huge resource.
21. Freelance Folder: More about the business of freelancing, but writers benefit greatly.
22. Freelance Writing Success: Articles and resources.
23. FundsForWriters: Articles, newsletters, and more.
24. Fun with Words: Wordplay
25. Google Book Search: Access thousands of books based on your keywords. How much you get depends on the book and its copyright.
26. Guide to Grammar and Writing: Guidelines and resources for writing proposals.
27. Little Known Online Research Sites: List of online research sites and apps.
28. Long Story Short: Ezine with book reviews, excerpts, interviews, articles, poetry, writing school.
29. Luciferous Logolepsy: Collection of obscure English words.
30. Manuscript Analyzer can help dump those trouble words and phrases. It looks for frequently-used words and “identify junk phrases, ‘frequent offender’ word patterns, and adverbs.”
31. NewsTrust.net: Discover good journalism based on quality not popularity.
32. OnceWritten.com: Introduces new fiction writers, contains a community, and provides resources for contests and marketing.
33. ParaPublishing: Newsletter and resources.
34. Phrase Finder: “Search beginnings and endings of phrases.”
35. Publication Coach Newsletter: Power Writing newsletter provides quick tips.
36. Publishing Central: Find articles from around the Web on just about every topic related to publishing.
37. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Superb resources covering writing, research, grammar, and MLA and APA style.
38. ResearchCopyright.com: Learn about copyright law in simple language.
39. Research Guides from New York Public Library: New York Public Library research guides in alphabetical order by topic.’
40. That White Paper Guy: Articles, FAQ, and other great white paper writing resources from Gordon Graham.
41. Top 25 Books for Writers and Writing-related Topics: As voted by writers.
42. The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resources: Top ten lists for free apps, online apps, bookmarks, communities.
43. Visuwords: Online graphical dictionary.
44. The Well-Fed Writer: Site behind the books of the same name. Sign up for the free newsletter.
45. Writing for Dollars: Articles and newsletter
46. WhitePaperSource: Excellent resource for white paper writers.
47. Worldwide Freelance Writer: Markets, newsletter, and articles.
48. Writer Magazine: Not only a print magazine, but also has lots of online articles.
49. Writing White Papers: Everything white papers including a community, blog, links, and newsletter.
50. WritingSpirit.com: Resources, strategies and support for writers.

Tools

1. About Writing Tools: Best writing tools on the Web.
2. Abbreviations: Search and browse abbreviations.
3. Anagram Genius
4. Cliche Finder: Identify and kill cliches.
5. ClicheSite: Cliches, euphemesms, and figures of speech.
6. Chris Pound’s Name Generation Page: Includes fantasie, parodies, and more links.
7. The Editorium Freebies: Tools and templates for Microsoft Word.
8. The Free Dictionary: Includes English, Medical, Legal, Financial, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Idioms, Encyclopedia, and a Literature Reference Library.
9. Freelance Switch Hourly Rate Calculator: How much should you make an hour? Complete this form to find out.
10. Global Acronyms: Search for acronyms.
11. Good Keywords: Find the right keywords.
12. Google Docs: Online-based word processor
13. Instant Anagrams
14. Instant Rhymes
15. Microsoft Word Shortcuts: Exactly as it sounds.
16. The Naque: Tools for coming up with names.
17. NetLingo: Online text and jargon.
18. The Passivator: Eliminate passive phrases.
19. Phrase Finder: Find phrases and their meanings.
20. Reference.com: Dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, reference material Wikipedia and Lexico’s On This Day.
21. Rhymezone: Tool for finding words that rhyme. Also includes other resources such as Shakespeare, quizzes, quotations, Mother Goose, and famous documents.
22. Scrivener Gold: Helps writers organize projects — for Macs. Apple Matters review gives it a rating of 9 out of 10. Scrivener requires a Mac running OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
23. Seventh Sanctum: Name generators (look on the left).
24. Text Block Writer: A virtual index card program.
25. ThinkFree Office: Free “Office” application.
26. Tools for Creating Ideas: Nice list of ideas of what you can do to brainstorm and come up with new things.
27. U.S. Newspapers: Find Web sites for US newspapers.
28. VocabTest.com: Boost your word power.
29. Wordsmith: Love the site’s anagram server. Also has A Word a Day, Wordsmith Chat, Wordserver and more.
30. World Newspapers, Magazines, and New Sites in English: Nice resource that sorts resources by categories.
31. WordWeb: Thesaurus and dictionary accessed with one click.
32. Zoho Writer and other apps

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

The nice thing about Fashion Craze is not having to pick up left behind clothes and folding clothes again. A sewing machine and talented tailor sit in the store ready to make customized clothes for all of its customers. The best part comes in seeing the results on the customers after they put on their newly tailored clothes. Halloween had my sons laughing hard as they enjoyed seeing nicely dressed customers turning into pumpkin heads.

In Fashion Craze, players have the ability to customize the store’s colors and change Maria’s clothes. Maria is a fashion reporter by day and a good niece in her spare time. She helps run her aunt’s clothing store while she’s on vacation since it could lead to good material for future articles.

As Maria survives each level, she eventually gets to pick one of three colors for more décor upgrades. Unlike many similar games, the upgrades don’t cost anything. The hard work comes in ordering the customers’ color and style, handing them their clothes and accessories, keeping their hearts full with bribes… err… surprises, and collecting the money after they’ve tried on their new duds.

The surprises vary from level to level. They include a soccer ball, fancy ballpoint pen, flowers, and balloons. Every level comes with a coffee maker and those levels with kids come with a doll and car to keep the kids happy.

It doesn’t take long before things get crazy in the game. At first, I thought the game was a little boring, but it gets better as I progressed. The clothes change based on the seasons from skimpy bikinis to warm and plush sweaters. Colors also change for the four lines of clothing with 21 available colors.

The décor comes in bright colored pastels to brighten up the store. It’s nice not having to pay for upgrades giving you something to forward to as you wonder about the next upgrade. Each day begins with a note indicating the weather or season, so you know what to expect when the customers arrive.

You must take care in seating customers when there are two seats as some customers’ heart meters will drop if you put them next to the wrong person or better yet, fill up when you find a perfect seatmate.

Thank goodness Fashion Craze prevents you from going stir-crazy by only letting you pick the right color material and the right styles. If you accidentally click on the wrong colored material (one that no one has requested), nothing happens. When customers pour in, it’s easy to click all the wrong things.

But I got annoyed with seating the customers. I’d drag a customer to the chair only to see the customer bounces back to standing up and waiting. It’s not as if I dragged the customer above or below the seating area — this shouldn’t be an issue. Sometimes I click an outfit or a customer, but nothing happens. This occurs more often when kids start coming in pairs with their parents. In this case, you must click on the person with the request.

When the customers try on clothes, they don’t look like as you would expect and that’s what makes this the most fun part of the game. Two customers could order the same thing, but they look different when they put them on. One outfit looks like a raincoat, but sometimes it looks like a robe.

While Fashion Craze doesn’t offer any runaway or original features, it’s a solid game with well-drawn graphics. The story only plays a small role in the game as the focus is the game play. Some casual gamers will find this high stylin’ game fashionable and worth trying on to see how it looks, or rather … plays.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows XP/Vista
• 1 GHz or faster processor
• 256 MB RAM
• 260 MB hard drive space
• 64 MB graphics card
• DirectX 9.0 MB or later

Talk about a delightful surprise when I heard Chocolatier 2 was coming out. I never imagined Chocolatier would get a sequel as it’s a long and involved game. Not something that you can use the original game play and change up the story like in diner-style games. Chocolatier 2 not only expands on the original, but it’s a sweet success.

A family feud again takes center stage in the story mode as the Baumeisters return dealing with a mole in the business. Chocolatier 2 takes place 40 years later after the original, and the scenery reflects the styles of the 1920s and 1930s. Even buildings that don’t exist in 1920 like the Empire State Building will crop up in cities in later years.

The game, like its predecessor, beautifully presents every ingredient and finished product based on 72 recipes. Well, one ingredient might not sound pleasing to many, but it’s a delicacy in some places — fire ants. Bars, squares, infusions and truffles all return into the recipe book along with sauces, pralines, and exotics.

This time, we get to create our own recipes using secret ingredients from hidden ports around the world. However, it requires raising enough funds before purchasing a chocolate tasting lab in Buenos Aires. People we meet along the way provide clues and ideas for new recipes, but experimentation is also necessary. Pick a handful of potential ingredients, and the researcher extraordinaire will let you know what works and what doesn’t work — much in the same way Mastermind.

Chocolatier 2 comes with over 200 quests, 20 cities including Bombay, Cayenne, Paris, and Moscow, 6 factories and 4 shops. The secret ingredients hide in the new hidden ports, which take longer to access and cost a pretty cacao.

I’m thankful for the changes in the arcade part of the game where we set up a factory to make a new product. Again, you have to make as many as you can of a product following the set recipe by shooting ingredients into circles.

Instead of spinning circles, which make me dizzy, the circles don’t spin and instead flow differently on the product line. Sometimes another circle blocks the circle you want. The arcade portion now includes bonuses turning this into a fun game — something it wasn’t in the original.

The most disappointing part of the game is logo design. The game contains a limited choice of images and some of the colors are awful. I know the creators were trying to capture the art deco style of the ’20s, but I actually love art deco and this isn’t pretty. Some of the images are of terrible quality — like someone stretched a small image. It’s surprising considering the rest of the game has beautiful designs and images.

The basics of the game includes buying ingredients, manufacturing new ingredients, making new products, selling chocolates, buying factories and stores, and traveling the world. I love how the traveling varies based on location. Players could take a train, ship, hike, or a canoe.

Of course, we continue to use the finest ingredients, so lots of traveling is necessary. But this time we need to watch the seasons since some ingredients cost thousands of dollars off-season, and drop into the more affordable hundreds of dollars when they’re in season.

Some cities don’t have a store for selling chocolates, so it’s important to think ahead to ensure you have enough funds to get you through a trip. Also returning for an encore are gambling hot spots. I don’t play these games, but they’re there for desperate times or those who enjoy dice games.

Another improvement is the message section. This time, it only displays one big task at a time. I don’t mind seeing multiple tasks, but the message screen was too small in the original.

Chocolatier 2 comes with lots to do and no set path you must follow. You don’t have to do one, two, three before four can happen. Although, you do need to attain certain titles and funds before you can access information. You can also make whatever you want as long as a factory or two meets any customer requests.

I’m all for a third edition of the game if it’s done right or expand it by changing the industry or products. Chocolatier 2 is addicting as chocolate that I stayed up late several times unable to pull myself away.

System Requirements

Windows:

• Windows Vista, XP, 2000
• Pentium III 700 MHz minimum
• 128 MB RAM
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound card recommended
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 25 MB hard drive space

Mac:

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 MHz or faster processor
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound card recommended
• 25 MB hard drive space

Discover the Amazing Adventures The Lost Tomb, a hidden object game with mini-games and travels throughout Egypt. This sharp looking game lasts a long time with over 100 levels of play. With that many levels, it’s amazing how it rarely feels like one plays the same rooms repeatedly or hunts for the same objects in 22 locations.

While the game won’t blow you away with anything special, it’s a completely well-produced game from graphics and story to mini-games and bonuses. The historian’s mission is to find the Lost Tomb by completing 20 missions with each containing multiple levels.

Although the hints are almost always available, the game makes a point of mentioning when players rely on hints when reporting the score. This mention is enough to discourage hint abuse especially when using a hint takes away 4,000 points. When using a hint, the hint meter starts over again and must fill up before it’s ready to give the next hint. It doesn’t take long for the meter to fill up.

A perfect search — which is not using any hints during a level — equals 15,000 points. The game awards bonus points for finding two items quickly, even for those who opt to play relaxed mode. Too much random clicking leads to losing points. Players also have the opportunity to earn title promotions, but it won’t mean any extra pay or perks.

“Find the Lost Tomb” would be the story game mode while the “Secret Game” resembles — without giving away too much — unlimited game play. Within the story mode, you can either play timed mode or relaxed mode. Having relaxed mode helps make the game more enjoyable for many players who want to make the most of the experience rather than hurry up and go.

After finding all the needed treasures, the mini-game enters the picture. Mini-games include jigsaw puzzles, comparing two rooms for spotting the differences, tile swapping and four others. One of those is the popular memory match game except this one calls for finding same color, same type, related items such as a glove and baseball, or identical objects.

The difficulty level in the placement of the hidden objects is medium. Some objects are easy while others take a lot of work to locate. Those having played many hidden object games will be pleasantly surprised at the unpredictable locations of the hidden objects. Long, thin items won’t necessarily be where they expect to find them. Both new and experienced players will enjoy this one.

What’s more, the game throws a few curveballs in its word choices in the list of objects to find. That’s nothing new, but it does the job without getting carried away and while keeping things fresh. A “red hexagon” references a STOP sign. You can’t help but laugh with hints like “Flew the coop” or “Ribbit!”

Also hidden in the game are 21 ancient Egypt worshipped scarabs. Find them all to unlock the secret game. Even if you forget to keep an eye out for scarabs, it should be OK as the reviewer found all 21 despite forgetting about this little game within the game.

Hidden object games have quirks. Some make it difficult for clicks on the correct object to register. In the hunt for a spike, the viewer correctly clicked the right item and the game seemed to say, “Nope. Uh-uh, that isn’t it.” Finally, the situation called for a hint and sure enough, it was the right object. But this was a rare incident, fortunately. Another time, the list included “3 hand tools.” Hammer, boomerang, arrow, C-clamp, fork, and knife didn’t count. The name, in this case, was too broad.

While Amazing Adventures The Lost Tomb doesn’t have anything that hasn’t shown up in one game or another, it’s a nice full package with a long-lasting value that is sure to please anyone looking for an adventure of the hidden object kind.

Download and play Amazing Adventures The Lost Tomb.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• 350 MHz or faster processor
• 75 MB RAM
• DirectX 7.0 MB or later

• The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need
• MindMapPedia is a library of publicly available mind maps.
• BookSpoke is a social network for readers and writers.
• Brijit: Content with 100 words or less.
• Catalog your books at Library Thing.
• Get the skinny on your zip code.
• Blog of quotation marks abuse.
• Periodic Table of Comic Books.
• Cup stacking caught on with my son and his friends. But dice stacking? Whoa.
• Three geeky goodies from TechRepublic:
  • Dirty Computers
  • Endangered Computers
  • Vintage Computer Festival

  Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!

This inspiration for this list comes from the blog entry, Cook up a Style Guide. The style guides are sorted into three categories. Let us know if about any others.

• Academy and other Style Guides
• Web Design, Web Site and Geek Style Guides
• Writing Style and Media Guides

Academic and other Style Guides

• AAA (American Anthropological Association) relies on two to create its own AAA Style Guide
• American Institute of Physics
• AMA Style Guide from University of Washington that lists the most frequently used entries. Medical professionals tend to rely on this one
• APA Style Guide is a popular style guide especially with colleges and universities
• APA Research Style Crib Sheet
• Carnegie Mellon Writer’s Style Guide
• Columbia Guide to Online Style
• Introduction to Basic Legal Citation
• MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association)
• Ohio State University (based on Chicago Manual of Style)
• OSU Turabian Citation Guide
• University of California at Irvine
• University of Colorado at Boulder Style Guide

Web Design, Web Site and Geek Style Guides

• A List Apart
• Apple Publications Style Guide (pdf file)
• Dojo Style Guide
• IEEE Computer Society Style Guide
• IEEE Standards Style Manual
• Jargon File, the online version of The New Hacker’s Dictionary
• Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications or Microsoft Computer Dictionary
• Mozilla Coding Style Guide
• New York Public Library’s NYPL:Style Guide for web sites
• Python Style Guide
• W3C Style Guide for Online Hypertext
• Web Design Group Style Guide for Online Hypertext (Largely taken from W3C’s guide)
• Web 2.0 How-to Design Guide
• Web Style Guide for web sites
• Wikipedia Manual of Style
• Writing for Multimedia’s Terminology

Writing Style and Media Guides

• AP Style Guide
• BBC News Style Guide for radio
• Chicago Manual of Style
• Economist Style Guide
• Dictionary.com Style Guide
• GuardianUnlimited Style Guide is for writers and editors
• Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch
• Guide to Citation Style Guides
• Strunk & White’s Elements of Style

With book coverage in print and newspaper sales declining, authors and publishers must extend their reach to the Internet if they want to boost book sales and publicity. Furthermore, authors are more involved in marketing their books than in the past as publishers can’t or won’t do enough.

Print publications still play a valuable role in books’ lives though the Internet offers many other advantages for promoting books:

• No need to rely on battery power, electricity, or a working Internet connection to read print.
• People leave finished copies of printed resources in doctor’s offices, coffee shops, and other public places for others to pick up.
• No shut down needed upon flight take off and landing.
• No taking it out of your carry on or briefcase to get through airport security.
• Fewer distractions and information noise as you don’t have links and animation enticing you away from your reading.
• Knowing where something starts and ends. The Internet consists of connected pages making it easy for someone to jump from page to page endlessly.
• Just open and read. No booting up, waiting for loading applications and pages, signing on…

Authors and publishers need to make the Internet their partner in marketing books. The Internet offers the following benefits:

• Cheap: It costs as little as $5 a month to have a Web site and $0 for a page on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bookhitch. Plus, add the book to your e-mail and discussion board signature for noticing when people read your e-mails and posts.
• Search: Search engines and Web sites help people find books on topics of interest.
• Access: Contact reviewers and bloggers who cover your book’s topic offering to send them a review copy. Also contact sites that publish book reviews like BlogCritics. The Internet also provides a great way to connect with reading groups. Many reading groups invite members to submit questions for the author to respond or hold a conversation online through chat or a Web-based application.
• Network: Forums, online groups, and social networks allow you to connect and interact with potential readers and reviewers.
• Link: Contribute articles to article libraries, online magazines, and other online resources where you can have a byline that links to your Web site or book ordering page.

Start or boost online book marketing with help from the following resources:

• Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book!, walks the talk with his blog and Myspace page on this topic.
• Christopher Diggins’ Marketing Your Book Online guide
• 101 Book Marketing Sites
• BookSistah Blog often covers book marketing. Sophfronia Scott also has book and writing articles in EzineArticles.
• SalesRankExpress has a tool for checking a book’s Amazon sales rank.
• Future Perfect Publishing blog often covers book marketing.
• 27 ways to sell more books doesn’t focus on online book marketing, but authors can integrate its tips with online marketing.

Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst has the distinction of the first hidden object game I’ve ever reviewed. I had no basis for comparison, so little did I know I reviewed one of the best games of its genre. Since then, I’ve also checked out Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate surpasses its four predecessors and the Mystery Case Files (MCF) series continues to push the genre to new levels.

In this one, Madame Fate, the fortune teller, believes someone is going to kill her at midnight and she asks for your help. It’s not that her fortune telling abilities don’t work, but rather she needs you to find hidden items or clues from the 15 carnival employees. These items help Madame Fate use her crystal ball to see each person’s fate at midnight.

As she reveals the fate of each carnival worker, it also helps remove that person as a suspect in her possible death. But before she can do that, you go to work in solving a “crystal ball puzzle” with no direction or clues. I adore these puzzles, which resemble the locked door puzzles in Ravenhearst. They’re the best part of the game. They even attract my eight-year-old son’s attention as he joins me in solving them.

Another neat twist is that every location doesn’t mean you’ll go a-hunting for 10 or so hidden objects. Some scenes have a mini-game that usually has something to do with words. It could be rearranging jumbled letters to create two words that are opposites, creating 10 four-lettered words from the given letters, or playing a hangman-style game to find three words describing the carnival worker plus a couple of others.

After solving the puzzle and gaining access to the suspect’s room, you search for 10 to 15 of two different items. These items range from the letters B and L to magic wands and lipstick. While doing that, you might have to keep an eye out for the morphing object — a new feature in the MCF series. Morphing objects such as a beagle changing into a terrier and back appear in random scenes — you know which scenes have them because of the purple question mark symbol that appears on the map of the carnival.

Madame Fate also introduces a scene within a scene. Some locales have another scene that you can only access through the specific locale. You know there’s a second scene when the number of hidden clues is higher than normal and the sparkles that appear on the scene to indicate the location of the hidden scene.

As picturesque the scenes are and the audio fitting to the theme, the game isn’t without quibbles. You can find the right object, but it takes precise clicking for the game to register the selection for some objects especially the smaller ones. The hint system could be a little better. While it’s nice the game doesn’t straight out and point to the object you’re trying to find, the circle could be smaller.

This one is also a problem in Ravenhearst — sometimes one puzzle hint isn’t enough, but if you click for a second hint — the game provides the same hint as the first and you’ve wasted a hint. You can also call the hotline to pass through a puzzle that annoys you. I also missed a few morphing objects because I forgot about them — there isn’t a way to find them without starting over.

You can unlock three scenes when you find enough of the mysterious changing objects. I unlocked two scenes and can’t seem to access them or do anything. The ending is also a disappointment like Ravenhearst. But the journey of getting there is worth it with the intriguing story, beautiful graphics, and clever puzzles. I couldn’t help but stay up late because I couldn’t exit the Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate‘s enchantment. Or did Madame Fate have something to do with it? <creepy evil laughter>

Get the Strategy Guide

Get help at the game’s forums

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• 800 MHz or faster processor
• 512 MB RAM
• DirectX 7.0 MB or later