Archive for July 2008

• Merriam-Webster releases new words to its Collegiate Dictionary including…
  • Air quotes: My brother makes fun of me whenever I do this — which ain’t often.
  • Edamame: What took so long?
  • Fanboy
  • Malware: Yuck, but at least we all know what its name is other than dirty rotten stinkin’ software.
  • Mental health day: Gee, “I don’t feel well” doesn’t cut it anymore? Or is it a way around that so you don’t curse yourself? After all, “mental” doesn’t have to mean a cold.
  • Texas Hold’em
  • Webinar: Now maybe we’ll stop hearing the 20 variations of this.
  • And for the most interesting one: mondegreen. Along the lines of a malaprop except in this case it’s when someone misheard something not the unintentional misuse of a word or phrase (pornography instead of photography).
• Making the Most of Tough Times: Never, ever become complacent.
• Copyblogger Tagline Clinic
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky
• Copywriting: The 10 Magic Words
• 3 Steps to Successful Writing on the Web

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 70 Amazing Business Cards
• Rice Field Art
• Kid safe browsers
• Fuel Savings Calculator
• Vaudeville Nation: I loved reading about vaudeville and catching TV programs about it. I still have an old tape from 1983 called Parade of Stars Playing the Palace. I wish it would come out on DVD as the tape is full of commercials and weather interruptions. Plus, the quality is going downhill.
• Take a Staycation as an alternative to pricey vacations.

Forget everything you’ve seen and heard about farm-style time management games. Sure, the time management genre has seen enough of this theme, but Ranch Rush will change your mind. You just feel like yippee-yi-oing while you work feeding the cows and sheep, making cheese and ketchup, collecting honey, and gathering up corn, tomaters ‘n other crops.

I may be a native Texan, but I’m far from wearing 10-gallon hats and cowboy boots. Once in a while I’ll see horses, cows, and longhorns while driving around my lovely city. I don’t even like country music and don’t envy my daughter’s recent month-long trip stop to the Country Music Hall of Fame (she couldn’t care less about it either). So if anyone shouldn’t like a ranchin’ game — it’s me.

Ranch Rush and its star prove me wrong. Sara loves working in a nursery where she experiments with new flowers. Boss Jim reports that he’ll have to sell the store to the developers in eight weeks unless things change for the better.

Rather than giving up on her home away from home, she remembers they have three acres of land and decides to open a farmer’s market to raise money for the nursery. With shovel in hand and a bag of seeds, she has eight weeks to succeed in fulfilling customer orders. Each week consists of multiple customer orders and she takes care of one customer at a time.

Instead of seeing a path of your progress, we see a chart showing eight weeks with an update at the end of each week. A skill meter that looks like a grain silo tower also appears on the progress report page. This identifies your rank.

The game’s built-in tutorial guides you in your first steps. Every time you create a new player, the tutorial appears again. It would be helpful to have a skip option as well as a back option while reading the story in case you want to re-read it again. At first glance, the game looks like an ornery farm time management game. But wait. It has surprises waiting.

You start with clovers, corn, and tomatoes. Then add a cow for milk (hey, animal rights folks — it’s all pixels — no animals get hurt in the game). Feed clovers to the cow to produce milk. Next come the bees that hang out at their hives and digging in the clovers. Make your move while they hover the clover or else get stung and no honey. Eventually, you’ll get a machine like the cheese maker. It takes two jugs of milk to make cheese.

The week begins on Monday with a customer’s order. Once you finish that, you move through the week until Saturday, Farmer’s Market Day. Here you race to turn in as many products as you can for a chunk of cash. Sunday is a day of rest as you’ve earned it. New crops, animals, machines, gear, and other useful tools pop up at a nice pace throughout the game.

After playing the whole game, you may want to play it again with a new ranch. It doesn’t matter if you have $100K and all the upgrades available, you only have so much space to store it all. That’s the beauty of the game — there’s no way to have two of everything (not counting crops) so you have to decide what you need and how many. Arrange your crops and objects in any way you desire and take a snapshot. Playing it again with a new ranch gives you an opportunity to play with different layouts and discover most efficient way to run your ranch.

I have a couple of bones to pick. Clicking ahead works great, but canceling actions doesn’t. Ranch Rush isn’t consistent here. You can click the crates three times and pick up three crops, but you can’t click water three times and click three crops in need of water. Also, the story doesn’t give you a way to pause or go back to a missed part. The last level (Friday in week eight) takes the game from challenging to impossible in casual mode (expert mode is available, but requires unlocking first). I try different tricks and can’t conquer the level.

Nontheless, Ranch Rush has roped me in with its charm, unpredictability, constant introduction of new features, and super whoopin’ production values. Yee haw! Ya gotta try Ranch Rush.

Get it from your favorite site:

Big Fish Games

Reflexive

Whew! What a big, but fun job. I had to make sure I got everyone entered (over 1000 entries!) and followed all the rules. It was a blast to hand out prizes and make people’s day. Winners will receive an email from me.

Thank you to all the guest contributors, prize contributors, all of the participants, and those who spread the word — especially those who did it multiple times. OK, OK, I’ll stop talking and start announcing.

• One $80 gift certificate to Amazon from Meryl ($10 for every year). Jon Phillips
  
• One $100 gift certificate to Amazon from Mark Wegner of The Diamond Games. Tim Childers
  
• Full version of Microsoft Expression Studio 2. Deborah Edwards-Onoro
• Peter Shankman: copy of his book, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them. Sharon
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media‘s Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design. Jacob Cass
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media‘s Indi Young’s Mental Models. John Hewitt
• Problogger Darren Rowse provides a copy of his book, Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. David Laprad
• AWAI’s Nick Usborne’s Million Dollar Secrets for Online Copywriting. Bob Younce
  
• Two copies of PowerReuse by Softpowerhouse, a document assembly software designed for boosting productivity for professionals. Lou Rosenfeld and Ted Demopoulos
• Access to Teaching Sells for two months from Copyblogger Brian Clark. Jamie Grove
• How to Make a Living as an SEO Writer from Yuwanda Black. Joanna Young
• Tara Calishain-authored book. Bill Moore
• Ted Demopoulos: One copy of Secrets of a Successful Blogging System digital audiobook with What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting (in which Meryl appears). Thursday Bram
• Airport Mania: 3 copies (2 Mac and 1 PC). Travis Vocino, Joe Heuer, and Joey
• One copy of Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Mary McDonald
  
• One copy of Wit and Wisdom of a Regular Joe from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Jon Symons
• One copy of New Idiot-Proof Guide to Customer Loyalty from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Yvonne Russell
• One copy of Andy King‘s Website Optimization. Dustin Brewer and Mark Wegner
• One copy of Unicorn Castle Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. Tara Calishain
• Full copy of Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper PC game from Mark Kanter of Bang Out Games. Meryl’s Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper review. Chanon Sajjamanochai
• 80 Photoshop brush packs from Jacob Cass. Oleg Kuznecov

Unannounced blog entry prizes

• Custom blog design by Jon of Spyre Studios and Freelance Folder. Yvonne Russell

Guest Blogger Prizes: Some contributors donated prizes specifically for guest bloggers or provided more than one copy, one of which goes to a guest blogger.

• One copy of Unicorn Castle Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. Janet Lee Johnson
• One copy of Magic Farm Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. Yuwanda Black
• One copy of Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Anne Wayman
• One copy of Andy King‘s Website Optimization. James Chartrand
• One full copy of PowerReuse software from KK Cheng and SoftPowerhouse. John Hewitt
• Big Kahuna Reef 2: 2 copies (1 Mac and 1 PC) Jamie Grove and Paige Eissinger
  
• Ricochet Infinity: 1 copies (PC) Bob Younce

I wanted to send my clients a little something as a thank you now instead of waiting until holiday time. Every day, I’m grateful for them and I want to show it. But what? I don’t want to send food especially since I’m in Texas. Besides, you never know who has what food allergy.

Searching for business gift ideas yields sites full of keywords and little else. Should I get something in bulk and imprint my company’s name on it? Or is that vain? I use things with company names on it — it’s a matter of finding something people will use.

Still have to consider shipping costs as all clients are not local — except one. Go with the bulk thing and just not print anything on it? Because I need to send a few, it would be tough to personalize it for each person. I don’t know all of their interests.

• Baskets: I send these occasionally — not in bulk. I’ve sent them to clients who had surgery or as a special treat. Not all contain food.
• Charitable donation: I appreciate it when people do this. But usually, it’s friends and family — not business contacts. I can see the good and bad side to this.
• General business book: Too bad my Outlook book doesn’t sell in the U.S. as I think most of my clients use Outlook. Another idea: Book of inspirational quotes.
• Gift cards: How to get one place that everyone uses is the tricky part. Coffee? Not everyone drinks coffee or tea or eats the giant treats. Amazon? Not everyone likes shopping online.
• Pen: Too boring? We have too many of them? As a writer, it would be appropriate to give.
• USB flash drive: These are wonderful tools and a person can use more than one.
• Rumors has a category for business gifts and they range from $3 to $$$. I like the selection, but nothing rings with me.
• Cowboy Chuck has business cartoons that make you smile.

I like the card sending services that let you enter your handwriting. However, I don’t like their sales and pricing process. I’ve yet to find one that lets you do it on your own and not pay a service fee. I’d rather pay per card and not participate in a pyramid scheme.

What do you think? What did you like receiving? Or what did others receive that they liked? Will keep adding gift ideas as I find them.

From Popcap release (shortened): Steve Day was a man on a mission – now he’s the proud possessor of the world’s highest-scoring Peggle shot. A currency trader from Portsmouth on England’s southern coast who previously spent a dozen years as a software developer, Steve achieved his 18-million+ point shot after being inspired by a video of the previous best shot, a 13-million point shot by Max Daube of Australia, using the same level and power-up. Steve’s YouTube video of his shot, along with a shot-by-shot “video tutorial” of the entire level on which the shot occurred.

After buying Peggle Deluxe and completing most of the game, Steve did a Google search looking for tips on scoring 750,000 points on one level – generally considered the toughest of the game’s 75 “Challenge Mode” hurdles. “If I hadn’t found the YouTube replay of Max’s wondrous shot, I don’t think I’d have ever thought of it myself,” Steve admits. “I’d already managed to clear all of the pegs on that level (“Beyond Reason,” the last level in the game, known less formally as “Zen Frog”) using the “space blast” power-up, but thanks to the videos on You Tube I finally achieved the 750K challenge. However, having completed the game I felt somehow robbed of what had become my working companion, and having read some of the comments on You Tube regarding the ‘impossibility’ of clearing the side pegs, I decided to see if I could find a way, and perhaps set a new scoring record in the process.”

“First, I set about finding a way to clear all the pegs – orange and blue – from the sides of the level without creating holes in the central ‘DNA strands’ of pegs due to ricochets,” he recalls. “As it turned out I achieved this in only an hour or so. I employed the same technique I’d used obtaining the ’100% clear’ on some of the harder levels, namely picking logical landmarks on the screen to use as mouse position markers. In this way I could easily replicate the shots, and when combined with a little ‘bucket timing’ could be guaranteed of getting a free ball to boot. Clearing the hole at the bottom of the helix proved more difficult though, since it was a moving target; and it took awhile longer to work out some shots that had at least a 70% chance of getting a free ball.”

Steve continues, “By this time I was regularly getting 5 million point finishes, and completing probably 1 in 5 attempts, and I had decided I wanted to beat the 13.5 million by a decent margin, and make a video to put on YouTube. It had also become apparent that the highest scores were dependent on having a large number of blue pegs left to clear after the last orange peg had been hit. So having got 14 Million a couple of times, the extremely lucky 18 Million point shot came about through a combination of the law of averages and 3 ‘lottery winner’ type lucky shots, each being the result of miss-timed shots that ended up kicking the bucket, taking out an extra peg or two, and miraculously ending up back in the bucket where I had originally intended them to go. It was these extra pegs, and a lucky final shot, that secured the very pleasing Cool Clear and Ultra Extreme Fever – though I don’t think that this added greatly to the final score. Of course getting an extra ball off of Reinfeld was just the icing on the cake and did add 300K to the score board which was a nice touch.”

As for the painstakingly shot and edited “how-to” video that follows the footage of the shot itself in Steve’s YouTube video, “I wanted to make a ‘live play’ tutorial section to show that it was indeed possible to clear the side pegs without touching the inner helix,” Steve explains. Indeed, Steve’s exhaustive video tutorial provides details on each and every shot of his record-breaking effort, including exactly where to position the cursor prior to launching each shot AND location and direction of the bucket below the playfield when each shot is launched.

When asked whether he believes his record will stand the test of time, Steve is realistic to say the least. “I’m under no illusion that my score is somehow ‘unbeatable’ – and in fact would love to see someone top it,” he grins. “That was the intention behind the tutorial in the video, to see if collectively the Peggle Deluxe community could compile enough information to achieve and even better shot and score. However there must be an absolute theoretical ceiling on the maximum score possible. Hopefully someday we’ll get to see what it is!”

Peggle review.

July 15 has arrived, but it doesn’t go away until midnight. So if you want a chance to win prizes, better get movin’! If you are stalking us on Twitter, subscribed to one of our many exciting feeds and newsletters, or did something else and haven’t emailed us, be sure to do that.

I will announce winners when random.org has done its job and I’ve done all the administrative part on my end. All details here:

http://www.meryl.net/2008/07/final-blog-birthday-bash-prizes/

Deb Ng no longer works as a freelance writer and has a full-time gig. However, she still works from a home office and doesn’t sit in meetings or watch presentations that bore. The differences between full-time work from home and freelance work from home …

• Hours: Freelancers have more flexibility in the hours, but they also might work in the evenings and on weekends depending on projects and schedules. Full-timers work set hours like most in the corporate world. But then in the corporate world, people rarely work the standard 8am to 5pm anymore (at least in the U.S.). I attend PTA meetings, play tennis, volunteer, and take my kids to their appointments. Would full-time work allow for this? Not so sure.
• Employer: Full-timers only work for one client, don’t have to worry about quoting rates, bookkeeping, and marketing. Freelancers have to make all of this part of their jobs. Freelancers must manage multiple clients. However, if freelancers lose a client — they already (should) have other clients to keep things going. A full-timer losing a job has no other income (this doesn’t count those who might have a couple gigs on the side).
• Benefits: Full-timers usually have benefits and freelancers don’t. Full-timers can go on paid vacation with little guilt. Freelancers can go on vacation, but don’t get paid for it — which can lead to feeling guilty (some are great about it and others like me aren’t).
• Illness: Full-timers get sick days. Company sick days vary widely, but freelancers don’t get money when they don’t work unless they’ve built up passive income. When I don’t feel well, I use my laptop and rest on the sofa or on my comfy bed. How much I work depends on deadlines — just a matter of finding a compromise. But when I feel awful (flu), I’m out and I won’t force anything.

One thing about going freelance is that it has given me a more well-rounded life than before when I worked in the corporate world. Before, it was work and family. Now, it’s volunteer (much more and sitting on the boards, too), tennis, more family involvement, and work (more variety and people).

I just need to add travel (other than Austin!) to the mix. At least, it’s a greater mix than when I worked in the corporate world. I didn’t exactly take real vacations while in the corporate world, but did sneak in a couple (one in 1998 and one in 2002).

Which type of career would you prefer? Why?

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ web site dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. July 14th: 50% off on Groschengrab Deluxe

Tue. July 15th: 40% off on Super Text Twist

Wed. July 16th: 65% off on Discovering Nature

Thu. July 17th: 55% off on Deep Blue Sea

Fri. July 18th: 50% off on Lethal Judgment 4 – Deluxe

Sat. July 19th: 40% off on Sally’s Spa

Sun. July 20th: 75% off on Linx0r

• The cost of writing fiction versus nonfiction
• Three things to consider when deciding how long your posts should be
• 100 useful web tools for writers
• Slate even has a reading list.
• Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs
• 100 Sites Entrepreneurs Should Visit
• 20+ free press distribution sites
• 16 great personal finance resources and blogs. If you know of good ones from a business POV, please comment. These are hard to find (not interested in stocks).

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Cell phones and popcorn… what happens? Watch the video.
• Pipl: Search for folks by name and location. OK, maybe it’s not so fun when you think about big brother… but people will find other ways if it weren’t for this site.
• Budget Travel: Real deals sorted by region and other categories like “girlfriend getaways.” Just makes me want to go somewhere!

I can’t help but hear… “You’ve gotta fight… for the right… to own your site” in my head. I can’t help but have that ’80s group Beastie Boys who remade You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right to Party playing in my head from time to time. {Taps head to try to get the song out.}

Travis Vocino brought up an interesting point in Paige Eissinger’s Do You Own Your Web Site?

Paige talks about owning your domain. Travis brings up an important point in response about owning the content on your site. The credit for the rest of this entry goes to Travis. Of course, consult with your legal experts if you need to take action. We’re just the messenger sharing experiences.

“Paying a web developer to create your site doesn’t necessarily give you the rights to it. Generally, that work is still the intellectual property of the designer and derivative works might sometimes be the subject of legal issues in the future.

“One of my clients had this type of issue with their previous designer who was basically holding some material hostage. Our legal team who we introduced through my consulting took care of it but not without some substantial cost. Intellectual property law can be a bit tricky.

“That’s why it’s important to accurately document who owns the entire rights package of the work and whether that is handed over upon payment of the final invoice or if it’s a situation where the designer is considered to be your employee and any/all works default to your ownership. Also, once those contracts are in place, it’s much easier to require things like source files (e.g. PSD, AI, FLA, etc.) that will allow you to have an exit strategy in case the relationship with your developer goes south.

“After hearing a couple of these stories and being directly involved in helping a client out of one, my company has begun including specific verbiage regarding the issue in our consulting agreements. This is primarily for the client’s peace of mind, more than anything, since we do give them the ownership rights.

“I’ve also been in a situation where the company was sold based on technology developed. The people that were contracted to bring the original concept to market still technically held the intellectual property rights and when they saw there was money to be made, they came knocking.

“Usually it’s not a problem until the relationship with the developer goes sour and the company goes on to great success. That’s when the phone starts ringing with someone wanting a cut.”

I think you get the moral of the story here.