Archive for December 2008

I love PopCap Games
Chuzzle
and Peggle.
. When you arrive on the home page, click “New Deals Everyday, Click Here” to see all the Winter Funderland deals.

Today’s deal is the first FREE “level pack” for Peggle Nights. Available exclusively at Popcap.com, the Peggle Nights “Holiday 2008″ level pack features five all-new levels, with holiday themes or themes related to other PopCap titles – or in some cases, both. The new levels can be played in the Quick Play or Duel modes of Peggle Nights, and there are also ten new challenges in Challenge Mode based on the new levels. Additional level packs will be forthcoming in 2009 and beyond.

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

Mon. December 15th: 70% off on Vega

Tue. December 16th: 60% off on Linkit: A Christmas Carol

Wed. December 17th: 60% off on PreVa

Thu. December 18th: 50% off on In-Poculis Mahjong

Fri. December 19th: 50% off on Kikujiro

Sat. December 20th: 50% off on PIRATE! Battle for SKULL ATOLL

Sun. December 21st: 50% off on Space Ping Pong Match

• 64 B2B Marketing Tools and Resources
• Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words: No preparing to die… just to know the difference between lay and lie (not included… just had to rhyme). The Princess Bride, like Copyblogger says, icky title — great movie.
• Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples
• GovTwit Directory: List of government peeps who use Twitter. I worked for US government right out of college. Wonder if I could’ve Twittered? Probably from home and not work. Didn’t find any from my agency in list. Nice name… “GovTwit.”
• Comment Forms Designs: Nice collection. Sure makes mine feel so 1990s.
• 2008 Eddies: Edublog awards.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Cake Wrecks: I could spend too much time on this blog.
• Coffee Art [Link: Nancy Duarte]
• 6 EXTREMEly overused game titles: Good stuff. I’d add “Deluxe.”
• Best Free Games to Play This Holiday: Games are a wonderful way to spend holiday time especially when playing with family.
• jackassletters.com: Real letters. Real replies.
• Top 12 Tech Embarrassments in 2008.

PlayFirst announces the winners of its first ever PlayFirst Firsties. Of course, the games up for nomination are PlayFirst games. But we gotta admit they produce great games.

We love the following winners:

• Flo in Cooking Dash as Best Leading Lady. [Game review]
• Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan as Best Hidden Object. [Game review]
• Natalie Brooks: Secrets of Treasure House [Game review] and Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze [Game review] as first and second place winners in Best Adventure Game.
• Build-A-Lot 2: Town of the Year wins Best Simulation and Strategy Game. [Game review]
• Cooking Dash as Tastiest Food Game.
• Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet for Best Mystery Game. [Game review]

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” –Winston Churchill

“Failure is an event, never a person.” –William D. Brown

It’s been too easy for me to fall into a pity party and woe is me situation. OK, maybe I did that for three minutes. I consider myself lucky to have a spouse, three healthy kids (for the most part, one does have a couple of challenges), a comfortable home, and a home office business that I love.

The first part of this story is over at Bionic Ear Blog because it talks about what not having an MRI due to a cochlear implant.

Several people inspired me. The first being Daphne Gray-Grant. She had her second stroke in six years! My dad, who died on 24 December 2007, died from complications of his April 2007 stroke. I knew her story was incredible and her attitude most impressive. She wrote, “Life is a gift. Use it. Write with it.”

Right before my surgery, my friends mentioned, Stuff Happens (and then you fix it!): 9 Reality Rules to Steer Your Life Back in the Right Direction. I don’t usually order books right away as I’ve got plenty to read. But it struck me and I felt like I needed to read it. Another inspiration comes from Karen’s “Deaf and Thankful,” which published right after the surgery.

It only took a day to read the book, if that. It contains stories of people getting pass roadblocks in their lives. One person had a lot of money from the dot com days only to lose the money and everything. He rebuilt his life.

Our failures are not failures. They tell us what doesn’t work and we keep on trying. This alleged quote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Notice these were events, not a reflection upon him as a person.

Although I can’t do as much work for my clients as I can or do much laundry (both of which puts heavy duty guilt on this gal), I remember that I have my life and family.

My clients all understand the situation and that’s why I put high value on being personable and building relationships with my clients most of whom are friends. In fact, one of my first clients and I met in person when he flew to Texas from Minnesota for a family celebration.

Coupon: $5 off of any full priced single game of your choice!

Code: PFHOLIDAYSPECIAL

Expires: January 15th, 2009

Suggestions on where to spend the coupon.

PlayFirst just launched Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye a historical hidden object adventure game featuring the two heroes from The Nightshift Code (currently on sale for 99 cents), Mike and Isabel. The game has you traveling from the jungles of Guatemala to the streets of Moscow, from present day back to the history of the Spanish Civil War while hunting for stolen artifacts across multiple continents. Can you find mysterious Jaguar’s Eye before it’s too late?

Maybe you’d rather create a perfect island paradise with My Tribe. Shipwrecked on a beautiful tropical island, your brave little tribespeople must build a new home. For Virtual Villager fans.

Mortimer Beckett’s back for an all-new, hidden object adventure game! Although Mortimer was able to get rid of the ghosts in Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of Spooky Manor, his Uncle Jerome’s home is now host to another ominous challenge – a time portal! Even worse, the Time Bomb that would close the portal has been scattered across eight different eras! Join Mortimer in Mortimer Beckett and the Time Paradox for a wild trip through time to find the scattered pieces, put it back together, and close the portal before it’s too late (playing this one now and so far, so good.

Due to skier’s thumb, I can’t type long notes, articles, or blog entries. I’ve used the opportunity to clean up my email box since it only involves the mouse (which I’ve become adept at with my left hand though I’m a lefty, I use the right hand for mousing business) and a finger or two instead of both hands.

I use filters to file emails from certain companies and email addresses into specific folders. I keep the inbox as empty as possible. It rarely reaches 10 emails after a review. You’ve probably read most of these tips at some place or another, but it never hurts to have a refresher.

Here’s a list of things to do to clean up email boxes with details following.

• Notice which newsletters you never read or always delete and take the following action:
  1. Unsubscribe.
  2. Change email options to help you receive fewer messages from the sender. Some companies have multiple options or let you control the frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) as well as individual vs. digest (all the individual emails combined into one daily digest).
  3. Create or edit the filter to file it away or delete it.
• Take instant action on emails that won’t take longer than five minutes. For example, someone asking for canned food donations? Get up, grab a few cans, put in bag, and put by door or inside car. As soon as that’s done, delete or file the email.
• Create a folder for things you like to read (newsletters), but they don’t require action or instant reading. That way, when you get a break or need a break, you just jump to the newsletter or reads folder and read away.
• Create a folder for current work. This helps me ensure I keep my inbox as clean as possible while keeping current work in an easy to find place. Once I finish the project or assignment, I file the email into its permanent folder.
• Create a folder for other email accounts. For example, I’m a big PTA volunteer and have PTA email addresses. Those all go into my PTA folder instead of my main inbox. When I take care of the PTA item, I file the email into the specific PTA folder (elementary school, high school, or city PTA) out of the main PTA folder. The main PTA folder acts like my inbox for PTA stuff.
• Create a folder for follow up. These items have no time constraints and low priority. Or you can treat the folder that you check once a week or else the emails will stay there for too long.

Sometimes we forget to change things up. For instance, I’d delete the same newsletters that came into my inbox daily. So I started paying attention to these deletions. As a result, I’ve either unsubscribed to the newsletter or change the filter to send it to the delete folder or other folder out of my way.

I don’t want to unsubscribe to all of them because some do still have gems. Either it may not be what I need on a daily basis or they send too many promotional emails between newsletters with valuable content.

Gmail handles most of my newsletter subscriptions. So I can always search if I need something. I rarely enter Gmail’s trash folder beyond searching for items. With my desktop email, I’d delete trashed emails a couple of times a week. It used to be every day. Gmail helped me curb that wasteful habit. I never delete trash in Gmail.

In essence, Gmail helped become less obsessive with email cleaning. I added Gmail into Thunderbird (my email client) as an account using IMAP. Gmail has instructions for doing this. The Gmail folders in Thunderbird reflect those in Gmail. I can create a new folder in Thunderbird for Gmail and it appears on Gmail, too.

I moved a lot of my Thunderbird filed emails into Gmail. Three reasons:

1. Access the messages from any computer, anywhere.
2. Better backup solution than my computer’s backup.
3. Keep local inbox lightweight as attachments go into Gmail or elsewhere.

I don’t file everything into Gmail because I like the faster and offline access to the emails on my computer. That’s a personal preference. I also moved many of my newsletter subscriptions from my desktop account to Gmail.

Only habit I haven’t broken is checking email less often. But email is my “phone” that I hear from school and elsewhere needing instant addressing (like to pick up my sick kid from school). What tips do you have for better email management?

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

Mon. December 8th: 40% off on Laxius Force

Tue. December 9th: 60% off on Cruxade

Wed. December 10th: 60% off on StoneLoops!

Thu. December 11th: 60% off on Saqqarah

Fri. December 12th: 50% off on Santa’s Breakout

Sat. December 13th: 50% off on Gunslinger Solitaire

Sun. December 14th: 50% off on Haunted House Quest

Still can’t write, but discovering great stuff in whiling away the time reading and learning… and social networking…

• Scottish Vernacular Dictionary [Link: Joanna]
• How Alltop Powers Bloggers
• How to Use Twitter as a Twool
• Top 10 Tweeters to follow by subject… be warned… long list.
• Convert your blog into a podcast [Link: Deborah] I’ve added it here. What do you think?
• Real life LinkedIn stories leading to opportunities, 100 Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn, and Success Stories [Link: Scott].
• Pitch Engine: Run your PRs through it. My first PR in PE.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Sequart Research and Literary Organization: “a non-profit organization devoted solely to the study and promotion of the artistic and literary medium alternately known as comics, comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, manga, sequential art, and sequart.”
• Help a friend & her mother. Maybe you can hire her as she’s a QuickBooks pro. Even folks like me who love software don’t like QuickBooks. Took a class and a lot of courage to finally get the hang of it.
• Wonderglen Productions: Satire site a la Christopher Guest, Best in Show, and Spinal Tap. Half the fun consists of trying to figure out who the site’s actual authors and owners are.
• 15-Second Film Festival: To heck with two hour bum numbing movies. Hello, 15-second movies.
• Models made out of books [Link: Guy]. Amazing and detailed work.
• Eyeballing game [Link: Steve]
• Regiftable: Regifting stories.

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

Mon. December 1st: 75% off on Aargon Deluxe

Tue. December 2nd: 75% off on A Snake’s Life

Wed. December 3rd: 75% off on Mahjongg Variations

Thu. December 4th: 60% off on Jump Jump Jelly Reactor

Fri. December 5th: 75% off on RatMaster

Sat. December 6th: 75% off on Fragmentor

Sun. December 7th: 75% off on Space Taxi 2