Archive for August 2009

• The Reality of a Times Bestseller: Think you have to go to 40 signings in one week, every conference, etc. etc. to have a best seller? Not in one author’s case.
• A Day in the Life of an Author: Great lesson for authors with new releases.
• 99 Free Online Classes on Business and Entrepreneurship [Link: SternalPR]
• How to get your press releases read, not trashed [Link: Susan Jacobsen]
• Productivity and Time Wasters in Social Media: Covers much of what I believe in when it comes to social media.
• 12 Ways to Reveal Suspicious Shortened URLs: Ching Ya put a LOT of time and effort into researching this for us. I use Firefox’s Longurlplz, but the drawback is when I do a RT in Twitter — copy/paste copies the longer URL and not the shorter version. So I have to right-click copy the URL to get the shortened version.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 10 Strangest Allergies: I think being allergic to water is the worst.
• Tech Support Cheat Sheet: I do all I can to avoid making the call to tech support. Google, knowledgebase, forums…
• Awesome Transformer Costume: Gosh, Halloween isn’t so far off. And it’ll be the last year of first grade pumpkin math for my family
• Google Sightseeing: Funny sights.
• Rubik’s Cube for the Visually Impaired: I think this is a great tool for everyone to sharpen his/her senses by wearing a blindfold. I can’t do it without a blindfold, so it’d be pointless to try with one

Popcap Games brings us another edition of literary and epic battles starring Lex, the adorable bookworm. Following the success of Bookworm Adventures, Volume 2 adds new characters and power ups. The game play remains the same as you work to create as long words as possible. The longer the word, the more power you’ll have in your next move in battling the enemy.

Those familiar with the original game will find the game hasn’t changed much. You get a grid of letters. Select the letters to make a word. Some letters have a different color to indicate bonus points or power ups that give your hits extra punch.

You begin each round (based on locale) of battle by battling the little people. At the end of the round, you battle the big boss. They’re the hardest to defeat.

What’s new in Volume 2: characters, power ups, story and companions. You’ll get to pick one companion to go with you on your adventures. Each companion has a strength, so you’ll have to figure out what you need. Every round begins with a heads up on what you’ll face so you can pick two power ups and one companion to travel with you.

You have the occasional challenge of trying to create words that fall in a category such as metals (“nickel” and “gold”) or words with double letters (“moon” and “tattle”).

Prepare to laugh even when you’re waiting for a new level to load. You know how web sites show a loading bar or animation (pre-loader)? The game has comments instead that flash on the screen. “Spelling architekt,” “Playing Peggle” and other funny notes. Of course, Lex and the enemies exchange repartees.

I love the game’s use of Mother Goose and nursery rhymes characters such as the cat and fiddle and Miss Muffet. You’ll also see Alice in Wonderland and other literary characters like Odysseus and Moby Dick. I wish it had more of these types of characters and less of the Chinese, sci-fi and role-playing game (RPG) style characters since we had more of these in the original game. But that is probably a personal preference as I do love literary characters. Plus, there may be copyright laws involved.

The game lasts a long time and has great replay value. You unlock a second mode that’s timed — which freaks me out and puts me on edge. Also, during the adventure, the mini-games return so you can earn bonus power ups and take a break from battling.

One feature I wish the game had: the ability to use the keyboard to create the letters. I’ve played loads of word games and they allow you to use the mouse or keyboard. Keyboard is faster and more comfortable especially in timed mode.

Although Bookworm Adventures Volume 2 doesn’t have many enhancements and the story drags, it’s a joy to play especially for literary and word lovers and Lex fans. It brings a new experience so you don’t feel like you’re watching a rerun of the original game.

Image from Riesma Pawestri

I wish I could say this is stating the obvious — it’s not. People continue to miss out on opportunities because of something they said anywhere online. This applies not only to those looking for jobs, but also freelancers and those in current jobs. Future clients, customers, employers, agents and publishers WILL check up on you before they consider signing you.

This applies to interests including political. Now, we all have a right to support whomever we want running for office, but how we handle ourselves in supporting or not supporting a candidate can affect whether you get a job or gig. A financial service placement firm reported that a candidate lost out on a job because he posted a negative note on a candidate’s Facebook page.

Whole Foods Flap

I wish I had more details. Would the employer overlook a positive post? Was the negative post one of those shooting off at the mouth without any supporting facts? If the job was an executive or C-level one, it probably would not matter as Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote a Wall Street Journal Op/Ed that left many loyal customers seething. Mackey posts the full details on his blog. In short, his opnion went against what many of Whole Foods’ customers believe in.

Topics That Might Bug Folks

Would you want to hire someone who complains about family, marriage and illnesses, or posts about a drunken night ora frustrating editor? Most of us have done regretable or silly things in our lives, especially as youngsters, but they don’t belong online if you want to have a chance of landing a job, contract or gig.

Oh, you only send it to close friends and family? Even if you can trust them, are you sure they won’t accidentally forward it or accidentally spill it to the public? Remember landing the job at Cisco tweet? Or the Fedex insult?

Rule of Thumb

When you write anything electronically, do the Mom / child / employer check

Would you want your mama or child to read about your drunk night? Would you want your employer to read that you can’t stand X candidate? Would you want your client to see you whine and complain about life in general? Do you want an editor to see how difficult you are as a writer?

If necessary, reword them to ask “How would you feel if you read that a prospective peer or employee did X?” Maybe the reality will have a greater impact.

Recruiters, hiring managers and other folks know that many folks share too much about themselves online. While someone might keep that out of her professional life, that has no bearing on the message she sends. If you need to talk to someone, do it offline. Also, watch what you text on your phone because people can forward those too.

What stories have you heard about people who lost opportunities as a result of improper online posts?

Yeah!!! Did that sound too happy? I think summer would be more valuable if we stretched out the school year and have two to three week breaks at a time. Then, older kids would miss out the opportunity of having summer jobs or doing special programs. Eh, it’ll never change.

• If Only I Had Some Advice for Writers: I get questions like Rachelle does. Sometimes writing related and sometimes something else. When it’s writing, I point to this blog entry and this one prompted by a similar question. If you’re bold, send them to LMGTFY.
• Marketing Advice for Writers with Molly O’Neill: Mine — always make marketing part of your job no matter where you are in your project or career [Link: Greg Pincus].
• 5 Questions for Those Who Don’t Have Time to Market/Promote: See previous. No excuses for not marketing!
• The Press Releases of the Damned: Love this. I rarely predict things — but I called it on Palm’s Foleo. I had a better article on the Foleo ready for print publication, but Palm killed the product before the article was to print.
• How to Drive Traffic with Repeat Tweets: I repeat-tweet on occasion and it’s not a problem. Few people keep track of all your tweets and won’t notice unless you repeat yourself too often.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Broadway’s Next to Normal Goes Viral, the Twitterized version of the musical. Follow ‘em @n2nbroadway.
• 12 Funniest Wedding Cake Toppers
• Firekites’ Autumn Story Chalk Animation Video: I like the song and the animation fit well with the mood.
• Cardboard Sculptures: (Picture me: Jaw dropped, whites of my eyes peering)
• Grammar geeks unite! [Link: @kylejameson @lydiabreakfast]

You’ve probably heard this before when an original hidden object game came out, but this time I mean it — Pure Hidden flips the hidden object genre upside on its head, spinning it around and throwing everything we thought we knew about hidden object games out the door, heck — out of this world.

Pure Hidden takes place out of the world in a colorful scene reminding me of 1960s or 1970s graphics style with a plant and budding flowers. The flowers hold boxes, or surprises. But you can’t open them until you complete a puzzle inside one of the boxes. Upon finding the “key” or object to open another box, you can move on or you can finish the puzzle.

Good surprises wait for you behind those boxes. You could be finding hidden objects from a list, but the scenes vary. They’re nothing like you’ve ever seen before — more like different styles of mosaics.

You’ll never encounter identical scenes and objects. A couple of games repeat — not the hidden object ones, though. The dominoes game repeats and it’s a delight to do it again.

Despite “pure” in its name, the game has you doing more than finding items. Yes, sometimes you’ll look for a bunch of the same objects. But also, you’ll knock down a bunch of dominoes, help seeds bloom, look for differences in two scenes — however, in a lot of unique ways. One way has you spinning the scene around from day to night in 3D to find the differences.

Although you can move on to another scene once you find the object to open the next box, you may not help help but want finish the scene because it’s compelling and fun. You can play zen (ohhhmmmm – relaxed) or timed mode, so whatever your preference — you got it. Really, this one is for savoring not rushing through.

Hints are available when the asterisk fills up and you can select which item you want to find. The game posts a circle for you melting away any frustration in trying to find something.

The music wows. No story exists to waste your time. And the game has you from the first click, or close to it. Just go play for ten minutes. Pure Hidden is pure gold. It’s the kind of thing you’d want to do on a rainy day and a sunny one, too. Good to know innovation and creativity remain strong out there in the hidden object genre.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.

Inspired by the foolishness and mayhem we see on Clean House, my husband and I spent much of the past weekend cleaning house. We cleaned out the kids’ closets and dressers — removing outgrown clothes, those they don’t want anymore and shoes without a partner (yep, my daughter had several of these). Then, I tackled the game room (oh, man… especially when you have hundreds of Hot Wheels, Pokemon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards and Bakugan between two boys).

Dumping Stored Magazines

I remembered I kept every issue of every magazine my writing work appeared in. I also found Writer’s Digest Magazine as far back as from 2000.

I threw away all of the old Writer’s Digest (I still read the magazine, just no reason to keep old ones in storage) and kept only a few of the magazines where I had a feature — not just a column. I probably dumped two-thirds of the magazines in my storage box.

Reading Magazines

I love to read magazines. They take 10 to 30 minutes per issue (except for Reader’s Digest). Rather than keeping the issues with inspiring articles, I trash them as soon as I finish. HOWEVER… I cut out…

1. Anything I want to look up… an author, a book, a web site.
2. Anything I want to do later such as “Word Power” from Reader’s Digest, which sharpens my vocabulary.
3. Anything I want to try later… a tip, a recipe, etc.

Instead of having thick piles of entire issues, I have thin piles of ripped pages. Those that take little time, I put on my office desk so I can handle them when I am back in the office. I review the rest of the pile on a monthly basis, or around there.

Like handling the mail, read your magazine and toss while holding on to anything you want to look up or follow up on. If you keep it, count on never seeing it again until you decide to clean house as those over five-year-old issues showed.

Writing for a Magazine

I have a couple of issues of magazines I’d like to query. I study the magazine before I pitch the editor. But rather than having a dozen issues, I hold on to the last couple of issues. When a new one comes in, the oldest one goes out. I think five issues is more than enough.

Set a limit on the number of issues you’ll keep, and then just throw out the oldest one when the new one arrives.

Managing Subscriptions

I don’t subscribe to as many magazine as I have in the past especially with the books I need to read. I have a couple subscriptions I pay for and a couple I receive free. But mind you, I don’t subscribe to every magazine I can get free. The topic still matters and I don’t want to receive something for the sake of free-ness.

Aside from TV Guide Magazine, no more weekly magazines for me. That’s too much.

How do you manage your magazines? Or have you given them up?

Ready for some sweet-smelling success? You can do it by running a perfume business in Passport to Perfume, and without driving the nose crazy in sniffing the different perfumes and colognes. OK, OK, I’ll cut it out with the scent talk.

Picture this: It’s the 1940s and a young woman, Sophia, we learn about her father’s accidental death from years before. She runs her own perfume shop when a package arrives containing her father’s diary. The diary reveals ingredients and where to find them in order to create Marie Antoinette’s fragrance.

The diary inspires Sophia to grow her shop and travel in between to search for various ingredients to recreate the special fragrance and others. She makes and sells perfumes in three locales stocking her selves with different shaped bottles with different colors and features.

Every couple of time management scenes, she takes off for various countries to track down special ingredients. These scenes switch to hidden object game mode where Sophia looks for hidden ingredients to use in her fragrances. After collecting the ingredients and new bottles, she can create new fragrances.

When she returns to her store, she needs to refill her stock as needed and buy upgrades. She can upgrade her store to add decor to bring in more customers and compel them to be more patient. Other upgrades allow her to speed the machines.

You play the Passport to Perfume store scenes in time management style, fulfilling customer orders. These scenes can turn wild and frenzied as customers request specific features making it all too easy to mess up an order. The difficulty level may be too easy for experienced players, but still challenge them in terms of trying to get the orders right. Or they can skip story mode and try the more challenging game play in endless mode.

The hidden object game play feels repetitive and tedious to find these ingredients using a brush and shovel. The hidden objects take little effort to find with the eyes, but a lot of mouse work in dealing with the tools to reveal ingredients and bottles hiding behind leaves and dirt. The ingredient part, even the entire game, would be more fun had it “copied” the Chocolatier formula.

The machines might drive you crazy. You can click the machines to send Sophia to the machine, but then nothing happens. You must press the button to activate the machine. Very annoying. The whole thing should work as one. The graphics disappoint. They just don’t measure up to the standards set in other time management games.

Passport to Perfume serves up a neat theme that some will find everything rosy. Give it a try and download Passport to Perfume.

• Hilarious analogies from Writer Unboxed: Contest called for writing funny analogies. I had a hard time deciding which to vote on.
• Fund Your Writing Projects: There was a controversial and fascinating discussion in #editorchat and #journchat about this — but lots of variables involved. It’s possible to do it right.
• How to Run a Successful Home-based Business: From the amazing person behind #smallbizchat.
• Some Local Newspapers Thrive During Recession [Link: Donald Schwartz]: I love me some print newspaper first thing every mornin’!

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Twitter Pigeon: Offline Twitter client.
• Hard Drive Weight Increasing: If you load more apps on your laptop, does that mean your laptop gets heavier? That’s what one person thinks.
• What looks like a surf board, but doesn’t float? The owner has no idea. As far as I know, these haven’t gone the way of cassette tapes and typewriters.
• Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren’t Allowed to See on Google Maps: Coinky-dink that it’s the same number as Area 51? Of course, that’s just the 51 things they found. Maybe there’s more.
• 25 Worst Album Covers of All Time [Link: @Auldhouse]
• 15 Geekiest Tattoos: Clever to tat a ruler on your arm. No tats for me.

Trouble on the set! Flo’s friend Gilda needs help feeding the cast and crew of her TV show. You prepare, cook, assemble and serve the delicious menu items from each TV-themed restaurant. Watch for celebrities, but beware of the short-tempered director who will make sure everyone gets back to work quickly! Can you successfully feed the egos and stomachs of the cast and crew before they walk off the set?

Sounds like Food Network’s “Who will be the next Food Network Star” Diner Dash style. I look forward to trying this out as I’ve been on a Food Network and Travel Network kick lately. Plus, I loved the original Cooking Dash.

Download Cooking Dash – DinerTown Studios to give it a try.

Not another great game coming out!? Looks like we’re going through a “busy” period of casual games in which many and high quality games are hitting the wires. Build-a-lot 4: Power Source takes on a “greening” theme, which makes it similar to Plan It Green. I’ll be interested in seeing the similarities and differences. Anyone play both yet?

You’ll have technicians working for you to convert homes into more energy efficient ones and add recreational facilities to neighborhoods.

Check out the review of Build-a-lot 3: Passport to Europe.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.