Author: Jonathan Riggall

Friday Timewaster: Silent conversation

 

Finally, someone has answered the age old question, ‘what happens when you mix Mario with literature?’ Silent Conversation is what happens – a unique mix of reading and platforming! Each level is a poem, ranging from the super short to really long, and the words are spread out to make platforms for your letter ‘I’ to jump. To score, you have to touch as many words as you can. When you touch the last word of the piece, the level ends, giving you a score and grade. The levels that I’ve played through feature pretty serious poetry – there’s not a lot of humor.

I’ve certainly never played anything quite like Silent Conversation, and it’s an idea that works surprisingly well. Can you concentrate on reading and platforming at the same time?

Telling stories with The Sims 3 blogs

 

The Sims 3 is undoubtedly the best in the series, and it’s so engrossing that people have been inspired to create blog soap operas out of the game. The first one I saw, like most people, was Alice and Kev. This excellent blog follows two homeless Sims, an insane father and his clumsy, shy daughter. It manages to be funny and touching, so it’s a shame the author seems to be taking a break! Read it from the start here.

There are an increasing number of Alice and Kev-a-likes. Unfortunately not many of them are as well written or humorous. There seems to be a split between having no real story, or being really worthy. In His Own World is about an unloved boy with mental problems. There are lots more characters in this story, and the author clearly enjoys creating difficult situations, however it feels forced, and lacks the humor of Alice and Kev. You can also follow Meet Mitsy Kedler, Quinn and Kendra, or Right and Wrong.

TheSims3Blog doesn’t tell a story, but features lots of videos about the various people created in the game, some of them are great! The most promising Sims 3 blog I’ve seen for a while, though it’s still in its infancy, is Left 4 Sims, a blog that recreates the Zombie fighting survivors from the fantastic Valve horror shooter.

I can’t think of another game that has its players blogging about their experiences, but perhaps Battlefield 1943 or Super Mario aren’t such good narrative material….

Friday Timewaster: You Only Live Once

Gran Turismo? Call of Duty? You may think they’re pretty realistic, but you’ve never played You Only Live Once. This flash-based browser game shouldn’t take you too long to play – there are no complex controls to learn, just a humorous storyline, some jumping, and the most realism you’ve ever seen in any game. Seriously, this is extremely realistic! It might have great replay value, but you won’t be playing twice…

In defense of Apple

Apple has been getting a lot of flak recently, from us as well as elsewhere. People aren’t happy the the iPhone App Store isn’t allowing Google Voice, or in general about the policy of not allowing any app that does something already available from Apple.

Apple is scared of competition, stifling innovation and generally annoying people by not doing whatever it is people want. I’m not sure things should have got so bad, despite my earlier claim they might be losing their cool.

It is certainly true that if Microsoft was seen as being this controlling today, it would get roasted by the press (as it has done in the past). But I think Microsoft are in a very different position, as they have a massive market lead over the rest, and unless you can pay more for an Apple,  or are brave enough for the uber-tech-nerd world of Linux, you will use Microsoft. So they’d better listen to people, as people mostly aren’t using them by choice.

But you choose to use a Mac, or to buy an iPhone. Apple products are beautifully designed, incredibly user friendly, and generally don’t crash. People loved the iPhone when it came out, but now it’s being demonized for not being able to do something it has never been able to do. Maybe the iPhone would be improved with Google Voice –  but it’s no worse without it. It seems a great deal of this is that users feel they are being denied a free service, but you can’t blame companies for wanting to maintain revenue.

To me, people are wrongly assuming that because they own a product, they have a say in its development. They don’t. Apple, like Nintendo, make incredible products by not listening to people, and being secretive. There may be odd things that other companies do better, but none of them get the whole package as right as the iPod and Mario creators. When lowly users are allowed to get involved, you get a big mess as the Simpsons showed us years ago with “The Homer” automobile.

As for exploding iPods: that just sounds cool!

Today’s downloads for Windows, Mac and Mobile

Windows: SmarterFox is a neat little add-on for Firefox that can really speed up your browsing. It adds functions to your right-click context menu, allowing you to easily search Wikipedia, Google in a click. You can also download all links or images from the page your viewing without hassle. For such a little program, SmarterFox is pretty impressive.

Flock logoMac: If Firefox ever does go down the wrong road or starts to decline, then Flock could be one of the main contenders to take its place. It’s based on the same engine, only with a greater focus on social networking integration. Flock 2 is the second major release of this excellent browser, with most of the improvements relating to enhanced security and performance.

How much charge have you got leftiPhone: The default battery life indicator on the iPhone looks nice, but isn’t the most precise way of telling how much time you have left before your next charge. Step forward BatteryStatus, a free application that gives you a more accurate guide to what you can do on your remaining charge. It assess how much longer you will be able to talk, use the Internet, leave idle, etc.

Friday Timewaster: Frobot

Two words: Robot + Disco.

If you’re still reading this, and not playing Frobot, you probably never will. Just in case I can convince the non robot and disco fans out there, this is a kind of shoot ’em up. It’s free, and plays in your browser with Flash. You control the Frobot, on a mission to save boring suits and government agents from themselves, and turn them into party loving disco dancers. Move with the keyboard, and aim with the mouse. You have to be careful – once you shoot a suit, they turn into a dancer, but will die if you shoot them some more! The music’s cool, the robot’s cool… it is a bit tough, but I can forgive that, as it’s got robots and disco in it!

Download Bing backgrounds in seconds

I didn’t expect to like Bing, but I have to admit it’s a pretty cool search engine. I’m still using Google by default – it’s hard to break the habit – but it’s nice to have Bing around too. The first thing anyone notices about Microsoft’s new wannabe is the great background images.

With the free Bing Downloader, you can quickly grab every day’s Bing backgrounds just by opening it. It doesn’t need an installation, just double click the EXE file to go. Download it free here. Once you have, wherever you keep the EXE file, create a folder in the same place called “BingImages”. All the images will then be automatically saved there.

It only takes a moment to open it, and doing so daily, you’ll soon have a ton of great looking wallpaper images! There are three every day – did you know there are three different local versions of Bing? I had no idea, but US, Japan and the rest of the world (International) each get different backgrounds.

Share your files on Twitter

Stop the presses, it’s a Twitter service that doesn’t use the prefix “twit”! That already makes FileSocial pretty cool even before you try it. FileSocial is a file sharing service for Twitter, that allows you to share any file up to 50mb.

Using it is simple, you have to allow it access to your Twitter account, then just choose your file, upload it, write a message, and it will be tweeted from your account. You can choose not to tweet directly, and just create a link to your upload. As FileSocial accepts any format, including compressed files, you can share whatever you like, which is excellent. According to their site, there is no expiry date on your uploads, although you can of course delete whatever you upload.

The service is quite new and still in a beta testing phase, but works well. You can see how many visits your link has got, although not how many downloads. Hopefully they will release a desktop application so you don’t need to always go through their website. Otherwise, FileSocial looks like a really promising Twitter service.

Friday Timewaster: Moonlights

It may sound like a cheesy cocktail bar, but Moonlights is actually a dangerously addictive physics puzzle game. It’s a flash based browser game, very much influenced by the excellent World of Goo. You have to build a frame from a certain point, so that it touches the moon, but your building material is kind of rubbery. This means as your constructions get more complicated, you really have to be careful, making sure nothing collapses. Some objects you can use to lean on, but anything purple destroys your hard work, so has to be carefully avoided.

Level design varies, and there are occasional annoying ones, but the majority allow to make elaborate and improbably wobbly constructions, which is really satisfying. It’s a very relaxing game, and really intuitive, give it a go!