I recently moved my residence and business to beautiful Bellingham, WA. Although it is a small town, approximately 100,000 residence in the general area, learning my way around can be time consuming. I decided to put my Palm and my Pocket PC into full use by taking full advantage of the contacts feature.
When I visit a new store downtown or in the Fairhaven district I add the store to my phone book. If I happened to have a nice conversation with the owner or employee I will add their name to the notes section. This has been a great help as on more than one occasion as I have asked for that person by name. For example at the print shop I know ask for a specific employee to do all my business cards and other stationary.
To remind me what the store looks like I will take a picture with my PDA and add it to the contact list. This might seem silly, but if you only visit the store occasionally having a reminder what it looks like is very helpful, especially in the downtown corridor.
Part of the fun of living someplace new is discovering short cuts. Whenever I find a new or interesting way to get to a store I will open the notes section and jot down the directions. This is also very helpful if I have not visited the store in a few weeks. It answers the questions, “hmm, do I take state street or 11th?”
I highly recommend all users when using the contacts list to take advantage of the note section and take a picture to remind you of the location.
I listen to NPR on a regular basis, especially when I am making the drive from Bellingham, WA to Seattle, WA. Every few months NPR will have a fundraiser (OK, not ever few months but it sure feels like it). This year the local station in the Pacific Northwest is having an online fundraiser. I see this as a great opportunity to give back to NPR so I have donated all five games that Smart Box Design has developed. They are WordPop, Word Monaco Solitaire, Word Watch, Triples, and Farkle Dice. Bidding on the games is from February 16 – 22, 2007. You can go here to get involved and donate or make a bid.
The editor of Palm 24/7 selects his two favorite games and WordPop is one of them. We are of course thrilled that he would choose WordPop. For all your Mobile news make sure to drop by daily to Palm 24/7.
Here is their commentary:
For me there are two that stand out as being perfectly suited to the PDA / Smart Phone format but it would be good to know which games you have played the most and keep coming back to time and time again.
Igzo The Dolphin is just so addictive and probably the game I have played most on any type of device or games console. It’s only 13k and free so there’s no excuse not to try it.
WordPop! has had me turning in circles for the past few months- I am not very good at it but that does not stop me trying over and over and over again to beat my high score. It has been responsible for more late nights than anything else lately.
Palm is now distributing a new patch for the camera. There was a bug where the camera would not shut down correctly after being uses which resulted in a battery drain.
You can get the patch from here:
http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo/680cameraupdate.html
Palm Addicts is reporting significant gains in battery usage after using the patch. Several users are now saying that they can use the phone all day without a recharge.
Great job Palm for releasing a patch so quickly.
I am getting a bit weary of reviewing word games (I love them, but there’s just not that many new things you can do with them at this point), but Word Monaco Solitaire is the most interesting title in this category that I’ve seen all year. The game is based on the idea of playing a word game based on solitaire at some sort of resort in Monaco (I could probably find better things to do in Monaco than play card games, but that’s the basic idea and it does give the game a nice atmosphere).
Here’s how it works: The game pieces consist of letters that are arranged in columns just like they are in solitaire, and the idea is to move them around until every letter forms a word. That’s the essence of the game, although three rule variations are offered along with nine difficulty levels.
The basic concept works well enough. Even though the number of words in each level is limited, getting all the letters into just the right spot provides a good challenge. Had the game been thrown together with limited sound and mediocre graphics, it would likely be overlooked as just another shoddy word game. What makes WM an exceptional title are not only the terrific graphics, music, but the overall feel of the game. While the graphics and sound evoke the famous French resort country and contributes to the game’s atmosphere as a casual game, WM provides plenty of feedback to the player. Once you successfully create a word, a green gem appears over that column. Dragging over a letter or group of letters results in a pleasant sound effect as well as the last “card” in the column to smoothly flip over.
Word Monaco Solitaire is not quite the same as taking a vacation, but its design and implementation meet all the requirements of a great casual game. Its visually stimulating, has great audio, has challenging but laid back game play, is very engaging, and is very easy to play. While it relies more on eye and ear candy more than other word games, it’s still good fun.
Title:
Word Monaco Solitaire
Developer: Smart Box Design
Genre: Word Games
Demo: Y
Platform: Pocket PC 2003+
Price: $14.95
Rating (of 4): 3.4