Scrabulous is back under the new name Wordscraper with some cosmetic changes, point tabulation changes and a what seems like a complete rework of game play. We’ll see how it plays with the Facebook crowd.
Archive for July, 2008
British academics have traced the world’s oldest recorded joke to the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq. The joke reads:
Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.
I think the real humour here is that the oldest recorded joke is a fart joke.
I’ve dabbled in tracking my golf scores and for the most part have had good results with a free online solution called GolfTrack at FreeGolfInfo.com. It lets me track the few stats I record (score, putts, fairways hit, up-and-down, sand saves, and penalty strokes). The free version shows me a trend graph of my last 10 rounds, as well as provides me with my average scoring on different holes, sorted by total or course. If I want I can drill down to one course and see how I fair on each hole (average score, fairways hit, putts and penalty strokes). I went looking for a local solution for the Mac and the only decent product seems to be Scorecard by Cynical Peak Software. Entering scores is dead easy, and they provide a wealth of statistics, but currently they don’t provide any graphs, and I actually find it difficult to locate the stats i want (I like to see my scoring average on par 3’s, par 4’s and par 5’s). It also comes with a price tag of $29.95 USD, less 20% if you know where to look. In an interesting stroke of coincidence Macworld posted a review today of the leading golf score tracking applications for the iPhone. From their review the best product (and surprisingly also the free one) is TeeShot. It tracks all the stats I currently track and returns a heap of information. It looks to be a real winner now, and with promises of GPS inclusion (think accurately track the length of your drives and location on the course) it can only get better.
With free products like this, and the current online solution I use, I am finding it very difficult to justify shelling out $30 for Scorecard.
So I posted a short while ago about the downfall of Scrabulous on Facebook. I’m sad to see it go, but hey, something is replacing it so no lasting harm done. Except there is. I got to thinking about the fact that Scrabble rights are owned by Hasbro in North America and Matel company worldwide. This has resulted in two separate ‘official’ Scrabble applications on Facebook — one for North America and one for the rest of the world. The rub? I can no longer play scrabble with my International friends.
Thanks Scrabble. You suck.
Back in November I linked to some impressive 3D maps of China (think old-school Sim City pixel art) that I found via Digital Urban. Today Digital Urban has pointed me toward YouCity and 3 demos maps of Manhattan they have created. Is it useful for navigating? Maybe not, but man do they look nice.
It looks like Hasbro has finally gotten Scrabulous shutdown on Facebook. I don’t really care how I get to play Scrabble online, as long as I can and it’s free. The only upsetting bit about this news is that I’ll lose all my statistics — no more gloating about that 170pt bingo, or that amazing come from behind win by 1pt.
The Rip Curl Pro Search, stop 6 on the ASP World Tour, has selected the location for the event and has announced it as ’somewhere in Indonesia’. This is one of the more interesting events on the schedule because it is in a different location every year. They look at the swell maps and figure out where it’ll be pumping then descend on the area. How ‘random’ it really is I’m not sure, but hey, it’s cool none the less.
Kelly Slater has won 4 of the last 5 events and looks unstoppable this season. That guy is a freak. I’m sure he has boards older than some of his competitors, but that hasn’t stopped him from winning 8 World Championships and laying down some amazing performances this year to push him closer to a 9th.
If you thought it was tough to get a good cup of coffee in Australia before think again. Starbucks has announced it’s closing 61 of its 84 stores across Australia, leaving only a few operations that are performing well in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. It pains me to call Starbucks a ‘good cup of coffee’ but in light of the espresso-only coffee the Australians enjoy, Starbucks was the only show in town serving traditional drip coffee — and at half the price of an Americano (watered down espresso).
I’ve never had a real need to have 2-way sync of my iCal and Google Calendar, even though I played around with products like Spanning Sync in the past. My need for 2-way sync is not worth $65. News today over at Lifehacker seems to suggest I can get the bare-bones sync I need for free as Google has added CalDAV support.
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