Posted on September 2nd, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
These “hidden object” games are addictive. We’re onto a new one, called “Mystery P.I., Stolen in San Francisco.”
This is a great game for playing side by side with your sweetie. In it, $250 million in gold has been stolen from an armored car. The gold’s owner has hired you, ace detective, to find and return it before the trail goes cold. Along the way, you’ll find 2100 hidden objects in 25 San Francisco scenes. We liked the puzzles interspersed throughout as much as the hidden object games.
Mystery P.I. is $20 from spintop-games.com. We thought this was high, but you get an hour to play for free before deciding whether you want to buy it. By the time we’d finished our hour, we were hooked. It’s a much higher quality experience than we’ve gotten from free online games.
The average person takes 10 hours to finish a complete round and usually plays it two more times in an attempt to improve their score.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
If you have old computer games that won’t play on your new machine, there may be a fix. For classic games, like Monkey Island, Loom, Indiana Jones, Backyard Baseball, Fatty Bear’s Birthday Surprise, Putt Putt Joins the Circus, and many others, go to scummvm.org. (The odd name “ScummVM” stands for “Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine,” a reference to a very popular game of old.)
You can download the latest version of a free program called “ScummVM.” Click the “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) link and see if the game you want to play is somewhere in their lists. It will tell you how to copy over the data files from your game’s CDs. Then run the ScummVM program.
How this works: ScummVM replaces the “executable” file, the “.exe” file originally shipped with the games, and allows you to play them on later systems.
Posted on August 31st, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
There are two new books about Ubuntu, the most popular of the free versions of the Linux operating system: “The Official Ubuntu Book, fifth edition,” and “Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, third edition” come with the latest version of Ubuntu on a disk in the back. The second book, the one for Non-Geeks is easier to follow and the best choice for beginners. Both books list for $35, but prices are normally cheaper at Amazon.com and other online sellers.
Ubuntu is often touted as an alternative to Windows because there are so many free software programs that work with it. It is also free itself, which of course Windows is not. Ubuntu is also a good way to rescue a computer that has a corrupted operating system. Insert the Ubuntu disk in the DVD drive and that computer should start up like a bat out of somewhere scary. It will also be very stable, and you can then load in any other operating system you want.
An objection to using Ubuntu or any other version of Linux used to be that your peripherals, things like camera cards and printers, might not work with that system. This used to be a common problem but is rarely true today. There are websites you can go to and check if your equipment is compatible with a Linux system. For printers, scanners and cameras, for example, you can go to openprinting.org or tinyurl.com/ubuntuthings.
We’ve noticed that people love free stuff (duh). And one of the things people like about iPhone and other smart phones is that a lot of the applications are free and there’s a central place to go get them. There’s an icon on the screen and pressing it takes you to the “app” store.
There are places like that for Windows users too. If you go to Ninite.com, for example, there’s a list of several dozen apps and a “batch installer,” to help download them. A batch installer lets you click on a bunch of apps you want and watch them install one after the other, in one fell swoop, as they say. Read more »
Posted on August 29th, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
Women over the age of 55 spend more time playing online games than any other age group, according to a newly released study by comScore. While women in that group spend, on average, 214 minutes per month — primarily on casual games such as puzzles and card and board games — males 15 to 24 spend an average of 92 minutes on games each month.
Posted on August 28th, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
Zdnet.com noted six things about the iPad that make them sell like hotcakes (or flapjacks, if you’re Canadian):
It instantly turns on. How annoying it is to wait while Windows powers up.
All the apps come from one place, the app store. How easy.
It’s dead simple. Just tap on a picture of something to use it or install it.
Most users consume, not create stuff. They don’t need all the complicated features regular computers have.
It’s very light. You don’t need a laptop bag.
Ten hours of battery life.
The bad news: If you have a slow wireless connection, which we do, you’ll notice that websites don’t open as fast as they do with a wired machine. And using the 3G system made for cell phones is even slower.
Many games aren’t easy to play on a tablet. We tried Monkey Island for the iPad and thought it was poor compared to the PC or Mac version. Also, the iPad screen isn’t as easy on the eyes as the Amazon Kindle, and if you’re using it as an e-Reader, it starts to get heavy.
Posted on August 27th, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
Waze.com is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on present road conditions. Powered by users, the more you drive, the better it works.
Right now, it’s limited to a few areas in the U.S. You can go to the “live map” on their website to see if your area is covered.
Posted on August 26th, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
GamesFortheBrain.com has dozens of free games. Master Cards, for example, is a matching game like the old “Concentration.” Since we got these games fro free, we already felt much smarter than we used to.
Parade.com also has a few free brain games. This is the web site for the newspaper supplement magazine “Parade.”
Posted on August 25th, 2010 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
Microsoft is about to invent the keyboard. They are working on their own tablet device to compete with Apple’s iPad and they’ve built one with keys on the back. You can’t see what keys you’re hitting, but you see the letters come up on the screen. At first you’ll probably type out nonsense words, but their hope is that after a while you’ll get the hang of it.
They’re calling it the “RearType” project, simply enough. Gripping the tablet in both hands, you can hit the front buttons with your thumbs while tapping the keys on the back with your fingers. If you’re a touch typist, you should hardly feel the difference, they say. But they admitted that the 12 expert typists they called in could only type about 15 words a minute. (Joy can type 90-100 words a minute on a normal keyboard.)
Since this is a Microsoft Research project, it may never come to market. We went to an IBM show-and-tell years ago and were shown lots of new products, none of which ever saw the light of day. It’s probably a good thing: One of their projects was a computer feature that told you when your popcorn was done. (One small step for the stay at home techie.)
These “hidden object” games are addictive. We’re onto a new one, called “Mystery P.I., Stolen in San Francisco.”
