The Hunt for Myst-like Games for Android Mobile Phones and Tablets

I’m not a fan of most computer games. I have had enough violence and racing in my life to not want to invite it in through games of violence, war, racing, chasing, or bashing in heads. Among my favorite computer games are Myst and its sequels, Exile, Riven, The Revelation, and Uru, created by Cyan Worlds.

Myst and its sequels are beautiful mind games, challenging the best in us through complex puzzles accompanied by phenomenal real-life graphics. My husband and I would play these together, discussing strategies and solving the problems over meals and long drives. We’d email or instant message chat back and forth things to try or experiment with to solve the puzzles. They took our minds other places while we were in places and dealing with things we didn’t want to deal with. Great distractions, but more than that – great mind teasers.

We’ve been searching for Myst replacements for years on our desktop computers without success. With the new drive in mobile games for cell phones and tablets, we felt confident that the need for Myst-like brain games would generate something. After several years of poking, we’ve found some possibilities. Unfortunately, most of these are more like pretty maze games rather than mind-benders.

I used to think there was a difference between a Myst-like problem-solving game and a simple hidden object adventure game. As the games improve their visual quality, the simple games of finding hidden objects to solve puzzles can become as interesting as Myst-problem-solving games that require a little more brain power. I’ve included some well-reviewed hidden object games in the list below accordingly.

To be true to the concept of a Myst game, I believe the game should put you in the key role of the player, giving you a vested interest in solving the puzzles. There should be little interaction with other characters, just you and the environment, where the pieces of the puzzle tell more of the story than the characters could. The puzzles should make you think, fuss over, and experiment with before solving, but not be too simple nor too inane. You should shout with joy when you figure them out, not groan. This is where many of the new games miss the mark. I rarely have the overwhelming impulse to jump up and down and shout, “I did it!” Or do I experience the water-cooler effect praising the game long after finishing the play.

It’s sad because we need this form of escapism today more than ever.

Don’t Be Scammed By SEO Scammers

On a daily basis my inbox is filled with SEO and web design scams and cons. A client just forwarded the following to me asking if I thought this was a legit company and whether or not they needed their services. I got the same one six times in the past three weeks. I’d like to rip into this one as an example to all on how NOT to take these things seriously.

I hope you’re doing well!

After looking through your site: , we found that neither it was making visitors attract towards your site and nor to your business/services.

If you are interested we want to increase the number of visitors to your website as it is important that you have a top position in search-engines.

Our search-engine-optimization experts will run a ranking report showing you exactly where your website currently stands in all the major search engines. Then we will email you our analysis report along with the recommendations of how we can increase your ranking, and improve your websites traffic dramatically.

We strictly work on performance basis and can assure you of getting quality links with a proper reporting format for your site as well.

We wish you the best of luck and looking forward to a long and healthy business relationship with you and your company.

Please do let me know if you have any questions.

Note the colon and comma without a site name in the second sentence. That’s a clue that this is a form letter, not personal, and worth dismissing or marking as spam immediately. I usually mark these as spam. I recommend you do the same to add these to the filters that keep this crap out of your inbox.

…we want to increase the number of visitors to your website as it is important that you have a top position in search-engines.

Sorry, the only way you can increase the number of visitors to my site in regards to search engines is to rewrite or write new content on my site. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all the SEO games over the years and trust me, content works. This is my site, my content, and I don’t want you touching it. That’s my job.

I also don’t want to be in the top position on search engines. Think about this a moment. I want to be in the top for the things I want to be known for and the matching content I have on my site, but not necessarily at the very top. Others are wiser than I, so they deserve top ranking. If I write the answers they need to the questions they ask, they’ll find me, usually after a bit of digging, but they’ll find me if they need me.

If they aren’t finding me, I need to notch up my content to feature the words they use to look for my answers. That’s me paying attention to the words I write and choosing wisely.

Our search-engine-optimization experts will run a ranking report…

There are tons of those free on the web. Why would I need you when I can do it myself?

We strictly work on a performance basis…

Well, so far, your performance sucks. This is the same form letter I get from hundreds of different “we fix your page ranking and SEO” sites and services. Has your company undergone a domain name or company name change? Twelve times in the last week? No. So this is a form letter that anyone can copy and paste into an email spam bot and spread around the world. Lose many points on that one, in addition to the point lost for not identifying my website in your bot.

Other points lost? Search engine is not hyphenated, nor is search engine optimization (go on, call it SEO). You start off personal without knowing anything about me or my site or business. There is nothing original or personally directed at me or my site. They haven’t done their homework. If they did, they would know they have picked the wrong person.

Part of the expertise in SEO is attention to details. The little details can make or break the success of your site. The words are part of it, but so is the user experience, what people see, what they notice, how they move through your site, navigation, and how calls to action are not just perceived but acted upon. No auto-bot report is going to give you that feedback. You want someone truly vested in the details, the little things.

Don’t Be Led Astray By SEO and Page Rank Scams

There are fantastic companies out there doing good things with keyword optimization and search engine optimization techniques. There are thousands of websites offering great tips on how to optimize your site yourself, at no cost and a little bit of homework.

Google killed off their PageRank public information a few years ago because of the abuse and misunderstandings around how it all worked. People used it as a score card and baseball bat to their heads rather than another piece of the puzzle. Whole advertising markets were based upon your PageRank score, not taking into account the bigger picture. Many lost money over Google’s changes in PageRank – for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of their sites, content, and audience. It was a joke, and Google took it off the table accordingly.

Basic SEO is easy. Treat it organically. Let search engine algorithms do their work. You concentrate on producing easy to understand and read content, make it findable, and you’ll just saved yourself a thousand dollars. When you’ve optimized your own site, then go to the experts to get it fine tuned, relying upon their expertise to guide you through the big picture maze, not the small minded fixes.

Here are some quick tips to avoid being lured into these SEO scams:

• If they don’t know who you are, what you do, or can describe your site in detail, ignore it.
• If they send you a cold calling email, ignore it. Only choose companies you know, trust, and that come highly recommended by people you trust.
• If there are gaps in the text or spelling mistakes, spam it.
• If they make promises you know aren’t true, spam it.
• If you have received these in the past with the names changed, spam it.

Again, do not take these personally. They haven’t checked your site. They don’t know anything about you. This is a phishing exercise and by the sure bulk of the mass emailing they do, they manage to pick up enough suckers to keep themselves employed. Don’t be one of them.

Keyboards Wear Out, So Does My Patience With Poor Quality Keyboards

In the July 2008 issue of Smart Computing Magazine, their Action Editor responds to an inquiry about the letters on a keyboard wearing off.

While we understand a scratch or dent on a product caused by a customer would constitute cosmetic damage, we’d call this situation something other than “cosmetic.” As a result, we contacted HP…

…[after offering a newer-model keyboard to the complaining customer] HP researched support calls for the reader’s original product and didn’t find other customers experiencing this issue, so the issue appears isolated.

As I scanned through old issues of the magazine and found this, I have to admit that I squealed my frustration. Since the earliest computer keyboards, I’ve been calling for deeper laser cut letter embedding instead of “stick on” or “paint on” letters and numbers on keyboard. I even spent a few months working with the Microsoft hardware group on testing and reviewing their new line of keyboards to ensure the letters and numbers stayed and weren’t worn off within a few months or less.

Unfortunately, my highly vocal complaints to the keyboard manufacturing community continue to go unheeded as I personally continue to wear out keyboards. Microsoft does have the only keyboard I’ve found that lasts the longest, Logitech the next longest in my information research.

I trained to type on a manual keyboard but quickly switched to an electric as soon as they gained popularity. Yes, I have a strong key strike, and yes, I have long nails, but the keyboard should should put up with any form of abuse for more than two or three months. Few do.

If your keyboard wears out sooner than you think is appropriate, please nag. Nag them to replace it. Nag them to make the letters and numbers last.

Too few people just get a new keyboard or stick on new keyboard number and letter stickers or use a permanent marker.

Complain. Complain loudly.

Unless you are heard, companies like HP are going to continue to think that worn out keyboard keys are isolated cases.

Samsung S2 Rebooting, Rebooting, Rebooting Nightmare

Now that the Tech Nag has a new smart phone, tablet, and more black snacks added to the electrical snake pit, she has even more to bitch and whine about.

The current bitch and whine is also a lesson in what not to do even if it will let you do it. You won’t get away with it.

After the rash of 10 cent apps on the Android Market, Tech Hubby and Nag got addicted to the constant hunt for new apps. Discovering new ways to get those cool apps faster, we installed Chomp, Best App Finder, Ondroid – Top apps chart, Best Apps Market, and My Daily Free Amazon App.

I did say addiction, right?

As you fill up your phone with a ton of apps, even if it’s got more RAM and SD Card space than your laptop, you want to play safe and move some of the space wasters from the phone’s storage to the SD card. The newest phones play well with this…to a point.

Dear WordPress.com, Please Help Me Not Find WordPress.com Posts in Unrelated Searches

Dear WordPress.com:

I love you. I worship you, so it comes with great pain to ask you the following.

Please come up with a way for irrelevant WordPress.com blog posts to stay out of my WordPress searches.

I don’t know how to do this myself, other than by restricting my searches to remove WordPress.com from the results, which is self-defeating as I’m on WordPress.com. A lot of amazing bloggers and WordPress fans are on WordPress.com and doing this will remove them from the search results.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about relevancy.

I search for WordPress fill-in-the-blank needing help with whatever WordPress thing I’m working on and I’m flooded with twits babbling about things that have absolutely and completely NOTHING to do with WordPress, and the word WordPress not found anywhere on their site other than “Powered by WordPress” and in the URL. This just shows you how powerful the keyword “WordPress” has become.

So I’m asking you for relevancy. I want my WordPress searches to matter. I don’t want to dig through who broke up with whom, who got drunk last night and crashed their car, some twit arguing with another other the current state of the world when it’s clear that neither understands the state of the world, and a million lolcats.

I want to find WordPress help, resources, and techniques that make the world work better and make my life easier.

Thank you, and keep up the fantastic work otherwise.

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

PS: This nag applies to all you dummies who installed WordPress into a WordPress directory on your server, please see Giving WordPress Its Own Directory « WordPress Codex for moving it into a non-WordPress name so you don’t mess up your own SEO and end up in irrelevant searches.

Dear Websites: Please Stop Using Interstitials, Popups, and Fix Your Bad Code

Dear Websites:

I’ve run across a few websites and blogs recently running interstitials (the modern term for “popup windows that overlay not pop) and a variety of scripts and bad code that cause browser errors.

Please stop this.

The reasons are many, but here are a few.

1. We hate them.
2. Interstitials require effort on our part to close which is not a good first impression.
3. Interstitials work on the clueless not influencers, so check your stats to see if these are really turning into conversions or annoyance.
4. Browser errors popup warnings in our faces, which is ridiculous in this day and age when it is easy to fix all these and prevent them.
5. Update your site’s code regularly, for our sake but mostly your own, especially for security reasons. It makes us think bad things when your site is so out of date our browser warns us.
6. If your site is out of date in look, feel, and functionality, what do you think that says about your content, purpose, and business?

Thank you for updating your sites and fixing all errors today.

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

Dear TED, Don’t Force Yourself Upon Us

Dear Ted:

When it comes to changing the world, few do so more than TED videos. Your tag line, ideas worth spreading, is a humble way of describing the power and influence of your presentations by amazing people.

However, when it comes to presenting your videos, please help improve the world by making your videos not play automatically.

I will often cruise through and open several tabs of TED videos in my browser, then life will charge back in and I’ll have to feed the cats, take a phone call, pay bills, and respond to the mundane life a tech nag leads. If perchance I have to close and restart my browser for a million different reasons, I have to plow through fifty or more tabs to find which ones have the TED videos on to stop them from playing. I’ll suddenly have 3 to 7 voices all talking at me and the video downloads will slow down my computer and browser, not to mention my horrible Internet connection.

While I’m not sure it’s a web standard yet, it is should be. Either way, TED, you exist to change the world. Please set an example for all to follow and give us our control back. Allow us to press PLAY to lose ourselves in the wisdom of others and don’t force yourselves upon us.

Thank you,

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

Dear WordPress, Please Fix the Comments Feed Icon

Dear WordPress:

Please fix the comments feed icon.

Currently, if a WordPress or WordPress.com users chooses to showcase their feed links on their WordPress blog, it shows the same RSS symbol for both feeds: posts and comments. If the user chooses to only show the icon, there is nothing to inform the reader that there is a difference between the two feeds.

While we can choose to use the icon and text, why force us to clutter up simple common icons with both.

Please change the comments feed icon to indicate it’s the feed for comments on the blog.

I’ve included an example to inspire you, but I know Matt Thomas or the WordPress Community can come up with something more stylized.

Thank you,

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

Dear Skype, Please Stop Crashing My Browser

Dear Skype:

I’ve put up with a ton of issues from Adobe Flash crashing my browsers. Now Skype is my main crash deviant.

I’ve put up with your terrible new reinstall that spawns web pages and took FOREVER recently.

You think I’m kidding.

I’ve had Skype installed since Skype began. I’m frequently teased as I’m “Lorelle” on Skype, not “Lorelle254″ or some other silly name. I’m the first Lorelle that signed up for Skype, probably in your first 500-1000 registered users. I also pay for your service, so I’m qualified to rant and rave about your growing problems and my increasing frustration.

Logging in today, I was greeted by two confusing “Skype” disguised Internet Explorer browser windows. They were filled with ads but also with options and choices I had to make. I was in a hurry for a meeting and didn’t have time to mess around with reading all the stuff. I just needed to find my login.

It appeared that I would have to install Skype, so I did. Twenty minutes later, I’m now 15 minutes late for my online meeting and Skype is still not installed. Things are loading, whirling, clicking, and my state-of-the-art, powerful computer is locking up and dragging as it consumes memory and hard drive activity. Ten minutes later, it installs, but I’m still clicking around trying to just find a login. I finally find the familiar buttons and open it up, only to have those two damn Internet Explorer windows pop up, covering everything, selling me more Skype crap.

I apologize to the client and life goes on, both of us cursing Skype and browsers, and Internet software in general.

When I’m done, I’m so furious, I completely log out and quit Skype.

Then my browser crashes. Why? The installed Skype Toolbars that I worked so hard to remove multiple times because they crash both Chrome and Firefox on a regular basis, usually at the worst of times.

I have to go into the Extensions and Plugins of each browser and disable the Skype Toolbar Plugins.

A few hours later, I’m up against a deadline when my computer goes wonky. I’ll save the long, horrible story and sum it up as an hour and a half of wasted time spent banging my head against my desk as I couldn’t get control of my mouse or keyboard as everything turned to molasses speeds. I rarely ever use Internet Explorer and it hasn’t been my default browser for nearly ten years and yet two Internet Explorer windows filled with Skype promotional crap kept popping up and wouldn’t close.

I managed to crawl through my Windows Task Manager and found NO evidence of Skype on, active, or in process, and yet something kept spawning these Skype Internet Explorer windows. I finally turned off my computer, losing much of my article, and rebooted.

I went through everything and cannot find anything that activates Skype without my manual permission and action to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, but I now don’t trust you, Skype.

I don’t trust you for this, nor for the battle I’ve fought for months thinking I had some virus disguised as a Skype toolbar or functionality as it came with the softage.ru URL in the error report. Why the hell you would have anything with a Russian extension on the domain name or function is beyond me, but I got the error every time I started Firefox:

Error: Components,classes(@softage.ru/skype/skypeF

And I’m not alone in the suffering of the softage.ru error.

Please fix this immediately and offer up a sensible fix for the rest of us still struggling with this.

Here is what I’m specifically asking for.

1. Please provide an option for installing Skype’s Plugins and toolbars to my browsers. This used to be an option and it is now gone. Put it back.
2. Don’t make installation a long and tedious affair unless you give us fair warning like providing the size of the download file or a time estimate based upon bandwidth options.
3. Do not assume I’m using Internet Explorer or any browser. Let my system handle which browser to showcase your promotional crap.
4. Don’t spam windows for any reason, no matter how good your sale or discount or deal is. Email us or put it in the Skype app.
5. Don’t use suspicious file names or error codes that make us waste our time thinking we’ve had our computers hacked.
6. Don’t make us work so hard to enjoy and use your service. While most use it for free, many of us pay for the privilege. We deserve your respect.

Please stop crashing my browsers, Skype.

Are you listening? We aren’t going to take this crap any more.

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

Dear WordPress, Please Fix 2011 Layout to Put Back in the Sidebar

Dear WordPress:

While I love what you are doing with your new annual default WordPress Themes, and love the features of 2011, please don’t mislead us regarding the layout.

Previewing a post, The sidebar was gone! I felt naked and exposed with no where to go from the post I was viewing. I was frightened, worried for my three readers and my mother visiting the site and getting lost without a clear way to navigate around to all the goodness I’m sharing here.

On the Appearance > Theme Options, I can choose the design layout I want. Left sidebar, right sidebar, or no sidebar.

I clicked VERY hard on right and left sidebar options and I still see only the single post with no sidebar on my posts.

If I choose a layout style, I expect it is the same for every page on my blog, not just the front page. That doesn’t make sense.

Maybe it’s broken in the Theme. I’ll except that excuse. Please fix it.

Thank you,

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

PS: I’m starting to have nightmares of the original Default/Kubrick WordPress Theme, so please fix this.