They’ll hook up 2 of you with an Amazon or Mobile gift certificate when they announce the second Utterz Game next week.
**BONUS** up your odds by sending in a picture of the total on your gas pump to go@utterz.com. Send it within 10 minutes of calling so it matches up to your recording.
What are you waiting for?! Go, pump, pay, and share the pain! Share your Utterz posts here in the comments was well for extra fun.
If you’ve been playing Scramble, the Facebook game by zynga, then you’ve probably noticed the credits you have. These credits can be used during your turn to get a word hint.
You’ve probably wondered where those credits come from. Well here you go, there are two ways to earn credits. One way is invites.
Earn credits by inviting friends to add Scramble to their FaceBook profile. You get two credits for inviting someone that you haven’t invited before. If they respond to your invite within a week, you get an additional ten credits! You can use these credits to get word hints when you’re playing a game of Scramble!
The second way is to log in. Each day you log in earns 2 credits.
Now those credits don’t accumulate too fast, but I don’t find I use them that often. They do really come in handy though on those days your just stuck.
Do you used your credits? Found a secret way to score more? Wouldn’t use the credits if they gave you 1000 of them?
Facebook holds few attractions for some. But for others, it’s a replacement for Excite and Yahoo games. The bonus being your opponents are taken from your contacts. That aside, there are hundreds of games now available on Facebook.
Few games though are in the category of both challenging and of high replay value. zynga has taken a stab at bringing us some word games that meet both those criteria. Those games are Word Twist, Pathwords, and Scramble.
All three games present time based challenges where word construction is the key. In each case, minimum word length is always three characters. The tiles in each case are randomly arranged and your task is to discover all of the words.
Word Twist presents the player with six letters. The player types or clicks the letters to form words. Score is based on the number of words found, with a bonus for ‘bingo’ words. That’s words of six characters. Here’s a screenshot.
Word Twist allows the players to complete all of their turns without waiting. There is no direct competition between the players. The number of terms and time is set at game creation.
Pathwords presents an entirely different challenge. Where Word Twist gives the player six characters to work with, Pathwords gives a whole field. A picture will help explain.
The players selects the words by clicking on the initial letter of the word and then clicking on the rest of the letters. To enter a word, a double click is required on the last letter. An alternate method is clicking on the first letter and holding the mouse button. The player can then drag over the rest of the letters in the word. When the mouse button is released the word is entered. Wrong words do not score, and clear the letter selection.
Once a word is accepted, the letters in the word are removed from the board. Each column’s letters then slide down and new letters are added at the top. An added feature allows the player to scramble the letters on the board at a penalty of points.
Scramble is my favorite of the three games. Scramble plays like the home game, Boggle(tm). The players take turns finding words in the 4 by 4 array of letters. With the classic tile look, it feels a lot like Boggle.
Players alternate turns finding words. Score is based on word length. There are no bingos or such. Typical games are 5 rounds of 3 minutes each. A word hit feature exits that requires 2 credits each use. Credits are earned on the first visit to Scramble during a day.
Nanna J and I are taking the big bird out to Seattle on June 10th. We’ll be flying out of Lambert Int’l Airport in St. Louis in the evening. We are headed there to see our son’s family, at Ft. Lewis, Wa. Mostly we are going because of the three granddaughters.
While we’re there, our plan is not just to visit with the girls but get out and see a few things. We’d really enjoy hooking up with folks in the area and seeing something we’ve not seen before. During out last visit a few years ago, we saw the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project, and the Sci-fi museum. We also visited the Pike St. Market and took the underground tour.
Looking for ideas in or around Seattle of course but considering the drive to Portland, Or or up to British Columbia. (Would be my wife’s first out of country visit if so.) We are also open to meeting up with folks one of the days a photowalk, to hang out for drinks, or something in between.
Drop a comment here, send me a tweet, an email, or call and leave me something here 636-486-4723. Oh yes, please include links if you’ve got them.
St. Louis is going to be host to the Midwest Media Conference. A variety of speakers will be on hand for an evening of stories, questions and answers about online media. One of my favorite guys involved in social media, Duane Myers, aka PreppyDude, will be hosting the show.
Three of the presenters are well known folks in St. Louis media, David Myers, Bill Streeter, Dana Loesch, and Michelle Havens. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting these folks in person on more than one occasion. But not only are locals turning up, like the St. Louis Bloggers Guild, one of our Ohio favorites is joining us as well, Ann Miller, aka AnnOhio.
Duane and the out of town speakers will be here a bit early. I’m hearing rumors of dinner and drink plans. Be sure to get a hold of these folks and let them know your interested.
Keith Burtis of, Magic Woodworks, is interested in finding three very creative blog posts. He’s presenting at Podcamp Boston on that very topic. Care to help him out? Watch the video, visit his blog, leave a suggestion, or even reply on Seesmic. Are you creative enough?
An Utterz Ambassador? No, it doesn’t mean you’ll be talking to more cows, but it does mean you could be representing good old Bessie for Utterz. Utterz is kicking off a Memorial Day weekend contest to find a small group of folks to become Utterz Ambassadors. Here’s the scoop straight from Sim and crew.
Here’s the skinny: The Utterz team will be hand selecting a small group of Utterz users to help shape the future of Utterz for the entire community. If you’re selected to be an Ambassador, you’ll get to peek behind the Utterz curtain to learn what we’re working on now, as well helping us design and refine our upcoming feature releases. And of course, you’ll get “more cowbell”.
So how do you become an Utterz Ambassador? Easy.
Send us an email (ambassador@utterz.com) or create an utter tagged “utterz ambassador” (bonus points) describing why you’re the perfect Utterz Ambassador.
Be creative, have fun, show off your riffs, and prove your chops as an Utterz user.
We will begin the selection process Tuesday, May 27th, so be sure to get your submissions in before then. We’ll announce the newly minted Utterz Ambassadors by Thursday, May 29th.
You read it here; you could be the next Utterz Ambassador! There’s an Utterz blog post with the same information in a video for your more visually fixated Utterz fans.
So what are you going to do? Join the fun! Be the next Utterz Ambassador!
Facebook is taking charge of your online presence. Mashable claims they are making it into a FriendFeed clone. But what’s really happening? You can read what Facebook’s blog says, but let me share my thoughts.
Let’s take just a couple of sentences from that post.
Your profile will automatically update when you upload a video to YouTube, rate last night’s episode of The Office on Hulu, and so on. If you have a personal blog, you can enter the URL in and a Mini-Feed story will be published every time you write a new post.
Hmm. Remind you of some Facebook applications you might already have installed? There are already plug in applications that let you import your feed, e.g. Flog Blog. It makes me wonder if they realize they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
Aside from aggregation of your online self, it appears they are stealing the thunder of their online partners. Up until now you could already bring all of your various feeds into Facebook either through partner applications or third party applications. Both of which allowed those sites to post ads. What will happen now?
Perhaps Facebook envisions you freely sharing all of your feeds, drawing in your readers and selling ads right there. Ads that you don’t see any revenue from. I expect the next thing you’ll see is an increase of ‘relevant’ ads based on the material shared. Can Friendfeed do a better job than Googld Adwords?
What’s your theory? Are you with Mashable? Got your own idea? Hate Facebook already? Can’t wait to add all of your feeds?
I’ve been running the Social Networking Postcard Project for several weeks now. A couple dozen postcards have gone out. If you haven’t asked for one, Friday is the day. Just direct message me on Twitter.
Today though, I’d like to point you to another postcard project, one run by eMailOurMilitary, Postcards Across America. This project is both easy to participate in and doesn’t require you to invest in a fortune in postage.
What’s it take? Buy up a bunch of postcards, write a message to ‘Dear Soldier’, or something similar. (Avoid saying sailor, marine etc. These may go to any branch.) Stuff that bunch of postcards in an oversized envelope and send them to:
eMail Our Military
Postcard Project
8004 NW 154 Street, Suite 344
Miami Lakes, FL. 33016
Yep. It’s that easy. What’s holding you back? Can’t find postcards? I’ve had the best luck at tourist attractions, Hallmark, and Wal-mart stores. Your local college might have some as well.
If you’ve ever been away on duty or a long trip, you know already how much mail means. Please consider joining this project. Have you already jumped in? Come tell us about it! Share some snapshots and stories.
