I wrote before about Scrabulous being dead and reborn. It ended up being mostly dead. Hasbro at their lunch and put them down, or so the world thought.

Rajat & Jayant Agarwalla are back in the game, more exactly, back in the word game business. They’ve brought us the new game, Lexulous.

Lexulous is a tile based game, much like Scrabulous was. Scoring is still based on tile values and positional bonuses. Play proceeds pretty much the same as well, with turns between the players.

So what’s different? Honestly it’s about the values. The game board is a different layout than the original style. Additionally the squares offer different bonus levels that before. To add another change, the tiles also have different values than before.

All in all these changes result in a different game, but one that reminds you at every turn of classic Scrabble. Heck, here’s the board.

So there you have it, Rajat & Jayant Agarwalla have brought us back a classic word game with a different face. They’ve hopefully done enough with changing up features, and adding some Facebook friendly play enablers that the fans will come back.

Cheers to you brothers Agarwalla!

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.

Aaron Brazell aka Technosailor has dropped Facebook. You can read about it here, Facebook, You’re Banished.

For instance, earlier today I went in and declined 17 application requests and ignored 32 “Which Bible Character are you?” kinds of questions. It’s pointless noise that is distracting.

Aaron made not just a blanket statement about it, but provides a short video as well.  His comment above summarizes the main frustration well.  It’s all about usefulness.

Facebook applications are significantly more focused on games, quizzes and other time wasters than productivity oriented.  Chris Brogan shared only a handful when asked.  I find only a few add real value to my life and my objectives.

Facebook may soon be in a battle to keep it’s high end users, like Aaron, Scoble, and Brogan.  Those users don’t just desire sites to provide productivity enhancing environments, but require it.  Even sites such as LinkedIn and Dopplr might be in trouble if the time spent there isn’t directly resulting in new knowledge, bringing in business, or otherwise making lives easier.

OpenSocial claims to be a boon to social networking sites. Ultimately though, if the quality and usefulness of the applications doesn’t increase, then OpenSocial may only bring a geometric growth of the noise over value.  Are we doomed have all social networking sites become useless?

The question is really not will there be more game and quiz applications, that’s a given. The real question is will sites find more real tool applications to use.  Behind that even, what might drive their development.

The big problem is that application developers are driven mostly be ad revenue right now. This is even true of sites such as LinkedIn, which I use.  Sadly, game players are apparently into clicking on ads.

My suggestion is to create services where the value is high enough that even everyday folks like me will join up as a paying member.  Those sites then need to make their objects available to me where I want and need them, not just on their website. If I want a Dopplr widget on my browser, that’s common enough it should already be there.  Or how about Widgets on my desktop? Where’s my Grand Central notifier?  The concept of sites that users must visit might be fine for folks that have lots of time to spare visiting them, but busy people needs apps that will come to them. Mobile application versions is just one aspect. They need not to forget desktop and laptop users like me, that don’t want to open 10 tabs to see all my stuff.

Yes, I’ve ranted off course a bit, but it comes down to usefulness versus noise.  The noise isn’t just a steady trickle on Facebook, it’s a flood.  The pace is just picking up.  Aaron isn’t the first to weigh anchor and move on but he’s a strong sign of the movement away from such sites.

What’s your line? 10 invites? 100? 1000? What’s your camel back breaking app you’ll freak out over and drop Facebook for?

Are you a Facebook application freak? Have dozens installed?  Or are you the more serious type that feels all applications are a distraction; that you don’t have time for Scrabulous or ChessPro.  Perhaps you’re somewhere in the middle, using Six Degrees, and FriendFeed applications.

Whatever your situation with Facebook, you are sure to have your most enjoyed, most hated, or most useful application.  I’d like to talk about those with you here on the blog.

Anyone can report a new application, but I’d love to get you involved talking about them.  In that spirit, what’s your favorite, most hated, most fun, most useful application, why and would you like me to write about it?

Come on; I know you have one.

(Comments welcome here; DMs on Twitter as well, @tojosan; also email – tojosan on gmail.com)

ChessPro is the newest Facebook application from the guys that brought us Scrabulous.

Here’s a quick screenshot before I head into some details.

The pieces are immediately recognizable on the default board. Classic choices here for black and white pieces.  Above the game is show the game number, and the opening name.  This feature alone makes this version of online chess a notch above.

Over to the right is the menu, allowing viewing of all open games, statistics, and more.  From words to pictograms though as you move down.  The next menu row is of symbols. Those of you who play Scrabulous will be some what at home with those.

The buttons from left to right are:

Settings, Capture Pieces, Move History, Refresh Board, Move List, Delete/Resign, Help

Below the buttons is the player names, and rankings.  The rankings are based solely on games played with ChessPro.

Next down is the shown the last move.  The notation choice here is standard alpha numeric. This will allow for easier use across languages and skill levels.

Underneath the message box area are three colored dots.  One is refresh, one flips the board, and the last shows captured pieces.

One additional feature here, not present in Scrabulous, is the private notes area.  This area is only visible to you as a player.  The probable intended use is for annotating your games.  Notes are free form.

Several people already show up as users. Some friends and I have started a few games

My initial thought is that this will likely become my home for chess on Facebook.  The game play seems bug free, and the game appears to be built on the same framework as Scrabulous.  I expected it will scale well with much use.

I already have feature requests too:

- allow me to export completed games – at least the moves

- allow handicapping

- allow game snapshots to be posted to the news feed – or at least share the game in the stream

Looks good though. And you can find me playing there.

So you’ve been playing the wonderfully addicting game PackRat over on Facebook. You’ve noticed thought that your friends are both leveling up faster and getting all kinds of cards you’ve never seen before. Wondering what’s up, you could just ask your friends, and hope for the best, or you could head here.

The PackRat wiki is really just one page but it’s dense with information. Each set of cards is listed, with pictures. An added bonus? Formula’s for cards that can be made are listed as well. Ha, you didn’t know that did you? That make button actually does something.

Go, check out the wiki, and really start playing with strategy!

My initial review can be found here.

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I’m competing to attend a blogging conference for free. SOBCon08 is held May 2, 3, 4 and they are giving away attendance cost and the hotel cost to the blogger that sends the most folks to check out the conference website. All of you have to do to help out is click any link here in this section of the post. Thanks.

Obsession has a new name, PackRat. Someone on my contact list introduced me to PackRat and now I’m addicted.

PackRat is a Facebook application that’s part card collection game, and part thievery. The rules are simple.

1. Form a set and put them away in your vault.

2. Buy cards to complete sets.

3. Steal cards from your friends to complete sets.

There are very few wrinkles beyond that.

You gain levels by putting sets in your vault and by stealing cards from your contacts. Each card belongs to a master set, and there are numerous sets. Sets are made up of common and uncommon cards, some of which must be combined to form other cards in the collection.

To keep you from losing friends, PackRat provides some built in rat friends for you to steal from. That, combined with being able to purchase cards, allows friends to play without becoming fierce competitors.

All of the cards are family safe as far as I’ve seen, and not a few are great for a laugh. The Primary Colors 2008 set contains various modern day political figures, with some surprisingly good likenesses.

The game is simple enough to learn that teens and adults can play along side.

Overall, this game is sure to be a hit for those that love card collection games of the not so virtual variety. Adding the family safe factor makes it one I recommend giving a try.

See you in the game. (clicking the image will take you to the Facebook application page)

** UPDATE: click here to read about the wiki site.

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I’m competing to attend a blogging conference for free. SOBCon08 is held May 2, 3, 4 and they are giving away attendance cost and the hotel cost to the blogger that sends the most folks to check out the conference website. All of you have to do to help out is click any link here in this section of the post. Thanks.