So, one of the things that has always bothered me about WordPress is the Site Stats plugin.  I understand Akismet and why it links off to a 3rd party database filled with spam fighting stuff, but why must Site Stats?

I mean, it’s data about MY site, right?  Why not simply track that internally?

I suppose it comes down to control and marketing.  If it’s hosted somewhere else, the developers can control it. They can also use the information being tracked similar to the way Google uses the information culled from Analytics.  Still, it irks me.

I am one of those folks who likes to login and click on the Site Stats link and see what’s been going on with traffic.  Yes, I also have the Google Analytics plugin but there’s just something about the site Stats plugin that is easier on the eyes and better at a glance, if that makes sense.

So imagine my dismay this weekend when I logged into atfmb.com this weekend and saw this:

Click for a larger view

I’d had a couple other times in recent weeks when Site Stats gave me messages saying it was down for maintenance, so I decided to let it go and see if it was working in the morning.  It wasn’t.  Then I got busy and it was out of sight/out of mind for a while until I logged in again yesterday (Sunday) and noticed the message was still up there.  This lead me to Google the message.

I found this thread on the WordPress.org forums discussing it.  Apparently the maker of Site Stats has a new product out called ‘JetPack’.  When I posted something about this on Twitter, I got a few replies telling me that other folks had received the same message and simply switched to JetPack – problem solved.  But the WordPress.org thread had people complaining that when they switched to JetPack, none of their legacy data was showing up (so, nothing from months or years past – only current information) and worse, some reported installation errors from the plug-in saying it wasn’t working at all.

Yikes.

Then I checked something else for grins – I opened up FunctionalNerds.com and clicked on Site Stats.  I saw this:

Click for a larger view

WTF?  They are both attached to the same account/key!  Why does one work and the other not?

As of right now – I’m not sure what to do.  Site Stats works on a couple of my sites but not on the other two.  It still works on the blog I run for work.  Jet Pack has it’s defenders and detractors so I’m not sure whether or not to trust it – and that’s really the problem here, Trust.

The makers of Jetpack (WordPress.com – plug-in site is here), have eroded my trust and confidence in them in a couple of ways.

1. Not telling me they were making a change.  Have they dropped Site Stats altogether?
2. Turning off the service for my site but not really turning off the service for my site since the account still works on other sites?  Sort of?
3. By not simply doing an upgrade to Site Stats. (maybe they can’t do it that way – I don’t know)

Why didn’t they just upgrade Site Stats – a plug-in everyone had installed and were using, to Jetpack if that’s the future?  Why make it a new installation?  Why break the old plugin forcing people like me to search Google for answers?  Is Akismet going to stop working now?  Without warning?

Just really frustrating.

~P

Make me famous:

I’ve had a lot of people asking me about podcasting recently.  Not surprising given how much podcasting I do these days.  I mean, I’ve got the Functional Nerds with John Anealio, the SFSignal podcast and the producer gig for Mur Lafferty on I Should Be Writing – that’s a lot of gravitas under my belt.

So, I thought it might be nice to do a little post here and talk about the various programs and whatnotall that I use – give you a sense of what goes into producing a typical podcast.

Skype

Skype: Click for a Larger View

First up is Skype – a free VoIP program.  VoIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol which is a fancy way of saying – we talk computer to computer over the Internet.

Skype is free to download and install, and free if you’re talking computer to computer or, as they say – Skype to Skype.  You can also do conference calls with up to like 20 people I think (could be more)- I’ve never pushed that to the limit. For podcasting, six is probably the max you want, any more than that and everyone is talking over each other and it becomes difficult for the listener to pick out individual voices (my opinion).

Now Skype can also do video calls and if you had the right software, I’m sure you could record that.  However, video conferencing has only just recently been released for Windows and not for Mac – since I use a Mac, I have not played with that feature yet.

Skype can also call ‘regular phones’ (so, land lines, cell phones – any phone number, really) but that costs extra.  Depending on the plan you choose, it could cost you anywhere from $0.023 cents per minute on the pay as you go plan or $3 a month for the US & Canada, $8 for ‘Unlimited North America’ or $14 for ‘Unlimited World’ which includes 40+ countries.  So, there’s a lot of flexibility there.

Since we do a lot of author interviews and not all of them are tech saavy or have the equipment to do a Skype call (headset, mic), I do pay for one of the monthly plans so I can call people up.

Skype is available for both Windows and Mac but the Mac side, I feel, doesn’t get a lot of love and new releases tend to come out for Windows first.

WireTap

WireTap: Click for a Larger View

Now, Skype is only the first piece of the podcasting puzzle.  With Skype, you can call and talk to people, but you can’t record those calls.  It would be a nice feature add for them, but I don’t see them doing that anytime soon SO, I had to go out and find something that could record Skype calls.

What I found is a little application called WireTap.

WireTap is a little program with a big kick.  It takes up practically no space on my screen, is always ‘on top’, and can record sound from any application running.  It is Mac only – sorry Windows people.  No WireTap for you…

I use it to record both Skype and my own mic – essentially putting the two input sources on separate tracks.  I can adjust those tracks as needed, boosting the audio, removing background noise, etc.  WireTap has a decent set of tools for editing sound files you record, which it keeps in a library.

Here’s what the completed audio file looks like, at which point I can edit – whatever I need to do.  Notice one track is gray, the other a pale blue:

Click for a larger view

I can change formats (Wave, MP3, AAC & a slew of others), make cuts and add effects:

Click for a larger view

Because some folks voices come through louder, or quieter, than others, I could spend a lot of time futzing with the audio to try and get everyone up or down to the same level, or I could be smart and go out and look for something that will do that for me – enter Levelator.

Levelator

Click for a larger view

This free program (donations are encouraged), was created by podcasters for podcasters.  Levelator is offered on the Conversation Network website, is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux, and is the simplest yet most powerful tool a podcast can have in their arsenal (again, my opinion).

In the early days of the Functional Nerds podcast, I noted that John Anealio’s baritone voice would often drown out my voice.  I would spend a lot of time trying to boost my audio or lower his.  It was a pain in the ass and would take me hours of playing around with various audio tools, settings, equalizers and the like to get it in the ballpark of where I wanted it to be.  Add a guest and it was worse.

So, I went looking for something that could help me out.  That’s when I found Levelator.

From the website: The Levelator®…is software that runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary), or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It’s not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It’s much more than those tools, and it’s much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler’s application window, and a few moments later you’ll find a new version which just sounds better.

And, it really is that simple.  I export all my recorded files from WireTap as WAV files, then I drop them onto Levelator and let it do it’s thing.  The file it creates has all the voices balanced out at the same level.  It takes from five to fifteen minutes depending on the size of your file and cuts a massive amount of time off of my editing time.

GarageBand

I never would have started podcasting if Apple hadn’t made it easy by creating a piece of software called GarageBand.  Sorry again Windows folks, GarageBand is part of iLife and is Mac only.

When I first started podcasting under ATFMB, I would record directly into GarageBand from my mic.  All the editing, sound effects, clips, music, etc was all done inside of GarageBand and it really was pretty simple.  You just had to click the ‘podcast’ button.

Click for a larger view

Things have changed a bit – I use a lot of other pieces of software to record the podcast, but I still use GarageBand to put all the pieces together into a single file.

For a simple enough piece of software to use, Garageband really does have a lot of features and tools – most of which I never use.  I have a template setup for both Functional Nerds and SF Signal and all I have to do is drag and drop the WAV files onto the appropriate tracks.

Click for a larger view

I keep notes when I’m recording, noting time stamps, when something happened that needs to be edited out, when we officially started, ended, etc.  I can quickly jump to those points in the recording and do whatever editing I need to do.  The artwork is already part of the template so I don’t have to change that every time, but I do have to change the text associated with the podcast (this is what shows up when you play the podcast inside of iTunes or on your iPhone / iPod).

“Hey, ATFMB? What about all that music and stuff you put in?”

One very cool feature is that GarageBand is made by Apple, therefor it talks to other Apple software like, for instance, iTunes:

Click here for a larger view

I created a couple of iTunes playlists long ago; one for all of John Anealio’s music that I’ve purchased or downloaded (depending on how he offers the tunes) – this way I can always add a little something of John’s to the end of the podcast.  I have a second playlist called ‘Podcast clips’ – this is where I put all the little TARDIS, BSG Cylon sound bites and whatever else I need.  From the side panel, I can just drag and drop them onto a track and then edit as needed.

Pretty slick.

Amadeus Pro

Amadeus Pro does what GarageBand does only a little differently.  I use it for the I Should Be Writing podcast because it’s what Mur uses and prefers, which is fine with me.  It’s a new piece of software to learn and play with, which is always cool (well, mostly – I mean, MS Project wasn’t fun at all to learn… but that’s a different story altogether…)

Click for a larger view

Amadeus Pro, another Mac only program, is offered on the HairerSoft website for $45.  It’s plugged as a ‘powerful multitrack audio editor supporting a variety of formats including MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Apple Lossless, AIFF, Wave and many others’ and it’s not wrong – the software has a massive amount of built in tools to help you get the best out of your recordings.

I find myself using the Fade IN / Fade Out, Normalize (Very similar to what Levelator does) and Silence Generator a lot.

Click for a larger view

Just like with GarageBand, you can drag and drop audio files, creating new tracks that you can move, edit and manipulate as needed.  You can zoom way in or way out depending on what you’re doing and what you need.

I fully admit that I have not explored everything that this software can do.  Yet.  Each week I learn something new, some new trick or an easier way of doing something and then I slap my head and say, “Why didn’t you think of that before?!”

I haven’t decided yet to standardize on either Amadeus Pro or GarageBand – yet.  Both have their pros and cons so, for now, I use both.

Equipment

Okay – so, the last piece to the whole puzzle is the equipment I use.

I bought the Alesis Podcast Kit from Amazon; it included a very nice USB mic with stand and a set of nice headphones.  I added to that a pop filter – this is a filter between you and the mic that protects the mic from your spit, and cuts down on popping noises that can happen when you say certain words.

My Podcasting Mic & Headphones

The Pop Filter

The Future

Part of my plan for the future is a mic boom.

A Microphone Boom

With one of these either mounted to the wall or clamped to the desk, I could get my USB mic and it’s very long cord, off the desktop and away.  When I am recording, I simply pull the mic to me and do my thang – when I’m not, I push it back and out of the way.

Haven’t decided on which boom mic to get just yet – I wish there were a way to find one locally that I could take a look at.  I’ve been to some music stores but they don’t carry this style.  Eventually I’ll just have to take the leap of faith and order one from Amazon, see how it goes.

Well, that’s it – there’s my podcasting 101 tutorial.  Hope this helps answer the questions some of you have been asking me in person and on twitter.

~P

Make me famous:

I said I’d do it, I warned you – you didn’t listen, did you? Well, now it’s TOO LATE!

THE RETURN OF THE PODCAST IS HERE!

Episode 9 of the All Things From My Brain Podcast is here.

In this weeks massive, DOUBLE SIZED, MAXI-PODCAST, I am joined by a special guest on his very first podcast appearance as we discuss the iPad, about Apple, Google, Blizzard, Doctor Who, Dollhouse, Torchwood – and the fact that his youngest son may be stalking me via iPhone.

With Episode 9 I am dumping Podbean and everything is going to be hosted here on atfmb.com. If you’ve subscribed to the podcast via iTunes, that link is in the process of being changed and you’ll have to resubscribe – I’ll let you know as soon as that’s ready and available.

In the meantime, click below and stream to your hearts content or you can download via this link by right clicking and choosing ‘save as’.

~P

Make me famous:

Back in the day, there was a company called ‘AOL’.  They provided a service to people.  You had to have a computer and one of their disks that would come in the mail.

When you installed the disk on your computer, a couple of things happened; first off, you could now dial into the AOL servers and ‘experience the Internet’. Second, your printer would stop working.

Anyway, AOL was what you called an ‘Internet Service Provider’, they provided to us, the consumers, access to the Internet through our modems.  Our modems used phone lines and essentially dialed a number (or a group of numbers) to gain access to the server.

Now, usually, these disks had a deal associated with them.  Some free hours versus the paid hours you had to buy.  “20 hours free!” and whatnot all.  In order to redeem your free hours, though, you had to call special numbers dedicated to those offers.

That’s where the trouble started.  You had a month to redeem your free hours by calling those numbers, only AOL didn’t have enough servers up and running to accept your calls, so, you got a busy signal.  A lot of people would go the whole month without being able to connect and use their free hours, which made them very upset.

I believe this would be the very first ‘bandwidth’ issue in Internet History.

AOL was sued over these busy signals and were forced to admit that the demand for their service was greater than their network could handle.  They tried their best to beef up their network, but it wasn’t enough and they ended up having to pay up on that lawsuit and now, their service is pretty much a long standing joke.

All because their network couldn’t handle the demands placed upon it by consumers.

…sound familiar, AT&T?

~P

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Faxiophiles

I’ve been around computers and technology for as long as I can remember. I cut my teeth on the Apple Color Computer II, then the TRS-80 (Trash80) from Radio Shack. I recall BASIC and DOS, played Pong, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sony Playstation and the XBOX-360. I’ve fond memories of dialing into a friends BBS for text based interactions long before there was such a thing as ‘Instant Messaging’ (or ‘text messaging’), and not so fond memories of dialing into something called ‘AOL’ (to get a busy signal all day and night) followed fairly quickly by the bliss that is ‘broadband’. I even remember sticking my finger into a plastic circle on a rotary phone in order to ‘dial’ it, and the heady sensation of the first time I ‘beamed’ a contact from my Palm Phone to a friends Palm Phone using LASERS (pew, pew).

In every instance, I saw technology grow and evolve, become something different, better, more advanced and, in most cases – more effective and useful. As something evolved, I didn’t hang onto the past, I embraced the future. I haven’t had a ‘land line’ phone in nearly a decade, for example. So many pieces of what were, at their time, technological marvels, have been tossed upon the midden heap throughout my lifetime and have simply become ‘worthless’ technology to me (and so many others) now.

For example – the fax machine (I realize that you may not consider these to be ‘worthless’ just yet but, read on).

The most revolutionary contraption of its day, the fax machine let people send information to other people instantly (more or less) that they would have normally sent via mail; letters, purchase orders – even marketing materials and fliers. I remember fax machines that v – e – r – y – s – l – o – w – l – y – c – r – a – w – l – e – d – a – l – o – n – g – a – s – t – h – e – y – s – c – a – n – n – e – d – a – d – o – c – u – m – e – n – t, and onesthatzippedrightthroughsofastyou’dmissitifyoublinked.

But, to be honest with you, I haven’t actively used a fax number since the late 90′s. I had one of those EFax numbers for a while (still do for work), but I rarely used it and just let it go away (and I rarely use the work efax either). Why? Well, because technology evolved again.

Along came the PDF. With the PDF or portable document format from Adobe, just about everything that someone could possible want to fax to me, can be sent vial email and PDF. It especially became viable when other companies started coming up with their own versions of ways to CREATE PDF’s – like the ability to save any document on a Mac as a PDF, or push a button in an Office doc and create a PDF – that sort of thing. Once you didn’t have to have anything particularly fancy to create one, PDF’s became the thing.

Which is why I am shocked when I talk to people who want things faxed to them or that they want to fax something to me or that we should fax together as if faxing is the pinnacle of technological achievement, the end all, be all of technological nirvana.

It feels like going back to DOS to me.  (I once walked uphill, in the snow, barefoot, across broken glass to get to school… or something, and you try to tell the kids today…)

“Wait – Fax? Seriously? You want to -fax- something to me? Um…”

With most people (I think), email has replaced the fax (right?), an email does just fine (Right?!). Email is simple enough (you can get one in a snap). Someone sends you an email and it can come to your phone or your laptop or your desktop or wherever you want it to show up. You’re not tied to a desk and a land line when you use email versus a fax and really, it’s not an additional charge – with a fax machine, you have an extra phone bill and who wants that?! It seems like a no brainer to me.

But then, there are people who are not so enamored of emails and PDF’s as I am. We’ll call them ‘Faxiophiles’.

Faxiophiles love their fax machines and their steno machines and their rotary phones and their #2, non-mechanical pencils because they are easy; plug them into power and a phone line and, for 99.9% of the machines out there, they are good to go (and the average #2 pencil just needs to be sharpened…). For the Faxiophile, email is the devils work (Or George Bush. Or Bill Clinton – depends on which side of the aisle you prefer). You have to ‘pop things’ with email, and figure out ‘maps’ and there are passwords and web things and and and – it’s just all so difficult and evil like Republicans or Democrats (again – whichever aisle…)!

I feel the pain of the Faxiophile, I really do. They like their world to be very simple, very easy, very black and white – square peg in the square hole. You need something typed up? Use a typewriter – no one has ever stolen your identity on a typewriter before. You need to make a phone call? That’s what that thing on the wall with the tangled up cord and the big buttons is for – never given -anyone- cancer, nor caused a car accident nor been banned by a local or state government. And when you need to communicate something that’s been written out, you send a fax.

Faxiophiles.  They’re out there.

~P

Make me famous:

When it comes to social media/networking, I think things have whittled down to two major players: Twitter and Facebook.

There used to be more.  There still are alternatives out there, but I don’t use them for all sorts of reasons.

I was never a MySpace person.  The very first time I visited a MySpace page, it took a while for everything on the page to load and then someone was screaming at me.  I realized it was supposed to be music – they had this little widget type thing on their page that played their favorite song, which happened to be someone screaming like a Yoko into a mic.  This put me off immediately.  For me, MySpace was all down hill from there.

I discovered Facebook just moments before discovering Twitter.  I liked Facebook.  I had that wonderful rush we all get when we first sign up with it and people we haven’t spoken to in forever suddenly find and friend us and the catching up begins.  It was fantastic.  Then, I started messing with Twitter.

Twitter was easy, much easier than Facebook.  In my mind, Facebook and MySpace had far too much in common.  Facebook was, in short, becoming complicated.  My use of the site waned.  Now, if you want to know anything at all about me, my day, what I’m doing, etc and so on – you have to look to Twitter, not Facebook, to find it.

Then, Facebook changed.  They made a conscious effort to provide updates in a more Twitter fashion.  I gave them a second look and really liked it.  I could go to Facebook and see all my friends updates in a single stream – it was fan-freaking-tastic!  I found myself warming to Facebook again.  I installed the iPhone app.  I added the Facebook column to my Tweetdeck.  Thing swere moving right along.

Then, they changed Facebook again.  Now we have not one stream, but three that I’ve counted so far – there’s probably others that I haven’t figured out yet.  Status Updates, News Feed & Live Stream.

With ‘Status Updates’, I would see some information from my friends.  You can click the image to see what I see when I first login to Facebook.  Now, people have told me that I can do this and I can do that to make things different, but so far – it’s all been crap.

When I login to Facebook, I see this page and on this page is updates that are hours old.  All the time.  For weeks, I thought that people simply weren’t updating Facebook anymore due to the lack of info and updates on this page.

To make matters worse, when I would update my own status, I didn’t see it on the Status Update page/feed.  And people were telling me that they weren’t seeing my updates anymore either and I realized that I was missing out on their updates, which weren’t showing up for me.  What the hell was going on?!

Enter: News Feed.

So, okay.  I click on ‘News Feed’ and I start going through this timeline and I can see stuff showing up from Yesterday.  YESTERDAY?

WTF?

Okay – so, on Status Updates, I see stuff 3 hours old.  On News Feed I see stuff from yesterday that didn’t show up on Status Updates for whatever reason.  What’s the difference between News Feed and Status Update?  I have absolutely no idea whatsoever.  When I go to MY page to update my status, it doesn’t say, “Update Status or News Feed?” so how does it decide where your update is going to go?  And why is there nothing newer than 3 hours ago?  Is everyone asleep?!  And why is MY stuff not showing up anywhere?!

…wait, there’s another button now – on News Feed, it says, ‘View Live Feed’ and has a number next to it.  Okay, let’s click that.

…

Okay, so, the answer is that Facebook is just stupid.  When I click on ‘Live Feed’, I now see ‘live’ stuff.  Stuff from a couple minutes ago – my own stuff, stuff that’s not showing up anywhere else (apparently).

Again, no rhyme or reason that I can see or that makes any sense whatsoever.

With this revelation, Facebook once again becomes absolutely useless to me.

The point is to be able to see what people are doing, leave comments, interact.  If you can’t find what people are doing because Facebook has randomly hidden it inside one of three timelines there is no longer any point to even trying.  It’s a waste of my time.

So I return to Twitter, where there is only ONE timeline.  Sorry Facebook, but you suck again.

~P

Make me famous:

It doesn’t matter if you have ten friends or a million on Twitter, I guarantee you, some of the people on that list are spammers.  Actually, there’s probably a good portion of them who are spammers.  I know you know who and what I’m talking about.

Spam n. a disruptive, esp. commercial message posted on a computer network or sent as e-mail.

Example: How many people on this list of my followers are real and how many are spambots?

Answer: Who the hell knows?!  I think 2 are real.  Keep in mind, this is a very small sampling and my followers list is cluttered with this kind of stuff.  I got an email today telling me that Carol Smith (belovedmuscle) was following me.  Um… Okay…

In the twitterverse, there are 3 kinds of spammers that I have encountered.  The first is the ‘increase your followers’ spambot that (I think) actual people (I think) have to sign up for (I think) which then puts out tons of crap messages on their account  like this:

I hate those more than I hate the others because they fill up my damned Tweetdeck column and burn through my API calls!

Next are the ones who start following me and then start spamming me with @replies which fills up my damned Mentions column on Tweetdeck.  ARGH!

Lastly, there are the spammers who may not even be intending to be classified as spammers.  These are the people who tweet and retweet the same things over and over again all day long.  Not like the above screen shot, oh no – see, they tweet something in the morning; it could be a link to their blog or an article that they found – it could be something interesting.  Wonderful!  That’s a legitimate use of Twitter!  I applaud you and your efforts to drive traffic to your site!

…but then they send the same tweet again an hour later.  Exactly the same.  Not even the link is different.  The exact same tweet, just an hour later.  WTF, right?  Maybe it’s a mistake?  maybe they aren’t aware that they’re doing that?  …but then they do it again an hour after than, and then again in another hour, and another, all freaking day long, using up my API calls and annoying the hell out of me.

That, my friends, is a spammer – someone who is sending a disruptive, esp. commercial message over and over again.

And that is the challenge Twitter faces moving forward – stopping the spammers and spambots from cluttering everything up with this crap every day. And they need to get a handle on this quick!  It’s only getting worse and people won’t stick around if it continues this way.

~P

Make me famous:

Here’s the stuff I checked out at lunch today.

Technology

Judge orders Microsoft to stop selling Word (patent infringement)

• Apple insider
• CNet News

Facebook launching Twitter-version of site?

• CNet News

Apple Stuff

• iPhone share of Smartphone market continues to increase
• Apple releases Safari 4.0.0
• Music labels to offer enhanced album format to compete with Apple’s cocktail?
• CourseSmart brings 7000+ textbook to iPhone and iTouch

Books/publishing

• Sony to unveil wireless reader?
• Mystery Writers of America backs Writer Beware program
• McGraw-Hill will offer more than 100 of its top-selling education titles for sale on the Kindle DX
• How the Amazon Best Seller List works

Comics

• Wolverine 2, Wonder Woman (should’a been done by Joss Whedon), Whiteout, Walking dead, Iron Fist
• Walking Dead coming to AMC
• Comics available today

Writing/Authors

• Racehelle Gardner: 2 things that don’t help a query part 1
• Racehelle Gardner: 2 things that don’t help a query part 2
• Nominate your favorite writing blogs over at Editor Unleashed

Scifi/Fantasy

• New Stargate films coming
• SF Signal’s SF Tidbits for 8/12/09
• Review of ‘Darkest Hour’ by Mark Chadbourn over on SFFworld.com

~P

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Well.

As you may or may not have figured out by now, I am most definitely an Apple head.  I’ve got 2 iMacs at home and an iPhone in my pocket and I love to discover new games and apps to play with AND I love to share those finds with the kind folks who read this blog and listen to my podcast.

A bit of an old school gamer, I am quite the fan of a side scroller.  S’why I like the games coming out on iPhone so much – they are simple to figure out, fun to play and, for the most part – they scroll sideways!   It’s also why I bought the Sega pack for my X-Box – SONIC!  ALTERED BEAST!  HECK YEAH!  But let’s get back to the iPhone for a second.  I was trolling the lists to see what was making the rounds in the Top 25 the other night, and I came across something that looked interesting.

Enter: Cartoon Wars

Cartoon Wars is a side scrolling game that you can scroll back and forth on, if that makes any sense.  The concept is simple: you have a castle and the computer has a castle.  You have mana and the computer has mana.  Use your mana to create your army and then attack the other castle and its army. Scroll to the right to see your forces attack the enemy.  If the enemy beats you back, you’ll find yourself scrolling left again pretty quickly.

It gets better.  Taking down the other army brings you gold.  Taking down the other castle also brings you gold.  In between battles, you can use your gold to upgrade your units or purchase new types of units.

You start out with your standard fighter dudes – they’re the stick figurey guys with the white heads shown above.  Next, you can purchase Ninjas, Gunners, Wizards, Dark Angels -the list goes on.  Each new class of fighter costs a little bit more mana – could be 10 (normal fighter dude), or it could be 400 (Dark Angel, I believe).  And each unit can be upgraded – so you can take a training Ninja and turn em into masters – depends on how much gold you have.

You also have a turret on the top of your castle that can shoot massive arrows out into the enemy forces.  Control of that thing is a little tricky.  I really thought I had it but then I upgraded the weapon between battles and everything went to hell and my boys got SLAUGHTERED!

So, Cartoon Wars is part strategy, part side scroller and though I didn’t know that I would like it, I find myself getting a bit addicted.  It’s taken over as my break time entertainment during the day.

It’s available in the iTunes store right now for $0.99 and is worth it.  Check it out in iTunes: this link will launch iTunes.

~P

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One of the things I’ve noticed since joining Twitter is that my instant messaging has gone WAY DOWN!

Does this spell the death of the instant messaging services?  Or has Twitter BECOME the new IM?

Prior to using Twitter throughout the day (Via tweetdeck), I would have several conversations going in either my AIM client or my iChat at home.  Now, it seems like I rarely have a chat going at all.  Most everyone from my buddy list is now on Twitter.  If I want to know what’s going on with them, I just check their time line and vice versa.  I also get a lot of direct messages and replies via Twitter, so direct questions or comments come from there instead of my chat client.

Does that mean Twitter is the new instant messaging platform?

I think AIM believes it could be so.  I noticed when I upgraded to their AIM client 6.9 just last week (I use iChat at home, but AIM at work), that they were pushing the fact that you can keep up with your friends from other social networks including Facebook and Twitter.  It’s possible that they’ve had that support for a while, but it was the first I’d seen of it and it got me to thinking.

As easily as I, a heavy instant messaging user, found myself rarely if ever using the damned thing anymore – how many other people are doing the same?  Are AIM and MSN and Yahoo and all the other chat clients suddenly seeing massive drops in usership as people flock to Facebook (Who has an ‘in network’ chat client of their own) and Twitter?

What do you think?

~P

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