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Since January 2005, I have read some 80 eBooks. I love all the advantages those books have and I have no immediate plans to go back to reading “dead trees”, as Richard Scoble called it so appropriately, but all of that is secondary.

The real reason for this post is that my favourite suspense author, Brad Thor, recently released his newest book from the Scott Harvath series, called The First Commandement.

Fictionwise, luckily, was very quick in picking it up for digital distribution, with a turnaround time of about a week after the paperback was released and thanks to Josef, who gifted me with a copy, I can actually immerse myself in the book right now.

That said, if you are looking for a great thriller / action movie for your mind, head on over here and get yourself a copy, I’m outta here, time for some quality time with the other Scot in my life ;-)

For about a month now, my favourite lifestyle / tech / design magazine, BRIGHT, has been releasing episodes of what they call BRIGHT.tv. A not-so-revolutionary form of media distribution, but nonetheless, one that is important to me.

Today’s episode of BRIGHT.tv featured the soon to be open for the public Qbic Hotel, a low-cost, medium-high-quality hotel that is completely automated: At Qbic Hotel, you do not have to wait in line for a slow receptionist to book you into the system and you do not have to put up with, sometimes, annoying room service guys.

Granted, some people value great service and to be honest, I do not mind staying in hotels that cater for your every wish, but if you are just staying in the city for a night and want to get some sleep and not be hassled by anyone, Qbic might be interesting to you.

With rooms ranging from roughly $50 to roughly $190, the rooms are cheap, for Amsterdam’ish standards anyway. Designed by a professional and accomplished designer, the rooms look very inviting and have just enough to keep you happy for the time you spend there.

I’d definitely stay at Qbic if the need arises, but you should be your own judge.

Unless you have spent the last two years living under a rock, you have probably heard about a puzzle game called Sudoku. These innocent looking puzzles have invaded newspapers and magazines, people have drawn up their own versions and there have even been whole sets of books dedicated to Sudoku. So, one might wonder, what is there left to discuss? That’s right, a Pocket PC Version!

A couple of weeks ago, PDAmill released their own Sudoku clone as part of their ever growing Gamebox Collection and if you are looking to train your brain a little during the summer (or any other season), this game might be for you.

Numb3rs

Sudoku is a game about relationship and, at first, seemingly endless possibilities. The truth, however, is that Sudoku is quite simple, there are only two rules (as far as I know) and once you understand these two rules, solving the game is not that hard anymore. PDAmill’s Sudoku makes use of the numbered version of Sudoku, which most people find easier to solve than, for example, shape- or color-based Sudokus.

Think tank

The interface for Gamebox Sudoku is quite spartan: you can either start a new game, continue or restart an old one, read up on the rules or quit the game. The minimalistic approach in this case however is very well chosen. The user does not need any more items than those that are presented in the menu.

Starting a new game is fairly straight forward: your first choice is the size of your puzzle, after that, you select the difficulty of your game and you can start solving your puzzle.

Once you are in the game, you get a richer interface, with a myriad of options. Two thirds of your screen are used by the Sudoku puzzle itself while one third is used for the sidebar. The set of tools that are available are streamlined to make your game experience as pleasant as possible.

The thing that I like most about the sidebar is the erase tool, with it, you can hide those numbers that can not be placed on a certain field, based on the rules of the game and your own calculations. While this feature might not be needed by professional players, I found it very useful in solving the bigger and more difficult puzzles.

As soon as you have hidden all the impossible numbers for a given spot, you can switch the erase tool to the pencil tool and start filling in your puzzle.

In case you are stuck, the game offers you both a undo / redo function as well as a hint tool that will cancel out any numbers that are wrong as defined by the rules of the game. Especially with the biggest puzzle form, this can be very useful and certainly more fun than simply restarting a session.

A good combo

In the past two years, I did a fairly good job in avoiding Sudoku. I played it once but could not find a solution back then and gave up, because the game did not appeal to me. When I came across this title, I had the weird idea of trying it again, because sometimes, I enjoy Pocket PC versions of a game a lot more than their real life counterparts. Long story short, I ended up loving the game. I think I have solved about 30 to 40 Sudokus by now and thanks to this game, I will probably keep doing so.

This game does it the right way: there is the soothing background music, the relaxing color scheme and additions to a brilliant game that make it a lot more fun, especially for those that never played the game or do not like this kind of games.

For $14.95, you get hours and hours of (single player) fun and unlimited Sudokus to boot. No need to carry around a huge book full of puzzles you can only use once. While I do not think that this game is overpriced, I would still suggest any buyers to sign up for My.PDAmill; that way, you get at least 10% off of the price and (depending on the amount of games you bought from PDAmill) that percentage can grow up to 50%.

As with all PDAmill games, a trial version is available, so I suggest you check out the game for yourself.

Pocket PC are becoming more and more of a replacement for small time computing. They may not yet be able to replace your office PC for a 100% but typing a long email, doing some mobile blogging or other input sensitive tasks is no uncommon thing anymore.

In recent years, a number of devices have been released with integrated keyboards and you can of course always attach an external keyboard to your device, but there is still a huge amount of Pocket PCs that have to rely on Software Input Panels (SIP) to get the job done. With such a big (potential) customer base, it is only natural that companies will try to come up with solutions that make your life easier.

One of these solutions is TenGo Thumb, a SIP that is big enough to be used with your thumbs (yet, it still works very well with a stylus). The application is aimed at people that want to input data quickly and easily on the go, without going through the additional hassle of pulling a stylus out of its silo.

Rules of thumb

After installing TenGO Thumb and starting any application that requires text input, you will be presented with a choice to either skip or follow the TenGO Thumb tutorial. While you could use the SIP without any training, I would recommend you to go through the included tutorial, for the simple reason that more advanced things like spelling words that are not yet in your dictionary, are hard to do if you have no clue as to how you can activate such a feature.

TenGO Thumb’s biggest advantage over many other large-button SIPs is that it includes a predictive text input feature called the TenGO core engine. With it, you can easily type words and just as easily go back and correct the word(s) you typed. Another useful feature of TenGO is that it stores your most used words at the most left part of the list, which can help if you type the same words a lot. You can see, in part, how the engine works, by looking at the characters that are displayed in the small box on the right hand side.

Thumbing a ride

Now, all of this is certainly very interesting, but we all know that a picture speaks a thousand words, so I decided to create a short video clip of someone typing an email, because, if a picture is able to speak a thousand words, this clip will speak volumes.

The clip is available in a variety of flavors, you can watch it right now in your browser, by going to the Flash version (4.7 mb), or you can download a smaller WMV version here (2.4 mb).

It should be noted that the typing is a lot faster than the screen recorder is capable of recording and as such, you only see one third of the keys actually being hit.

Another thing that you are not seeing is that I am actually using my thumbs to type the email. Based on the visual setup of TenGO Thumb, which basically comes down to six large keys for the various characters, typing long texts becomes a lot easier.

Thumb Problem

When I first came across TenGO Thumb, I installed it on a Windows Mobile 2003 device where it worked without a hitch. Then came my new Pocket PC and I installed the SIP there too but I had trouble activating it. In two out of five cases, the keyboard would not open and the only way to get it working again was a soft-reset.

Soft-resetting your device all the time, while harmless, gets annoying really quick and so I contacted the TenGO support team. I have to admit that I have not met support guys that walk the extra marathon (yes, marathon, not just mile) for a future customer like TenGO did. A dozen possible ways to solve the problem later, I ended up removing some of the (preinstalled) O2 applications from my Pocket PC and voilà the keyboard opens whenever I need it and I have not had a problem with it since.

Thumbs up or down?

All in all, TenGO Thumb is a great piece of software and makes typing on Pocket PCs without a keyboard a lot easier and a lot more efficient. Even with big thumbs, you will not face any problems and with predictive text input, you will be typing away at your first mobile novel in no time. At a mere $12.95, this application is a steal and will pay for itself in no time.

As far as I am concerned, TenGO Thumb gets a definite thumbs up from me. The only downside I can see with this application is that you might be able to damage your screen if you are using your device without a good screen protector.

I just came across a clip on YouTube that I felt was worth posting about. The clip has been viewed close to 500,000 times already and as always, this kind of attention also attracts those that try to take the high road by claiming that they would never do the things depicted in the video.

Now, before you get any wrong ideas about the clip, rest assured, its mostly safe for work. There’s no nudity or anything, in fact - its nothing more than a visualization of human nature:

Paul Robinett, director and producer of the clip is taping his son, who has been trying to bury himself under the sand, when all of a sudden, Robinett spots a trio of young women:

Now, beautiful women on a beautiful beach aren’t that uncommon these days, so what’s the fuss about you might wonder? Well, instead of stopping the tape or focusing on his son again, Robinett keeps taping the women, in order to point out that his actions (watching them) aren’t all that bad, considering that the trio is doing exactly the same, namely watching a handsome lifeguard and even having the guts of walking in front of the lifeguard in order to take a few pictures with him standing in the background.

So, I am wondering, how is it that it is acceptable for women to watch men and yet, at the same time, it is socially unacceptable for men to watch women?

As expected, this video gathered quite a few responses, with some of them complaining about the content of the video and others congratulating Robinett for being courageous enough to post this kind of clip on YouTube.

My take on this video is simple: Robinett has a point and a very good one at that. It is simply human nature to seek out the more attractive members of a society and there is nothing wrong with that and even more, that is nothing to feel guilty about.

Robinett does not portray these women as sex objects in any way, he only shows the viewer that females do not differ from males as much as socially accepted values would lead us to believe.

While EA is gracing the world with (yet another) The Sims spin off, called “The Sims Bowling“, PDAmill just released a bowling simulation that actually sounds like fun.

Fast Food meets Physical Education

Most Pocket PC gamers know PDAmill from the Arvale franchise, a collection of amazingly funny RPGs. I have enjoyed PDAMill games in the past and naturally, I wanted to see if this title would manage to live up to my expectations too.

I have to admit up front that I am not much of a bowler. I know that the ball has to knock over the pins and that you are not supposed to throw the ball in a way that would make it jump lanes or even damage the lane, but apart from that, I never really got into the game.

Meet the competition

The Bowling for Burgers Tournament has been going for some time now and you’re in the final stage of the tournament. Three players left. The cool Slick Bacher, the lovely Maggie Monroe and the no-nonsense Mr. Cube. All three of them have different attributes; while one might have an incredible amount of luck (most probably, due to her looks), the others enjoy a high level of strength or accuracy.

Don’t mind your step

With normal bowling, you would get a foul if you were to step over the line, it would void any points you received for your delivery and you would be one step closer to losing. With Bowling for Burgers, you do not have to concern yourself with all these complicated things, you just have to play.

Rolling the ball is simple: pick a good starting position (hint: the center of the lane is a good start) and then swipe your stylus in the direction you want the ball to go. The stronger your swipe, the faster the ball will go.

You can further influence the way the ball interacts with the pins by adjusting the weight or by hitting (or avoiding) one of the extras:

Since this competition is heavily sponsored by burger joints, you will occasionally find yourself in a situation where a strange object appears on your lane. It might be good, it might be bad, the only way to find out what kind of effect it has is to roll your ball over it.

The goal is simple: knock down as many pins as possible. If you manage to knock down all ten on your first roll, you hit a strike, if you manage to “clean up” with your second roll, its called a spare. The more pins you knock down, the higher your score will be after the last frame and who knows, you might even manage to hit a turkey.

Blow or blowout?

If you are looking for a dead serious bowling simulation, Bowling for Burgers is not for you. This game is as funny as bowling can get without real people. There’s the entertaining 50’s music, beautifully drawn graphics and, in general a great user experience, because gamers do not need to know anything about the game.

The game will set you back about $20 and will keep you entertained for many hours. Bowling for Burgers is one of those titles that you can keep playing no matter what. It does not start to annoy you after a few rounds and has a high replayability factor.

A trial version is available at PDAmill’s site, so I suggest you check out the game for yourself.

A big thank you goes out to Nate Nelson for providing me with all those fancy bowling terms and explaining the basic rules of the game to me.

Google just stealth-launched a new service (beta, naturally) in the Americas called AdSense for mobile. The service has already been tested for about 15 months now in Japan and was deemed successful enough to roll it out to a broader public.

While I am not a huge fan of advertising in general, I believe that the monetary reward that a publisher can get from services like AdSense can be beneficial to the end user as far as making content freely available goes.

If Google enforces the same guidelines as it does with “normal” AdSense, I believe that this will be a great way to provide mobile users with content free of charge, while at the same time being able to monetize those same visitors.

Hot on the heels of Fast Company’s announcement about Fast Cities and the lack thereof as far as Europe goes, Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni announced their newest initiative called Seedcamp.

Klein’s vision is simple:

We’re looking for the brightest and the best young entrepreneurs across Europe, Middle East and Africa to blow us away with their ideas for game-changing businesses.

What’s even better is that Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, of The Next Web fame, decided to provide some additional exposure to two of the selected Seedcamp teams.

Watch out Fast Company, next year, Europe will most certainly have a lot more to show than we did this year.

When you’re a technological nomad, there’s one thing you can’t live without: power. Your Pocket PC isn’t worth anything if you can’t power it up, an iPod without juice is like those old LP albums your dad has in the basement: useless.

Thanks to Proporta, you can now charge your devices while you’re in a car. All you need is an USB cable that connects to your device and a cigarette lighter outlet. Pretty ingenious design if you ask me, because the USB port enables you to use any device you own with the plug.

This accessory sets you back a mere $8.95 and you’ll be thankful that you got it when you still had a chance. Right now, Proporta is even running a promotion where you can get one for free as long as you order something else from them. Get yours while they still have stock!

[Mini Reviews are short articles that discuss the most essential things you need to know about an item. These articles are not meant to be longer than a few sentences and are a quick way to decide if something is worth your money or not. ]

Only two weeks ago, James from isotope244 presented his latest creation to the world. Yesterday, the final version of Machines at War was released. Reason enough for me to take a closer look at what promises to be the hottest real time strategy (RTS) game of the summer:

The Art of War

If you ever played Atomic Cannon (Pocket), you already know that isotope244 prides themselves with the creation of amazing graphics. James and his crew are using the Atom Engine once again and even though this is the same technology that powered games as long as three years ago, the graphics still look better than with most other current Pocket PC games.

The loading screens of the game are probably the first artwork you will pay attention to: depicting aggressive, yet strangely beautiful scenes of battle, they make the (mostly short) loading times bearable.

Next, you’ll be presented with a spartan interface: a sidebar to the right with access to the game menu, the help function, with a useful tutorial and buttons for four of your attack teams and a shortcut to get back to your base.

The lower third of the screen is used by, what I like to call, the command and control bar: It provides the player with all the information that is needed.

To the left are the meters for credits, power and the primary form of income of this game: Ore. Right next to it is the most important part of the control interface: your build tools. What I liked most about the building process is that you can queue up as many units as you want (well, can afford anyway) and also get to see a little timer that tells you when to expect your reinforcements.

Epic Movie: no, epic battles: yes!

Battles these days aren’t fun anymore, you see a group of soldiers fighting a few stray rebels in some desert country and maybe, just maybe, you’ll see a tank every now and then and if you’re really lucky, you’ll see some explosions.

Machines of War is different, here the old principle of overwhelming force still applies to and boy, what a feast this is. You may be playing this on a Pocket PC or Smartphone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy battles that take up multiple screens. Yes, you could build small strike teams and take out the enemy one-by-one, but believe me, its a lot more fun to just crush the enemy with your whole platoon and then take one final look at the destruction you caused.

To keep your ears happy too, isotope244 created a whole array of sounds. Combined with a fitting score that adds to the flair of the game but doesn’t disrupt your focus, you can enjoy the various explosions and weapon sounds and you might even hear the occasional radio chatter.

The Borg will adapt and so will Machines of War

RTS games can be very difficult, after all, keeping up with the needs of a huge army isn’t exactly a piece of cake. Luckily, isotope244 included a variety of different mutators you can adjust to make the game as hard (or easy) as you want to. Most of these mutators are pretty standard, like the amount of money and resources or the speed of the game but there are two that are quite uncommon:

Machines of War provides you with the possibility to play the game with adaptive difficulty. What that means is that, the better you are, the harder the CPU player(s) will retaliate. This is a great way to play the game without having to fear that your enemy will be too easy to defeat.

The other feature is the so-called AutoPlay option of the game helps you with building your base. You can just sit back and let the CPU build your defenses for you, but you can also intervene when you deem it necessary.

Military Science

You’re in the army now, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to study. Well, not you, Commander, but your underlings do, and they are very good at it. Machines of War has one of these rare R&D features that allows you to improve your units as you play the game.

Granted, you could beat the game without ever upgrading any unit at all, but its a lot easier to have those eggheads research some new toys and then put them to good, military, use. The best part of this is probably that, besides a set amount of time, you don’t have to spend anything on these upgrades.

Long story short

All in all, Machines of War is a great game. It’s fun to play, easy to understand and has enough options to keep you coming back for more for a long time. I expect this game to be just as popular with mobile Commanders around the world as Atomic Cannon was so get your copy now, because, as far as Pocket PC games go, you can’t spend $20 better right now and who knows, you might even find the easter egg that’s included.

The only thing that I am missing in this game is some form of multiplayer support but who knows, a feature like that might be available in a future version…

Update - July 21st, 2007
I just uploaded a couple of screenshots that show the destruction of terrain over time. Please be aware that these images are 1600 x 1600 pixels and come in at 1.2 mb each, but they are definitely the download.