Official Scrabble For Facebook does, in fact, suck

So over lunch I decided to give the Hasbro branded Scrabble the benefit of the doubt and loaded it up into Facebook.

Say what you might about the copyright wranglings of the clone Scrabulous - it had one distinct version over this now officially sanctioned one from EA:

It worked.

Loading the flash app was a long wait in the first place, and it took a reload before it seemed to acknowledge my IP address at all. Finally it did and I was pretty much just staring at a blank splash screen with little notion as to how to actually being a game. So I finally clicked the small text link above the huge flash animation to invite a friend and was greeted with this:



Wow. Every word really is a winner.

iPhone Pick: Galcon

I had gotten addicted to Galcon on the Mac, but the iPhone version is very much what you expect: a lot of twitch strategy in the palm of your hand. Basically you have a group of planets, you click on planets to send your armada to other planets and try to rule the galaxy. There's no resource allocation or unit distinctions - just click and go. It's simple but very fun.

It lacks a multiplayer mode, which is a bit of a shame as people make for far more interesting adversaries than the computer, but the game still manages to make for a decent challenge on the go. Also, the current version crashes occasionally on load - a problem that is currently plaguing a few iPhone apps. Hopefully a patch will resolve it.

Did Scrabulous Get Shut Down?

Signing into Scrabulous today brought back the following message:

Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

With "here" going to a very sparse page with an email signup form. The U.S. version of Scrabble recently released, and that might have sparked an injunction.

Webisode Watch: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Apparently Joss Whedon got bored during the Writer's Strike and this project came forth. I'm willing to say it's the best thing to come from the WGA ordeal because it is completely excellent. Starring Neil Patrick Harris as a the budding titular supervillain and the always great Nathan Fillion as his nemesis, the show is formatted in part as a video blog and in part as a musical.

Highly, highly recommended - just get it now.