Portent

This is really clever. Select one of the Amazon websites (com, uk, Japan or Canada) then a category (books, music or dvd/videos) and a search phrase.

I entered portent and you can see the word in the picture. Move your mouse over and click and it expands- I clicked a picture in the lower half of the “o” in portent (I highlighted this and combined into one image with box and arrow) , so you can see the book covers. As you move over then you get a pop up with book details etc. Now click again and you’re on the chosen site, on the page for that book etc. Quite clever especially as it’s a Japanese site (with text in English) and it has to pull the details and images from the selected Amazon site.

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This is very good. There are 28 puzzles ranging from very easy to hard. In each one, all you have to do is arrange the pieces so that when the ball drops, it is guided to the target.

The one shown is the first one and takes little effort to solve but they do get harder, much harder. You can reset the pieces at any time but you are always working against the clock and when it reaches zero, it’s game over.

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I think this has been well thought out. Some levels are very easy whereas other take a bit more effort.

You get a set number of bombs on each level and have to propel the main character to the exit door. On some levels there are barrels which explode after a while or tnt which blows immediately. Add in crates and it gets interesting. As you can see I’ve reached level 19 so far. Not easy as on some levels you have only one bomb- eg level 16.

You don’t have to solve all the levels in one go. Once you’ve done a level you can restart anytime at that level. Nicely implemented with great graphics. Recommended.

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I’ve never been fond of Flash but there’s no denying that it lets designers do some amazing effects. Where theres a lot of Flash code to load, the better designers usually provide a pre-loader; an animation usually showing a %loaded.

That’s all this site does though they do let you filter by year and provide information about the site that each pre-loader was used in. There are some brilliant animations there…

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Imagine a flash animation that combined Star Trek with the Flintstones with characters such as Captain James T Kirkstone, First Officer Sprock, Leonard RcKoy- you get the idea. The characters look like the Flintstones in Star Trek uniforms and there’s a running gag about red shirts who keep getting bumped off.

This is an excellent series with terrific cartoon animation and some mad plots- for example Pod racing on Tatooine- it’s clearly not afraid to take from other sci fi (e.g. Star Wars). My only hate- the canned laughter track, otherwise this is fantastic. And check out the animation to go with the Firm’s 1987 hit “Star Trekkin”.

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Unless you are a techy, specifically au fait with programming in C++, you’ll have trouble getting past the check points which ask you C++ questions. This was part of a marketing initiative by Sun earlier this year to promote programming tools. That has now finished but the game remains. It’s nicely implemented in Flash.

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Once again I’ve combined two screens to give you a better flavour of what the game is about. The left screen is the Bot designer where you buy parts to build your bot- you need a body to start with then add armour plating and various guns. As your cash is limited to start with, so are the choices but as you improve and earn cash you can buy better parts and fight tougher bots.

The right picture is the arena where you fight other bots. As you can see, my bot got beat up by Bonnie and Clyde. I’m constantly amazed by the sophistication of some of these games. Speaking from experience, no one ever appreciates how much programming effort goes into game programming.

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The best way to describe Flash Earth is to place it mid way between Google Maps and Google Earth. It can draw data from Google, Yahoo, Ask, Nasa, Open layers or Microsoft but the views are satelite view so you see an aerial view rather than a map. What you can do with it is smoothly zoom in and out and rotate.

It’s perhaps more of a toy than a serious mapping website but I’m not denigrating it. It’s fascinating to look at something and then compare it with the alternative from various providers. One of them (Microsoft) has street names, so you get a Google Maps type hybrid view. What you can’t do of course with Google Maps is smoothly rotate the view- Flash Earth is very good and very quick at doing that.

It also has a decent search, which works with UK postcodes as well. Take a look at the postcode SW6 1TR. It’s where I work; the Empress State building near Earls Court (in fact next door to the exhibition centre). The google photo is maybe 1-2 years old but the Microsoft one shows it being refurbished about 5 years ago (it cost £90 million!) so the view looks like a building site!

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This is quite a fun diversion. In the centre is a rotating arm with various coloured balls attached. You have a ball shooting gun that revolves around the perimeter. You have to shoot the ball to hit other balls of the same colour so they fall off the centre.

It’s all about the timing and the first few levels are pretty easy. After that…

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There a number of Flash games where you have to place the States in the correct location in the USA. This one was covered not so long ago on portent.

Something a bit different is combining the idea of locating things (in this case countries) with Tetris to make it more interesting. Countries or small states (Andorra, Lichtenstein etc) fall slowly from the top. Use the cursor keys to rotate and place them correctly. Three levels of difficulty make it more or less challenging.

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It takes more than being able to select pieces and drag them into place to be a strip cartoonist but I guess that Strip Generator is as near as you are going to get unless you are a PhotoShop whizz. You can play with it without registering but free registration gets you a blog and extra tools.

The main use of the site is creating strip cartoons and the Flash interface is pretty good. You have three frames, but you can remove them or add extra and resize them. There are a large number of icons, humans, beings, shapes, objects and text bubbles to play with. These can be resized, flipped and rotated.

Like most everyone else on the site I am a talentless hack and Dilbert etc have nothing to worry about in the shape of competition but I still fancy creating something! This is an excellent site- very nicely implemented and well worth a look.

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I like this- for simple entertainment, an online jigsaw puzzle website.

As well as the traditional jigsaw shapes you can choose blocks, triangular cut, wavy, jigzone (a mixture including some letters!), polygons, round, even Tetris and many others. Some of those are difficult, as are the smaller pieces – you can choose up to 247 pieces.

A flash application, this is very nicely implemented and with a new picture every day and lots in the archives this is an excellent piece of work.

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This is simple but unless you really know the USA and exactly where all the states are located, it’s not that easy.

Just drag a piece to where you think it should go. It tallies up your score and shows you where it should have gone if you get it wrong.

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This games takes the defence scenario but extends it by giving you the ability to build armies (using mana which is obtained by killing the baddies) and then you can go on the offensive. It’s a simple 2d left right scrolling and can be played with keyboard or mouse.

You have artillery in the shape of a bow and as well as earning mana during the battle, you also gain experience that can be used to upgrade your weapons, give you new types of troops. Great graphics, an ok sound track and just fun. Excellent.

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This is quite clever. You move a little man through a maze to get to the “end of screen” door, picking up keys to unlock barriers and avoiding jumping or moving onto the spikes.

So far so normal. However if you press the shift key, everything inverts – the screen dump actually shows the same screen twice, both normally and when it’s inverted. (Inverted 180 degrees and flipped colour).Lots of screens to get through and you will need to press shift as well as think outside the box. Very clever.

BTW, both this and the previous game are by Armor Games- a coincidence but also a tribute to the quality of their games. (And no I have no connection to them, financial or otherwise!)

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