Goodsol Solitaire Blog

Pretty Good Solitaire v12.1

A new version of Pretty Good Solitaire is now available (for Windows 98/Me/XP/Vista).

Version 12.1 can be downloaded from http://www.goodsol.com/download.html

Version 12.1 adds 10 new games for a total of 710 games.

The new games are Chinese FreeCell, Double Limited, Endless Harp, Jacks in the Box, Private Lane, Quadrennial, Rueil, Sixteen Piles, Succession, and Trigon Left.

Version 12 is a free upgrade for users who originally ordered versions 10, 11, or 12.0 (2005 or later). It is not a free upgrade for users who originally ordered version 9 or below. Users of older versions can upgrade for $11.95 at http://www.goodsol.com/upgrade.html

The quick way to determine whether you need to upgrade to use version 12 is to look at your registration code. If your registration code starts with "24", "2p", or "2m", the upgrade is free and your registration code will work in version 12. Otherwise, you need to upgrade. If you registration code starts with "22" or "2u", version 11 was a free upgrade but version 12 is not.

This is the first update to the Windows Pretty Good Solitaire in a year.  My plan is to do 4 new releases in the next 12 months, including this one.  The next version 12.2 is planned for the May/June timeframe and will contain 720, 725, or 730 games.

$600,000 in a Month

Here is a Wired story about an iPhone game developer who made $600,000 in a month.

My reactions:

1) Good news!  Now maybe all the people who want to get rich quick will stop making clones to sell on the portals and start developing for the iPhone instead.

2)  He quit his day job before he ever received his first check.  In fact, the article indicates that he still hasn't gotten his first check yet.  Yikes!

3) Perhaps the guy should read what this guy wrote: Why I write software.  This is how things are done over the long term.

Amazon, Lincoln, and More

Some thoughts for the day:

1)  Amazon.com has recently entered the casual games market with a new Games Download store.

This has caused some controversy as the store sells games for $9.99 or less.

That this would happen sometime has been entirely predictable for years - the entire portal model has devolved into simply competition on price - which means prices were bound to just go lower and lower.   Most of the games on portals are completely derivative and have no way to compete on quality or as a brand - so that leaves only price.

The result will be that margins of the portal companies will just go down and down until the weakest have to either sell out to some big company who won't care or go bankrupt. 


2) Today is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, which is a pretty big deal here in Springfield IL.  There are lots of events going on in town today to celebrate and the President will be here tonight to give a speech.  The location is not very far from where we live and the security is out in force.  When I went out earlier I saw security people with dogs roaming around.

3) Our neighbors across the street still have their Christmas tree up.

Amazon Kindle 2

Amazon has released the Kindle 2, their new eBook reader.  We thought about buying the original Kindle, but passed as it seemed not quite ready.  But this version looks a lot better, so we decided to try it.  It doesn't actually ship until February 24th.  When we get it, I'll post a review of it here. 

In the meantime, if you want to buy one, click on the link below (it gives us a percentage).  It's $359, so it's not cheap, but eventually something like this is going to replace books.

Tropical Card Set

We have released a new card set for Pretty Good Solitaire and our other games:

 

Download the Tropical Card Set here.