About nine months ago, Astraware released the pirate-themed trading game
Tradewinds 2. As a total sucker for all things piratical (a day rarely goes by without at least one 'yar!' escaping my lips), I immediately downloaded it. Unfortunately, I just didn't have enough memory available on my Treo 650 to have a proper go at it. I sent Sammy my
first impressions, but that was the extent of my piracy. That is, until Alison at
Astraware generously sent me a review copy to run on my Centro.
Tradewinds 2 is a strategy game, through and through. You play as the captain of a merchant/pirate ship in the Caribbean. You earn money by buying low and selling high, and sinking any ships that try to stop you.
There are two game modes: Free Trade and Story. The Free Trade portion of the game plays roughly like my previous paragraph. You sail your ship from port to port, buying a variety of merchandise, and attempting to unload it for a profit at another port. Occasionally, you'll be accosted by pirates at sea, or be forced to defeat the pirates that have captured a port. Bartenders and their thirsty patrons will offer you advice so that you can make the best deals or survive the hardest fights, and shipwrights will sell you cannon, special ammo, or a new ship. Despite the simplicity of this game model, it's shockingly addictive. And elements like greedy money lenders, bankers with branches in only certain ports, and contraband items that might be confiscated by Port Authority only add to the fun. But the real heart and soul of Tradewinds 2 comes in the story mode.
Story mode adds a story element and tasks to the trading and adventuring of the Free Trade mode. You begin by choosing a character to play as (once you've played through one of the first four characters, a new character and a custom character become available). You learn their back story and attempt to achieve money and fame by running errands for the governors at each port. This is where Tradewinds 2 really shines. Not only do the various tasks break up the monotony of trade run after trade run, they come with a fantastic sense of humor and great writing. Tasks generally start simply and spin wildly out of control. For instance, a governor asked me to end a long standing feud he had with another governor by delivering a peace treaty. By the end of the task, I had sacked the other governor's port and left a flaming bag of "something I didn't want to dirty my hands with" on his doorstep, for him to discover and step on. The number of tasks is vast (after hours of gaming, I haven't encountered a duplicate yet), and I've laughed out loud at the dialog in the majority of them. Governors reward you for your help with money, magical items (which may help or hinder you), passengers, maps to new ports, and invitations to speak with other governors.
The sea battle portion of this game has an arcade look and feel, but is just as much a strategy mini-game as the trading portion of Tradewinds 2. While fighting ships or port defenses, you're given the option to choose which target to fire on, which (if any) special ammo to use, and whether to flee (you stop firing when you flee). As the game continues, the number and strength (defensive and offensive) of your enemy increases. As such, you need to buy a better ship to stay competitive. Winning a naval conflict earns you money, valuable gems from ports, and special items in task related battles. The strategy elements come in balancing how much expensive special ammo you use, how many (costly) cannon you lose in a longer battle, how much damage your ship takes, and when you'll next be in a port with a shipwright who can repair and restock your ship. Losing a battle ends the game, and winning a battle but taking extensive damage, or over using special ammo can cost you money. Furthermore, as you purchase bigger and better ships, repairing them becomes more and more expensive. As such, the nature of your battles will change to keep them cost effective.
The graphics in this game are a delight. The pirate-theme overlays everything in the game, giving even the menus an old-map-ish look. Interactions with governors, bartenders, merchants, etc. are done through the 'port' screen by tapping on the appropriate buildings. Each port looks different, and may contain different buildings, but it's all easy to navigate. Sailing to a different port is done from the map screen, and I already mentioned the sea battle screen. Everything in the game can be accessed with the stylus, but the five-way support is also excellent. The only things I couldn't do were select the 'to port,' 'set sail,' and 'flee' buttons. They were easy to fat-finger, though. And each different character that you interact with is represented by a little portrait. I haven't yet seen two portraits that were alike, but I'm guessing I've seen a fair handful of close cousins.
All the fancy graphics and sound effects come at a hefty price in memory, however. Tradewinds 2 clocks in at just over 4 megs. That's nothing on my Centro, but it was a deal breaker on my old 650. You can keep the game on your SD card, but it'll cost you some on performance. With Tradewinds 2 in RAM, the game loads in about 10-15 seconds. All the loading screens come with piratical witicisms (i.e. "Remember, the ship with the most cannon has the right of way.") and a progress bar, but performance was very snappy on my Centro. I often didn't have time to read the text before the load screen was gone. This game was created with the Zen of Palm in mind, which is terrific. It doesn't take over your hard keys, and it saves state before it exits, so that you'll return to where you left off automatically. Exiting takes about 20 seconds. You should take advantage of the opportunity to save your game though, despite the automatic save-state exit, because a run of bad luck could cause you to lose the game. I encountered one unfortunate glitch while playing the game, and learned a valuable lesson about saving in the process. My phone rang during a sea battle, and I accidentally tapped the 'decline with text' button, causing the game to exit. Tradewinds 2 made its best effort to save state before exiting, but somewhere in there it corrupted the save file, and would reset every time I reloaded. I was able to fix the game, but I had to revert to my last save file. About two hours of progress were lost.
'Two hours of progress between saves?' you say. Tradewinds 2 offers easily dozens of hours of play time. My productivity since receiving this game has ground to a standstill. I think up excuses to start it up, and I find myself saying, 'just one more trade,' or 'I'll just complete this one task.' If you're the sort of person that digs trading games (the demo version gives you 36 weeks of sailing, roughly 30-60 minutes of play time; that's more than enough to find out if it's a fit for you), this game is positively addictive. Tradewinds 2 definitely makes it on the short list of my favorite games.
Tradewinds 2 is available for PalmOS, Windows PC and Windows Mobile (PPC and Smartphone) for $19.95.
Meizu CEO: Jack Wong has announced the revamped M8 (miniOne) user interface (UI) in Meizu forum, which really makes me wonder what exactly he's trying to do by that. It's as obvious as from the start of M8 (miniOne) introduction back then, where everybody is saying how much Meizu copied iPhone designs and how persistent Jack Wong denied it. Nevertheless, I'm very interested to see how long Meizu is going to keep on deny this. Everyone have already put so much weight to M8 even before it's launched, maybe it'll sink down like Palm's Foleo because so many bad user's oppinions in the internet for a copy-cat device like this. See how similar the new UI at Gizmodo here.
(blogged with my Treo 750v)
Wait up, hold that thought about MacBook Air (MBA) issues that I've talked about 
Another great Palm OS program that I think deserves a mention is
Friday's Wnner
John Glashan is the winner from my throwaway on Friday, so well done John and please reply to the email sent out by Lindsey, Friday afternoon. Next throwaway will be Monday morning so if anyone is interested then tune in.
This brief but interesting editorial at 
Mike Rohde has been sketching again and as ever his drawings are pretty outstanding, that is all I can say. "I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week.
I think the sketchnotes turned out well, and it was no problem for me to continuously create them for nearly every session I attended. I certainly went through ink in my G2 mini pens — I'm glad I brought several along." 
Clustered & messy cables on your desk, aren't they a reflection on how your life is? And like in life, (sometimes) we want to make things right & put everything back in order again. Here's where Bluelounge's products comes to save the day; the dock that hides all the cables underneath it called SpaceStation®. Unlike any conventional docking station for laptops, the SpaceStation® has the same sleek design that resemblance to Apple's as well. The rubberised pad on top makes you comfortably put your laptop and mobile phones, although I think Bluelounge should add more than 4 USB ports. Like for instance I recently used up to 5 USB devices at the same time with my PC, and those numbers will keep on growing. Just take a look at the pictures in their 
[From 
Treonauts has some specials on at the moment well worth ,entioning. "This week and weekend are really proving to be “extra special” with terrific offers coming in left, right and center….
First there is the Treo and Centro Software March Specials with 20% Off not only the Top 10 applications such as Ringo Pro, Butler and VolumeCare Pro as well as the latest updated titles like Agendus, Spb Mobile Shell and TAKEphONE but also any of the thousands of others in our Software Store.
Next there is the extraordinary 25% Off All accessories promotion (valid until Wednesday, March 19) at the Palm Store offering you some truly astonishing prices on cases, batteries, headsets, GPS units and cradles. Both of Palm’s latest GPS navigation kits – the Palm GPS Navigator Car Kit for Treo 680, 700p and Palm GPS Navigator featuring Garmin Mobile XT for Centro – are now only $127.49 and $186.75 respectively for example.
Last but not least is the turn of our own Treonauts Store which is running a St. Patrick’s Day Special giving you a FREE protective Palm Treo Pocket Pouch ($9.95 value) automatically added to your cart with every order above $19.95 (valid until Midnight PST on Monday, March 17)." To take advantage of any of these offers then 
The guys at SmartboxDesign always have great games for you to download and enjoy from your Palm device and remember that if you have a WinMob Palm smartphone then many of their games are available for your platform too including one of my favourites and thats WordPop. It's one of the games that I give 10 out of 10 for. "Part puzzle, part word creation, and all fun. Clear the board by creating words! As you pop each word from the board, there are fewer and fewer letters left. Plan ahead to win the round and the game. WordPop! is easy to learn and thoroughly entertaining." And as always there is a free trial for you to take advantage of 
Attention Grabber could be useful plus it's free too. "
Happy Sunday I hope that you are all having a great weekend, I cannot believe that Easter is only a week away, I wanted to add a warm welcome to our new Associate Writers who have made their first posts over the last couple of days, we have, Clark Fralick, Juan Jose Belmonte Torres, Nick Garnett and Luke Slater. It's lovely to have you writing your thoughts on all things mobile and I have enjoyed reading your thoughts over the last couple of days. If you have some time to volunteer and would like to become a Associate Writer for Palm Addict then 
The handheld has been an indispensable tool for me as an educator but one that I rarely see other teachers use. For this reason, I thought I would share with others how I use a handheld in my classroom and possibly inspire or spark an interest in other teachers. As an elementary art teacher, I see on averag e, 1400 students a week. I am always taking notes and jotting things down to remember. I tried very hard to keep track of this information but needed something more than the standard memo app.
I'd noticed that recently when I'd hit the Find button on my Palm, the machine would soft reset. This, obviously, made me unhappy. Half of the value of using a PDA is being able to search through my contacts, calendar, etc. quickly and easily. I did a little research and found out that when you hit Find, the Palm OS actually calls into each application on your device and asks it for any matches. A crash in find usually indicates that one of your apps has a bug in it or a corrupted database. Now came the hard part... how to figure out which app had the problem.
