...and office productivity nationwide skyrockets!

When I opened my Facebook page yesterday, had the nasty shock of finding that the Scrabulous application has been taken down.

New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/technology/30scrabble.html ?_r=1&scp=1&sq=scrabulous&st=cse&oref=slogin

Frankly, about time. The app was a pretty exact clone of Scrabble, and the brothers who had developed the app had been warned months ago.

And the official Hasbro version of the app not only got hit with an attack soon after Scrabulous was taken down, but it is a little buggy and too flashy. Hopefully when it gets re-introduced next month (or sooner! please!), it will be as smooth as the knock-off was. 

I am devastated. I usually juggled 3-4 games at a time with friends for the past year, and it brought me so much closer to family members, college friends, roommates who now live in other countries. 

While I know Scrabulous was developed without official consent, it worked so much better than any computer Scrabble I have ever played that I was hoping Hasbro would just buy it and slap their name on it.

Oh, Scrabulous was totally a ripoff of their intellectual property. The only difference between Scrabulous and Scrabble is that you can play phony words in Scrabble and it's up to your opponent to challenge your play. Scrabulous simply won't let you play phony words.

I knew its days were numbered the moment I first started playing it. But that didn't stop me and everyone I know from becoming addicts.

Is it not the same as this?

http://www.scrabulous.com/

oh, Ryan, that is exactly Scrabulous.

From a brief read at the site, looks like that is the original, and then they modified it to be a Facebook app.

Gonna have to see if that is as easy to get friends to play now.

I sincerely hope your productivity plummets again, Andrew :^)

Where are you looking for me, Al?  I have a Yahoo account, don't know if their game site has Reversi or something similar.  I'm ryanpmaxwell over there.