Zork will soon be returning as a browser-based game, put up by the company that owns the ruins of the glory that was Infocom.
That’s pretty cool — I’d especially like it if there were a non-cumbersome iPhone app to play Infocom games — but the best Infocom game is already online in several incarnations, including two illustrated versions from the BBC of, of course, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I haven’t mentioned it previously here, but the two original Hitchhiker’s radio series are finally available via iTunes, and I’ve been enjoying them way too much. (I even slapped the Hitchhiker’s movie thumb logo onto my iPhone as its wallpaper.)
And I somehow missed this big write-up about the never-released Infocom Hitchhiker’s sequel, Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
It’s almost the end of the year, so here’s what I’m listening to via podcast. (Audio or sometimes video programs downloaded directly and automagically onto your computer for later listening or viewing.) If you’re a new iPod owner, consider this a decent starting place for stuff to listen to yourself, assuming you and I have identical tastes. (And why wouldn’t you?)
All of these can be found in the iTunes podcast directory and most of them can be found via the magic of Google.
I keep promising to make this list, but it hasn’t happened until now.
I have a lot of friends who have iPhones now, or iPod Touch units (my brother’s family has my old one, for instance). And while the media player is nice and the phone aspect is fine, to me, the units become most impressive when you unlock their potential as portable computers and start adding applications from the iTunes App Store.
While some apps can be pricy — $30 or more for some financial planning software, for instance — there’s a lot of free programs, too, either produced for the fun of it or as freeware previews of more fully featured paid apps. I haven’t paid more than $5 for any app, and I only actually use one that expensive. (The other two paid apps on my iPhone were $0.99 each, as I recall.)
I keep promising to make this list, but it hasn’t happened until now.
