Blood Calves?

Due to the proliferation of "fan pages" and individuals who take wandering animal class links (calves, bulls, llamas, etc.) and use a hacking tool to convert them to post themselves, we are asking all members of Sharing Foals and Calves who wish to post calves to use a link shortening service, such as http://bit.ly or http://tinyurl.com to shorten your calf links before posting them in the group.  


Actually, it's a good idea to do this when you post ANY calf, because they're being taken and converted by many people lately.

NOBODY Legitimately Acquires THIS many calves to share in this timeframe. Nobody.

Got Snaggers?

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is "How do you deal with people who use the snag bar?".

Are you being snagged?  If you don't like it, solve it!

Well....it depends, and it's purely subjective.  Some 'Insane Snag Bar Users' (people who really tend to overdo the whole snagging thing - we pretty much know who they are) are also nice people, and you may want to keep them on your list because they're entertaining or informative.  Of course, the easiest way to deal with anyone who you feel is abusing your game feed is to simply remove them from your friends' list.  Problem solved.

A more creative way to keep them on your Facebook Friends List (but to block them from game posts you feel they may be snagging) is through the use of Facebook Lists and Custom Security on individual posts.

In order to do this, you first need to create a list of people from whom you'd like to block your game posts.

The Crying Game: Zynga Caps Gamefeed Collections

I have to click now? With my hand? Noooooo!!!!!!

In a move which was fully expected, Zynga (via Lexi) announced on Wednesday that they're placing limits on the number of items which you can collect from the game feed for FarmVille every day.  While this won't actually impact most players, it does seem to have impacted the most vocal ones - the ones who claim to need to collect more than the newly-imposed limit of 125 items per 24 hour period.


Oh, the tears!  From posts on Zynga's forums to GU to the various Facebook pages which have sprung up in opposition to the 125 item limit, it's clear that many people assume that this limit is on everything, and from the tone of some of these things you'd think the world was coming to an end.  


A few of these mouth-breathers making the most noise about the limit are some of the same people who tend to get confused while going through the checkout line at the grocery store - I end up behind one or two of their ilk every time I go shopping, it seems.  Lexi could put up illustrations and nudie photos and a LOT of folks just aren't going to get it.

2010: A FarmVille Odyssey

WARNING:  Unlike fan sites, there will be no fond trip down memory lane here.  The opinions here are strictly my own, your results may vary.  It's all based on the past years' worth of compiling opinions, reactions and other various data from several select mega-farmers: those, like myself, who have the Facebook limit of 5,000 friends, all relatively dedicated FarmVille players.  While some choose to orally copulate Zynga for everything they spew forth, here you're only going to get honest reaction and analysis - the good (Fertilize All!), the bad (pigpens), and the ugly (me).Oh - there may also be the occasional 'adult word' in here.  Most of us can't play FarmVille without uttering or at least thinking a few of them anyway.  It may be safe for work (depending on where you work), but it's probably a little too cynical for your kids to read.  Fair warning, right?

So....maybe by this time I should have titled this "FarmVille Remembered".  Is this a Eulogy?  It may be, folks.  If Zynga continues to lose players by the boatload as they've been doing for months now by alienating their strongest advocates - the advanced players - they risk losing not only their gaming crown but the position they've coveted for so long: the premier social gaming producer.

We saw a vast number of milestones and notable 'occurrences' in FarmVille in 2010 - here are just a few of the more notable ones.  They aren't in any particular order.

I'm sure I've either missed some, forgotten some, or intentionally blocked some of them out of my brain in order to maintain my own sanity.  Feel free to remind us of those in the comments section.

Yes, it's a long read, but in retrospect it was a VERY long year.  Get yourself a cup of coffee, or maybe bring the whole pot.  Just be careful, there may be spots here where you'll end up spraying it out of your nose.  You've been warned! Enjoy.

Removing Unwanted Games and Applications on Facebook

If you get infected with a rogue application (i.e., the 'trojans' you get from clicking on scam posts, etc.), this is the way to remove them from your account.  Be sure to bookmark this entry in case you need to refer back to it, and feel free to share it with your friends

- we all need to clean our our apps and remove games we don't play anymore - it helps you and it helps the rest of us so that we can focus our efforts on helping people who actually do play the games!
Sooner or later, we all get tired of playing some of the games on Facebook.  We tire of seeing and ignoring the requests for the games, the posts going past us and cramming up our newsfeed, etc.

Sometimes, we also inadvertently allow a rogue or bad application to do things in our name like make posts while we're not looking, advertise a service or scam, etc.

Note: A lot of people are hesitant to completely remove a game from their account because they don't want to lose all the progress they've made on the game.  Zynga keeps your game intact for at least 6 months after you remove it, in case you change your mind and want to go back to it....but frankly if you go 6 months and don't play it, you probably don't want to go back and play it at all anyway.  6 months is a LIFETIME in the gaming world, so at that point you may as well start over again anyway, and reap the benefits they pass out to new players, no?

Well, it's a new year and it's time to clean up our Facebook applications.  Not only will this make our accounts safer, but it will really help out our fellow gamers, since removing an application removes your name from the players list.  Your friends will thank you for not wasting their precious 'sends' for things like invitations, free gifts, and other game play in which you need to participate.

So...let's remove some games we don't play anymore, and get rid of some annoying applications we don't need or want around.  To do this, start by going to http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications

This brings up a screen which looks similar to this: