general

Today Pogo rolled out the finalized (?) changes to their chat colors and format. Friends’ chat is now the dark red color that was voted in earlier and chat text once again begins on the same line as the username and chat icon. You can see the changes in the screenshot to the right.

For those of you who missed the great chat fiasco of 2010: on April 6 Pogo updated their game chat window. After an overwhelming negative response from the community, Pogo allowed us to vote for our choice of chat color starting on April 17. By a landslide, the red color came in first. Today, the changes that were implemented more or less return the chat text to the way it was prior to April 6.

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In response to the overwhelming opinions they received regarding the recent changes to the chat window and most specifically the changes to the color of friend text in chat, Pogo has decided to let us choose which color they’ll be using to display our friends’ chat text! The poll is on the right side of the Pogo News page, and they’ve put up an article with screenshots of the possible choices as well. Your choices are blue, green or red. Vote away!

This week’s Letters to the Editor US was filled with complaints about the new chat changes, yet another mention of how to play RISK, what to do with email offers for free gems (*delete*), Facebook security, flashing chat icons, web browsers, and more. Lots of stuff, but here’s a roundup of the most important items:

Chat Changes

To start, the Editor responded to numerous complaints about the chat changes, telling us of their plans to change the chat once again:

Thanks to you, and to all those who spent the time putting together letters to the Editor regarding the recent changes to the chat format. As anyone who watches chat knows, we made some changes, and then we made some more changes.

And guess what? We need to make a few more changes to make the chat flow as well as it used to. Thanks for your patience on this. We do expect that the chat format will be changed again soon, hopefully to everyone’s liking.

So we’ll be seeing more change to the chat colors in the coming days. So far we have no idea what they’re planning, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see the chat colors change back to what they were, since that seems to be the overwhelming request from Pogo’s fans.

Spoofing

Also discussed was “spoofing”, something that our very own regular ELL had happen to her and described in our last weekend open thread. (ELL, was that your letter?) Unfortunately, Pogo’s only solution is for you to report the offending account so they can delete it; beyond that, they claim there just isn’t much they can do.

IE6 Must Die

Pogo is no longer going to support IE6 — this doesn’t mean you can’t use it to access Pogo, it just means if there’s a problem their Customer Support can’t help you. They encourage everyone to use IE8, Firefox, or Chrome. If for no other reason than your own security, you should ditch IE6 for something that won’t leave your computer vulnerable to attacks. “Just like not updating your virus software can get you riddled with spyware, not updating your browser can be a gateway to attacks. There are even code snippets that will shut down IE6. I won’t tell you what they are, but you can find them on Wikipedia. It’s unstable.”

And Clue!

The UK Letters to the Editor this week covers chat changes, Pogo UK pricing, and this little gem, perhaps the best news of all:

CLUEDO Secrets & Spies, to give it its full name (CLUEDO is called CLUE in the US) will be out real soon! All being well, it’ll be up before the next Letters to Editor column…

Looks like we’ve got a scheduled release date of April 20th for the Clue/Cluedo hidden object game — mark your calendars and keep your fingers crossed that nothing holds it back! To tide you over until Tuesday, check out the How to Play file or get more information on Clue: Secrets & Spies in our archives.

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Pogo is running a survey! They want to hear from you, their players and biggest fans. Rumor has it this survey is a little lengthy so set aside a few minutes to take the survey and help them out. It takes an estimated 15-20 minutes to complete.

These Pogo surveys are always interesting because they give us a hint of what Pogo might be considering for the future. For example, this one discusses prizes and jackpots, member benefits (even a question about getting download games for half off!), annual rewards for paying members, referring friends to Club Pogo, Pogo vs. Facebook games and Pogo on Facebook, Pogo games on iPhone, iPod Touch and/or iPad, and more.

Did you take the survey? If you could make Pogo implement one idea of yours or one idea from their survey questions, what would it be?

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Last night’s 20/20 on ABC (March 19, 2010) featured a story about an online romance that started on Pogo and ended in murder. The story of TalHotBlondbig50 and MarineSniper1000 started innocently enough, as a chance encounter in one of Pogo’s Teens game rooms, but it became a story of jealousy, murder, and deception. 20/20′s web site features a few articles that tease the reader to view the show, which aired last night, but so far the videos aren’t online yet. The teasers are in parts:

- Sex-Charged Cyberchat Spirals Out of Control
- Cyber Love Triangle Fuels Murder
- ‘MarineSniper’ and ‘Talhotblond’s’ IMs

We’ll post a link to the video of last night’s episode when it becomes available on ABC’s web site. The video clip embedded in the teaser articles includes a short clip of the riveting interview with Thomas Montgomery, aka MarineSniper, 46, who pretended to be 18 years old on Pogo.

This is more than just a story of love gone bad, it becomes so twisted at the end — you’ve got to either watch the video or read the whole story. Take a look at this Wired magazine article from 2007, which details the whole sordid affair from beginning to end.

In addition to the Wired story two years ago and last night’s 20/20 episode, there’s a documentary called “TalHotBlond“; it’s available on Amazon
for download rental, download purchase, or DVD purchase if you’re interested in checking it out.

A quick check of Pogo for user profiles matching these folks’ screennames comes up with nothing for MarineSniper1000, but non-Club accounts for Beefcake1572 (created in 2005, including profile information filled out including a link to his myspace page) and TalHotBlondbig50 (created in 2003, but with less than a million tokens and sporting a male mini). It’s eerie to see them still ‘active’ and publicly accessible.

What do you think of this story? After hearing about what happened, does it change at all how you’ll play at Pogo in the future? Leave your thoughts in a comment below.

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Pogo has just brought their Pogo Arcade web site into a more public beta. We’ve been aware of it since around October, but now Pogo’s asking for their members to give feedback*. The site features various flash-based games and is free to everyone: no sign ups, no memberships. Pogo’s been delving into Flash games for a while now, with games like Beaker Creatures and Puck’s Peak, but these games are more like homebrewed games. They’re quick, casual arcade games that are fun and addictive. You’ll have to check ‘em out!

Thanks Austin for the heads-up on this one, we’d almost forgotten about it entirely.

*We love this. The site states “Let us know what you think! What games do you love, which games could be better? We welcome and encourage any feedback you might have.” However, there’s no link to contact them near that paragraph or anywhere else on the site. We guess you can just send your thoughts to editor@pogo.com.

Open the floodgates! The application for the next round of Pogo Beta Testing is up.

Here’s some information if you’re unfamiliar with the beta-testing process:

Become a Pogo™ Beta Tester!
We’re looking for players to help us identify problems and give us feedback on games before they go live on Pogo. You’ll be a part of the super secret society whose goal is to make Pogo games more fun! Okay, so maybe it’s not a super secret society, but it is an opportunity to preview Pogo games and to take part in making the games you play everyday! As a Beta Tester you will get to:

* Play Pogo games before they are released
* Provide feedback and opinions on specific game features and game play
* Alert us to game bugs (problems)
* Hang out and play games with other Beta Testers

Good luck to everyone with your applications!

Here’s a quick run-down of the news I’ve received over the past week (at least the stuff that’s still relevant):

The next PBA in development is Spike’s Casino. It’ll probably be released in January, but I’ll keep you posted if I hear otherwise. I will post the badges and their requirements later.

There’s a sweepstakes going on in Pogo Bowl for another few days. Play Pogo Bowl daily between December 15 – December 20 for chance to win $1,000 for you and a $1,000 for your favorite charity or a Portable Media Player and $10 gift card.

Several folks have written in wondering if Pet Society on Facebook is the replacement for Pogo Puppies, or at least the reason it’s retiring. “In the world of Pet Society, you and your pet can play games, decorate your house and even bring gifts to your friends! Enjoy many games and activities– play ball, jump rope, treasure hunt and partake in contests against other pets at the Pet Stadium!”

Until December 26, Pogo is having a sale on select Mini items and badges. It looks like you can get a lot of stuff for 25% off, including select M-n-M badges and all of the Premium Badge Albums (except Take a Trip).

Last, but not least: thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has sent in news and rumors so far. You guys rock! And keep ‘em coming! And thank you SO MUCH to everyone who sent in well-wishes and congratulations. We’re doing great, and just downright smitten with our new addition. Tired tired tired, but smitten. :)

Hi everyone!

So… I’m going to be taking some time off for myself and my family. This is only temporary and only for a short period of time.

This notice will remain at the top of the BadgeHungry home page until I’m back — don’t forget to scroll past this post for the latest news.

Things around here won’t change much for most of you, but the most frequent visitors will notice a few changes for a little while:

Click to read more