general

If you didn’t apply for beta testing this summer, the beta application is now closed and there’s nothing else you can do but wait until next round (six months or so from now). But! If you applied for beta testing earlier this summer take note of this, from the latest Letters to the Editor:

Yes We Want Beta, But When?!

Dear Editor,
Last month was the sign up for the Pogo Beta and it said we would receive an email in a couple of weeks, well I asked around and nobody has received one, is there a problem?

Editor Bret: While moonlighting as the Pogo Editor I am also your host for the Pogo Beta Program. We took a bunch of applications for the upcoming Pogo Beta, and it looks like hopefully next week we will be sending out Beta Invites. So don’t worry if you didn’t get an email, a Pogo Beta test might be in the cards for you yet! Shortly after we send invites, the applicants that were not chosen will also be informed. Thanks for your patience and good luck!

In the past, Pogo hadn’t sent notice to applicants who weren’t chosen, so we usually asked people to let us know when they received an invitation so we could let everyone know that acceptance letters are in the process of going out. This time, though, we’d still like you to tell us so we can update the community. We don’t need to know any other details than that you received a letter, if you’re worried about violating your beta terms of service. Thanks!

And special thanks to John for pointing this out!

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Have you been putting off doing a badge because it requires you to win against another player or work with another player in a game to complete a badge? It’s easier than it seems…with “double browsing”.

Double-browsing requires a small amount technical know-how (and a lot of Pogo knowledge), but with a little patience and practice anyone can do this easily.

Double browsing is manually playing with two accounts at the same time on just one computer. It requires two different web browsers. There are several browsers to choose from: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, etc. In this example we’re using IE and Firefox. The point of having two web browsers is so that you can log in to Pogo with one account on one browser and then log in to Pogo with a different account on the other. That way, you can play with or against yourself in any game.

You will need to have two Pogo accounts to accomplish this. Some games that can be double browsed can be played on free accounts (like Checkers and Chess), so you can easily create a secondary account for double browsing for free at Pogo. If you are playing a game that requires Club Pogo membership, you can easily send a 5-day pass from your Club Pogo account to the new free account (the easiest way to do this is to add the new account to your friends list and send the pass from there).

Before you get started, we recommend you set your screen resolution to 1024×768 or 1152×864 or higher (right click your desktop, properties, and settings) before starting. This is optional, so if you’re not comfortable with changing settings or the size of the screen, it’s okay to skip this. Just beware you may have to move windows around a little more to find other windows underneath. An alternative to moving windows and using your mouse is to use Alt-tab to switch between windows.

In your Internet Explorer browser (IE), visit Pogo and log in with one of your accounts (we’ll call it AccountX):

* Choose the game you’d like to play
* Open the game room and pick a table
* Password protect the table
* Make sure you have the “allow players to replace computers” option checked

Your AccountX will now be sitting at a table with the option to play computers or wait for more players.

Move the IE screen down to the bottom right of your desktop. Remember the room that you chose and the table number. Open the Firefox browser and go to Pogo again, and log in with your second account (AccountY).

* Choose the game AccountX is playing
* Open the same room and pick the same table that AccountX is at
* Click the Play button and enter the password you AccountX chose

The IE browser (AccountX’s window) will ask you if you want to allow this player, say yes. If you have the room, move the Firefox screen to the upper left of your desktop and move IE to middle of your desktop. (This will allow you to see the majority of both game windows at the same time.

Voila, now you can play against yourself or with yourself to earn those badges!

Update: Kiki wrote in to let us know there are two new guest passes that can also be used for double-browsing. They’re for 14 days and will give your starter account 25,000 tokens. You can find them on our Free Tokens page.

It looks like things have gone awry for some folks in Pogoland! A few users had written in earlier today to let us know they were having problems loading games, and this was confirmed by a few tweets from Pogo_Bret (here, here and here).

In short, there is a problem with either the latest Java update or the latest IE8 update, or both. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done at this point, while Pogo works on a fix.

There seems to be an issue preventing some members from playing any Pogo games on the Pogo website. This issue seems to be related to the new version of Java (Version 6, Update 14) that was released recently.

The Pogo team is aware of the issue and currently working on possible solutions. Keep in mind that we are still at the information gathering-stage regarding this issue, and cannot recommend any possible fixes at this time.

If you haven’t run your updates on Java and/or IE8, you may want to hold off until Pogo posts a fix. Keep an eye on the Pogo help pages for more information, and we’ll update this post as further information becomes available.

Update 6/11/09, 10:27am: John wrote in to let us know what he did. He said if you don’t install the windows update (or maybe uninstall it) and make sure you don’t install this component, you’ll be fine: “Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP (KB969897)”. Good luck!

Update 6/11/09, 12:45pm: From @Pogo_Games: “It looks like the Loading issues should be over, if you are still having trouble clear you Java cache and your browser Cache in IE8 :)”

If you saw the latest Pogo News article about how Pogo is on Twitter, you’ll be pleased to know we’re on Twitter too. Follow badgehungry as well for the latest Pogo News and rumors, happenings at BadgeHungry and more from us!

We’ll be on vacation today through Friday November 7th. Regular postings will commence after we return. Good luck with your weekly badges and we’ll see you soon!

The response to the Trivial Pursuit answers has been overwhelmingly positive! Thank you to everyone who has written in to thank us and Brandy for our hard work on these daily postings. However, we have also received a little bit of negative email in response and despite that fact, we’re listening to your requests!

A couple of you had asked if we’d suppress the Daily 20 answers from being shown with regular blog posts on our front page and in our date-based archives. It’s hard to avert your eyes if you don’t want the spoiler of the answers, we know! So, with a little bit of code wrangling, that’s been done.

The Trivial Pursuit Daily 20 Answers will still be posted daily, but you’re going to have to visit the Daily 20 Answers category archive to find them. That link will always be available on our sidebar under “BadgeHungry’s Popular Pages” as well.

Here’s where you will find the answers:

Daily 20 Answers category archive
the Trivial Pursuit news archive
search results

Here’s where you won’t find the answers:

our front page
RSS feeds of posts (from this date forward)
date-based archives (like September 2008)

Have you ever wondered what the new (and old) TV commercials from Pogo look like? Now’s your chance. Pogo is featuring their six television commercials on this page. The first three are brand new, for Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and Bingo Luau. The next two have been aired in the past on different networks, like Lifetime and GSN. There’s also one that’s never been aired before, for First Class Solitaire.

Soon, Pogo will unveil a new design for Badge Central. They’ve separated out the badges into categories: Badge Central, My Collection, Mix-n-Match Badges, and Premium Badge Albums.

The Badge Central page is laid out to show you the badges you can earn for free (weekly badges) and the badges (Mix-n-Match) and albums (Premium) that you can purchase.

The My Collection page gives you an overview and specific breakdown of the badges you’ve earned of each type: Weekly, Mix-n-Match, Premium, and Special (which contains Game Award and Special Edition badges).

There’s still nowhere else to see at-a-glance what ranks you’ve earned in each game, so our BadgeHungry rank tracker is still as relevant as it was a year (and over four thousand active, registered users) ago! Check out a sample user’s very own rank tracker page!

Update 9/27: These changes will roll out on October 7th, according to a homepage banner on Pogo.com. You can read a little more about these changes in this news article.

A few of our readers have written in to ask if the Pogo beta tester letters have gone out yet. A quick scan of the Pogo fan forums shows that yes, a round of invitations has gone out already over the weekend. However, in the past Pogo has sent out the acceptance emails in small batches so they may deal with users who have problems logging into their beta accounts. If you applied and didn’t receive an acceptance email yet, don’t fret — there’s still a chance you may be invited at a later date.