Whisper Games will be shutting down on March 9th, 2013 – this is my personal reflection on the experiences I went through and the things I witnessed within this adventure.

Whisper Games Logo

In 2008, Sarsion and I gave life to Whisper Game Studios, a web-driven collaborative effort (read: not a company) to learn about, and make, video games. It started with the two of us. We pulled in a few friends for help in other departments and got going with a few flash games to bring in a community. It was a very enjoyable time, and we certainly were put through the ropes in the process.

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Today, a small update to Messaging Emoticons was certified for the marketplace that adds the ability to pin entire messages to the start screen and the option to change pin behavior to open in the app instead of copying instantly. It should be available on the marketplace soon!

I also learned today via an article on WPCentral that Windows Phone 8 has fantastic emoticon support on the keyboard.That is definitely great news! The downside is that Messaging Emoticons won’t likely have much of a use-case on new handsets. I will, of course, evaluate this decision more thoroughly when I have a phone that runs Windows Phone 8, but for the time being, it seems as though Messaging Emoticons doesn’t really need to support WP8 as it’s no longer necessary.

I will say, though…the video below shows the emoticon keyboard filtering by category and including a “favorites” category that showcases your most-used emoticons. It may be a coincidence, but it certainly reminds me of the experience I offered through Messaging Emoticons!

Regardless, the app update should be available very soon for those of you sporting Windows Phone 7.5+ devices, and it’ll still be useful in those cases! Be on the lookout!

It’s been a while since I have posted any updates. I apologize for that! I’ve been busy. I got married in July, and planning both before and after has been occupying most of my time. Life is great!

It’s time again for the monthly Energy Advisor from SSP Innovations. It’s another great issue this month. If you work in GIS and haven’t subscribed, be sure to do so! Links to the articles are below.

• Creating an ArcGIS Online Outage Map – Easy as 1, 2, 3
• Maximizing Fiber Manager – Simple Config for Major Value
• Unitizing Assets in SSP’s Workforce Management – Part 2 [View Part 1]
• Linking GIS Objects to Files

My article this month was the last article on that list. It’s my first non-script article at SSP, and documents a system I built for one of our clients that is designed for scalability to other configurations and even more complicated systems. Give it a read if you have the chance! You can view the list of every published article if you’d like to browse.