In honor of Bike to Work Day, even the King got in on a little two wheel action!

Have a great weekend!

First up is the new leaderboard we added.  Ever since we posted the blog post about our friend Anders and how he was one of the fastest Solitaire players we’ve ever seen, we’ve been getting emails from people claiming that they’ve also beat Solitaire deals in less than 30 seconds.   And even though we’re incredibly impressed and we still want to hear from you guys, we asked ourselves if the time it takes to beat a game is the most accurate measure to determine how skilled a Solitaire player is.  We decided that although speed is impressive, consistency is a good measure of skill too.  Therefore, we’d like to introduce our “Most Wins in a Row” Leaderboard.   With this leaderboard, we’re able to track your winning streaks and then post the results to Game Center, so you can see how your winning streaks compare to other people around the world!

Another feature we’re pretty excited about is our new batch of Winning Animations.  Now when you solve a deal, you’ll be rewarded with one of our new “dancing card” winning animations.  We’ve included a bunch of them in this update, so you could be getting a different animation every game!  Check them out today!

We’ve also made improvements to the way we handle sound in Solitaire.  We’ve included a new sound control option in our Settings menu.  If you set the sound option to Full, you will hear our sound effects; that means if you are playing background music external to Solitaire (like listening to music on your iPhone), some of the sounds from the game may mix with your music.  If you set the sound option to Silent, we will try to suppress all sound originating from the game.  So if you are listening to a song on your iPhone, the song will not be affected and you will not hear any sound effects from Solitaire.  To configure this option, tap the Settings button the toolbar and go to the Sound Control Option.

Get Solitaire for free from the iTunes App Store today!

As you might expect, we’re always working on updates to all of our apps on all of our platforms.  If you’d like to suggest a change or let us know about a certain feature, post it on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!  We’d love to hear from you guys.  Thanks for playing!

So, if you hadn’t seen our picture from last Friday of the MobilityWare King enjoying Solitaire on Google TV, then we’d like to let you know our Android apps are not only limited to Android phones, but are playable on Google TV as well!

Here’s a picture of how Solitaire looks on a Sony Google TV.

The graphics are crystal clear and gameplay is incredibly easy on it.  So if you are looking to purchase a Google TV in the near future, make sure to check out how the apps you use look on it!  We’ve checked it out with all our Android apps are we’re very pleased with it.

If you haven’t checked out our apps currently available on all Android devices, here’s where you can get them for free!

Solitaire

Spider Solitaire

FreeCell

The MobilityWare King is currently sitting back and enjoying our Solitaire app on Google TV!  That’s right, our Android apps are now playable on Google TV!  More info on that next week.  Have a great weekend!

Earlier this month, we ran a Where Do You Play Our Apps Photo Contest. We were delighted to see all your responses and we were thrilled to see all the different places our apps were being played.  We’d like to congratulate Nathan Q again for his winning entry.  It was pretty tough having to decide on a winner and we’d also like to thank all you guys again for helping us by voting on Facebook.  It was really interesting to see the creative side of all you guys and you can bet we’ll be doing some other contests in the near future.

As part of MobilityWare March, we also wanted to recognize some of our fans that accomplished some really remarkable feats.  We featured Georgia, a fan from Texas who scored over 31 million points on Word Warp Xtreme.  We also acknowledged Anders, a fan from Sweden who beat a deal of Solitaire in under 30 seconds!  And though their accomplishments are extremely impressive, we’re just glad you guys downloaded our apps and play them again and again.  We love it when you guys reach out to us, and we do read all of your messages.  So please, send us a tweet or leave us a comment on Facebook!

Also, it only seemed appropriate that during MobilityWare March, we received word that our Solitaire was featured by Apple’s “Top Free Apps of All Time” and the Amazon Appstore’s “Top Free Apps.”  Though we were ecstatic about being featured by such notable companies, we knew we owed a lot of our success to the support of our fans.  We say it a lot, but we could probably never say it enough, we are very thankful for all that you guys do.  As a company, we put out products that we’re really proud of, but we still need you guys to help us make it successful.  Just by downloading it, playing it, and leaving great reviews, you guys are making all of our hard work worth it.  And hearing that a lot of you play our apps again and again to beat your old previous scores, it only gives us more motivation to make each update better than the last.

So whether you score 100 points on Word Warp, or you beat a 4 deal Spider Solitaire game, whether you play our apps at a coffee shop in London, or on your couch here in California, we’re just glad you’ve chosen to play our apps.  To all of our users and fans of MobilityWare, one month is not enough for us to say how thankful we are for you guys.

So stay tuned to our Twitter and Facebook for our latest news and updates.  We’ve got so many things in store for you guys that we can’t wait for you to see.

As always, thank you again for the support. You guys are the best. Happy MobilityWare March.

After the entries were submitted, we asked our Facebook fans to help us choose the winner of the contest by voting for which photo they liked the best.  The entries with the most votes moved onto deliberation by a panel of judges here at MobilityWare, where the winning entry was selected on a scale based on creativity and popularity.

MobilityWare is pleased to announce that the winner of the Where Do You Play Our Apps Photo Contest is Nathan Q!

Nathan’s entry:

For his efforts, Nathan wins a $100 gift card to his choice of either the iTunes App Store or the Amazon Appstore.  Congratulations!  Great work!

To take a look at the other submissions in the contest, check out our contest photo album.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this contest.  We really had a blast seeing all of your submissions.  It was really great to see the creative and innovative side of our fans. Thank you also to everyone who helped vote!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and on Twitter to participate in future contests and giveaways.  We’ve got a lot of stuff planned, so stay tuned!

We got an email a couple months back from Anders, a native of Stockholm, Sweden, who found out about our Solitaire game through the iTunes App Store.  He was soon hooked and began to play every day at home on his iPad.  After about 2-3 weeks of playing, he started to notice that he was becoming quite skilled at the game, routinely beating deals extremely quickly, improving every day and posting some very high scores.

It got to a point where he was playing so much he noticed that there was a slight delay in the card movement in our app, which he thought was preventing him from getting even better scores.   After informing us of his problem, we noticed that there was indeed a delay in the card movement and we reduced it considerably in the next update.

With this out of his way, Anders stormed ahead and improved on his already impressive Solitaire scores, including beating Solitaire games in less than 30 seconds!  He even videotaped his effort for us to see.  Here is a video he shot where he completes a Draw 1 game in 29 seconds!  Check it out (his winning deal starts 19 seconds in):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwjmJSG18Hk

Impressive, right?  Congratulations to Anders.  He might be one of the quickest Solitaire players we’ve ever talked to.  We’ve watched the video several times and we’re still amazed.  What an accomplishment!

Just like with Georgia, these types of stories really make us happy.  We’re already very excited when people download and play our apps, but to hear that people take our games, play it again and again every day in order to get high scores, is really heartwarming and drives us to make each update better than the last.  We’ve got so many ideas planned over here at MobilityWare and we can’t wait to share them with you.

Remember, we love to hear from you guys.  Whether you just beat a Solitaire game in 4 minutes, or you can beat Draw 3 games without even breaking a sweat, we’re just glad you guys chose our app and embraced it.

So far, Anders is the only person we know of that has broken the 30 second barrier on a deal of Solitaire; but if you think you deserve to be in this elite club, send us a video of yourself completing the game and we’ll definitely include you in!

Thanks for supporting us…Happy MobilityWare March!

If you haven’t checked out our Solitaire app, you can download it for free from the iTunes App Store, the Android Market, or the Amazon Appstore.

You can imagine our excitement when we saw our Solitaire app slotted in at #3 on the Top Free Apps list (over the last 12 months), right behind powerhouse Angry Birds Free and the incredibly popular Netflix app.

Even though our Solitaire has been consistently ranked among the Top Games category the past couple months, the fact that it’s listed in the Top Free Apps overall list at #3 is extremely gratifying to us, especially considering our Solitaire has only been in the Amazon Appstore for less than six months.

When we debuted our app in the Amazon Appstore around November of last year, we didn’t know what to expect.  The Appstore had been around for 8 months or so and there were already a couple of card apps high in the rankings.  However, we did know that we had a quality Solitaire app, with crisp graphics and smooth gameplay, that we were really proud of.  We just had to let our fans see that.

So yes, we’re thrilled by the recognition.  And even though we’re really proud, we know we couldn’t have done it without our fans.  You guys downloaded it, played it, left us great reviews, and it’s putting us in some pretty elite company!

So thanks again for the support.  You guys mean the world to us.  Happy MobilityWare March.

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If you love our Solitaire app, check out some other apps we have available for free on the Amazon Appstore.

Spider Solitaire

FreeCell

Have you voted for your favorite photo in our Where Do You Play Our Apps Photo Contest album yet? Today is the last day to vote!  We need you to “Like” your favorite photo IN the album to help us pick a winner!

Just like with everybody else, we agree…the Retina Display is impressive.  Yes, we all know that the design of the new iPad didn’t change much from last year’s model (this year’s model is slightly thicker), but the instant you turn the new iPad on, you’ll see…the display is gorgeous.  Pictures look incredible, text looks crisp, and watching videos in high definition have never looked more amazing.  After having used both the first iPad and the iPad 2 in previous years, we can safely say there is a gigantic difference between viewing things on the older models and the new iPad.

With a 2048×1536 resolution to work with, we can’t wait to take advantage of the Retina Display.   We’ve always made sure that the graphics on every one of our apps were extremely clear, and we can promise you that the future versions of our apps that will be on the new iPad will have the same incredible attention to detail we’ve always prided ourselves on.

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Here are some new iPad-related articles we rounded up from the past weekend that we found particularly interesting:

What do you use your iPad for?  Here’s how 7 Tech CEO’s use their iPads throughout the day.

Some people have complained about the new iPad overheating when they used it, but we haven’t run into that sort of issue yet.

A survey finds that half of the people waiting in line for an iPad are first-time buyers.  Let us say that you’re in for a treat!

Even though the new iPad is slightly thicker, many cases for the iPad 2 will fit the new iPad.  The Apple Smart Cover will fit the new iPad but it may not work like it’s supposed to…. (it seems the problem is the magnets).

If you were able to get a new iPad, how do you like it?