According to Steve Sakoman, chief technology officer for the Palm OS platform, "The Powered Up Awards recognize originality in the vast Palm OS developer community and honor developers of the best applications." Winner of the Best Overall award was a solution called ActiveECG from Active Corporation at http://www.activecenter.com/products.html, which I profiled in this month's issue of PalmPower's Enterprise Edition at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200201/activeecg001.html.

Here in PalmPower, meanwhile, I decided to take a closer look at the winner of the Best Leisure and Entertainment Solution: Handmark Scrabble from Handmark, Inc. at http://www.handmark.com/products/scrabble/index.html. It's pictured in Figure A.

FIGURE A

Play the Palm OS version of the classic Scrabble boardgame.

I've been a long-time fan of Scrabble, so I was excited to get to play it on my Palm V. The game utilizes a drag-and-drop tile placement interface, has a built-in Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, automatically scores every game, and saves partially completed games to be continued at any time. You can choose to play in either Friendly or Tournament mode. The rules in Friendly mode are a little looser. Handmark describes it as being like "a casual family game where you can choose to accept or reject words not outside the standard rules." Obviously, they've never played with my family.

In Tournament mode you play by the classic Scrabble rules, which includes challenges that automatically check the built-in Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary.

Up to four players can play at a time, or you can play on your own against an automated computer opponent. You can choose the skill level of your opponent: Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, or Expert. You can also play against opponents using multiple Palm handhelds via IR beaming. The game even supports Bluetooth, so you can challenge your friends in real time on your individual handhelds.

How to play
To begin a new game, tap the menu icon and then tap New Game. The New Game dialog box appears, as pictured in Figure B.

FIGURE B

Choose your name and your opponents.

Here you enter each player's name and choose whether the player is human or controlled by the Palm handheld. If you're playing the computer, you can select the level of play using a drop-down list. The Game Mode drop-down list lets you select between Friendly and Tournament. There are also two check boxes that allow you to choose whether you want to allow suggestions and if you'd like to play by beaming. Tap OK, and the computer will choose who goes first by randomly selecting tiles. The letter closest to the beginning of the alphabet goes first.