Flash Puzzle Blog

1,000,000 Puzzles Served!

2007-01-04T17:26:00.000-05:00

Wow, around 2:00 today we served up our 1,000,000th puzzle! Thanks to all of our regulars and new puzzlers! So, what are we up to and our plans for 2007? In December we added over 50 new puzzles and several new categories. We plan on adding another 100+ puzzles in January and February. We are still taking suggestions for categories and puzzles, so be sure to get those in.

Here are some of our new puzzles.

Online Jigsaw Puzzle

Flash Puzzle Zone Update

2006-11-20T13:29:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like we may be coming out of the Google Sandbox. Our Google organic is up and we set a couple of daily visitor records this week. We have served over 640,000 puzzles since we started and that continues to grow at a faster rate.

We add 20+ flash based puzzle games to the website last week. Be sure to check those out.

Look for more photo puzzles this week. We are also working on a way that will allow MySpace users to use some of the photo toys on their page or others pages. More about that in the near future.

TheChosenLink

2006-11-03T18:16:00.000-05:00

In the link building for the flash puzzle zone, I came across this new web advertising ploy called TheChosenLink. We have all seen the old buy a pixel make some guy a million dollars. This is different. Buy a 60x60 space on a grid for the advertised price. Then if any one buys a space next to yours you get your money back via paypal(up to 8 squares). How does that work? Well when you buy a square you increase the cost of the squares around you. Links are also permanent and the site is ranked 23,329 in Alexa for the week. If you do buy a link, buy one near one of this images ;)

FPZ Stats and More

2006-10-27T16:10:00.000-04:00

Well the Flash Puzzle Zone served its 500,000th puzzle today! All I can say is wow! We continue to grow and are adding 100+ new members each week. The next 2 weeks we will concentrate on building traffic and links. Look for new puzzle sets in early November. Thanks!

Flash Puzzle Zone Update

2006-10-19T18:06:00.000-04:00

Well we recently added a bunch of female and male celebrity photos to our collection of puzzles. Be sure to check out the movie star and tv star sections of the website.

New jigsaw puzzles

2006-09-29T15:14:00.000-04:00

We have added a bunch of new jigsaw puzzles this month. There are many new movie and television actress photos in our people jigsaw section. We also added a new dog pictures gallery. This gallery is an easier way for you to look through all of our dog breed photos. Then you can select a dog and what flash toy you want to play with. Our photo warps are really doing well, so be sure to check them out when you get a chance.

Horse Pictures

2006-09-04T21:05:00.000-04:00

I'm playing around with a new navigation structure for my horse pictures. I've created a new page with all the horse thumbnails and 18 random horse pictures. Users can select the horse they want and then they are given the six flash applications they can use the horse picture in. Just trying something new.

Technorati: Horse Pictures, & Horses

30 more online jigsaw puzzles

2006-09-04T20:45:00.000-04:00

I added 30+ jigsaw puzzles this week. They are a mix of things I found interesting. A couple of dogs, cats, and horses. A couple of portraits and landscape shots. A real mixed bag.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Online Jigsaw Puzzle

Technorati: Jigsaw Puzzles, & Puzzles

Pirates of the Caribbean Jigsaw Puzzles

2006-08-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

Well as you would images images from the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest are hot. Here are a couple of jigsaw puzzles with Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley. The Keira Puzzle isn't a movie shot, but she is still beautiful.

Elizabeth Swann
Online Jigsaw
Puzzle

Jack Sparrow
Online Jigsaw
Puzzle

Will Turner
Online Jigsaw
Puzzle

Technorati: Pirates of the Caribbean, Jigsaw Puzzles, & Puzzles

New Africa Category

2006-08-27T18:49:00.000-04:00

We recently added "Africa" and new category under places. Here are a few of the africa related jigsaw puzzles.

Online Jigsaw Puzzle

Technorati: Flash Games, Jigsaw Puzzles, Ancient Egypt, & Puzzles

Flash Puzzle Zone Geo Map Overlay

2006-08-24T20:40:00.000-04:00

I love Google Analytics. Here is a snap shot of my Google Geo Map Overlay from a couple of days ago. As you can see, the flash puzzle zone was hot in Russia. I don't speak Russian, but a Russian blog found something very amusing with the Icelandic Horse Yawning Kaleidoscope. If you run a website or blog, signup for Google Analytics its free and very powerful.

Technorati: Kaleidoscope, google, Geo Map, & Icelandic Horse

More than 30 new puzzles added

2006-08-19T09:20:00.000-04:00

I had some IStockPhoto credits that were getting ready to expire, so I downloaded a bunch of images and did a large addition to the Flash Puzzle Zone this week. Here are a few of my favorites.

Online Jigsaw Puzzle

OK, the Karolina Kurkova picture wasn't from Istockphoto. She was added to the new Supermodels page.

Technorati: Flash Games, Jigsaw Puzzles, & Puzzles

2006-08-14T21:15:00.000-04:00

Here are a few of the recently added jigsaw puzzles at FlashPuzzleZone.com.

Online Jigsaw Puzzle

Technorati: Flash Games, Jigsaw Puzzles, & Puzzles

Make your own jigsaw puzzles

2006-08-12T13:07:00.000-04:00

The FlashPuzzleZone.com has just released the Make your own jigsaw puzzle tool. This tool allows users to quickly upload their own images and make jigsaw puzzles they can share with their friends and family. The tool also creates a "badge" for the puzzle that you can use on your own website or blog. The tool is tightly integrated with ImageShack.us to store the images and every step of the process is seamless to the user. Users can also submit their jigsaw puzzles to be included in the user gallery.

Puzzle of the Day Badge

2006-08-08T13:16:00.000-04:00

The FlashPuzzleZone.com has justed released the Puzzle of the Day web badge. Users can put this badge on their website or blog to quickly see what the puzzle of the day is. The image automatically changes every day so you are always up-to-date. Visit the Daily Jigsaw Puzzle to get the html code to add to your site.

Daily Jigsaw Puzzle

Macromedia Flash turns 10

2006-08-04T11:08:00.000-04:00

Well Macromedia/Adobe is having a big birthday celebration for Flash this year. The product, which started off as Future Splash, is now turning 10 years old. I've been using flash since 1996, so I guess I was an early adopter. In 1997, Macromedia's taut line for flash was "It's Cinchy! No Programming". Gone are the days of "skip intro" movies. Flash has come a long way and is now an extremely powerful programming application. Happy Birthday Flash.

Updates and SEO

2006-07-29T21:26:00.000-04:00

Well, I've been adding a bunch of new puzzles to my Cat, Dog, and Horse jigsaw collections. I have also been messing around with the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for those three pages. I'm trying to get each one ranked high on Google and MSN for their 3 keyword phrase. Right of the bat they are doing ok, but I really want to get on page 1 for all three sites.

Flickr Problems update

2006-07-24T21:51:00.000-04:00

Well, after many emails back and forth with Flickr Developer Support, it looks like I will have to drastically modify my Flickr Jigsaw Puzzlemaker. I still didn't get a good reason why my site was any different than other Flickr apps which had the exact same search and image selection functionalities. It may have been the fact I was running Google Adsense, but again, I found other sites doing that as well.

So, I was issued a commerical Flickr key, but I had to promise to convert my application to use the authentication api. This means that only Flickr members can use the application and they can only use it with their own images. I'll start work on that as soon as I catch up on some other stuff.

I still love Flickr and for those amazing images that would make a great jigsaw puzzle, I'm asking the author for permission to use on flashpuzzlezone.com.

Flickr problems

2006-07-11T23:00:00.000-04:00

Well, I have temporarily taken down my Flickr Jigsaw Puzzlemaker. I had one of thousands of users complain to Flickr that their images were accessible via my site. Uhh, isn't that what the Flickr API is suppose to do? I checked and that user's images are also available on all the other Flickr apps as well.

To make a long story short, Flickr asked me to take down my site until I obtained a commerical API key. No big deal, I was fine with that. However, then they said I would also have to authenticate users to Flickr before they could use my jigsaw application! There in lies the problem. None, I repeat none of the other apps require you to log into your flick account before you can search for images. I'm waiting for a response to see if this is some new requirement. If it is, it stinks and will pretty much kill my app.

For the Horse Lover

2006-07-11T22:55:00.000-04:00

FlashPuzzleZone.com just launched its third "For the Lover" puzzle collection titled "For the Horse Lover". This collection is a growing list of horse photo puzzles.

For the Cat Lover

2006-07-09T22:09:00.000-04:00

FlashPuzzleZone.com just launched its second Flickr jigsaw puzzle collection titled "For the Cat Lover". This collection has a growing list of cat and kitten jigsaw puzzles categorized by their breed. There are definitely some beautiful cats in there. If you have ideas for other "For the Lover" sections let us know.

Gilligan's Island Trivia Quizzes

2006-06-30T22:38:00.000-04:00

We just added a couple of Gilligan's Island quizzes and a new Television quiz to the trivia section of the flash puzzle zone.

Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island Castaways

Television Trivia

Trivia Quizzes

2006-06-27T12:52:00.000-04:00

The flashpuzzlezone just released a new trivia section. In the trivia section we have topical ten question quizzes on many subjects and are adding more. We are using a flash application to deliver the questions and grade the users responses. The score is tied into our user rank system, so users can accumulate score and improve their rank by taking the trivia quizzes.

Here are a few samples

Ancient Egyptian History

The Brady Bunch

Movies

Check out http://trivia.flashpuzzlezone.com for more.

For Dog Lovers

2006-06-20T12:08:00.000-04:00

FlashPuzzleZone.com just launched its first Flickr jigsaw puzzle collection titled "For Dog Lovers". This collection has a growing list of dog and puppy jigsaw puzzles categorized by the breed. There are definitely some beautiful dogs in there

User Score and Ranking

2006-06-18T12:26:00.000-04:00

Well, the new user management system is up and functioning well. All of the jigsaw puzzles and games are still publicly available, but for users to submit their highscore times and earn points they have to be logged in. Everytime a registered user completes a puzzle or other scored activity on flashpuzzlezone.com, they are awarded points. The user score accumulates and all users are then ranked on their cumulative score. This offers a great avenue for friendly competition.