Filed under: Gaming, Odds and ends, Freeware, App Store, App Review
Mafia Wars out now on the iPhone
Unfortunately, the classic mobile game of Dope Wars (I played hours of it on my old TI-80) still hasn't been allowed on the App Store -- Apple reportedly wasn't happy with the drug-themed gameplay, and so there are only "sugarcoated" versions there now (including one that is literally about sugar, branded as Candy Wars). But Zynga, makers of Scramble Live, have now released a game called Mafia Wars, which brings the same kind of premise: you're a mob boss, and you buy and use firearms to get money and all sorts of illegal items. The gameplay isn't exactly the same (rather than selling for higher and lower prices, you're "doing jobs" that cash out earned points for money), but Mafia Wars goes a little farther than Dope Wars, too, in that, since the game was originally created on MySpace and Facebook, you can "fight" against other players and win cash from them, too.
Don't expect to see any of Grand Theft Auto's 3D graphics or storyline (for that, you can go try Payback) -- this is a strictly turn-based button pressing simulation. But it's got quite a life of its own on Facebook already, so it's well balanced and fun for a few pick-up-and-play minutes at a time. It's free right now on the App Store, though Zynga says there'll be "premium versions" (whatever that means) that cost from $10 to $40 (whatever that means) available soon.
This is a big duh to anyone (like me) who's switched to a smartphone within the last year or so, but 

Late last week it was reported that Apple is now blocking access to
All the people hanging out on MySpace looking for friends make me sad. A great programmer turning to MySpace looking for love for his project makes me sadder, especially when the project in question is arguably one of the most useful OpenSource projects out there for OS X. Nevertheless, Sherm Pendley sent the following around to the macosx Perl list early this morning:
A malicious QuickTime movie 

You might not know who Adam Betts is, but you've probably seen, or at least heard of, some of his work which includes the icon of a pretty famous Mac OS X chat client: Adium. The animated, quacking duck icon has made a bit of a name for itself, and Phill Ryu (of 
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)

