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Twine, easy-to-use free software, brings interactive-fiction game development to the people.

These days, regular folks across the world are using free software to easily create homespun music, Webisodes, and movies, so why not interactive fiction? A little program called Twine (download for Windows or Mac) that brings a DIY ethos to text-based Web games has slowly emerged as a huge player in the indie-game scene. If you're new to Twine, it's freeware that lets users develop their own interactive stories and games. It enables players to determine their own adventures by clicking on hyperlinks scattered throughout the text.

Originally developed by Chris Klimas, Twine has been used by myriad storytellers to great effect. A directory site called TwineHub lets users upload their completed stories and games for the enjoyment of others, and it is packed to the gills with submissions. From the teeming mass of Twine games, I've selected a few of the best or most interesting:

Howling Dogs (by Porpentine)

Opening scene from Howling Dogs

Bklyn Trash King (by Ben Esposito)

Opening scene from Bklyn Trash King

Hypnagogue (by Mitch Alexander)

Opening scene from Hypnagogue

If any of the above stories inspire you to create your own Twine game, then download the freeware and follow these simple directions:

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Choose your Twine adventure

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how to upload images on google | How to upload pictures to google images 2013 - Video

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Moxie Software, Inc., the leading provider of customer-centric enterprise social software, today announced the availability of Social Knowledgebase, the first application that combines collaboration technology with knowledge management.

Social Knowledgebase allows enterprises to tap into the collective knowledge of their employees to enhance service levels by getting the right answers to customers faster. By bridging the gap between knowledge workers and contact centers, Social Knowledgebase enables enterprises to deliver the exceptional customer experiences that socially connected consumers expect.

How Social Knowledgebase Works

Social Knowledgebase is a single application that combines the capabilities of Moxie Softwares industry-leading knowledge management application with its collaboration software. The product allows users to recommend and promote content from the collaborative application to the knowledge workflow, where it can be certified and published to employees or customers. Social Knowledgebase gives companies the ability to easily harness the power of employees tribal knowledge to both dramatically reduce costs and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Key features of Social Knowledgebase include:

Watch video.

Insights into Social Knowledgebase and its Benefits:

People are more productive when collaborating to find a specific answer that benefits employees and customers, said Tom Kelly, president and CEO of Moxie Software. The result of purpose-driven collaboration is actionable knowledge. Organizations analyzing big data are really after big knowledge intelligence they can put to use making their enterprises more agile to efficiently serve customers by creating superlative customer experiences.

Social Knowledge is about harvesting the potentially rich stratum of information created in social networking sites and discussion forums, said Johan Jacobs, research director at Gartner. It is about sifting through this input to decide what is appropriate and applicable to your organization, and using that information as input in the development of product- and service-specific content. (Report: Use Social Knowledge to Enhance Your Customer Self-Service, Nov. 11, 30, 2011).

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Moxie Software Ushers in the Era of “Big Knowledge:” Brings Crowdsourced Intelligence to Customer Experience

Although business headlines still tout earnings numbers, many investors have moved past net earnings as a measure of a company's economic output. That's because earnings are very often less trustworthy than cash flow, since earnings are more open to manipulation based on dubious judgment calls.

Earnings' unreliability is one of the reasons Foolish investors often flip straight past the income statement to check the cash flow statement. In general, by taking a close look at the cash moving in and out of the business, you can better understand whether the last batch of earnings brought money into the company, or merely disguised a cash gusher with a pretty headline.

Calling all cash flows When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Advent Software (Nasdaq: ADVS) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Data is current as of last fully reported fiscal quarter. Dollar values in millions. FCF = free cash flow. FY = fiscal year. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Over the past 12 months, Advent Software generated $84.3 million cash while it booked net income of $35.2 million. That means it turned 23.1% of its revenue into FCF. That sounds pretty impressive.

All cash is not equal Unfortunately, the cash flow statement isn't immune from nonsense, either. That's why it pays to take a close look at the components of cash flow from operations, to make sure that the cash flows are of high quality. What does that mean? To me, it means they need to be real and replicable in the upcoming quarters, rather than being offset by continual cash outflows that don't appear on the income statement (such as major capital expenditures).

For instance, cash flow based on cash net income and adjustments for non-cash income-statement expenses (like depreciation) is generally favorable. An increase in cash flow based on stiffing your suppliers (by increasing accounts payable for the short term) or shortchanging Uncle Sam on taxes will come back to bite investors later. The same goes for decreasing accounts receivable; this is good to see, but it's ordinary in recessionary times, and you can only increase collections so much. Finally, adding stock-based compensation expense back to cash flows is questionable when a company hands out a lot of equity to employees and uses cash in later periods to buy back those shares.

So how does the cash flow at Advent Software look? Take a peek at the chart below, which flags questionable cash flow sources with a red bar.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Data is current as of last fully reported fiscal quarter. Dollar values in millions. TTM = trailing 12 months.

When I say "questionable cash flow sources," I mean items such as changes in taxes payable, tax benefits from stock options, and asset sales, among others. That's not to say that companies booking these as sources of cash flow are weak, or are engaging in any sort of wrongdoing, or that everything that comes up questionable in my graph is automatically bad news. But whenever a company is getting more than, say, 10% of its cash from operations from these dubious sources, investors ought to make sure to refer to the filings and dig in.

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Why the Street Should Love Advent Software's Earnings

Enterprise licence renewal requires strategic planning: you re under pressure to save money but the sales rep doesnt want to lower the standard price. One potential negotiating tactic? Ask for free tickets for the provider s conference and training events.

Conference picture from Shutterstock

University of Pennsylvania senior IT director Donna Manley recommended the technique during a session at Data Center World in Las Vegas. When negotiating with large providers, ask for free education credits or registrations at conferences, she said. It s a great way to incent your staff members to get more education at a lower cost to you.

Manley used the technique in negotiations with Software AG. We got a couple of gratis admissions into their conferences, and we also negotiated a firm discount on any professional services activity.

Be sure to note any such savings when you re reporting on your budget. When we do that, we capture that as savings maybe not for the current year, but for the years when they re actually used, Manley said.

The savings might be relatively small (conference registration typically runs at between $1000 and $2000) but every cent can help. Those discounts are more likely if you send in a team to discuss pricing. Never negotiate by yourself, Manley said. Always get the good cop and the bad cop.

Lifehackers World Of Servers sees me travelling to conferences around Australia and around the globe in search of fresh insights into how server and infrastructure deployment is changing in the cloud era. This week, Im in Las Vegas for Data Center World, looking at how the role of the data centre is changing and evolving.

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Negotiating New Software Licences? Ask For Free Conference Tickets