VO is an online multiplayer game that takes place in space 2400 years in the future. It’s cross-platform, letting Mac, Windows, and Linux players join in. Once you download or buy the game, you create an account online with a username and password that lets you access most of the VO website (the forums, account options, active players, etc). When you start the game, you get the chance to create a character and choose one of three nations: Itani, Serco, or UIT.

Itani and Serco are enemies, while UIT is neutral. The game revolves around missions, where you play an independent trader who’s trying to accomplish tasks and earn rewards like credits and level upgrades. As your credits and levels increase, you gain access to better ships, more powerful energy cells, more destructive weapons, and more missions. The game is fun, exciting, and interesting.

Unlike other MORPGs, the community is welcoming and eager to help new players. If you have a question, it’ll be answered quickly. It’s very easy to make friends, even with people of opposing nations. The in-game chat is full of engaging discussions, and is not something you should try to avoid. Unfortunately, it’s not a very popular game at the moment and there are often not more than 40 players logged in.

Because its online, the developers are still working hard on fixing bugs and upgrading the game engine. Updates are usually released weekly, and are distributed via the auto-updater that runs when you first launch the game.

It may seem like there’s no real incentive to complete missions, since the only reason for doing so would be to get better missions. However, the community is here to help. Each day, there’s almost always a player-run competition or nation battle taking place somewhere in the VO universe. An example is “tube racing”, where players must try to fly their ship through small tubes. Every so often, developers test capital ships (huge ships with dozens of gun turrets), letting players dock with their nation’s ship and fire at each other for fun.

Unfortunately, after the eight-hour trial, you’ll have to pay $9.99 per month to continue using it. Download Vendetta Online and give it a shot. The storyline, community, and graphics certainly blow a lot of other online games out of the water.

Fortunately, Nathan Spindel created a free Mac OS X plugin called gSpell, which eliminates most of the problems associated with the default spell-checker, and adds an interesting twist.

Recently mentioned by John Gruber, gSpell is similar to the Google spell checking tool found in Gmail and Google Docs. Since Google collects data from millions of users, it’s bound to be more accurate than any desktop spell-checker, and can even correct names and colloquialisms (words like ain’t, gonna, etc.). It’s installed in ~Library/Services, but doesn’t appear in the services menu. To activate it, you select the text you want corrected and press command-shift-’.

Overall I think gSpell is a very worthy addition to any of your other writers’ tools, and really helps you leverage the wisdom of crowds to improve your penmanship. Also because the tool no longer requires Google API access, there’s now no limit to the amount of times or frequency you can probe Google for corrections. Keep in mind though, you will still need to be connected to the internet. Also, It doesn’t replace the default spell-checker, so there’s no reason not to try it, and remember: each time you make a search on Google, you’re making your spell-checker smarter.

gSpell is completely free and open source – so grab a copy and give it a shot.