How to play/check from a smartphone effectively
Yeah, we all know that TSO runs on flash and most smartphones are not capable of running TSO natively. But 80% of my playing time is from my phone/tablet connected to my home PC.
There are many ways to play from phone but I'll propose a new one (#2 below) that I have not seen in the forums.
1. Teamviewer (http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx)
If you don't mind displaying TSO in your PC screen, then this is arguably the cleanest method.
2. Concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions (RDP)
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...n-windows.html
My home PC is shared with my family. So TSO can't monopolize the monitor. A workaround is I log on to my home PC using a 2ndary account remotely from my phone. The PC screen will continue to display the primary account session but my phone will display the 2nd account session playing TSO.
There are many free phone apps that support RDP, which is a standard protocol.
Tips/Tricks
1. Most of these methods rely on a home PC running 24/7. But if you don't have such a PC, then you can use cloud computing such as AWS EC2.
2. One side effect is since the PC is playing TSO 24/7, you will always appear as "green" (online) even though you are not. For example, I don't know who buffed me when I get back to the game. Here are several ways to overcome this.
a. Only log on to TSO when you play.
b. Keep logged on to TSO but visit other's island.
c. If you don't want to appear as "green" but want to check the status from "News" tab, then log in/off from a 2nd PC (or browser). Even if the server gets logged off, the News tab will continue to get updated so you can check the status from your phone. For example, even if my TSO is offline, I can check whether my goods are sold in TO, or I have depleted mines/fields/wells in 5 seconds (probably less time than it takes to log in to TSO). In fact, this has nothing to do with remote desktop.