Blither! is an exciting new mobile app game that generates random and amazing sentences in a variety of categories.

What makes it fun is that you can completely customize the words and names that show up in the sentences.

And now, with the Favorite Words feature, your most recently added words and words you've chosen as favorites show up right away in sentences, and are displayed in bold.

Please Note

At the heart of Blither! are its multiple categories, or grammars. Blither! lets you choose from 89 different grammars -- or it will select one for you at random!

In the Settings view, suppose you select the Fortune Cookie grammar.

Select the Sentences to see a newly generated batch of random fortunes.

The Words view shows the parts of speech for the Fortune Cookie grammar.

Suppose you want to add a new Adjective.

When you're done, you see that magnificent has been added to the list of Fortune Cookie adjectives. It has a star next to it, to show that it's one of your Favorite Words.

Select the Sentences view, and the new word magnificent is featured in a new batch of fortunes.

Favorite Words are displayed in bold.

Select a fortune you particularly like by tapping it. The popup menu appears.

The menu provides Social Media integration for sentence sharing. You can customize this menu in the Advanced Settings view.

Select Post! to post your sentence to Facebook.

Confirm your post to Facebook on your own timeline. You can post the sentence, the Blither! screenshot, or both -- or you can change your mind and cancel.

Or you can Tweet, Text, or E-Mail your sentence, if you prefer.

The Advanced Settings view lets you fine-tune your settings for Sentences, Social Media, and Favorite Words.

OK, let's get started with Blither! ...

Blither! can be installed on any iPhone®, iPad® or iPod touch® device running iOS v.6.1 or later.

Apple, iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

If this is your first time running Blither!, you'll be asked whether you want to authorize its Facebook social media feature. In order to do this, you must select Login to Facebook Now.

If you aren't currently a Facebook user, or don't wish to authorize this Blither! feature, then select Disable Facebook Feature.  (Don't worry -- you can change your mind later!)

If you'd rather not make up your mind right now, select Decide Later: then you'll be asked again the next time you switch to another app or the Home screen, and then re-activate Blither!.

If you decide to authorize the Facebook feature, you may be asked to log in to Facebook by providing your username and password. Or you may already be logged in, if you have installed the Facebook app, or if you are currently logged in to Facebook in Safari.

Next you will see a screen like this, requesting basic access to your Facebook profile. Don't be alarmed! Blither! does not collect or store any of your profile or friend list data.

Touch the OK button to continue.

Next you'll see this page, indicating that Blither! wants to post on your behalf. Blither! needs this permission in order to post the text and screenshots you choose directly to your Facebook timeline. Don't worry! Blither! will never post to Facebook until you specifically tell it to!

To fully authorize the Facebook social media feature in Blither!, you must select OK. Note that you can also use the Privacy drop-down button to change who will be able to see these posts (default is Friends).

If you decide not to give permission at this time, you can change your mind later -- or you can decide to disable the Facebook feature whenever you like.

That's it! Now you're ready to begin playing with Blither!.

OK, now it's time to start having fun with Blither!. In the next section, you'll learn about the Sentences view, where you can generate endless batches of nonsense sentences, fortunes, recipes and stories sentences, fortunes and recipes.

You'll also learn about the Social Media features available on the Sentences view popup menu, which enable you to share your favorite Blither! sayings on Facebook or Twitter, or via Text (SMS) or E-Mail.

Touch the Blither! button in the upper-right to generate a new batch of nonsense. You can also do this by shaking your device.

Blither! will select a category at random -- perhaps you'll see some Entertainment sayings next.

Blither! generates a random number of sentences from 1 to 32.

Scroll down to reveal more of the results.

Use the pinch gesture to make the font smaller.

Use the zoom gesture to make the font larger.

Pinching and zooming can be a little tricky, as the window is also scrollable. If you're having trouble with this gesture, you can change the sentence font size in the Advanced Settings view.

Touch one of the sentences to select it. This will bring up the Social Media popup menu.

Note that not all of the menu picks are displayed at one time. Use the arrows on the menu to reveal more choices. Also, some picks may not display, depending on the capabilities of your device.

The following sections illustrate the Social Media menu picks and their corresponding actions.

Select Post! to have the sentence posted to your Facebook timeline.

You can choose to post the sentence as text, as a screenshot, or both.

Note: Blither! never posts to Facebook until you tap the Post button.  If you decide not to post, just tap the Cancel button to return to the Sentences view.

Select Tweet! to have the sentence tweeted to your Twitter feed.

Note that some texts, particularly in the categories Bedtime Stories and Gastronomy category , may be too long for a single tweet. But don't despair! a new feature lets you serialize your text into multiple tweets! The text is sent last-to-first, so the tweets will read top-to-bottom in Twitter readers.

Tap the Send button to tweet the sentence to your Twitter feed.

Optionally, you can include your current location in the tweet.

Note: Blither! never tweets to Twitter until you tap the Send button.  If you change your mind, just tap the Cancel button to return to the Sentences view.

Note that some sentences, particularly in the categories Bedtime Stories and Gastronomy category, may be too long to send in a single tweet. But don't despair! See Sending Longer Tweets below.

Select Text! to send the sentence in a message (SMS or iMessage) to a friend.

Note that some sentences, particularly in the categories Bedtime Stories and Gastronomy category, may be too long to text.

Complete the To: field to address your message, then tap the Send button to send it.

If you decide not to send the message, just tap the Cancel button instead to return to the Sentences view.

Select E-Mail! to mail the sentence to a friend.

Complete the To: field to address your e-mail, then tap the Send button to send it.

If you decide not to send the e-mail, just tap the Cancel button instead to return to the Sentences view.

Select E-Mail! All! to mail the entire batch of random sentences to a friend.

Complete the To: field to address your e-mail, then tap the Send button to send it.

If you decide not to send the e-mail, just tap the Cancel button instead to return to the Sentences view.

Select Copy! to copy the selected text to your device's clipboard.

Now you can paste the text into another app, for example, the Notes app.

After the paste, the Blither! text appears in Notes.

Some texts in Blither! are just too long to fit in a single tweet. But now you can send a longer text, like this recipe in the Gastronomy category, as a series of tweets.

Select the text you want to send, and choose Tweet! from the menu.

A message appears, asking if you'd like to send a longer tweet.

The message tells you the number of individual tweets that will be required to send the entire text. In this case, 54 tweets will be needed.

Touch OK if you'd like to proceed, or Cancel if you've changed your mind.

If you decide to go ahead, the text is tweeted last-to-first, so it will read top-to-bottom in Twitter.

Note that you'd be prompted 54 separate times to send the 54 individual tweets that make up this entire text. You must continue to select Post if you want the entire text to be tweeted. If you change your mind, you may Cancel at any time, but you would then have to go to the Twitter app to delete the tweets that have already been posted.

After you've posted the entire Blither! text, here's how it appears in the Twitter app.

In the next section, we'll take a look at the Words view, where you can customize the vocabulary by adding, modifying or deleting words.  

Your new and modified words will automatically be tagged as Favorite Words, so that they will be featured right away in sentences and show up in bold.   You can also tag existing words as Favorite Words.

Blither! is even more fun when you customize the vocabulary and add you own favorite words, which will quickly show up in its random nonsense.

Touch the Words tab, and you'll see a list of the grammatical parts of speech for the Entertainment category.

As you scroll down the list, you'll see that, in addition to the typical parts of speech, like Adjectives, Adverbs, Nouns, the Entertainment category contains special parts of speech, such as Broadway Composers, Directors, and Movie Actors, to name a few.

At the heart of Blither! is a basic but flexibly configurable grammatical rule engine, that enables it to generate syntactically correct sentences and texts -- which are likely to be semantically suspect.

Whew! what does that mean? Well, as the words are grouped into the correct part of speech, Blither! will take care of the rest, silly!

Suppose you scroll back up and select Adverbs.

Here you see the list of Adverbs for the Entertainment grammar. Naturally, it's listed alphabetically.

If you touch the letter S in the index on the right, you can see that the adverbs smugly, stirringly, and sweetly are already in the list.

Let's add the adverb slyly. Begin by tapping the + button at the upper-right.

The list scrolls back into view. The new adverb slyly is highlighted, and it also has a gold star, indicating that it is a Favorite Word -- all newly added words get favorite status!

Tap the Sentences tab, and a new batch of sentences is generated, some featuring the newly added word.

Notice how slyly shows up in bold.

As we've just seen, newly added words are automatically treated as Favorite Words. But you can also "favorite" words that are already part of Blither!'s vocabulary.

Suppose you want to flag one of your favorite movie actors. From the top level Entertainment Words page, select the Movie Actors "part of speech".

Scroll down to the letter R.

Select the actor Ryan Gosling.

Tap the Favorite (star) button.

The view scrolls back to the list of actors. Notice that actor Ryan Gosling now has a gold star!

Select the Sentences tab. Now you see that both Ryan Gosling and slyly are being featured in the new batch of sentences.

Blither!'s vocabulary is fully customizable.

Suppose you decide to part with legend of the silent screen Rod La Rocque. First select him in the Movie Actors page.

Touch the red Delete button.

The Actors list scrolls back, and (gasp!) Rod La Rocque is gone! Rod won't be showing up in your sentences from now on, either.

You can also replace existing words. Suppose you want to modify the noun camera.

Tap the text box and type lens after camera to change the word to camera lens. Or you can tap the microphone button and dictate a replacement.

Notice that the original word camera appears in small type just below the text box.

When you're done, touch the green Replace button.

The list of Nouns reappears, with camera lens selected, and it is marked with a gold star to show that it is now a Favorite Word.

Finally, touch the Sentences tab. A new batch of Entertainment sentences is displayed, featuring your 3 favorite words camera lens, Ryan Gosling, and slyly (though not necessarily in that order).

In the next section, we'll talk about the Settings page, where you can use the grammar picker to select which category Blither! uses in the Sentences and Words pages.

You'll also learn about a few other buttons and controls on the Settings page.

The main control on this page is the Grammar Picker, which displays the grammar that is currently selected in Blither!. It also lets you choose a different grammar category.

The categories in Blither! are: Bedtime Stories, Entertainment, Fortune Cookie, Gastronomy, Literature, Music & Arts, Odds & Ends, U.S. History, and World Affairs.

When you select another grammar, the colors change to reflect the new grammar choice. Here's what the page looks like when you select the Gastronomy grammar.

If you touch the Sentences tab now, Blither! will generate a batch of nonsense recipes (i.e., Gastronomy "sentences").

If you touch the Words tab, you'll be able to edit the vocabulary for Gastronomy.

Here is what the Settings page looks like when you select the Odds & Ends grammar.

Back at the Entertainment category, see that the Reset Grammar button is displayed. (It's the red button.) Did you notice that it didn't display for the other grammars? That's because we haven't made any changes to them yet.

Touch the Reset Grammar button.

The window slides up from the bottom to explain that this is a permanent change. If you select Entertainment - Reset?, this will permanently erase any changes you have made to the Entertainment grammar (such as the changes we made in the previous About section, Words), and restore the grammar to its original (factory) settings. You cannot undo this action.

Suppose nevertheless that you decide to do the Reset. (You really don't have to! You could always choose Cancel!)

Here's what the Settings page will look like if you decided to go ahead with the grammar reset.

Ordinarily, Blither! will generate a batch of sentences in a random category, except immediately after you go to the Sentences page from this page, or from the Words or Advanced pages. This corresponds to the default setting: Surprise me! = ON.

The orange About Blither!® button is the way to bring up these pages from within the app.

Here's what the About Blither! page looks like with its Menu selected.

When you're done looking at the About pages, double-click the Home button on your device to bring up the list of apps you are currently running. Then click the Blither! icon to return to Blither!.

Touch the Facebook icon button to bring up the Blither page on Facebook.

Here you can see posts and photos and other diversions, and, if you choose, you can Like us on Facebook.

Touch the Twitter icon button to bring up the Entropic Waffle page on Twitter.

Here you can see our Entropic Waffle profile and tweets, and, if you choose, you can Follow us on Twitter.

On the next page, you'll learn about the Advanced settings, where you can completely geek out on all the knobs and levers controlling Sentences, Social Media, and Favorite Words features.

When you tap the Advanced icon on the tab bar, the Advanced menu appears.

Here, you can configure advanced settings for Sentences, Social Media, and Favorite Words.

Use these settings to customize how sentences are generated.

Font Size: use the slider to set the font size used on the Sentences page. Note: you can also use the pinch or zoom gestures directly on the Sentences page to resize the font. The default setting is 18 (points); range is 12 to 72 (that's really big!).

Automatic Refresh: ordinarily this is ON, meaning that a new batch of sentences will be generated each time you switch to the Sentences page. Turning this OFF means that the previous batch of sentences will be preserved. So, even if you've changed grammars, the change won't take effect until you generate a new batch of sentences.

Scroll down the page to reveal the remaining advanced settings for Sentences.

Surprise Me!: when this is ON, which is the default, a new category is chosen at random each time you generate a new batch of sentences. (Well, maybe not every time! See Surprise Me Delay below.) If you turn this OFF, then the sentences you generate will stay in the currently selected category, and you'll have to manually set the category on the Settings tab in order to change this.

Surprise Me Delay: if both this setting and Surprise Me! are turned ON, then the current category is used the next time you generate a new batch of sentences. It will also hold the category the same if you do anything on the Words, Settings, or Advanced pages and then return to the Sentences page. If you turn this setting OFF, then the next category is always selected at random -- that is, if Surprise Me! is turned ON. Otherwise, the Surprise Me Delay setting is ignored. Confused? eh, what do you expect from a bunch of nerds?!

Reset Sentences Defaults: use this button to reset all the advanced settings for Sentences to their default values.

Use these settings to customize which Social Media items appear in the Sentences page popup menu.

Facebook: Post!: set this to OFF to remove Post! from the Sentences page popup menu. If you disabled Facebook when you first installed, then this setting will already be turned OFF. Read the fine print if you've changed your mind and now want to enable the Facebook feature -- you will likely have to do a little fancy footwork (well worth it!).

Twitter: Tweet!: set this to OFF to remove Tweet! from the Sentences page popup menu. Note that if you don't have Twitter properly set up on your device, this option probably wasn't appearing in the popup menu anyhow.

Scroll down the page to reveal the remaining advanced settings for Social Media.

Serialize Long Tweets?: when enabled, you can send longer texts as a series of tweets. Texts are sent last-to-first, so they will read top-to-bottom in Twitter readers. Set this to OFF if you wish to disable the long tweets feature.

Messages: Text!: set this to OFF to remove Text! from the Sentences page popup menu. Note that if you don't have messaging properly set up on your device, this option probably wasn't appearing in the popup menu anyhow.

Mail: E-Mail!, E-Mail All!: set this to OFF to remove E-Mail! and E-Mail All! from the Sentences Page popup menu.

Reset Social Media Defaults: use this button to reset all the advanced settings for Social Media to their default values. The default is all ON.

Use these settings to customize the behavior of the Favorite Words feature.

Enabled: set to ON, the Favorite Words feature is enabled, and your favorite and most recently added words will show up right away in generated sentences. If you turn this OFF, the feature is disabled, none of the following Favorite Words settings will have any effect, and sentences will be generated entirely at random -- so you might have to wait awhile for your newly added words to show up!

Display in Bold: default is ON, so Favorite Words are displayed in bold in sentences. Turning this OFF won't change the algorithm for using Favorite Words, but they will be displayed in normal font, not in bold.

Scroll down the page to reveal the remaining advanced settings for Favorite Words.

Depth: this determines how many Favorite Words are stored for each grammar (category). Default is 5, range is 1 to 10. As you continue to add Favorite Words, once you exceed this depth setting, the older favorites are discarded. (Don't worry -- they're still in your grammar. They just aren't favorites anymore).

Match Percent: this determines what percentage of the generated sentences will include Favorite Words. Default is 50%, so roughly half of your sentences will contain favorites. Range is 5% to 100% -- at 100%, all of your sentences will contain favorites (try it!)

Expiration Days: this determines how long your words remain favorites before they "time out". The default setting is 14, so your favorites will stick around for 2 weeks. The range is 1 to 30 days. A setting of 0 means that your Favorite Words will not time out. Note that, while your words may not have timed out, they could still be removed from the list of favorites if you have exceeded your Depth (see above).

Reset Favorite Words Defaults: use this button to reset all the advanced settings for Favorite Words to their default values.

Clear Favorite Words Storage: use this button to clear storage for the Favorite Words feature. Your added words are retained, but they will no longer be highlighted or given preference in sentences.