>Tic Tac Paddywhack! has made Babble’s list of the Top 50 Favorite iPhone Apps for Kids.
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A week following gigantic Zynga fundraiser, Playdom draws more money for social gaming.
Playdom’s latest round comes at a time where social gaming startups are constantly making headlines with fundraisers, acquisitions, and other announcements. A week ago, for example, Zynga raised a whopping $147 million from Japanese telecom SoftBank to expand the company’s social gaming offerings in Asia.
It looks like the social media spending wars are on. Time will tell if his leads to innovation or saturation. The drop off in userbase is a sharp one when you count down from the top developers. Zynga and Playdom seem to be saying that you need to buy your place at the top in the current social network geography.
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Pirata Boat Race gets undeniable cool points for this unique implementation. Download the program, scan the QR Code and start rowing with your iPhone. The set up is a bit clunky but the innovation on the cheap is top notch.
Check out the title link for more or just go to http://piratalondon.com/boatrace/ .
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From Boing Boing:
We love chiptunes, the quirky celebration of 8-bit-style music that’s become a a vibrant genre of its own with a thriving scene supporting it. The compositions evoke a time where electronic musicians had to make the most of the limited resources offered by primitive computing technology. Keeping that fire alive, the latest compositions are like the soundtracks to vintage videogames that never existed.
As teased last week, we’re joining with Safari Books Online, the massive online library of technical know-how, to honor the mighty chip in the form of a Game Dev Challenge. Your task is to make those games real. For inspiration or technical insight, Safari Books Online is offering Boing Boing readers 30 days free access to five videogame-related books from the library.
Game dev folks have until July 5 to get there 8-bit tribute to Boing Boing to submit in time. The prizes include a limited-edition art print to a Gama-Goon statue
While we understand the nostalgia around 8-bit graphics and music it seems quite tired now. Boing Boing might as well be asking the game development community to make a cubist game. It is endemic of a culture of sentimentality and childhood obsession that is running rampant.
This contest does nothing to move gaming forward. It only keeps us mired in the past.
>Investment Opportunities in Social Apps – Not Just Publishers and Not Just in the US
The industry is well on its way to contribute $835 million to the $1.6 billion US virtual goods market this year. And even though many developers’ traffic has been wracked by Facebook’s changes to its communication channels, there are still opportunities for investment, as leading social app investors told us recently.
We’re just excited it’s Friday. Let’s all go out and buy some virtual beers and contribute to the billions being made by those social games out there.
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With the new iPhone being released in two weeks and the Android OS continuously getting better software and hardware, the battle between these two is more fierce than ever. Obviously when buying a phone of this type, doing as much research as possible in order to make sure you get the best phone for your money, for what YOU’RE going to use it for. So what phone should you spend your pennies on?
Though this article provides (obviously biased) comparison between the two platforms there are two key areas that they fail to address which still give iPhone the advantage.
Fragmentation
The Android phone market is rapidly fragmenting with all the new handsets making is very difficult for users to find the apps they want. This, in addition to the lack of any Android Marketplace curation or moderation, makes for a vastly inferior Android experience.
Applications
Not to be redundant, but the quality and accessibility of the Android apps in the marketplace leaves a lot to be desired. Developers with quality apps get lost in deluge of crap apps. Even the service providers attempts at their own App Stores are flimsy. Is anyone home at the Android Marketplace? It will be interesting to see if these new phones have an impact on the app market which for Android is estimated to be at $1.7 million annually compared to Apples $250 million.
We’re hoping the slew of Android tablets coming out this year to compete with the iPad have a positive impact on the Android app market. We’re banking on it. Our new indie title Hercules: Curse of the Hydra, which is due out this summer, will be released on a bevy of Android tablets. Here is hoping for change for the better!
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* RIM is at 42.1% for December to February period, compared to 40.8% for the September to November period.
* Apple is at 25.4%, compared to 25.5%.
* Microsoft is at 15.1% compared to 19.1%.
* Android is at 9%, compared to 3.8%.
* Palm is at 5.4% compared to 7.2%.
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