>
SOOSIZ
>Soosiz – Another fun game, reviewed
Tunerfish
>So I discovered Tunerfish today and it seems interesting. I am quite interested in these new apps that are offering 'badges' in reward for certain tasks. I love Foursquare, (and I dabble in GoWalla) and so no wonder! Other examples of services who are 'incentivising' include Yelp, and Hollrr – i wonder how many more startups will hop on this bandwagon?
While it certainly has a certain buzz about it, it seems the catch is motivating users to stay and to continue to use the service – there needs to be some point, some added value. I was quite attracted to Hollrr when I first discovered it, however I must admit that I haven't really used it lately because there is little enticement except for some badges.
Anyway, anyone else using tunerfish? I wonder how this will fare?
I plan to update this as i progress and answer my own questions. Consider this an experiment!
>My current Buzz. Physics
>
Skies of Glory
>
So I have gone and joined the herd and become slave to the latest addictive iPhone game – Skies of Glory. What I like about this game is the full use of the iphone accelerometer, as well as the great UI, theming, and game play. There are multiple missions, game styles, etc. I guess this game reminds me of my days growing up playing “Retalliator” with my Dad (as his wingman!) on our old 286. I guess since then i have always had a penchant for Flight / Dogfight type games.
However what I really like about this game is the business model that the makers have employed. As was mentioned over at Mashable recently, this game employs the “add-on” model. You see, the actual game is free, thus eliminating any barriers to mass adoption and spread. This also means that the user can experience enough of the game to really “get into it” (a.k.a – get addicted!). The way that SGN (the makers) make a living however, is that you can then buy ‘add-ons’ for the game – either a new level, a new setting, a new plane, new weapons, new game modes. Some may call this sneaky and be turned off by it, however I think that this is really clever. Not only does it encourage wide adoption, it means that SGN is able to make more than 0.99USD from each player. Also however, it means that this is a thoroughly user-centric model – you buy what you want, when you want it.
If that wasn’t enough, the makers have also added the social element – and not just multiplayer – but you can also join the twitter and facebook community, where there are prizes, competitions, updates, and just general banter around the game. Good fun!
I thoroughly recommend trying it out!
2ndcity
>
2ndcity – it’s a place, a destination, a culture.
2ndcity is the name of the project that I am currently working on. Obviously I can’t reveal too much at the moment, but it’s exciting to be a part of it. In the meantime, you could check out the ‘coming soon’ page that I built for it.
Wee Places
Useful utility [MasterCard ATM finder app review]
>
Another iPhone app review!
Just found this app – simple but effective. Makes great use of the
iPhone GPS and the Internet. Essentially it's a mashup between a list
of ATMs and your location. I guess the only question is how much I
will use it given that I don't really use cash anymore.
Great UI too 🙂
Chicks – addictive!
>
Having just completed this game, I thought I would share it here. I grew up playing Lemmings on my mates sega, and I have countless memories of staying up to the small hours playing level after level. I just loved the problem solving nature of the game!
Any way, I found this game here (chicks) whilst browsing the app store, and all my childhood memories returned. Similar to lemmings, you are in charge of a brood of chicks, and the tools to get them safely home are at your disposal – builders, diggers, tunnelers, climbers etc.
With 32 levels, this game is definitely addictive but also well made and challenging. At the moment it's free on the app store, but even it if wasn't I would still buy it – it's that good!
I'm on the go!
Microsoft’s misguided tablet strategy is the apotheosis of the company (via Jason Hiner)
I came across this post and thought I should re-blog it.
Microsoft’s misguided tablet strategy is the apotheosis of the company (via Jason Hiner)
- Date: August 2nd, 2010
- Author: Jason Hiner
- Category: Microsoft, Tablets
- Tags: PC, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp., Tablets, Microsoft Windows, Notebooks,Microsoft Windows 7, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Operating Systems
Let’s be clear: Microsoft doesn’t have a tablet.
In fact, the company barely has a tablet strategy, despite what Steve Ballmer urgently told investors last week about Windows tablets that will soon compete with the iPad.
We’ve heard it all before. I sat in the front row at Ballmer’s CES 2010 keynote in January, on the eve of Apple’s iPad announcement, when Ballmer tried to preempt Steve Jobs by announcing Windows 7 “Slate PCs” that would be released during 2010.
While the iPad has turned into an international phenomenon, Ballmer’s promise turned out to be little more than vaporware. No Windows 7 tablets have hit the market, or even been officially announced.
Ballmer showing off an old pen-based Tablet PC. Photo credit: CNET
The flagship slate PC from Hewlett-Packard that Ballmer showed off at CES got cancelled by HP because Windows 7 was reportedly too much of a power hog. ASUS, which had been planning to power its Eee Pad with Windows, switched horses and went with Android instead. And, one of Microsoft’s most reliable partners, Dell, also spurned Windows for Android on its tablet — the Dell Streak.
You can’t blame these traditional Microsoft partners for balking at Windows 7 on their tablets. After all, Microsoft has treated these devices as just another form factor of the PC, and Microsoft saw the biggest advantage of Windows 7 tablets being that they had all the power and capabilities of a full PC. That was a fundamentally misguided approach.
The iPad and the forthcoming Android tablets are much more like smartphones than PCs, and users tend to like these devices for two reasons:
- The touch-based interface is far more self-evident than a traditional PC or Mac
- The app experience provides single-task immersion that makes it easy to do things
You simply can’t recreate those two factors in a tablet with a full PC operating system. It’s too complicated. A few people inside Microsoft recognized that and they trumpeted Windows Embedded Compact 7 (based on the old Windows CE) as an answer for a Microsoft-powered tablet computer that could match the capabilities and user experience of Android and iPhone.
But, that naturally confused everyone. After all, Ballmer had already declared the full Windows 7 as Microsoft’s tablet platform in January. And, in February, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 7 as the company’s next smartphone platform, setting off speculation that it could also become the natural candidate for a Microsoft tablet.
Microsoft did little to help clear up the confusion. In fact, the company said that it would “continue to support, ship and sell [Windows Mobile] 6.5″ even after the incompatible Windows Phone 7 devices arrived. And, this spring the company also released the ill-fated Kin smartphone, which was based on an entirely different mobile platform altogether and which was so poorly received in the market place that Microsoft and Verizon killed it less than two months after launching it.
So Microsoft has talked about five different mobile platforms in 2010: Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Embedded Compact 7, Windows Phone 7, Kin, and Windows 7, with very little explanation about how these platforms relate to each other and which ones Microsoft wants to use in which settings. Is it any surprise then that Microsoft is flailing so badly in the mobile space and has no coherent tablet strategy?
And I think it’s fair to say that Microsoft’s tablet troubles are indicative of the larger problems that are haunting today’s Microsoft — similar teams competing for resources, minimal collaboration between similar projects, and not enough vision from the top to get everyone pushing in the same direction.
What’s puzzling is that Ballmer and the Microsoft board of directors haven’t come under greater fire for this lack of product focus, and for the misguided strategies that have led to Microsoft falling so far behind in the mobile computing race, which will likely end up spreading to far more people around the globe than the PC revolution.
This failure is a direct consequence of Microsoft putting an accountant in the CEO position to succeed Bill Gates. Steve Ballmer has done an excellent job of maximizing Microsoft’s profits and milking as much money as possible out of consumers and businesses for Microsoft products — primarily Windows and Office. But, Ballmer has done little to propel the company forward technologically or strategically.
That’s why Wall Street has continued to bet against Microsoft. The stock market is a barometer of the expectations of a company’s future success. Microsoft’s stock price has hovered in virtually the same place for a decade because Ballmer’s leadership has given the market no reason to bet on Microsoft’s future.
When you hear Ballmer speak, the stuff he gets most excited is things like explaining that Microsoft now has eight separate billion dollar businesses. Ballmer would make a great CFO or COO/President of Microsoft. He’d also be a great CEO of a mature public company trying to maximize its profits in order to produce a dividend for its shareholders.
However, Microsoft’s top dog needs to be a product leader. If you look at all of today’s successful tech companies, they almost all have a product visionary at or near the top of the org chart.
Microsoft still has plenty of strong assets and a ton of smart engineers in Redmond. But, where’s the leadership? What’s the company’s vision of the future of computing? At a time when mobility is about to power the next great wave of expansion in the technology industry and bring the benefits of computing to hundreds of millions of new people, Microsoft is standing on the sidelines still trying to figure out which play to run.
Ice Mission
>
What a great idea from Auckland City Mission, and big Ups to all the companies and organisations that donated resource to make the Ice Mission happen. Also big ups to aucklanders for donating!
Here are some pics i snapped from the big finale….
@brookwarner 