Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Are you wow blind?

Jill Arrington Tami Donaldson Padma Lakshmi Sarah Mutch Gabrielle Union

Why yo daddy won?t use Google+: no noise control

OK, there are a few people giving me heck for using sexist language in my last post. Sorry for pandering to my audience, but when I visit engineering teams at tech companies around the world they are mostly male. At the recent WWDC (Apple’s developer conference) there were so few women in the audience that [...]

Cristina Dumitru Cat Power January Jones Christina DaRe Malin Akerman

Monday, July 18, 2011

GameTanium: Subscription Mobile Gaming Comes to Android

Gametanium 150x150From games-on-demand company Extent, there comes a new distribution platform called GameTanium, the first unlimited subscription gaming offering on Android. With GameTanium, users can play all the games from participating developers for just $4.99 per month. By year-end, Extent says that there will be over 200 games on its network.

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At launch, some of the most notable of the initial 75 titles include Farm Frenzy, Speedx 3D and The Secret of Grisly Manor. All are available as a free trial from www.gametanium.com/mobile for those who want to sign up directly.

For Operators, Too

The service was designed with the needs of operators in mind, too, says Extent, which already has relationships with mobile carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile, for example. With GameTanium, carriers can customize certain elements of the service, including its branding, UI and packaging. They can even adjusting the pricing, if desired.

GameTanium

For game developers, Extent offers a new way to monetize their applications. With its Netflix-like service for mobile gamers, the company offers integrated billing options and discovery tools for helping users find new games via things like Editor's Picks and the like. In addition, Extent plans to host only quality content from the looks of it, which will help end users avoid the "demos, spam, broken apps" as well as the "boring games" �which comprise "close to 99%" of the games currently offered on Android...or so says Extent. Ouch!

Whether or not gamers will pay for games on demand like this has yet to be proven, of course, but it's certainly an interesting experiment to watch.

Discuss


Drea de Matteo Trista Rehn Moon Bloodgood Kristin Kreuk Molly Sims

Borders Goes Under

Jennifer Aniston Amy Cobb Deanna Russo Cheryl Burke Olivia Wilde

Google+ has made Twitter boring, here?s what Twitter should do about that

For the past few days I’ve been hanging out in Jackson Hole with a bunch of geeks and one thing I’ve noticed over and over is how boring Twitter has gotten when compared to Google+. Why has Twitter turned boring? I’ve found several areas: 1. First experience. 2. Pictures and videos. 3. Control over content [...]

K. D. Aubert Sara Spraker Alexis Bledel Kim Kardashian China Chow

Publishing News: Newspapers finally test tablet-content bundle

Amber Arbucci Christina Aguilera Kate Hudson Adriana Lima Brittany Daniel

iPad for Business Round-Up: VA Ready to Allow iPads, Khan Academy Open-Sources Its App and More

The iPad isn't just a hot new consumer device, it's also an increasingly popular tool for business. Each week we take a look at the new or updated business apps for the iPad, and highlight trends in how tablets are being used in the enterprise.

This week we take a look at how the Veterans Administration is planning to roll out iPads, the Khan Academy's open source iPad app and more.

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Veterans Administration Set to Approve Use of iPads

We've seen a few instances of federal agencies - notably the NSA - using iPads. And health care has always been cited as a good vertical for iPads. So we're not surprised to read that the the Veterans Administration is set to approve the use of iPads. The VA will extend its device policy to include iPhones and Android devices as well.

Most Important Elements of a Mobile Enterprise Strategy

This week we took a look at a Forrester report on enterprise mobility strategies. Forrester laid out the eight most important types of enterprise collaboration software, and suggested that the future is in native mobile apps that connect to cloud services.

Box Contest

Box announced an enterprise mobile development contest called Box Mobile Dev Challenge. The prizes include up to $25,000 in cash and the chance to pitch your idea to the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. I will be one of the judges.

Khan Academy iPad App Open-Sourced

Though it's not really a business app, I thought this was worth noting here: the Khan Academy has open-sourced its iPad app. The app isn't available from the iTunes store yet, but the organization has made its jQuery-based source code available on GitHub. The Khan Academy offers free video lectures on a variety of academic topics.

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Magdalena Wróbel Connie Nielsen Melissa George Cameron Richardson Chandra West