Foursquare Signing Mainstream Partnership Deals Left And Right
Foursquare continues to sign interesting deals with major players in a wide range of fields. Following the service’s Bravo deal a couple weeks ago, they’ve reached a deal with restaurant rating guide Zagat, according to The New York Times. And AdAge has some details about deals with even more partners, including HBO, Warner Brothers, and the History Channel.
The service has been on a roll lately. They’re now seeing over a million check-ins a week, with that rate doubling in the last month alone. And these new deals can only help them as they bring the type of mainstream appeal that it took services like Twitter so long to find.
While Zagat is an obvious partner thanks to its restaurante recommendations, the entertainment partnership appeal may not be immediately apparent. But as you can see on the Foursquare page for the movie Valentine’s Day, those promoting the movie have added 50 “Romantic Tips” around the cities that the movie takes place in, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. Any Foursquare user that checks-in at one of these places will unlock a special badge for the movie.
The new HBO show, How To Make It In America, meanwhile, has four special badges that you can unlock: Culture, Living, Cocktails, and Nightlife. Each of these is obtained by visiting venues from the show.
And the Zagat deal is interesting in that it goes beyond simply offering food and restaurant recommendations. The service plans to have a weekly web video series entitled “Meet The Mayor” in which they interview the Foursquare “mayor” of a restaurant in their guide.
Another deal that Foursquare recently signed was with Harvard.
These types of deals are crucial to Foursquare not only because they point to an eventual money-making opportunity, but also because they give the service a way to fend off attacks from Yelp (which just launched a check-in feature on its own iPhone app), and soon Facebook. Meanwhile, these deals give brands a fun way to interact with the public. It’s advertising, but it’s interactive.
Now Foursquare just has to solve that douchebag problem…
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Formerly Cc:Betty, Threadbox Emerges As A Realtime Collaboration Platform
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Recently, startup Cc: Betty, a nifty service that organized and managed group email threads, decided to rebrand and relaunch its service. The new product, Threadbox, was going to be streamlined and tweaked to appeal to workspace users.
Today, Threadbox is officially launching in private beta, as a more collaborative and user-friendly service. Essentially, the site aims to combine email, IM, and collaboration tools into one platform. Instead of focusing on email like Cc:Betty, Threadbox centers around collaboration in the workplace. The service organizes and logs every type of communications with clients, allows users to share documents and images, and record decisions and feedback. The new service also has the ability to serve as a project management tool, allowing users to share and track requirements and specs, then track and follow team members from start to finish.
iPhoneWorld.ca: TwitCasting on the iPhone – Hot New Trend!
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iPhoneWorld.ca writes:
Last year everyone talked about the iPhone app that you could use to stream videos from your iPhone to the web so other could watch while you were recording. (…)
Pre-Order the iPad Now [Ipad]
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You can place your iPad pre-order at the Apple Store now. And if you’re still between a few models, it’s not too late to read our iPad Buyer’s Guide. [Apple] More »
GDC 2010: Hands-on with Faraway
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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPad
Steph Thirion’s first iPhone game was Eliss, a touchscreen-based arcade game that had you combining and maneuvering planets around one another, and trying to size-match them up with black holes to earn points. As he told us (stay tuned for an exclusive interview with the indie developer), it was pretty hard — even more so than he actually intended it to be. So, for his second iPhone game, Faraway, he’s gone much simpler. Inspired by the iPhone game Canabalt, Thirion has created a one-button game in which the goal is nothing less than to explore the universe. He has it running on a Mac at the show (so he can project the video onto a bigger screen), and we got to have some hands-on time with the new game.
You control a comet that flies around an inky black void speckled with dots and circles; the pixelated space aesthetic from Eliss is back. This time, however, there’s only one control, and it’s a tap anywhere on the screen. Doing so will cause your comet to gravitate towards the nearest static dot, which will then slingshot you around the star until you let go, and the comet flings off in a new direction. There’s an arrow pointing off of the screen, and by timing slingshots correctly, you will face the comet in the direction of the arrow.
Once you get moving the right way for a length of time (the game has a counter constantly counting down), you’ll hit a gigantic circular body, like a large white sun. Once you hit that shape, the screen flashes, and you enter into another gameplay mode — your comet will drag a line around the screen, and anytime you gravitate to a star, the line will connect between the stars you gravitate to. Continue connecting the line, and you can continue to rack up points, but cross or touch the line (or the outside edge of the screen), and that point of the game is over — you’re given your score and your comet is sent off in a new direction, a little bit of time added to the clock that’s still counting down to game end.
It sounds complicated, but in practice, the one-button simplicity keeps it fairly easy to understand. There are also various shapes to hit outside of the gigantic sun you’re aiming for — red polygons that hit your comet will make it go faster for a little while (allowing you to close space to the next sun that much more quickly), and white polygons will add time to the overall clock, letting you play the game that much longer.
The game tracks your best score, but that’s it, really — the goal is to keep the comet going for as long as possible. And it’s addictive — just like Canabalt, every time you play you feel like you’ve figured out a new trick, or if you just hit a star’s gravity just right, you’ll careen off into a new high score.
It’s a lot of fun. Thirion hasn’t decided on a price or release date yet (stay tuned for more information in our upcoming interview), but especially if you like the one-button simplicity of Canabalt (and who doesn’t?), Faraway seems like it’ll be a fun expedition into the reaches of space.
TUAWGDC 2010: Hands-on with Faraway originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone – AppStore – Steph Thirion – Apple – Eliss
ToGo.TV v2.2.0
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What is TV To Go! Mobile Television?
A service that lets you watch live TV on your mobile phone. It includes an easy to use App and 40+ independent premium and broadcast channels: entertainment, new movies, hot news.
Install the free TV To Go! App to your mobile, sit back and enjoy!
How to watch TV To Go!
Enjoy the programmes you watch at home on your mobile phone. The App shows you what’s on, what’s coming up and what’s available for purchase. The only thing you need is mobile internet access. The TV To Go! App works with GPRS, 3G or Wi-Fi. The App adjusts to the available speed in 10-15 seconds to provide the best picture quality.
What TV To Go! broadcasts
Exclusive content created and acquired specially for mobile TV viewers: unique media, movies and TV programmes. Film festival shorts, animation, hot news, 5-10 minute auto TV programmes, sport and extreme amusements, pop news and much more. Video on demand, downloaded to your mobile.
1. Watch FREE TV channels
2. Subscribe for paid channels and watch them
3. Purchase high-quality video clips by mean of downloading them to your mobile device
4. Purchase mobile Video-on-Demand service
5. Recharge your account.
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The Real War At SXSW: AT&T Versus 15,000 Data-Crazed Velociraptors
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We’ve talked a lot this week about the so-called “Location War” brewing at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas starting tomorrow. That war will happen, but actually, there are likely to be a lot of winners because a few of the location-based services should be able to leverage the exposure to gain usage after the conference. Those with real bloodlust should probably be watching another war: AT&T versus everyone in Austin on their network.
AT&T’s struggles to stay up last year are well-documented. CNN recently ran a piece about how AT&T hopes to avoid a similar fate this year. But actually, “struggles” is way too kind of a word. If you were at SXSW last year and happened to be on AT&T’s network — like, say, if you had an iPhone, like many festival-goers did — it was an absolute nightmare. You couldn’t make a call. You couldn’t send a text. Data? Ha. At a few points early on I seriously wondered if I had forgotten to pay my bill and AT&T had simply shut my phone off — except that it was happening to everyone.
AT&T has a funny word for the failure, they like to say it is “unprecedented.” As in, the usage of its network was at levels previously unseen, as a strong percentage of the over 10,000 festival goers (just the interactive part) were using iPhones. Well guess what? Word is that is year, there will be some 15,000 people there for the interactive part. As Samual L. Jackson’s character, Mr. Arnold, says in Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butts.”
And It Begins: Foursquare Shatters Its Check-In Record The Day Before SXSW
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The official Foursquare account just sent out a tweet letting everyone know that today is already the service’s biggest day ever. This is interesting since it’s actually the day before the SXSW conference kicks off in Austin, Texas.
According to the tweet, Foursquare broke 275,000 check-ins (the previous record, set last Friday) for the day “hours ago.” This means they’re very likely well past 300,000 now and perhaps even higher. To put that in some perspective, just a month ago, Foursquare set a record with 1.2 million check-ins for the entire week. And that was double was it was the month prior. At today’s rate, Foursquare would be doing well over 2 million check-ins a week.
Android’s American market share soars, WinMo pays the price
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Mobile manufacturer and platform market share stats for the US are in for the month of January thanks to comScore, and as usual, they tell a fascinating (and somewhat unpredictable) story of what’s actually going on at the cash registers. Motorola — which has long since fallen off its high horse on the global stage — still maintains a commanding presence in the American market by representing some 22.9 percent of all subscribers, though that’s down 1.2 percent from October 2009; that’s particularly interesting in light of the Droid’s success, and a possible sign that smartphones still aren’t on the cusp of dominating the phone market overall. Samsung recently touted the fact that it had held onto the States’ overall market share crown, though Sammy was undoubtedly referring to sales, not subscribers — in other words, there are still a ton of legacy RAZRs out there inflating Moto’s stats.
Turning our attention to smartphone platforms, BlackBerry OS, iPhone, and Android all saw gains, while Windows Mobile and Palm both saw significant downturns. You might use Palm’s loss of 2.1 percent of overall market share in a single quarter as a big nail in webOS’ coffin, but we’re inclined to believe this includes legacy devices — and considering the huge installed base of Palm OS-based handsets (Centros, for instance) that are coming off contract these days, it’s neither surprising nor alarming to see that kind of drop. Android’s gain, meanwhile, likely comes in large part from WinMo’s whopping four percent loss — it’s no secret that WinMo 6.x is well past its expiration date with customers leaving in droves (even before Windows Phone 7 Series announcement), and our informal observations lead us to believe that many of those folks are heading for Android. After all, it’s kind of convenient that Android gained 4.3 percent and WinMo lost about the same, isn’t it? BlackBerrys still dominate the American smartphone landscape, and the iPhone market looks like it might be mature for the time being — Apple added just 0.3 percent to its market share in the quarter, possibly a sign that folks are holding out for whatever Cupertino brings us come Summer. Is this a sign that Palm needs to step up its game yet again? Undoubtedly — but at the same time, we wouldn’t call the loss of those Palm OS subscribers a death knell just yet.
Android’s American market share soars, WinMo pays the price originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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GDC 2010: The secret to App Store success
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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Freeware, Developer, App Store
For the last panel of GDC 2010 day two, David Whatley of Critical Thought took the stage to talk about the App Store success he found with his games geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm, and almost dared other iPhone developers to follow his “guaranteed plan” to go from “zero to Time Magazine.” He’s got quite a background in the trenches of coding and game development, having designed and run online mulitplayer games for over a decade with his “day job” at a company called Simutronics, but he decided to take to the iPhone in his spare time both to learn the platform and see what he could do with it.
First things first, he said, to make an iPhone game, you’ve got to figure out your goals as a business. He talked about the potential on the iPhone in terms of millions of dollars, but of course, since “99.9% of businesses on the App Store make no money,” it’s much more likely that if something goes wrong during development or something doesn’t click right, the money will drop down to just “a few bucks.” It’s a balance of costs (which he relabeled as “risks”) vs. revenue — it’s very easy, he said, to make money on the App Store, but the issue most developers have is that they let costs get away from them by having too big a team or by investing too much development time, and that comes straight out of their bottom line.
To save money on his bottom line, Whatley made a big deal out of hiring a PR firm. He hired Triple Point PR to handle his publicity (and namedropped them multiple times; like many similar firms, they send us PR notices here at TUAW), and he says that as a developer, that helped him remove a part of the business he didn’t like (press and user interaction) completely from his equation, for what turned out to be only 6% of the revenue (he made a deal with them to get a percentage of the backend based on a few goals he gave).
He said to the audience that a PR firm is extremely important in app sales, because of the press cycle. A PR company sent word of his app (especially his second app, since he’d already created somewhat of a reputation with his first app) out to niche outlets like TUAW and Touch Arcade [Excuse us? Niche? -Ed.], and those outlets gained the attention of Apple, which placed his app in the iTunes promotional channels. That led to major sales, of course, and then the mainstream media (his app was featured in Maxim magazine) wrote about apps featured by Apple, which led to even more sales. In short, he said to developers at the conference, PR hands information off to “gamer press,” which attracts Apple, which attracts mainstream media, which all goes back to sales numbers.
And he wasn’t shy about numbers either: he’s made $251,000 with geoDefense. That’s only part of the revenue — a certain part went to Apple, $15,000 went to the PR firm, and then he had $2,000 in overhead, which he said was literally a Mac on his Mastercard. Given that he already had the coding skills and business experience necessary to publish a successful app, that’s quite a return.
So how can developers replicate that? He said that the X-factor is probably the most important part — while you can follow the rest of his instructions to a T, and “do everything right,” your app still needs to have that “X-factor” of being something people want to play and share. He also recommended that developers establish their goals early on and stick to them — “if you’re getting into this to be a millionaire,” he said, “you haven’t thought it through. If you get into it to learn to be a millionaire, you probably have.”
Likewise, he joked that he had a foolproof solution to defeating piracy once and for all, and it was… “make a game no one wants.” Finally, he showed a picture of himself working on a MacBook from a beach in Bali, and said that he’d been extremely happy with the success he’d found in the App Store — like a few other developers at the conference, he made it clear that Apple is offering up quite an opportunity to smalltime developers, and that with the right mindset and discipline, there is money to be made.
TUAWGDC 2010: The secret to App Store success originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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AppStore – iPhone – Apple – Unofficial Apple Weblog – Game Developers Conference
AirPhones
about 11 hours ago - No comments
AirPhones is an application which lets you stream audio from your computer to your iPhone or iPod touch. Once you have it set up — which doesn’t take long at all — it’s as simple as opening the app on your iPhone and hearing your computer’s audio through your phone. You can play audio through the built-in speaker, using headphones, or even through a speaker dock if you have one. Simply plug in, open the app, and you’re in business.