Posted in: Gadgets & Handsets, social networking

Classic Parlor and Board Games Continue to Inspire Social Mobile Game Devs

Yesterday someone asked me the ubiquitous “what’s working in mobile social games?” question and I thought it was worth pointing out that a lot of the most popular games today outside of the physics genre (by reach and revenue) are social mobile versions of known popular board and parlor games adapted for asynchronous play on […]

Posted in: Gadgets & Handsets, social networking

Does Android Need Its Own Version of Game Center?

In all of the announcements about Apple’s iOS5, the one that caught my attention was the continued progress that Apple has been making with GameCenter. They now claim over 67 million registered players for the Game Center service and it continues to expand to include a wider range of game types. I’ve been thinking about […]

Posted in: facebook, google, paypal, social networking, web20

Apple, Facebook, and Google – When to Launch Platform Payments

I’ve been tracking the progress of Google’s In-App Purchases for awhile. It’s not just academic to me – we’re building Android games over at Bionic Panda Games and the development of that product is pretty important to us. Previously, I worked on the Facebook Platform, which went through its own process in launching Facebook Credits. […]

Posted in: facebook, google, mobile, social networking, web20

Are Facebook Credits and the Apple App Store on a Payments Collision Course?

Just a quick thought that’s been on my mind of late. I’m trying to figure out how two major changes I see in social and mobile games will be reconciled: 1. Many social games developers are gradually beginning to embrace deeper integrations of Facebook Credits into their on-Facebook social games. In a number of cases, […]

Posted in: apple, Business, Gadgets & Handsets, iphone

The iPad as a Laptop Replacement – My 1 Week Experiment

Every day I seem to love my iPad more and more. I read a few reviews of people declaring that they could easily go iPad-only during their workday and not a miss a beat. I was a bit skeptical of that claim, so I decided that I would try to go iPad-only during my workday […]

Posted in: apple, Gadgets & Handsets, google, iphone

The HTC Incredible Has Shown Me that Android is Now “Good Enough” to Compete

I’m now on my second Android phone and I have to say that Android has come a long way. When I first got my Nexus One, it wasn’t an iPhone killer by any means (some of my early thoughts on the Nexus One can be found here). In reading a few posts, this one by […]

Posted in: apple, facebook, social networking, twitter, web20

Three Reminders about Platform Businesses (Apple, Twitter, and Facebook)

This has been a really interesting week in the world of platforms. Between Fred Wilson’s blog post on filling holes and the subsequent Tweetie acquisition announcement and Apple’s announcements about some of the social gaming features that will be part of the next iPhone OS release, it reminded me of some things I’ve thought about […]

Posted in: Gadgets & Handsets, google, iphone, web20

Google Nexus One Phone and Creating an Android Exemplar

I saw so many posts about the new Google Nexus phone (I liked the one on TC, so I’m linking to that one) that I wanted to post my quick thoughts. In the interest of fair disclosure, I used to work at Google back in the day and know and respect a lot of the […]

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