iphone blog

March 18, 2010

Mobile open source developers turn to the underdog

Filed under: zdnet — Tags: , , , , , , , , — @ 12:52 pm

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 5:52 am

Categories: Apple, Development, General, Google, Hardware, mass market, mobile

Tags: Apple iPhone, Developer, Mobile, Quantcast, Bray, Open Source, Dana Blankenhorn

If you wanted to make money whose side would you rather be on, the guy with 64% market share or the guy with 15% market share.

Open source developers want to be with the 15% share, according to a new analysis from Black Duck Software. (Picture from Quantcast.)

Are they a bunch of daffy Donalds, or do they know something?

Many are no doubt standing on principle.

That principle got a human face when Tim Bray joined Google recently from Oracle (Sun). Ol’ Tim came in  filled with piss and vinegar, calling Android “an unambiguously good thing” and saying of the iPhone, “I hate it.” It’s not Mel Gibson in Braveheart, but we’re hoping this movie turns out differently.

Apple’s suit against HTC, focused on its introduction of multi-touch technology, has hardened hearts on both sides. If there’s one thing open source developers like it’s a crusade against an easily-identified villain. Bray’s appointment was well played.

For developers, Android is the momentum play. The iPhone market is still growing. It’s just that the Android market is growing faster.

Android also lets developers play with multiple vendors on both the carrier and phone fronts. You can support the Motorola Droid as well as the HTC. Your data can go through Verizon as well as AT&T. Developers like that.

But for Android to keep this momentum among developers it needs to keep its momentum in the marketplace. Google needs more carriers and more manufacturers, people who worry about things like lawsuits.

And it needs to expand beyond North America. Quantcast says the iPhone is actually stronger in Europe, a more mature mobile market, than it is here.  Mobile market trends don’t usually start here and flow outward. For years they have been starting in Asia, moving to Europe, and then sweeping through the Americas.

Still, this year is going to be fun.

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Mobile open source developers turn to the underdog

HTC will ‘fully defend’ Apple’s patent suit, but needs more than history lesson

Filed under: zdnet — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 12:16 pm

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 5:16 am

Categories: Apple, General, Legal, Smartphones, iPhone

Tags: High Tech Computer Corp., Apple Inc., Intellectual Property, Smart Phones, Cellular Phones, Handhelds, Keyboards, Research & Development, Business Operations, Consumer Electronics

HTC said Thursday that it will “fully defend itself” against Apple and its patent lawsuit, but will need more than a history lesson in court.

In a statement, HTC said it outlined its disagreement with Apple and gave a history lesson. HTC added that it advocates intellectual property protection, but disagreed with Apple. HTC noted that it shipped its first touchscreen phones in 2002 and has added 50 models since then. It also added that HTC (all resources) had the first gesture-based smartphone in June 2007.

Also see: HTC responds to Apple – the long-term hit? · Apple sues HTC · Apple’s complaint

HTC posts response to Apple lawsuit with a walk through HTC history

Apple’s HTC lawsuit pays off: Rival roadmaps disrupted

The company also added that its HTC Sense user experience was “fundamentally based on listening and observing how people live and communicate.”

What is missing from HTC’s statement is the specific patents it would own to disprove what Apple is complaining about. HTC’s official reply in court is likely to have that information. So far HTC’s trip down memory lane won’t cut it.

HTC CEO Peter Chou said:

“HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself. HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible. From day one, HTC has focused on creating cutting-edge innovations that deliver unique value for people looking for a smartphone. In 1999 we started designing the XDA(i) and T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition(ii), our first touch-screen smartphones, and they both shipped in 2002 with more than 50 additional HTC smartphone models shipping since then.”

Related: Apple’s HTC lawsuit: Is it biting off more than it can sue?

Excerpt from:
HTC will ‘fully defend’ Apple’s patent suit, but needs more than history lesson

March 16, 2010

Google’s Nexus One: Can it recover after an early bellyflop?

Filed under: zdnet — Tags: , , , , , , , , — @ 4:40 pm

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 9:40 am

Categories: AT&T, Android, Apple, General, Google, Mobile, Verizon, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Google Inc., High Tech Computer Corp., Phone, T-Mobile, Nexus, Sales Strategy, Smart Phones, Telecom & Utilities, Sales

Google’s Nexus One came out of the gate strong and promptly fell on its face and sold a mere 135,000 units, according to mobile analytics company Flurry. Is it too early to call the Nexus One a flop and was such dismal performance really that surprising?

The Motorola’s Droid and Apple’s iPhone both sold 1 million units or more in the first 74 days of sales, according to Flurry. Flurry took the Droid and iPhone 74-day sales and compared it to the Nexus One. The Google phone was a train wreck.

So what went wrong? A lot of things that had little to do with the phone. Once you digest the reality of the Nexus One you realize that Flurry’s numbers aren’t all that surprising. Among the lessons learned:

  • The phone is $529. Sure it’s unlocked and yes you don’t have a carrier contract. But the reality is that folks in the U.S. trade off a contract for a subsidized phone every day. We’re not going to break that habit just because Google wants us to.
  • Marketing matters. Google went with an opening day splash, but didn’t market the Nexus One a bunch. Sorry folks, keywords aren’t going to rally the masses or spark dinner conversation. What did the Droid and iPhone have in common? Verizon and AT&T marketing. And in the iPhone case, Apple wasn’t shy about the commercials either.
  • Who you going to call? Just peruse the Nexus One information and you see a three headed monster—Google, HTC and T-Mobile—of support. You may hate your carrier, but at least there’s one throat to choke.
  • There’s no choice. If the Nexus One wanted any love it would have had Verizon Wireless at the launch. T-Mobile is a fine carrier, but it’s about the network folks. And in the Northeast corridor—my home base—T-Mobile isn’t much of an option. Now the Nexus One is compatible with AT&T’s network, but it wasn’t on opening day. How many of us really checked out the Nexus One site after that first week?

The big question: Will the Nexus One get off the mat? If Verizon Wireless backs it up there’s a puncher’s chance of success. If not, the Nexus One will be reserved for a few folks that will pay up for an unlocked phone.

You didn’t expect Google’s Nexus One to flout tradition, consumer habits and the wireless ecosystem and become a roaring success did you?

Related:

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Google’s Nexus One: Can it recover after an early bellyflop?

Flurry: more Droid devices than iPhones sold in first 74 days on the market

Filed under: mobilecrunch — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 12:33 pm

Mobile app analytics company Flurry estimates that while Apple sold 1 million iPhone devices in its first 74 days of availability on the market, the Motorola Droid actually shipped more devices during that timespan. Sales of Google’s Nexus One, by comparison, kinda stunk: the company only sold an estimated 135k phones in 74 days.

Flurry reaches its conclusions through applications using its solution for analytics reporting. Because applications embedded with Flurry are said to have been downloaded to over 80% of all iPhone OS and Android devices, the company claims it can make reliable estimates about total handset sales.

Check out Flurry’s blog post for possible reasons why the Motorola Droid appears to have outsold the Apple iPhone in terms of numbers of devices shipped in the first 74 days on the market.

The respective launch dates of the 3 devices were: iPhone, June 29, 2007; Droid, November 5, 2009; and, Nexus One, January 5, 2010. Note that this means the Nexus One still has a few days left to reach 74 days, but it’s safe to say Google won’t be selling almost a million devices by the end of this week.

Earlier this year, Flurry estimated both first week and first month sales of Nexus One sales compared to Motorola Droid and the first-gen iPhone. They paled in comparison then, and they do now.

Here’s what Flurry has to say about the limited success of the Nexus One:

As Google and Apple continue to battle for the mobile marketplace, Google Nexus One may go down as a grand, failed experiment or one that ultimately helped Google learn something that will prove important in years to come. Apple’s more vertically integrated strategy vs. Google’s more open Android platform approach offer strengths and weaknesses that remind us of PC vs. Mac from the 1980’s.

A key difference this time around is that Apple is enjoying much more 3rd party developer support, whose innovative applications push the limits of what the hardware can do. Ultimately, however, developers support hardware with the largest installed base first. For Android to make progress faster, from a sales perspective, it needs more Droids and fewer Nexus Ones going forward.

Ouch.


Original post:
Flurry: more Droid devices than iPhones sold in first 74 days on the market

March 15, 2010

Best of Smartphone Experts, 14 Mar 2010

Filed under: tipb — Tags: , , , , , , , , — @ 4:00 am

Best of Smartphone Experts, 14 Mar 2010 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

March 13, 2010

Review: Motorola Devour smartphone

Filed under: macworld — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 4:00 pm

Android smartphone has nice features

At first glance, the Devour (Motorola’s second Android phone on Verizon) looks a lot like the Droid (). But after spending some time with the Devour, I realized that it couldn’t be more different from its older sibling. There’s a lot to like about the Devour, especially its social networking features, intuitive user interface, and sturdy design, but it also has some shortcomings.

My initial impressions of the Devour’s design and look weren’t exactly positive. The Devour is a bit clunky, and its aluminum body is retro in a somewhat unappealing way. The 3.1-inch display seemed way too small for its 4.4-inch-long body and is much smaller than the Droid’s 3.7-inch display. In fact, the Devour is slightly bigger than the Droid, but weighs a tad less at 5.9 ounces (the Droid weighs 6 ounces).

After some hands-on use though, the Devour began to win me over. Yes, this thing is a brick, but it feels quite solid in the hand and has some unique design elements. For example, rather than a back battery plate, the Devour’s battery and microSD slot can be accessed by removing the rubber siding on the phone’s left spine. To remove the battery, you just tip the phone, and it slides out. The Devour also has black rubber panels on the top and bottom, keeping the phone from feeling slippery.

I found the layout of the Devour’s touch controls a bit awkward, however. There’s a sizeable gap between the bottom of the display and the touch controls. Then, for whatever reason, Motorola placed the touch controls in two rows: The Menu, Home, and Back keys are on the right side of the top row, with a thumbpad/optical mouse below them on the left. Overall, it makes for a lot of unused space, which is unfortunate when you have only 3.1 inches of screen real estate to work with. On the bright side, the touch keys are quite responsive, and the optical mouse is a good alternative to the touchscreen.

I do applaud Motorola’s keyboard design for the Devour; it is far better than the Droid’s. While the Droid’s keyboard is spacious enough, I found it shallow and a bit uncomfortable to use. The Devour’s recessed keyboard is easier to steady, making typing more comfortable. The keys are also large, and nicely raised and spaced out. The sliding mechanism is crisp and springy, yet solid.

While I felt a bit shortchanged by the size of Devour’s capacitive display, I was impressed with its responsiveness and brightness. At 320-by-480-pixels, its resolution isn’t as good as the Droid’s (which is an 854-by-480-pixel stunner), but colors appeared vivid, and I was pleased with its responsiveness.

MotoBlur for social networking

Perhaps the biggest difference between the Droid and the Devour is in the software. The Droid runs Android 2.0 with Android’s vanilla user interface out of the box. The Devour, on the other hand, runs Motorola’s social networking interface for Android called MotoBlur. This is Motorola’s second MotoBlur device, following the Motorola Cliq () on T-Mobile. Motorola has two more MotoBlur devices coming to the United States later this year, the Cliq XT (the carrier will be T-Mobile) and the Blackflip (carrier not yet announced). The Devour (along with other MotoBlur devices) runs Android 1.6, but Motorola says it plans on eventually upgrading the phones to version 2.1. In my review of the Motorola Cliq I covered MotoBlur extensively, so here I’ll only briefly touch on some of MotoBlur’s most important features.

When you start up the Devour for the first time, you have to register for a MotoBlur account. This establishes a registration record of your phone on the MotoBlur servers so you can receive updated information without interruption. You then choose which social network accounts (such as such as Facebook, Last.fm, MySpace, and Twitter) you want to associate on your Devour.

MotoBlur also collects and organizes all of the contacts from your various social networks. If you’re friends with the same people on multiple networks, MotoBlur condenses all of their information into a single listing to avoid duplicating data on your phone. You can then see each of your contacts’ current information—birthday, status update, current profile picture, e-mail address, phone number, and the like. You can view your communication history with a particular contact as well as viewing that person’s activity on different social networks.

Aesthetically, I find MotoBlur a bit overwhelming: Text, talk bubbles, and images fly out at you in every direction. And the text and icons lack the pop of iPhone OS or even Palm’s WebOS. Fortunately, you have five homescreens to fill with the widgets and applications of your choice, which helps reduce the clutter. In addition to the standard Android widgets (Music, Clock, Calendar, and Search, to name a few), you’ll see four MotoBlur widgets: Messages, Status, Happenings, and Weather.

My favorite element of MotoBlur is its ability to track your lost or stolen phone via GPS and remotely wipe it. And since all of your data is stored in the cloud, you won’t have to reload everything into your new (MotoBlur) phone.

In addition to the MotoBlur features, you also have access to all of the useful Google applications like Gmail, Google Maps with Navigation, YouTube, Google Search, and so on. You can also set up and sync your Yahoo account with the device and get full Outlook sync support as well.

Good multimedia features; lackluster camera

The Devour has the standard Android music player with support for playlist building, as well as shuffle and repeat modes. Transferring music on to the Devour is a snap with the included USB cable. Audio sounded clean through the provided earbuds, but even better through my higher-quality set. Music piped through the external speakers was a bit weak, however. Video playback was smooth, especially through the included Verizon V Cast video application.

Unfortunately, I can’t give the same praise for the Devour’s 3-megapixel camera. I’m not sure why Motorola went with only 3 megapixels, as both the Cliq and the Droid have 5-megapixel cameras, and such 5-megapixel cameras also seem to be the norm for higher-end smartphones these days. Overall, I was disappointed with the way my snapshots turned out. Colors appeared washed out, while details looked fuzzy. The Devour’s camera doesn’t have many editing features, either. You can geotag as well as apply a color effect to your photos, but I wish it had more capabilities, especially when the camera quality is merely adequate.

Solid network performance

Call quality over Verizon’s 3G network was excellent. My contacts sounded loud and clear with no distortion or background static or hiss. Callers on the other end of the line noted that my voice sounded natural, and they couldn’t hear very much background noise. I experienced no dropped calls or dead zones during my use, either.

Surfing the Web on the Android browser was a pleasurable experience as well. Pages loaded quickly over Verizon’s 3G EvDO connection. I had no issues browsing media-rich pages, either. Of course, the Devour doesn’t support full Flash (though Flash Player 10 will be available for Android later this year), so you can only view Flash Lite content.

The Devour isn’t a bad phone by any means, but it is hard to see where it fits into the Android universe. On the one hand, the full QWERTY keyboard and MotoBlur’s social networking features make it appealing for teens. But, in my opinion, its industrial look seems to be targeted more at older audiences, and it isn’t that much cheaper than the Droid (which is $200 with a two-year contract). Until the Devour gets upgraded to Android 2.1 (and perhaps gets a price drop), I’d recommend the Droid over the Devour.

[Ginny Mies is an assistant editor for PCWorld.]

 

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Review: Motorola Devour smartphone

The Macalope Weekly: A sad state of affairs

Filed under: macworld — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 3:00 pm

Online technology journalism. Can’t live with it and you can’t shoot it in the back of the head and dump it in the creek off the old interstate bypass where all the serial killers dump bodies. Wait, can we? Because this week brought out the seamy underbelly of people who inexplicably get paid to pontificate about Apple and if there’s a way—any way—to make it all stop, the horny one is all ears and antlers.

This is actually this man’s job!

First off, a warning. Do not click this link to Scott Moritz’s piece entitled “Apple: Sell Before The Fall” (tip o’ the antlers to Shawn King).

The Macalope only provides the link for the sake of future historians who wish to document the pathetic state of online journalism during the early part of this century.

Ugh, where to start with this mess? First off, it’s broken up into five pages to increase ad views and, as if that weren’t bad enough, includes those seizure-inducing ads that helpfully pop up any time you accidentally hover your cursor over a keyword like “Apple,” “technology,” or “and.”

It’s like peeling an onion of everything that’s wrong with online media. Only stinkier.

While hard to picture now, Jobs and company will one day, maybe soon, fall out of step with fashion.

Why? Because Scott Moritz—a man congenitally wrong about Apple—says so!

Growth will stall. Fair-weather investors will flee to sunnier stocks. Loyal fans will become embittered. Smelling blood, critics will get even nastier.

It will rain locusts! A great heaving in the earth will split Infinite Loop in two and flames will leap out with the screaming and the yelling and…

Man. Who writes this stuff?

Oh. Right. Scott Moritz.

It’s inevitable.

Is it inevitable that Apple will be unable to keep up this mind-boggling pace of introducing highly successful products? Probably. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen this year or even next year. But Scott wants you to get out of Apple’s stock now because booga-booga.

Scott helpfully includes “Numbers” with each declaration of DOOOOM for Apple, but the numbers are nothing more than subjective statements that Apple products just cost so gol durn much that no one in their right mind would ever buy them!

Back here on planet Earth, however, there is substantial evidence to the contrary.

Apple’s 4th version of the iPhone—not to be confused with a 4G iPhone—is due this summer, and it’s not likely to be any different than the past three.

It’s become a cliché to say “Translation: I am as high as a kite.” But, really, he is as high as a kite. Or at least that’s the most charitable explanation the Macalope can come up with.

Scott later concludes:

The revolutionary iPhone is getting stale.

Yeah, that 100 percent year-over-year growth is a killer. Moritz has been trying to downplay the iPhone since before it came out, so he’s not interested in the rumors that the iPhone 4.0 OS will have multitasking support.

No wonder the investment business is such a mess. They’ve created a venue for fly-by-night analysis like Moritz and Jim Cramer, hucksters whose primary concern is how much advertising revenue they can shove into their pockets while the getting is good.

Where Scott really tips his hand is in talking about the iPad.

After working on its highly-anticipated tablet device for three years (or more), Apple unveiled an expensive e-reader. … The iPad is both an oversized iPod Touch and an under-powered netbook.

You’re trying too hard, Scott.

It’s obvious he gets that it’s more than an e-reader, but now he’s more concerned with packing as many troll-worthy comments into five pages of dizzying pop-up ad space disguised as online journalism.

Investors like to call the stock’s premium valuation “the Apple tax.”

Wait, there are two so-called Apple taxes? The Macalope is familiar with the one coined by Microsoft that supposedly described the higher price of Apple’s products. But investors are complaining because it’s too costly to buy Apple’s stock? Really? Who are these investors who care about the base price of the stock and not the potential for it to go up?

This is not about giving sound investment advice, people. This is about advertising.

(Disclaimer: the Macalope holds an insignificant number of Apple shares.)

Moral compass. Is there an app for that?

You know a SmartMoney (sic) piece on whether or not people should buy the iPad is off to a bad start when the first person quoted is Rob Enderle. But things go from bad to worse when Enderle suggests that people instead buy a competing product from Dell and doesn’t disclose that the company is one of his clients.

Shame on Kelli B. Grant for failing to get that out of him or Googling it or realizing Enderle’s toxicity by the fluorescent glow he gives off. Journalists ought to know that Enderle should never, ever be used in a piece about Apple. Or technology. Or kittens, for that matter.

“I don’t expect kittens to be popular. The Dell Streak has a higher value proposition.”

More interesting, however, is that technology journalist and FOTM (Friend Of The Macalope) Glenn Fleishman confronted the man himself about the piece via Twitter. You can read the back and forth, but long story short, Rob doesn’t feel any obligation to let journalists know he’s been paid by Dell.

Which, in practice, we already knew, but seeing in his own words that he really doesn’t think it says anything about his standards is…

Well, who’s the Macalope kidding? That’s not surprising at all.

Tunnel vision

After Scott Moritz and Rob Enderle, ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’s iPad: Perfectly flawed is almost quaint.

See, what Adrian means is that it’s flawed for him based on his particular criteria, which are unlikely to be reflected in the population at large. The Macalope sees a lot of this in technology journalism. “IT’S WRONG FOR ME SO IT MUST BE WRONG FOR EVERYONE.” Honey, shhh. Use your inside voice.

Nowadays $500 buys you a lot of hardware, and since I’m not obsessed by having a particular logo on my hardware, I try to make rational decisions when it comes to spending my cash.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww SNAP! YOU GOT SERVED, APPLE CUSTOMERS! ADRIAN KINGSLEY-HUGHES STYLE!

Hmm. That needs work. How about just “KINGSLEY-STYLE!”? We’ll run it through some focus groups.

Just because Apple’s given up on DRM for music, don’t think for one moment that it’s given up on DRM. Expect audio books, movies and other stuff to be locked away nice and tight.

As opposed to all those other tablet vendors who have negotiated magical deals with the publishing and movie companies that allow them to distribute everything DRM-free.

Pundits, when you’re talking about the relative merits of a platform, please remember to keep your comments relative.

Basically, the device is one big lock into the Apple ecosystem.

And there are some real drawbacks there, such as the heinous terms of the iPhone developer license agreement. Unfortunately, the choices boil down to a clear and highly restrictive path with Apple or an open but unclear path with Android.

No Flash support
I hate Flash…

!

… but web minus Flash is a pretty poor web experience.

?

Adrian. Why the masochism? The Macalope installed ClickToFlash months ago and hasn’t looked back. For the content that lazy developers insist on creating in Flash, he can choose to look at it if he wants, but he’d argue that the Web plus Flash is a worse experience than the Web minus Flash.

No removable storage
It would be really cool to be able to store files and on a removable media, such as an SD Card…

Personally, the Macalope has never once missed the ability to do the same on his iPhone so he finds this eminently easy to overlook.

I’d really like a USB port on the iPad because it would offer interoperability between my existing hardware and the iPad.

See above.

I think I’ll be holding onto my money for a little while … maybe another vendor will come out with a tablet that offers most of the upsides but without so many downsides.

Maybe! The same, of course, could be said about any purchase ever made in the history of mankind.

Well, except for this MacBook Pro the Macalope’s typing on. Which is perfect.

[whispers] Who’s perfect? You are. Shhh.

[loving caress]

Built-in battery
Yes, I still hate the built-in battery.

The Macalope has several different battery packs for his iPhone and they work great. Everyone—including Kingsley-Hughes—complains about evil Apple licensing the connector technology while companies like Mophie and Richard Solo laugh all the way to the bank.

So, rather than get an iPad, Adrian says he’s going to hang on to his money until someone releases his dream tablet that has the little tweezers and corkscrew.

That’s his right, of course. The Macalope feels he’s going to miss out on something, because a lot of talented people who make really good stuff are very excited about the iPad. And when you have an ecosystem populated by talented people who make really good stuff, it’s a nice place to be.

But enjoy the two netbooks you’re going to buy instead, Adrian. Enjoy running Office 2007 really slowly or whatever.

Just don’t be looking over at what we’re doing while you’re changing batteries and popping cards.

Uhn-uhn-uhn! Look away. You made your decision.

Shoo.

More here:
The Macalope Weekly: A sad state of affairs

GDC: Electric Bat Interactive previews free browser-based games

Filed under: macworld — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — @ 12:01 am

Typically, players in a game battle for fantastical lands, important landmarks, or some other pre-determined acre of game territory. But what if the land you played for wasn’t a mere kingdom or country, but the entire Internet?

That’s the basic premise of WebLords, one of two browser-based games in the works by developer Electric Bat Interactive. WebLords is a strategy game with role-playing elements that tasks you with battling against other players to take and hold Web sites. Any site is part of the game, and each one captured grants you ore, crystal, wood, or gold resources. With these resources, you can buy units, upgrade your character, and further strengthen your armies.

The genius of the game is that it appears as a simple bar in your browser. Talking to Electric Bat’s Jonathan Hanna, it’s clear they wanted to make a game that allows people to multitask; on your computer or on your iPhone, you can surf the Web and play. If you stumble upon an unclaimed site, with a simple click you can deploy your armies to take and hold it.

Not all Web sites are created equal, of course. The most popular sites will get you the most resources and will often be the most closely contested. You’ll have to build up your armies and perhaps even recruit your friends to take an extremely popular Web site like Macworld.com.

There’s also plenty of strategy involved. You can only capture five sites at a time, though members with a subscription can gain access to more. When you capture certain sites, you’ll be granted loot to outfit your anime-stylized character general. WebLords offers a diversity of gear and units to outfit for your armies, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. If you outfit your character with armor that increases dragon attacks and include several dragon units in your army, you’ll have a pretty one-dimensional army and will likely be defeated by a more diverse group. When you attack, you’ll want to pay attention to what units your opponent has and which ones will pose the most problem. Before battle commences, you’ll want to prioritize what units you attack first and then sit back and watch as the battle enfolds. Afterwards, you can see how your strategy faired and if you succeeded or failed in your defense or attack of a site.

WebLords’ social elements are also sure to attract the attention of gamers. In addition to Facebook integration, you’ll have friend lists and the ability to ask your friends to join you in battle. The two or three of you can then decide how many troops you want to deploy to a battle and can share in the defense, attack, and resources of a site. There’s no disadvantage to calling a friend, either: while you’ll share the captured resources, your loot ultimately depends on how many troops you have. You increase your garrison, you increase your resources.

From an advertiser’s perspective, WebLords presents a striking new business model. Jonathan Hanna explains that instead of a .5 percent click through, sites where WebLord battles take place have an 80 to 90 percent click through. Because players are still on the sites while battling, sites see a huge spike in hits. According to Hanna, Electric Bat Interactive is hoping to parlay this high click through rate among its users into deals with certain sites. By making a site more valuable in the game, more players will be drawn to the site as an objective. There are certain quests and items to find on certain sites for the game, and these also will increase traffic to certain websites.

This free to play title will have in-game purchases as well, but Hanna assures us that “players can’t buy their way to victory.” You’ll have to strategize, build up your troops, and build up your character’s experience like anyone else.

Combining strategy, RPG, casual, and social genres into one game seems like a precarious proposition, but Electric Bat seems confident in their product. They’re shooting for a summer release, and already their games have become one of the bigger stories creating buzz at GDC.

While WebLords will likely appeal to a number of different gaming communities, Weblings is perfectly tuned to a young adult audience. Weblings is already live at the moment, but after talking to their users, Electric Bat Interactive decided to take the unusual step of completely overhauling the art of the game.


Weblings

Now hoping to relaunch in April, Weblings is a free scavenger hunt/collection game with a player versus environment focus. The game’s premise is that the Internet is sick with bugs and you and your friends must find these bugs and defeat them. The “bugs” in this case aren’t technical errors in code, but rather cartoon mechanical menaces that you must defeat in battle with your digital pets, the Weblings.

Like WebLords, you’ll be using a browser bar to log on and play. You’ll also be able to travel to different web sites, in this case in a quest to eliminate bugs and unlock more weblings.

Your weblings are like Tomagachis, Pokemon, and badges combined into one. You’re trying to collect the 20-plus weblings available at launch (not counting special holiday ones that are only available after completing time sensitive quests) and then use these weblings to take out bugs. Each player will have a special home, called a Haven, for his/her favored webling. Your friends can visit your haven and see your webling and the decorations you’ve unlocked or bought for its home. There’s also a messaging system so you can keep in contact with your friends in the game.

By defeating bugs, finding special bugs, and accessing web pages that are special quests for the day, you’ll be able to gain tokens. The six types of tokens available can be combined to unlock new weblings. There are seven different types of weblings that correspond to a different type of website: food, celebrity, popular, science, music, family and finally the elusive “wild” type. You’ll only have access to five weblings at a time when battling, so you’ll want a diversity of types (each has their own strengths and characteristics) and you’ll want to make sure they keep up their stamina.

Weblings’ “scavenger hunt across the internet” collection game formula will likely appeal to younger or casual gamers. From an advertiser’s perspective, the game is also a great opportunity for traffic. Many weblings can only be unlocked through finding certain web pages and battling certain bugs, meaning players will be frequenting many different sites and sticking around until they’ve completed their quest.

GDC is privy to some of the glitziest and most anticipated gaming news items in the business. But developers like Electric Bat Interactive prove that some of the best gems are harder to find but just as rewarding. Both games offer cross-platform performance and rare depth for browser games; they’re unique and clever formulas will hopefully give them a bit more than just a fleeting moment of spotlight in the GDC circus.

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GDC: Electric Bat Interactive previews free browser-based games

March 10, 2010

A Belated New Year’s Resolution: No Walled Gardens!

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 1:00 am

The Comedy Central-Hulu announcement last week made me recall my New Year’s resolution, one that I wanted to share publicly, and encourage you to embrace as well. It is simple in its concept, but epic in scope. It involves eliminating something from your routine, something unhealthy –- not for your body, however, but for your wallet, and the world at large. In short, I’m asking you to join me in giving up Walled Gardens.

What does that mean? Well basically it means to eschew controlled environments, whatever the cost , and to embrace open platforms with all your heart. In practice, here’s what you’ll have to give up:

iPhone and iPad: This first stipulation is a doozy. Resolve to give up your iPhone, and walk past the iPad display without ponying up. Why do this? Well despite Apple’s claims of embracing everyone, the iPhone and iPad are huge walled gardens. You can’t just load any app -– no, you’re forced to load just those programs that some soulless corporate drone on Infinity Loop deems “appropriate.”

Yes, that means T&A from Sports Illustrated, but not from many other similarly legitimate sources. Want your iPhone to quack like a duck? Sorry. Google Voice, Groovy Sharks — nope, can’t use ‘em, says Apple — and the list just goes on and on.

And the iPad looks to be even worse. Heck you can’t even watch Flash on the darned thing, which tends to obviate much of the most interesting content on the web. Luckily, there are many other awesome alternatives, including the Motorola Backflip, Nexus One, and other great Android phones. And expect everyone else’s pad — from the sexy U1 Hybrid from Lenovo to Dell’s new super-small slate — to deliver more functionality.

These pads will deliver an open, anything-goes platform, for less money, probably. I know it’ll be hard, but this year, vow to embrace an open marketplace of apps, video, web sites and books, rather than a locked down, overpriced, shiny gewgaw.

Kindle: Speaking of books, are you thinking of a Kindle? That’s also a walled garden. Want to buy a book? You have to go through Amazon. Sure you can load your own stuff onto the Kindle, but only via a few formats, and you even have to pay for that privilege. Many other types of e-books simply don’t convert well at all. The Kindle lacks good support for tables and monospaced fonts, has lousy PDF rendering, and worst of all, doesn’t even support the open ePub format.

The lack of ePub means you can’t borrow e-books from your library and read them on the Kindle. It’s as if Jeff Bezos is declaring war on the local library! But even worse, the Kindle is the roach motel of e-books: Books go in, but they never come out.

Luckily there are other options. f you must have an e-reader today, opt for Sony’s latest touch version. But if you can wait, do. There were zillions of e-readers on display at CES, and by this fall we should see an explosion of low-cost E Ink-based alternatives that support open standards and a wide variety of off-the-shelf books.

Hulu: And that leads me to Hulu. Although web-based, Hulu is another walled garden, locking you into its platform. Want to see it on Boxee? Sorry. Oh, well, maybe you can now, but probably not tomorrow. What about other over the top services? Not likely. Hulu is designed for PC viewing only, even though any 15-year-old can easily figure out how to connect a PC to the big screen. And now Hulu’s been out-gardened by Comedy Central, which is pulling its programs, among them “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” viewable only at ComedyCentral.com –- another walled garden!

NBC’s Olympics coverage was yet another ridiculous approach to walling off viewership and screwing consumers. And don’t even get me started on TV Everywhere, the misguided attempt to transmogrify the ultimate walled garden –- cable TV –- into a narrowly protected online universe. It just isn’t going to work, guys. Instead, embrace open video platforms like YouTube –- which you can embed and watch everywhere — along with Boxee, Roku, Popcorn Hour, Play On and other wide open services and providers (including Revision3, where I work).

Why? Because these walled gardens are not only expensive, they lock you in to a never-ending merry-go-round of price hikes, poor customer service and reduced choice. In the end they will turn the Internet into a monolithic series of silos, accessible only to those with the money, influence or power. The promise of a democratic medium that lets you reach the entire world with your voice, your vision and your creativity will be gone forever, locked behind corporate palaces that will turn us all into nameless, faceless drones.

Well, maybe it won’t be that bad. But still, I’m staying away from the iPhone, the iPad, the Kindle and Hulu this year. And you should, too.

Jim Louderback is CEO of Revision3. He was previously vice president of Ziff Davis Media and Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine and PCMag.com.

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A Belated New Year’s Resolution: No Walled Gardens!

March 9, 2010

Apple vs. HTC Lawsuit a Warning Shot to Disrupt Competitors?

Filed under: tipb — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 7:05 pm

iphone_vs_android_ufc1_thumb

Fortune quotes Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner, who thinks Apple’s patent infringement suit against Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone manufacturer HTC was a warning shot meant to disrupt competitors’ roadmaps:

“Starting in January, Apple launched a series of C-Level discussions with tier-1 handset makers to underscore its growing displeasure at seeing its iPhone-related IP [intellectual property] infringed. The lawsuit filed against HTC thus appears to be Apple’s way of putting a public, lawyered-up exclamation point on a series of blunt conversations that have been occurring behind closed doors.

“Our checks also suggest that these warning shots are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.”

What changed?

“Top-tier handset makers continued to avoid implementing multi-touch, but Apple could safely assume that they were hanging back to gauge Apple’s response to Motorola and HTC. If there wasn’t one, the OEMs would likely read the silence as a green light, especially after Google also moved to enable multi-touch on its Nexus One phone.

It was likely in order to counter that perception that Apple began reaching out to handset OEMs in January and explaining in no uncertain terms that it was now ready to do battle–and not just on multi-touch. It was ready to press its case along a number of axes that had made the iPhone experience unique, from the interpretation of touch gestures, to object-oriented OS design, to the nuts and bolts of how hardware elements were built and configured.”

He believes it’s working, and might end up driving people away from Android and… towards Windows Phone.

Nice.

Apple vs. HTC Lawsuit a Warning Shot to Disrupt Competitors? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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