Friday, March 5, 2010

I held a 6-hour workshop at NSConference in both the UK and USA recently, focusing on software design and user experience. Predictably, an extremely popular topic was the iPad, and how to approach the design of iPad applications. I gave a 90-minute presentation on the subject to start each workshop, and I want to share some of my observations here.

"Points," "coins," "bucks" and other forms of virtual currency are becoming standard offerings for online game sites, social media sites, retailers and other businesses. Virtual currency systems generate revenue, provide low-cost alternatives to credit cards for micropayments, offer prepaid solutions appealing to youth and other users without credit cards, and help companies build attractive loyalty programs.

by giving away a million free copies of FaceFighter, we’ve seen paid sales of FaceFighter surge up over 200% after ending the promotion; downloads of FaceFighter Lite are also up over 300% in that same time.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

FreeAppaDay is a service created by the folks at ICS Mobile, OpenFeint, and TapJoy to give away one free app every day.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Indie Fund is a brand new funding source for independent developers, created by a group of successful indies looking to encourage the next wave of game developers. It was established as a serious alternative to the traditional publisher funding model. Our aim is to support the growth of games as a medium by helping indie developers get financially independent and stay financially independent.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Repository of iPhone and iPod Touch source code, including TouchJSON, TouchXML and more.

Okay, this article has been a long time in the coming. THe delay is partially because Ive just been crazy busy, but its also because I wanted to spend enough time with the Nexus One and Android so that I wasnt judging them purely on what I was already accustomed to. I think that Ive spent enough time with them now to be able to do that. Not only has it been several weeks, but when I was in the U.K. for NSConference, I had only my Nexus One most of the time because I didnt want to incur AT&Ts incredibly high data roaming rates. As a result, I got a real feel for what its like to use the Nexus One as my main phone.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Zynga has become the envy of the video game industry because it has so many users for its Facebook games. So Brian Reynolds, chief designer at Zynga and a veteran of the traditional video game industry, got a lot of attention for his talk about designing hit social games.

While the iPhone and upcoming iPad get all of the press buzz, it is easy to forget that almost a third of all mobile Web traffic and iPhone/iPod Touch application activity is coming from the iPod. According to new metrics from Quantcast last week, between 37% and 42% of Apple-originated mobile Web consumption is from the iPod Touch. Teenagers especially use the device and can download all of the same apps to their media player that an iPhone user can download to his or her phone.

At the recent Mobile World Congress 2010, Dutch app store analytics firm Distimo presented their findings on the six largest mobile application stores in existence today: the iTunes App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. In their presentation, they analyzed everything including store size, store growth, the most popular applications and where you can find the best deal. They recently shared some of the highlights from that presentation by way of a slideshow embedded on their blog.

If youre an iPhone owner, youve probably got a virtual wardrobe full of deleted iPhone apps. Most cost you a dollar or more, others were downloaded for free, but nearly all of them let you down in some way. But its not your fault. Customers must sift through more than 150,000 apps, and are often forced to rely on trial and error to find apps that suit their needs and tastes. The tools they do rely on, like Apples Top 25 lists and customer reviews, contain their share of flaws. Thats the dirty little secret of Apples App Store.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

iA has created a created an Omnigraffle stencil set for the iPad, based on the iPad GUI PSD from Teehan and Lax. Looks like a nice way to put simple screens together quickly.

Given the number of apps on iTunes AppStore right now, the greatest hurdle for any developer is getting to the top 100 and even harder is sustaining a sweet spot for an app. Developers have probably tried everything to get their apps noticed--from "peggling" to giving it away for FREE for a day but only a handful have become successful. To be honest, its awfully hard to find the trend on the AppStore nowadays. As someone who have been closely observing the AppStore for the past year, I now believe that almost any kind of app can be a bestseller regardless if Apple features you or not (although it helps if they do).

Sunday, February 7, 2010

SGN founder Shervin Pishevar, jetlagged and sleep deprived on a “secret mision” trip to Eastern Europe, wrote a long and partially lucid email to friends last night. I reprint it here because it captures much of the entrepreneurial spirit that drives so many of the men and women who we write about.

Apple broke with the consumer electronics industry’s accepted wisdom by designing its own processor chips for the upcoming iPad tablet computer. In the past, Apple persuaded Intel to build a custom central processor chip for its super-skinny MacBook Air. But iPad design goes one further by bringing the chips in-house, using the talents of a company called Palo Alto Semiconductor — PA Semi to insiders — a maker of power-efficient chips that Apple acquired in 2008.

Game developers are shifting their attention to the iPhone and starting to ignore the Nintendo Wii, according to Game Developer Research. Developers creating games for mobile phones increased to 25 percent, up from 12 percent a year ago. Of those mobile developers, 75 percent are targeting iPhone and iPod Touch games. The total number of iPhone developers is more than twice the number making games for the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The veil was lifted this morning on Apple’s latest product (and product category). So here are a few thoughts from me about the iPad.

Nearly every startup I have worked with has been nervous about writing press releases.  Lack of experience is one reason but people also think there are a set of secret rules to writing one “properly.”  I’m also hearing startups say they believe press releases are irrelevant in an age of social media.  I disagree.   The majority of press releases really stink but they stink because they are written like we wrote them 15 years ago.  A modern press release can be a valuable marketing tool for startups and I believe anyone can create a great one.  Here’s how:

This free set includes 50 icons of the most popular social media networks on the internet. The icons are designed in 32px and 16px vector format. With the vector format, you can scale the icon to any size to fit with your design or use it in high quality print materials. What you will get from the zip package: 32px and 16px in three different file formats: vector EPS, PNG, and GIF.

took some time away from programming something I hope will become a really good shmup and read the source code of Doom for iPhone. I was very interested in finding out how a pixel oriented engine made the transition to openGL. Here are my notes, as usual I got a bit carried away with the drawings.