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Paying Real Money for Branded Virtual Goods
I was having an interesting conversation the other day with a friend who’s creating a platform for game developers to add brands to a game. They’re building some really cool tech around the idea, not unlike AdWords/AdSense for virtual goods or in-game achievements, both for social and more traditional console games. I think it’s quite clever on their part, and it feels like a natural evolution of the gaming ecosystem as advertisement starts to creep into the gaming experience. Social gaming has already seen some partnerships with large brands, like the Farmer’s Insurance blimp in Zynga’s Farmville, or deals with charities whereby they reap the benefits of virtual goods sold…
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Twitter’s New Homepage Speaks Volumes
If there was any doubt about the direction Twitter might be headed as a company, I think this new design clears that right up.
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Sex Up Your Shopping Cart
It’s not often I get excited about shopping carts. But I just discovered Foxy Cart and it looks like the shopping cart solution I’ve been wanting for as long I can remember. At Joby we use Netsuite for our shopping cart, and one of my chief frustrations is how locked in we are to their shitty UI design. It’s truly awful. It takes at least 6 steps to get through the entire checkout process, entering discount codes is completely unintuitive, and customizing the look and feel is very limited and a pain in the ass. FoxyCart seems to solve most of these problems, and I wish I had a project…
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Qik Demos Video on the iPhone
Streaming mobile video service, Qik, has demoed a version of their service which will work on the iPhone. As Mashable reports, they will be facing competition from Flixwagon, who will also be releasing such a service. Here’s a video of their demo:
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Twitter Transparency
I’ve been working on a post talking about the challenges that Twitter has faced lately and why I think they’re on shaky ground these days, but before I get a chance to finish it and post it here I figured I’d link to a post on the Twitter blog where they answer a number of technical questions that people (notably TechCrunch) have been asking them. I give them kudos for addressing these questions publicly and for permitting transparency into their operations and technical challenges. As I see it, however, they’re still not out of the woods yet, even if I (and most of the Twittersphere) am pulling for them in…
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Getting Satisfaction
The awesome folks over at Get Satisfaction launched two sweet new features today. I’m extremely pleased to add that Joby was among the very first to implement beta versions of their new Help Center software. Over the past few days I’ve been working on getting our Joby version of the Help Center up and running, and I’m pleased to show off our installation to the world. I can’t say enough about the folks over at Get Satisfaction – especially Lane, Thor and Scott (their lead developer), who have been extremely helpful the entire time. Those guys really do know customer service. In case you’re interested, here’s the full press release,…
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A Short-Lived Affair
There are few tech things I love more than my dear, sweet Blackberry (recent crashing issues notwithstanding), but one thing that comes close is Twitter. So what could be better than something which marries the two? In an attempt to do just that I downloaded Twitterberry the other day to test it as a client on my Blackberry. Unfortunately, I found it to be a great concept but poorly executed. It contrasts starkly with the fluid, effortless UI of the Blackberry. My chief complaint is that it’s too difficult to see updates from your friends when using Twitterberry. The screen defaults to an input screen where you can enter tweets,…