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Gamasutra - Features - Building the Foundation of a Social Future
To say that social games are booming is an understatement. After having been in existence for only a scant few years, games on social networks like Facebook and MySpace are gaining users explosively. There are now over 200 million monthly users playing the top 10 Facebook games alone -- up by 50 million from August to September.
Investors have certainly taken notice and, even in the depths of a recession, startups have been popping up left and right. With competition comes conflict and social gaming has been no exception -- already the space is a mire of me-too clones and lawsuits, with companies so busy looking over the shoulders of their neighbors that they've lost sight of the bigger picture.
Rather than dashing headlong into this new space, throwing money, resources and litigation blithely and blindly, it may behoove us to pause for a moment and consider: just what is a social game? A little critical thought up front might open more opportunities and alleviate some of the pressure to borrow from the competition.
FarmVille’s Parent Company Valued at $1 Billion?
That number is based on the recent deal that Electronic Arts made to acquire Playfish for up to $400 million, a multiple of 3-4x its revenue according to another analyst cited in the report.
Insanity? Perhaps, but Zynga has shown no signs of slowing down and seems to be able to replicate the same concept over and over again successfully. The company recently introduced “FishVille,” an underwater version of the FarmVille game, and today, launched FarmVille.com, a destination site for the game that utilizes Facebook Connect.
Startups.com | Your Business. Your Questions.
Stackexchange site, somewhat duplicates answers.onstartups.com
Online FarmVille game ploughs new fields of revenue - Times Online
The cash spent by Zynga’s players on micropayments within FarmVille is one reason why Zynga is generating revenues of more than $150 million (£91.4 million) this year.
Virtonomics :: Economic online game
Business simulation game - I delicioused it because some time ago I had a similar idea
SCORE | Counselors to America's Small Business | SCORE
Look a little like brazillian SEBRAE, but is maintained by volunteers. Someone on answers.onstartup mentioned that SCORE provides advices on formulating contracts.
Start Your Online App with FairSoftware; Find iPhone Developers; Share Revenue
A little too utopic, but the idea is connecting great ideas with great developers in exchange for a part of the gains.
Webcore Games +55-11-3259.6116 - advergames, brand games, in game advertising, advergame, advergaming, viral games
Yet another company doing augmented reality and related things in S. Paulo
Registrar sua Marca (P.A.P.) » .marcamaria
Você tem duas opções para registrar uma marca:
Procurar um procurador para fazer isso por você (e gastar um belo dinheiro) e não se preocupar e parar de ler esse texto aqui; ou
Você mesmo ser o seu procurador e pagar apenas as taxas que o INPI pede.
Chile Wants ... Your Tech Entrepreneurs
Chile may not become an outsourcing powerhouse. But this South American gem could very well morph into the new land of opportunity for immigrants in general and export-centric tech entrepreneurs. The Chilean government has put together an incredible slate of incentivesfor technology-based companies that export their products. The government wants you to invest $500,000 over 5 years, but is pretty flexible about how you do this.
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But first, you want to check out the country, right? The government will give you 60% of your due diligence costs, or up to $30,000, to visit and explore Chile. And they’ll grant you another $30,000 to launch your company in Chile. If you work from one of their tech centers, the government will pay for 5 years of rent (up to $1 million) or split the costs if you want to locate elsewhere in this gorgeous country.
How about workforce incentives? Chile has you covered. The government will pay you (as an approved entrepreneur) up to $25,000 for the first year of “training costs” for any locals you hire. By the way, Chile has some excellent engineering schools so it’s not terribly difficult to pick up a good Java or C# programmer. They typically make $15,000-30,000 per year. Can’t find the local talent you want? Chile will subsidize your efforts to bring folks from Sunnyvale, Mumbai or wherever you may find them. And you can train these folks on Chile’s dime as well. And if you decide to buy some land and build your own labs or offices, they’ll give you 40% of your costs up to $2 million. How about for H-1B immigrants or other talented folks who want to move to Chile? Simple. Get a legitimate tech job and they’ll give you a visa, no questions asked. Are you starting to get my drift? (Note: If Chile took even one-quarter of all the H-1B holders current working in tech jobs in America, they would probably come close to doubling the size of their technology workforce).
Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Eric Ries, Author - Evangelizing for the Lean Startup
Speaker, author, and entrepreneur Eric Ries shares rapid fire wisdom on building nimble, responsive, and efficient online software-based businesses. He also offers his wisdom on streamlining processes and progressing engineering systems, and puts forth front line insight into why some new ideas succeed where others have failed.
Outsourcing Is High Tech's Subprime-Mortgage Fiasco - Is the U.S. Killing Its Innovation Machine? - Harvard Business Review
As economists explore the causes of the current worldwide recession, they are expressing a growing recognition that free markets are not always as efficient as many assumed them to be. In particular, they do not appear to be able to properly price systemic risk: the second- and third-order effects of decisions by a number of financial players, each apparently operating rationally, which can combine to cause a complex interrelated financial system to collapse.
Complementing on Augmented Reality Business Models | Agora Media Group Blog - Travel Industry, Social TV, tCommerce, 3D, Augmented Reality, Marketing, Design, Applications, Mobile, Open Source
Augmented Reality is on the rise, this means also creating business models which are profitable and sustainable for the Augmented Reality industry.
An extended and interesting attempt to do so, is written and visualized in the 16 Augmented Reality Business Models by Gary Hayes.
17 fields of Augmented Reality Applications | Agora Media Group Blog - Travel Industry, Social TV, tCommerce, 3D, Augmented Reality, Marketing, Design, Applications, Mobile, Open Source
Due to increasing interest in Augmented Reality, the creative question rises where Augmented Reality can benefit the user?
Theoretically, all is ‘reality’ and all can be augmented with meta-data, but what are the fields that will benefit most?
If one reads the articles and watches the videos on Youtube, one cannot deny the futurisic and science fictional touch that Augmented Reality brings along and fires up creativity and innovativity.
In this article we set out a list of Augmented Reality applications which in some cases are already prototyped, investigated or in use.
MP3: Graham on Start-ups, Innovation, and Creativity | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty
Paul Graham, essayist, programmer and partner in the y-combinator talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about start-ups, innovation, and creativity. Graham draws on his experience as entrepreneur and investor to discuss the current state of the start-up world and how that world has changed due to improved technology that makes it easier to start a software company. Graham talks about his unusual venture firm, the y-combinator, and how he and his partners work with start-ups to get them ready for more advanced funding. Along the way, Graham discusses why hackers are like painters and how to survive high school.
Dr. Dobb's | Is Fixed-Price Software Development Unethical? | July 18, 2008
We fundamentally know that fixed-price IT projects are a very poor way of working. Luckily, so do our customers. Whenever a customer insists on a fixed-priced IT project, even within the scope of an RFP that's been put out to bid, ethically we must attempt to dissuade them from this perilous path. Unless we start providing a consistent front against fixed-price projects, we will never get off this treadmill that we find ourselves on. We must actively choose to reduce the inherent risks in our industry, and the desire by customers for fixed-price IT projects is likely the greatest one that we face.
Brainstorm - College for $99 a Month? - The Chronicle of Higher Education
What if that weren't the case? How cheap could, say, a standard introductory course in College Algebra be? How about $99 a month, by subscription--not for one class, but as many introductory classes as a student is able to complete? It's not a theoretical number--it's actually happening, right now, as I explain in this new article in the Washington Monthly magazine. If universities are no longer able to charge more than an individual course costs to offer -- if the positive side of the cross-subsidization scheme disappears as prices fall to the marginal cost of production -- what's going to happen to the conglomerate as a whole?
College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly
Rather than students being tethered to ivy-covered quads or an anonymous commuter campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in certain subjects and—most importantly—fiercely competing on price. Smith himself may be the person who revolutionizes the university, or he may not be. But someone with the means and vision to fundamentally reorder the way students experience and pay for higher education is bound to emerge.
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