Food, tech, disruptions

Disruptions: Silicon Valley's Next Stop: The Kitchen - NYTimes.com: ". . . .“The food system is bizarre and ineffectual and completely lacking in innovation,” said Josh Tetrick, founder and chief executive of Hampton Creek Foods, which makes imitation egg products using plants. Creating a successful food company requires a lot more than just a good idea. There are government rules and regulations and competition from entrenched conglomerates with vast distribution systems. These obstacles will not be easily overcome. But these start-ups are trying to do that by behaving like the most successful tech outfits that have gone from ideas to multibillion dollar businesses. Some have programmers writing code to test out snacks and determine the types of ingredients that can go together. Some approach management in the same way start-ups run their operations, using a process called Agile methodology, in which project managers work in very small teams with programmers and have software development practices like Scrum that are intended to move and build products very quickly. Essentially, they are organizing the development of food products in much the same way that tech start-ups organize code. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Mobile race, Apple, Google, Microsoft

Anybody's game: Mobile world divided between Apple, Google, Microsoft - NBC News.com: "...In the third-quarter sales numbers from Kantar Worldpanel, it's clear that it's more or less a two-horse race in the U.S., Australia and Great Britain. Android takes up a bit more than half of all sales, iPhone is about a third — 40 percent in Apple's home turf, the U.S., less elsewhere. But leave the English-speaking countries and things get a bit more unpredictable: the other countries in Europe, for instance, are far more Android-heavy. In Spain, Android accounted for an incredible 90 percent of all smartphones sold. Germany, France and Italy showed similar but not quite so serious trends...."

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Chinese Mobile Game Company Chukong Goes Social

The Daily Startup: Chinese Mobile Game Co. Chukong to Go Social - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ: "Chinese mobile gaming company Chukong Technologies Inc. has raised $50 million led by new investor New Horizon Capital, to make its games social and to cement its role as a distribution platform before filing for an IPO next year. The Series D infusion, which VentureWire learned was done at a post-money valuation of $500 million, brings total outside funding to $83.2 million."

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Google Answer to Silicon Valley in London

Tour Google's Answer to Silicon Valley in London: Video - Bloomberg: (Dec. 2 Bloomberg) –- Silicon Valley is number one for tech, but not if Google has anything to do with it. Over the last year the internet company has attracted thousands of bright entrepreneurs to it's London Campus, in an attempt to fuel the UK capital's start-up scene. (Source: Bloomberg)

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Oculus Rift, Virtual Reality, Reality

Oculus Rift Brings Virtual Reality to Verge of the Mainstream | MIT Technology Review: " . . . .What could make the product so compelling is the combination of price and performance. At $300 for a developer kit, studios used to spending thousands of dollars on video game development hardware are likely to see it as a relatively small gamble for a piece of technology that could have a big impact on the tech landscape. (Indeed, when development kits were put up for sale on the Oculus website in September of last year, they sold at a rate of four to five per minute.) . . . ." (read more at link above)

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Japan Winning in Mobile Games

How Japan Is Winning in Mobile Games - WSJ.com: "... In Japan, each downloaded game earns three times the global average on Apple AAPL -0.57% devices and six times the world-wide norm on Android devices, according to App Annie. "The download is just the start,'' says Jun Otsuka, Line's global business manager. "The real grunt work is in running the game." The stream of cash from games has even pushed Japan to overtake the U.S. in app revenue on phones and tablets overall, according to an App Annie report being published Wednesday .... " (read more at link above)

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Hunter Hamster Studio adapts Snail Bob to HTML5 (video)

Hunter Hamster Studio adapting its Snail Bob series to HTML5 in collaboration with Spil Games | GamesBeat: "HTML5 is different because browsers and mobile devices can all understand it. This is opposed to iOS or Android native apps, which developers need to build specifically for those operating systems. “As we move toward an even more instant-gratification world, gamers care more about how quickly they can get into a game,” said Prigg. “Being platform agnostic helps us deliver games more readily to more people.”"

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Free Gaming Apps, Disney Struggles

Will Disney Interactive finally make it pay? --

Disney Struggles to Make Its Free Gaming Apps Pay - NYTimes.com: "The company is clearly making headway in its overall games business — no small feat considering that gaming troubles have contributed to more than $1 billion in Disney Interactive losses in recent years. The company is now the No. 3 publisher of mobile games for Apple devices by downloads, behind Electronic Arts and Gameloft. Disney says it has 90 million monthly users of its gaming apps, providing a vital network of players to which it can market new offerings. The Playdom social games division of Disney, which started out focused on Facebook but has shifted toward the mobile market, has had a difficult time finding hits. . . ."

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Xbox One, PS4, Chromecast, home entertainment and gaming

Why Million-Console Debuts Don't Guarantee Success for Xbox One and PS4 - Businessweek: "....the companies are betting that people will be willing to pay a large premium for much more powerful, cinematic gaming experiences. But they’re also packing in digital entertainment options that extend beyond gaming. The idea is that to justify a price tag of $400 (Playstation) or $500 (XBox One), people will need something that also serves as a portal for Internet video. This could be a challenge, given that the most popular video streaming devices cost less than $100...."

Ever hear of Chromecast? It costs $35 and plugs into your TV. It runs on Android. With Chromecast, Android is a home entertainment platform. Android is also a gaming platform.

Would you rather spend $35 or $400-500?

Merry Christmas!

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Federal Government #FAIL, Waterfall Method Guarantees Failure

Nobody does development like the Feds do -- no wonder the Obamacare website healthcare.gov was such a disaster --

How Willful Ignorance Doomed HealthCare.gov - Clay Shirky - POLITICO Magazine: "...Like all organizational models, the waterfall method is mainly a theory of collaboration. By putting the most serious planning at the beginning, with subsequent work derived from the plan, the waterfall method amounts to a pledge by all parties not to learn anything while doing the actual work. Instead, the waterfall approach insists that the participants will understand best how things should work before accumulating any real-world experience, and that planners will always know more than workers. This is a perfect method for a culture that communicates in the deontic language of legislation. It is also a dreadful way to make new technology. If there is no room for learning by doing, early mistakes will resist correction. If the people with real technical knowledge can’t deliver bad news up the chain, potential failures get embedded rather than uprooted as the work goes on...."

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Art Appreciation iPad Game, Artistico

Mobile Games Startup, PlayArt Labs, Brings Its Art Appreciation iPad Game, Artistico, To The iPhone | TechCrunch: "The game’s design has been created by a children’s book illustrator, which gives the app a narrative feeling — of being a journey through art history. It’s this educational tone that PlayArt Labs is hoping will help it stand out in the crowded mobile gaming space. “For us, gaming is an outstanding tool to put art and culture into the hands of both casual gamers and art lovers. Our platform allows users to immerse themselves in art by learning about each art masterpiece through deep exploration into the paintings, history, and artists,” the startup says. “We believe that our genuine education-focused approach to experiencing art will both differentiate us from the rest of the pack, as well as open up a new category of cultural gaming.”"

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Miami, Art, Architecture, Tech

Under Nick Korniloff, Art Miami empire grows - Business Monday - MiamiHerald.com: "While Swiss import Art Basel Miami Beach has been the headliner act in South Florida since it started in 2002, Art Miami’s history goes much deeper. The fair debuted in January of 1991 in Miami Beach, catering to South Floridians and snowbirds with international dealers. “It made sense to establish an art fair in Miami as a winter destination and as a gateway, as they promoted it, to Latin America,” said Bonnie Clearwater, director and chief curator of Nova Southeastern University’s Museum of Art...."

Miami's new vice – an addiction to star architects | Art and design | The Observer: "From here, Miami can go in two directions. It can do what almost every other aspirational city has done in the past 15 years, which is to behave like a teenager let loose with a platinum credit card in a luxury store. It can buy itself more and more skyscrapers and cultural monuments of diminishing usefulness. Or it can invent new ways to renew itself, as yet unknown, based on its inimitable fusion of South and North America, each of which has powerful and distinct ideas about how to make cities."

SIME MIA 2013: "SIME MIA is a joint venture between SIME, Europe's first and funkiest digital business event, and MIA Collective, which organizes events in Miami focused on Media, Internet and Art. SIME MIA is launching for the first time December 3rd at the heart of beautiful (and sunny) South Beach. SIME MIA offers a unique blend of international thought leaders and a meeting place for great people, great ideas and new business opportunities. We are inviting the hottest new companies, entrepreneurs and business leaders from Europe, the US, South America and Asia for two knowledge packed days culminating in the annual Art Basel festivities."

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Websites, Web Apps, Running Faster Techniques

Beyond caching: Google engineers reveal secrets to faster websites | PCWorld: " . . . To improve performance, and better manage memory, developers should use an approach similar to the one used by the middleware library Emscripten, which is being used to build high performance HTML5 web games. Emscripten converts code written in C or C++ into JavaScript, allowing it to manage memory from within the application itself. An Emscripten-based program will pre-allocate a block of memory from the system. The programmer, along with Emscripten itself, decides when memory is no longer needed, and Emscripten returns this unused memory to its pool of internally available memory. The JavaScript engine does not do any garbage collection on the program and so would not affect the performance of the program. Generally speaking, programs written with this technique can run two to four times faster than typical JavaScript programs and do not suffer from the occasional lag in performance that GC operations can cause, McAnlis said. . . ." (read more at link above)

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The War Inside the Game Industry

This tells you everything you need to know about the game industry today -- console vs mobile --

This Is War (for a Game Industry’s Soul) - NYTimes.com: " . . . Like big-budget movies, newspapers, printed books, DVDs and other once-dominant means of conveying information and entertainment, traditional video games like Battlefield — played at home, with a special console or maybe a souped-up PC and the biggest possible screen — are under digital assault. A handful of programmers in a garage can put together a crude but compulsive smartphone game in a few weeks. These games are designed to be played in snippets, anytime and anywhere, making them ideal for a busy modern life. Mobile games are not exactly complicated. Fruit Ninja involves slicing animated fruit in half. ActionPotato is all about trying to catch potatoes. Candy Crush Saga consists of rearranging pieces of candy — and is played 700 million times a day, its creator says. Immersive games like Battlefield, on the other hand, require years of intricate work by hundreds of software engineers and artists. They demand an investment by players, too: $60 plus quite a few moments of attention. And they are tied to technology going the way of the rotary phone. PC sales are dropping as users migrate to tablets, while sales of the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation consoles have wilted 40 percent in the last two years.. . ." (read more at link above)

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Obamacare Website Was Destined to Bomb

If you can, you do. If you can't, you get a government job or a government contract --

Why the Obamacare Website Was Destined to Bomb - Businessweek: " . . . . Put charitably, the rollout of healthcare.gov has been a mess. Millward Brown Digital, a consulting firm, reports that a mere 1 percent of the 3.7 million people who tried to register on the federal exchange in the first week actually managed to enroll. Even if the problems are fixed, the debacle makes clear that it’s time for the government to change the way it ships code—namely, by embracing the approach to software development that has revolutionized the technology industry. . . ." (read more at the link above)

See also: How Willful Ignorance Doomed HealthCare.gov - Clay Shirky - POLITICO Magazine

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Google App Engine, mobile apps back end

Google extends App Engine for mobile app back end | PCWorld: " . . . For those who want even more of a turn-key service, Google offers Mobile Backend Starter. Mobile Backend Starter provides a complete back-end infrastructure, further reducing the amount of effort needed to get a mobile app running. It provides a data store, user authentication, push notifications, and the ability to do event-driven programming to facilitate user interactivity. The updated version of the service promises to run seamlessly with the latest editions of iOS and Android. It can now also manage large media files." (read more at links above and below)

https://cloud.google.com/files/blossomio.pdf
http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2013/11/connecting-mobile-developers-to-the-cloud-with-google-cloud-endpoints.html
https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/endpoints/
https://developers.google.com/cloud/samples/mbs/

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App Smart, Music Games (video)

App Smart: Music Games - Video - NYTimes.com: "App Smart: Music Games
BY DALLAS JENSEN - October 30th, 2013 - Highlights of game apps with a strong musical component, as reviewed by The Times’s Kit Eaton."

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Miami Tech Start-up Scene Heat (video)

Miami's tech start-up scene is heating up: " . . .The Lab Miami hub has expanded to 10,000 square foot facility Knight Foundation is a big supporter of Miami tech scene MIAMI — In a sunny, roomy office overlooking a vibrant bustling Miami Avenue below, Freddie Laker is putting the finishing touches on a potentially groundbreaking app that turns written text into video. He's not shepherding his Gui.de in Silicon Valley, or even in one of the top start-up cities like New York, Boston or the Denver/Boulder area, but way far away at the extreme southeastern part of the country. Miami? Home to hot temps, leggy South Beach models, a bustling Latin American scene and thousands of retirees? "There's more talent here than people give us credit for," says Laker, son of the late British airline mogul of the same name. "Because it's Miami, people assume everyone will be by the pool. They forget that nerds are nerds and they're happy to be inside anywhere." Great weather, cheaper real estate and labor and being the gateway to Latin America doesn't hurt either. "You're lucky if you can carve out a corner for yourself in San Francisco or New York, but in Miami it's wide open," says Daniel Lafuente, co-founder of The LAB Miami, a tech-geared shared workspace in the Wynwood area . . ."

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Zynga blew it, says EA head

Electronic Arts: "Zynga blew it" - GameSpot: ". . . "Zynga blew it. They're not a mobile business," Gibeau said when asked about Zynga cofounder Mark Pincus' belief that in the future, the majority of people would play games all the time. "We're six or seven times their size in mobile. Zynga fell into a hole because they were completely focused on one platform, which is Facebook," he added. Zynga now operates its own platform, outside of Facebook, through Zynga.com. A company representative was not immediately available to address Gibeau's comments. EA has moved away from the social networking site of late, closing some of its biggest Facebook games recently, including The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society. "We saw all the Facebook users going to smartphones. You can't play a game on Facebook on a phone," Gibeau said. "Coupled with that was the fact that customer acquisition costs were on a straight line up.". . ."

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Google, Minecraft, Quantum Physics

Google Entangles Minecraft with Quantum Physics | MIT Technology Review: " . . . One reason for the popularity of the video game Minecraft is the way its blocky universe faithfully adheres to the physics of the real one. Google has now released a software package that introduces quantum physics to the game, an area of nature’s laws previously missed out by Minecraft creator Markus Persson (see “TR35: Markus Persson”). Players of qCraft, as the new “mod” is called, can toy with quantum teleportation, entanglement, and objects that exist in a “superposition” of multiple states at once. Google asked Caltech quantum mechanic Spyridon Michalakis to help design qCraft. In a blog post on the project, he expresses hope that the mod will help people from school age and up to understand the quantum world better. Google also partnered with MinecraftEdu, a project run by educators from the U.S. and Finland interested in using the game as a teaching aid. . . ." (read more at the link above)

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Mobile Games, Asian Companies

The $1.5 billion deal by SoftBank of Japan for a majority stake in the Finnish game developer Supercell shows that Asian companies are still building positions in the industry --

Asia, Where Mobile Games Flowered, Extends Its Reach - NYTimes.com: ". . . . The growth of mobile gaming is upending the longstanding business model of the business, which was based on the sale of games — and the devices to play them. The new approach is to give away games away for smartphones and then to earn revenue from in-game purchases, advertising and other add-ons. While the so-called free-to-play model has spread to much of the rest of the world, it was mostly pioneered in Asia. “If the U.S. and Europe are great conceptually, the leading Asian markets are masters of the science of making money from mobile,” said Tim Merel, founder of Digi-Capital. In September, two Asian countries, Japan and South Korea, together accounted for a whopping 62 percent of worldwide revenue from games on the Google Play mobile app store, according to App Annie. The United States represented 15 percent of sales. Over all, Asia accounts for half of the revenue in the mobile game business, and this will grow to two-thirds in 2016, according to Digi-Capital. . . ." (read more at the link above)

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Rare Video Games, National Museum of Play (video)

Atari Games, Street Fighter Machines, and Rare Video Games-Game|Life-WIRED: At the National Museum of Play, Chris Kohler visits an exhibit all about classic video game maker Atari, and he gets hands-on inside the museum's lab of rare games.

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Team Engagement Through Gaming

Engage Your Team Through Gaming | Big Think Edge | Big Think: "Research shows that gaming can have positive social, emotional and psychological benefits. According to game designer Jane McGonigal, "when we tap into emotions like optimism and curiosity and creativity and even love," these emotions stick with us for up to 24 hours after the game was played. As a result, we are more cooperative with team members in our real lives after we have played a social game with them. . . ."

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Productive Design Critiques

9 Rules For Running A Productive Design Critique | Co.Design | business + design: ". . . 8. DON’T DESIGN IN THE MEETING (THAT’S THE OWNER’S JOB) While it’s OK to suggest an alternate approach occasionally, don’t use your design critique to solve big problems. Design work--as with other kinds of critical thinking--is best done by an individual. Identify problems, but leave it up to the owner to figure out the answer. 9. LEAVE WITH A TASK LIST . . ." (read more at the link above)

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DRM, Hollywood, Programmers

Interesting articles --

What Do We Get for That DRM? - Programming - O'Reilly Media: "What Do We Get for That DRM?
The W3C sells out users without seeming to get anything in return . . . The W3C appears to have surrendered (or given?) its imprimatur to this work without asking for, well, anything in return. “Considerations to be discussed later” is rarely a powerful diplomatic pose. Berners-Lee, best known as the creator of the World Wide Web, seems well aware of the tarnish he’s applying to his creation. He acknowledges that: “none of us as users like certain forms of content protection such as DRM at all. Or the constraints it places on users and developers. Or the over-severe legislation it triggers in countries like the USA.”. . . ." (read more at links above)

W3C's DRM for HTML5 sets the stage for jailing programmers, gets nothing in return - Boing Boing: "As St Laurent points out, the decision means that programmers are now under threat of fines or imprisonment for making and improving Web-browsers in ways that displease Hollywood -- and in return, the W3C has extracted exactly zero promises of a better Web for users or programmers." (read more at link above)

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Professional Gamers, Best Games

Best Games For Professional Gamers - Business Insider: " . . . Where does a gamer who's intrigued by the idea of playing for real money start? We've gone through the event lists of some of the largest gaming competitions in the world to find out. No matter what kind of game you're into, there's probably something you'll find that's to your liking. What's more, many of the games are free-to-play. . . ." (read more at link)

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Toilet Play, Mobile Gaming, in the bathroom

Opinion: Mobile gaming's throne of power is the toilet, not the sofa | feature | PocketGamer.biz | PocketGamer.biz: ". . . . Ultimately, it's up to you whether you declare your history of toilet play as openly as I do - but if you own a smartphone, tablet, or dedicated gaming handheld, I'll safely assume that you've brought it into the bathroom with you at least once. While this might not be something you admit to at a dinner party or disclose on a first date, it's something you should be proud of because you're actively controlling your gaming habits and consuming what you want to consume in a place where few of us want to think about consuming anything. So, to the unconsoles, I say let the consoles have the living room and keep mobile games where they belong - on our phones and tablets - wherever we go. Toilet play is what sets mobile and handheld gaming apart from the rest of the games industry, and it's what mobile gamers want from their phones, tablets, and handheld gaming experiences..."

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Fashioholic, serious mobile fashion games

Fashioholic raises $1M to debut ‘serious’ mobile fashion games | VentureBeat: "Marketing director Anna Brody said Fashioholic specializes in “serious games,” or games that provide value other than entertainment. The games are also meant as a marketing channel for fashion brands. Participating designers choose which merchandise to display and get their products in front of engaged, style-savvy consumers. They can collect data on users’ preferences and deliver targeted merchandise. In addition to Fashion Eye, Fashioholic can develop customized games for brands, and the technology can be white-labeled."

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Intel, HTML5, Developer Economics

Intel throws its weight behind HTML5 | HTML5 - InfoWorld: " . . . . During a briefing this week in San Francisco, Intel's Michael Richmond, senior architect in the company's Open Source Technology Center, positioned HTML5 as a technology for applications beyond just website development. "You're going to see applications that exploit screen real estate in a way that we haven't seen before," Richmond said. He cited HTML5 applications that automatically adapt to different screen sizes, offering more information to the user when a bigger screen is detected. HTML5 also can offer benefits over native programming in that developers do not have to redo all their code for each new platform, Richmond noted. "For us, the developer economics are compelling.". . . ."

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Oracle, HTML5-based, mobile BI app designer

Oracle unveils HTML5-based mobile BI app designer | Business Intelligence - InfoWorld: "Oracle is latching onto the self-service BI (business intelligence) trend with a new tool for creating HTML5-based mobile applications. BI Mobile App Designer, which was announced Monday, runs in a browser and has a drag-and-drop design format. Users can mash together graphs, tables and other types of data "to create mobile analytical apps tailor-made to their lines of business," Oracle said. . . . Oracle's use of HTML5 means the applications can run across iOS, Android and Windows Mobile devices. Users are able to share mobile applications through a catalog called App Library, according to the announcement. . . .(read more at link above)

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Mobile Gaming, Whales, Males

Mobile Gaming's Whales Overwhelmingly Male, Spend Big On All Types Of Video Games - Forbes: "Divnich adds that “core mobile gamers are often core console gamers as well” suggesting the two demographics are not always as disparate as we like to think. This is why free-to-play is on the rise on PC and console systems, and why we’re only going to see more of this trend in the next generation. When it comes to the Xbox One and PS4, Divnich points out that these “consoles are not just competing with each other, but all forms of interactive entertainment.”"

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Games, Developers, Hype

Some classic statements here --

BBC News - Minecraft maker shelves 0x10c video game: "Earlier on in the broadcast Mr Persson appeared to blame the excitement surrounding the game for its demise before completion. "I stopped developing 0x10c because everyone started caring about it before it was even done," he said. "I just want to make small games and talk to other game developers about them. Forget all the hype." He has today tweeted about the impact of his reputation as a high profile game developer on his work. "It was much easier to have grand plans when nobody knew who I was," he wrote. "The gaming world doesn't need more under delivering visionaries.""

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38 Studios video game auction

PROVIDENCE, R.I.: 38 Studios video game headed to auction block - Technology - MiamiHerald.com: " . . . Michael Pachter, an industry analyst at Los Angeles-based Wedbush Securities, said he doubts the game is worth much or that many parties will bid, because it could cost anywhere from $20 million to $100 million to finish it. "It's like buying a brand that hasn't been marketed yet," he said of 38 Studios. He added: "You have to want to make an MMO and they really aren't doing well.". . ."

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Google, Native Client, a dilemma?

Google's Native Client dilemma: A faster but fragmented Web? | Internet & Media - CNET News: " . . . Google does seem wedded to Native Client, though, in part because of its security protections. It's even considering moving Chrome's entire browser engine, Blink, into Native Client -- though that would be a deep-level move that wouldn't affect Web developers' programming choices. Some at Google have expressed interest in asm.js, but for now, the Chrome programmers are marching down the Native Client path. The big question is whether the Web will follow."

No the big question is who will follow? (The web never moves in unison) As for most developers on Google's platforms, wherever Google leads, they will  follow.

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iPhone Design, Jony Ive (video)

Making the iPhone: The Design Tao of Jony Ive: Video - Bloomberg: "Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief designer, is one of the most recognized faces at the company and arguably the world's best-known industrial designer. Bloomberg Businessweek's Sam Grobart spoke exclusively to Ive at the Apple Campus just hours after the iPhone 5S and 5C were announced. (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Apple iOS 7 gaming bet

Apple's big bet on iOS 7 gaming to play out this fall | Mobile - CNET News: ".....When iOS 7 goes public, game developers will have already optimized apps waiting for download. It makes sense too when you note that iOS adoption is typically quick and widespread. (One month after iOS 6's release last September, more than 60 percent of users had installed the update.) "The updated versions of Dungeon Hunter 4 and Playmobil Pirates have cleared Apple approval and are up on the iTunes store," said Thomas Price, a representative for mobile game developer Gameloft. The studio also has a dozen more apps waiting for Apple approval, all optimized for the jump to 64-bit with the iPhone 5S and the more minute software tweaks present in the updated Game Center app. More are on the way from a number of high-profile developers. At Electronic Arts, developers are taking advantage of the OpenGS ES 3.0 interface, a cross-platform API -- currently supported only by the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, updated Nexus 7, and Sony Xperia Z -- widely used for smartphone graphics rendering...."

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The $4 Billion All-Night Party Ready to Go Public (Video)

The $4 Billion All-Night Party Ready to Go Public: Video - Bloomberg: "SFX Entertainment is betting big on Electronic Dance Music and hoping there will be as big an appetite for the industry here as there is in Europe. Bloomberg's Cristina Alesci went to TomorrowWorld, a three-day electronic music festival in Atlanta. (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Intel, chips, fabs

Intel Plans to Shed East Coast Chip Plant - Digits - WSJ: "Intel, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., leans more heavily on larger, newer factories in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon, as well as plants in Ireland, Israel and China. Such “fabs,” as they are called, fabricate chips on silicon wafers. The company regularly updates fabs with new production processes that shrink the size of circuitry to add more features to chips at ever-lower costs per function. Intel is currently in high-volume production of chips with circuit dimensions rated at 22 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, using wafers that are 300 millimeters across (larger wafers reduce the cost of each chip produced)." (read more at link above)

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Word Games, Mobile Screen

Besides the popular Words With Friends, app word games can be played with others over the Internet, or alone against the clock.--

It’s Your Words Against Others’, in Games for the Mobile Screen - NYTimes.com: "But it’s not just Words With Friends; hundreds of word game apps are available. Some are more traditional and some are possible only because of high-tech Internet trickery." (read more at link above)

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Shiver, Zynga, Free-to- Play Gaming Market (video)

Is Shiver Going After Zynga's Market?: Video - Bloomberg: "John Schappert, CEO of Shiver Entertainment and former COO of Zynga, and Owen Mahoney, CFO of Nexon, talk with Emily Chang about Nexon's investment in Shiver and the shift to free-to-play gaming. They speak on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg West." (Source: Bloomberg)"

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iCity, London, $150M Tech Utopia (video)

The Birth of iCity, London's $150M Tech Utopia: Video - Bloomberg: "Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- After the Olympics left London, organizers promised the Olympic facilities would be put to good use. Bloomberg Television investigates what being done to the former broadcast center. (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Sony's Silicon Valley Headquarters (Video)

Inside Sony's Massive Silicon Valley Headquarters: Video - Bloomberg: "Bloomberg's Cory Johnson takes you on an exclusive tour of Sony's new headquarters in Silicon Valley. (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Apple, iPhones, Apps, Startups

The annual iPhone unveilings draw fans, entrepreneurs and technology executives who are praying that a new function does not make their company obsolete--

Disruptions: Apple's Next Unveiling Could Make or Break a Business - NYTimes.com: " . . . The apps store connected to the iPhone has allowed thousands of small businesses to thrive. And a handful of them, like Rovio, the maker of the Angry Birds game whose headquarters is not far from Nokia in Espoo, Finland, have become large companies. “Competing has become so cheap and has been pushed down to such individual units, like app makers” that “what formerly required significant overhead to be successful is now trivial,” said Nicco Mele, who teaches classes on the Internet and politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and the author of the book, “The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath.” “The rise of app makers has allowed anyone to compete with a corporation from home.” There is a scary side to that, of course. The destruction and renewal upon which the tech industry has thrived has accelerated thanks to the Internet, cheap smartphone apps and lower costs of doing business. Facebook, for example, which in just a few years has gone from a start-up to one of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley, has to constantly be on the lookout for the next big threat. And when it can’t take those competitors out at the knees, it buys them, like the photo-sharing service Instagram...."

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NeuroRacer, Rebuilding Attention Span through Games

modest exposure to NeuroRacer, the customized video training game, helped participants improve their ability to screen out distraction and stay on task (source infra)

How to Rebuild an Attention Span - Douglas Foster - The Atlantic: " . . . For users, the game relies on familiar conventions. When the screen lights up, the road reveals itself. On my first run at NeuroRacer, done sitting behind a computer in a darkened lab, I thought: Piece of cake, what idiot couldn’t master this? Controlling the direction by a modem operated on the right, I managed to hold my sporty auto avatar in its lane for several seconds. Then, unfortunately, the road kept slipping away from me, winding around curves, and unexpectedly rising and falling in elevation. The multitasking version of the game required me to drive and, simultaneously, respond accurately through a button on the left to signs that popped up at random on the screen. Designers of NeuroRacer used an “adaptive staircase algorithm” to ratchet up the level of difficulty, meaning that each time a participant improved enough to respond accurately at least 80 percent of the time the challenge increases incrementally. This component of the research is the study’s “special sauce,” Gazzaley told me. The adaptation allows participants of different ages and abilities to start at an equivalent level of comfort and provides a basis for valid comparison across age groups. . . ." (read more at link above)

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New Entrants Rush In, China's Booming Mobile Game Business, Consolidation

As New Entrants Rush In, China's Booming Mobile Game Business Faces Consolidation - Forbes: "....Yet with 80,000 developers releasing more than 100 games a day, mobile game companies in China are “finding it increasingly difficult  to stand out,” the report notes. “We expect to see consolidation in the coming year,” Niko’s senior partner Kevin Hause said in a statement. Casual games are among the most popular mobile titles so far, but relatively intense role-playing and strategy games are explain to make inroads in the future, Niko says." (read more at link above)

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HTML5, native apps, developers

HTML5 now neck and neck with native apps for developer love | ZDNet: "Native apps might deliver a supreme mobile experience, but the lure of HTML5 hybrid app building is growing among developers. While HTML5 versus native apps debate rages on, more developers are willing to trade in a superior native experience for the lower cost of maintaining a common code base using HTML5 code in a native app container, according to analyst firm Forrester. "Mobile developers split their time almost evenly between native and web-based plus hybrid development," Forrester found in its Development Landscape 2013 report. Based on responses from 478 developers in North America and Europe, Forrester found developers were spending 41 percent of the their time on a native app approach, 24 percent of their time on mobile web, and 22 percent of their time on hybrid apps...." (read more at link above)

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'No drawback to working in HTML5'

Financial Times: 'There is no drawback to working in HTML5' | Media | theguardian.com: " . . . When the FT first switched from native to HTML5 on iOS in 2011, it was seen in some quarters as a snub to Apple. Although that was partly true – the FT and Apple disagreed over control of subscriber data – a more important reason was the desire to make porting and maintaining the app across multiple platforms and devices easier in the longer term. Two years on, Grimshaw says the strategy is proving a success. "I challenge anyone to tell the difference between our HTML5 app and a native app. There is no drawback to working in HTML5, and there are lots of advantages," he says. "Anybody that's chosen to develop native apps in parallel [for different platforms] is now really struggling with the overhead of maintaining and developing them. Most of the savvy developers have switched to HTML5, even if they're still delivering those apps in a native wrapper. I don't think it will be long before a lot of those apps start emerging as pure HTML5 apps in browsers.". . . ." (read more at link above)

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Google Chrome, Chrome Apps, Offline

Today we’re unveiling a new kind of Chrome App, which brings together the speed, security and flexibility of the modern web with the powerful functionality previously only available with software installed on your devices. (Think apps designed for your desktop or laptop, just like the ones for your phone and tablet.) These apps are more powerful than before, and can help you get work done, play games in full-screen and create cool content all from the web. If you’re using Windows or a Chromebook, you can check them out in the “For your desktop” collection in the Chrome Web Store (Mac & Linux coming soon).  (source: Google Chrome Blog)

Google Chrome Blog: A new breed of Chrome Apps: " . . .Cracking Sands is an action-packed racing game that lets you speed your way past your online or computer opponents through beautiful 3D courses. And for those looking for more precise control, you can even connect your Xbox controller via USB. Other games worth checking out: Tank Riders, Spelunky, They Need to be Fed and more in the Chrome Web Store. . . .
(read more at link above)

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Facebook moves into games publishing

Facebook leaps into games publishing: "Facebook also announced the first 10 developer participants in the program. They are 5th Planet, Brainbow, Certain Affinity, Dragonplay, Gameloft, Gamevil, KiwiGames, Outplay Entertainment, Space Ape and WeMade Entertainment."

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Mobile game apps beat portable console games

Mobile game apps now leaving portable console games in the dust - Yahoo! News: "The long-term challenge that mobile apps present Nintendo keeps getting more formidable. The new joint study from IDC and App Annie shows how consumer spending on games for iOS and Android continues to soar above spending on portable console games. In Q2 2013, revenue from iOS games was more than double the revenue generated by 3DS and Sony Vita games. Google Play games alone also generated more revenue than the entire portable console industry"

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Camille Paglia, video games, YouTube, news sites, web design

Camille, in her own words, covers it all --

Camille Paglia: “It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton is our party’s best chance” - Salon.com: "Video games and YouTube.com are creatively booming, even though Web design, as demonstrated by the ugly clutter of most major news sites, is in the pits."

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Miami, Austin, a Technology Comparison

The US Economic Census counts:
High-tech jobs - Establishments
Miami-Dade 16,778 - 1708
Broward 21,699 - 1718
Palm Beach 12,293 - 1125
Miami Region Total 50,770 jobs - 4551 establishments

Austin Region Total 48,491 jobs - 1845 establishments

The Miami metroplex has 5 universities vs 1 in Austin, 2 ½ times as many students, 10 incubators vs 12 in Austin, and it has more tech organizations and regular networking meetings . . . .

Source: Are we selling South Florida technology short? | The Starting Gate

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Google Play Developer Program Policy Update

Google Play Developer Program Policy (“Content Policy”) Update - Android Developer Help: "updated the Google Play Developer Program Policy (“Content Policy”). Improvements include new guidance on ads behavior and clarifications to existing policies related to hate speech, gambling, in-app payments, ratings, and impersonation. Please visit and familiarize yourself with the above policies. If you find any existing applications in your catalog to be in non-compliance, we ask you to remedy and republish the application within 30 calendar days of the posting of this notification. After this time period, applications discovered to be in violation may be subject to removal from Google Play. Any newly published applications must adhere to the latest version of the Content Policy for Google Play." more at http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html

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Mobile game spend

Mobile game spending crushing Wii U, Vita titles - GeekWire: "With more than half of us now sporting smartphones, more and more people can purchase and play mobile games. That means you don’t have to own a Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita to game on the go, and new data reveals how exactly that’s hurting the traditional handheld gaming companies. App Annie and IDC just posted its second quarter “Portable Gaming Spotlight,” which found that consumer spending on games in the App Store and Google Play rose to four times that of handheld consoles. And for the first time ever, game spending on Google Play alone surpassed handheld game revenue. Games also represented more than 40 percent of app downloads and 70 percent of app revenue in both app stores."

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Siri Smack Talks Google Glass (video)

Siri Now Smack Talks Google Glass - ABC News: "Now when you refer to Siri as Google Glass, by uttering the words "OK, Glass," she will respond with one of a few snarky phrases, including the following:
"I think that Glass is half empty."
"Stop trying to strap me to your forehead. It won't work."
"I'm not Glass. And I'm just fine with that."
"Glass? I think you've got the wrong assistant."
"Just so you know, I don't do anything when you blink at me."
For now only Apple's personal assistant is talking smack, when you ask Google's Google Now service about Siri it will simply just search the web. However, Google says that Google Glass has the following response to Siri's newly learned phrases. "Siri, it's not you, it's me. You see, I just met Google Voice Search and fell hard for her. She doesn't just listen; she understands me," Google Glass said in a statement."

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Android, responsive design matters

Why responsive design really matters for Android #fragmentation #rwd pic.twitter.com/qtwYVIfmNO
— Paul Stamatiou (@Stammy) July 30, 2013

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Stunning Views from Top of the World (video)

Google Seizes Stunning Views from Top of the World: Video - Bloomberg: "July 24 (Bloomberg) -- Google Maps' Street View isn't just for city streets anymore. Using mobile panoramic camera rigs, the Google team has been capturing some truly unexpected environments, from coral reefs to mountain tops. Bloomberg takes a look."

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HTML5, Goo Technologies, Angry Birds investor

The siren song of HTML5 has lured Goo Technologies and Angry Birds investor | GamesBeat: " . . . The technology is based on HTML5, the lingua franca of the web. Another technology, WebGL, has been created to accelerate the performance of HTML5 programs so that they can run fast enough on the web. With both technologies together, Goo Technologies hopes to create cool 3D games that are instantly playable, with no need for browser plug-ins. And that is promising enough for Goo Technologies to raise seed money from Hed, the chairman of Rovio, and his investment firm Moor. . . ."

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When Lousy Code Strikes

When Lousy Code Strikes, Google Dispatches Its Elite 'Gopher Team' | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com: " . . .The problem was the software underpinning the file server system was more than five years old. It had simply languished. “If code doesn’t receive constant love it turns to sh_t,” Fitzpatrick said. The original C++ code wasn’t well documented, its automated tests weren’t up to snuff and no one really knew how it was supposed to work. People kept making incremental changes, resulting in a patchwork programmers refer to as “spaghetti code.” The unreliability was driving the server operations team crazy, but no one had time to rewrite something that technically worked. So Fitzpatrick volunteered to do it. That’s the kind of thing he does at Google, where he’s part of an team of about 25 engineers creating a custom programming language called Go. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Atlanta tech promoter Larry Williams is Miami's new Beacon Council president

Good news for tech in Miami -- Larry Williams, who currently runs the technology arm of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and has worked in economic development in Washington state and North Carolina, was named new president of Miami-Dade's Beacon Council on Friday. (source: MiamiHerald.com ; see also Beacon Council taps Atlanta economic development expert Larry K. Williams as CEO - South Florida Business Journal )

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Android 4.3, Updated Developer Tools

Good news from Google--

Android 4.3 and Updated Developer Tools | Android Developers Blog: " . . . Check out the Android 4.3 platform highlights for a complete overview of what’s new for developers. To read more about the new APIs and how to use them, take a look at the API Overview or watch the new DevBytes videos. Along with the new Android 4.3 platform we’re releasing an update to the Android NDK (r9). The new NDK gives you native access to the OpenGL ES 3.0 APIs and other stable APIs in Android 4.3, so if you use high-performance graphics in your games or apps, make sure to check it out. Last, we’ve updated the Android Support Library (r18) with several key APIs to help you build great apps with broad compatibility. Most important, we've added an Action Bar API to let you build this essential Android design pattern into your app with compatibility back to Android 2.1. For apps targeting RTL languages, there's a new BidiFormatter utility you can use to manage RTL strings with compatibility back to Android 2.1. Also, watch for a new RenderScript feature coming soon that will let you take advantage of hardware-accelerated computation with compatibility back to Android 2.2. You can get started developing and testing on Android 4.3 right away, in Android Studio or in ADT/Ant. You can download the Android 4.3 Platform (API level 18), as well as the SDK Tools, Platform Tools, and Support Library from the Android SDK Manager."

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UK Mobile Gaming Landscape

Mobile Gaming Trends - UK Insights

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Innovation Nation (Video)

U.S.A.: Innovation Nation: Video - Bloomberg: "July 26 (Bloomberg) -- On today's "Insight & Action," Adam Johnson looks at innovative companies in the U.S. on Bloomberg Television's Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Google Play game services on Android

Google trumpets early success of Play game services on Android | GamesBeat: "The search company may be late when it comes to developing a game network, but it clearly sees the value of games on mobile devices. Games, more than any other category of apps, drive revenue on the Apple App Store or Google Play. That Google is putting so much effort into convincing developers to adopt its services by trotting out these early success stories is proof that it gets how important gaming is. This is good for gamers and good for developers."

More info:

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/07/unlocking-more-users-with-tablets-and.html

http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/spotlight/games.html

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Android fragmentation and hack journalists

Android Fragmentation? No problem! That's another way of saying how successful and dominating Android has become. Nonetheless hack journalists are out there writing with dismay about "Android fragmentation" and having not a clue what they are talking about--is "android fragmentation" a problem? No. Here's one developer's take (full article at link, excerpt follows)--

My argument for ending the Android Fragmentation talk once and for all: "...seriously, how on Earth are we talking about fragmentation when an app runs as well on a 1.6″ 220X176 display as on a 2560X1600 10.1″ display?. . ."

Why are we talking about fragmentation? Because know-nothing "journalists" have to write about "something" even when they don't have a clue what they are writing about.

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Business Brothers, Horse Racing, Online (Video)

Business Brothers Look to Cash in on Horse Racing: Video - Bloomberg: "July 26 (Bloomberg) -- DerbyJackpot.com Co-Founders Walter Hessert and Tom Hessert discuss their online ideas for horse racing with Carol Massar on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)"

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World of Warcraft loses 600000 subscribers

Game over? 'World of Warcraft' loses 600,000 subscribers | Fox News: " . . . Despite the steady decline, World of Warcraft is still easily the world's most popular MMOG (massively multiplayer online game). A new in-game store, announced earlier this month and allowing players to buy extra items, may also help shore up subscriber numbers. Some paid-for online titles have struggled over the last year and dropped their subscription fees, casting doubt over the future of the business model. Star Wars: The Old Republic was the most notable casualty. Reported to have cost several hundred million dollars to produce, it became free to play in November 2012. World of Warcraft's subscriber figures come as Activison Blizzard revealed it is to go independent and buy $8 billion shares from its owner, French media giant Vivendi. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Zynga Abandons Online-Betting Plan (Video)

Zynga Tumbles After Abandoning Online-Betting Plan: Video - Bloomberg: "July 26 (Bloomberg) -- Zynga, maker of the social-networking game “FarmVille,” plunged as much as 20 percent in early trading after abandoning plans to enter the online-gambling business in the U.S. Jon Erlichman reports on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg West." (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Google now accounts for nearly 25% of Internet traffic (North America)

Blog | DeepField: "While it is old news that Google is BIG , the sheer scale and dominance of Google in the Internet infrastructure has significant implications on network design and evolution. When we last published some large-scale measurements in 2010, Google represented (a now seemingly small) 6% of Internet traffic. Today, Google now accounts for nearly 25% of Internet traffic on average. Only Netflix has larger bandwidth, but Netflix peaks last only for a few hours each evening during prime time hours and during Netflix cache update periods in the early morning." (read more at link above)

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Next Horror Movie Franchise Is an App

Your Next Horror Movie Franchise Isn't a Movie - It's an App | The Wrap Movies: "A producer raised in the world of music videos and David Lynch, “Haunting Melissa” is his first time directing a feature. He came up with the story and hired “True Crime” novelist Andrew Klavan to handle the screenplay. All his actors were local Canadians . . . The entire series is has been completed, he said, at a cost of just less than $1 million. A season's pass will set viewers back $6.99 (or $14.99 for HD); individual episodes go for 99 cents (or $1.99 for HD). And viewers who share on social media that they watched the first episode can still watch the second for free. There will be no advertising at all. Edelstein said he will rely on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the viral nature of successful projects on the internet, assured that both the quality of his project and his innovative approach to storytelling would be enough for people to buy it." (read more at link above)

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GitHub, A Free Place for Open-Source Software

Tom Preston-Werner’s GitHub Is an Exceptionally Free Place for Open-Source Software | MIT Technology Review: "San Francisco startup GitHub has all the hallmarks of the next big social network. The company’s base of 3.6 million users is growing fast, and after raising $100 million last year, GitHub was worth $750 million, at least on paper. Yet GitHub is not a place for socializing and sharing photos. It’s a site where software developers store, share, and update their personal coding projects, in computer languages like Java and Python. . . ."

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Florida Treasure Hunting (video)

Florida has more sunken treasure off its coast than anywhere else in the United States. At Jupiter Beach, along the aptly named Treasure Coast, How to Do Florida is scouring the sand and shallow waters for gold. With its centuries-long history of shipping and stormy weather, Florida and its coastal waters are home for perhaps $200 million of sunken artifacts.

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