The Mouse Has Laid Its Mitts on Tapulous

The Mouse Has Laid Its Mitts on Tapulous

tapulous_logo.pngDisney has purchased iPhone gaming company Tapulous. They are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney Interactive Media Group.

Tapulous builds mobile games for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

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Tapulous founders, Bart Decrem and Andrew Lacy, as well as their development team in Palo Alto, Calif. will be joining DIMG's mobile content group, Disney said. Decrem and Lacy, previously CEO and COO of Tapulous, will now take on the leadership roles for the DIMG mobile group with Decrem reporting to DIMG President Steve Wadsworth.

Tapulous games, like Tap Tap Revenge and Riddim Ribbon, have been downloaded by 30% of iPhone and iPod Touch users. The former, Tapulous says, has been installed 35 million times, and stands as the most popular game on Apple's App Store.

With this purchase, Disney moves into production of app-distributed mobile games, and the two-year-old Tapulous gets a big shoulder behind its wheel.

A PR rep for Tapulous said Disney have a "do no harm" approach to the buy.

"They want to maintain the nimbleness and innovative spirit that has made Tapulous so successful to date. Tapulous and Disney also have a strong shared vision for the future of mobile social entertainment-in fact, that shared vision played a major factor in this deal."

All Tapulous employees are being retained.

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The Times Paywall Is Now Active. £1 Please!

The Times Paywall Is Now Active. £1 Please!

UK newspaper websites The Times and Sunday Times have this morning completed their transition to being paid-for services.

From mid-June, users were asked to register free to read articles at the websites but now it’s a case of pay up or move on. Visit TheTimes.co.uk, for example, and you’ll see what looks like the normal website. Try to click on a story, though and you’re presented with this:

Readers currently have the choice of £1 per day for access to the site, or a promotional rate of £1 for 30 days’ access. Users who take this promotional rate will be bumped onto a £2 per week subscription once the trial period is over. Those who subscribe to the tradition newspaper version  of The Times get access to the site included in their current subscription.

As we recently reported, figures show traffic to The Times has almost halved since requiring registration to read stories began. We imagine that the drop will continue but as long as the number of users wiling to pay is high enough to turn a profit, owner Rupert Murdoch won’t be complaining.

Next to disappear behind a paywall will be Murdoch’s UK tabloid titles The Sun and News of the World. Given their more downmarket nature, charging for access to the website might be a harder sell.

Original title and link for this post: The Times Paywall Is Now Active. £1 Please!

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W3C Pleased With Semantic Web Adoption by Facebook, Best Buy & Others

W3C Pleased With Semantic Web Adoption by Facebook, Best Buy & Others

At the Semantic Technology conference in San Francisco last week, I met up with two W3C representatives to discuss the current state of the Semantic Web. W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, is the official standards organization of the Web and is led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. I spoke with W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead Ivan Herman and W3C eGovernment Interest Group leader Sandro Hawke.

The main takeaway from the conversation was the rapid adoption of RDFa, by big commercial companies such as Facebook and Best Buy. It's come as a "very pleasant surprise" to Ivan Herman.

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RDFa Adoption in 2010

RDFa is a simpler version of the primary language of the Semantic Web: RDF (Resource Description Framework). RDF is a complex and production-heavy language, so it has struggled to gain adoption over the past decade. The main purpose of RDFa is to add metadata to existing HTML or XHTML webpages, so it is easier to deploy than RDF.

I opened by saying that at last year's SemTech event, adoption of Open Data was the big theme. This year, adoption of RDFa seemed to attract the most chatter in the hallways.

Ivan Herman agreed, saying that it was a "very pleasant surprise [that] there is a buzz around RDFa." Herman remarked that "RDFa is suddenly picking up and it may become the single biggest source of RDF data, aside from relational databases." He added that RDFa is "easy to add and when you see Facebook or others adding RDFa data it's really exciting."

How Facebook is Using RDFa

Indeed, Facebook's adoption of RDFa is exciting. However it should be noted that Facebook is not using pure RDFa; and this is where a new standard called RIF comes in.

At SemTech, W3C announced RIF: Rule Interchange Format. According to Ivan Herman, it is "two standards in one." Firstly, it's a format for exchanging rules between one rules system and another. For example a set of email spam rules that can be exported for another person to use. Secondly, RIF defines a rule language for semantic web data - similar to what can be done with ontologies. Herman said that it enables "simpler things than major ontologies."

Simplicity is a key attribute in the adoption of RDFa. It's also something that Facebook emphasizes (which we will explore more in a follow-up post based on interviews with Facebook people).

According to Sandro Hawke from W3C, Facebook's Open Graph platform uses RDFa "in an abbreviated, not really good modeling way." He said it's because "they [Facebook] need to make it simple enough that everyone can use it." He thinks though that Facebook made the right choice. Hawke explained that RIF "is a way to bridge from that [Open Graph markup] to the more standard modeling that we see in the rest of the Semantic Web."

Hawke sees Facebook's Open Graph as "the real killer app for RIF right now."

Others Adopting RDFa

Another example of RDFa adoption is Best Buy adding RDFa to their entire product catalog, which has resulted in benefits in SEO and cost savings. We will write more about this in a follow-up post.

UK retailer Tesco is doing the same as Best Buy. Drupal 7 is also adding significant support for RDFa. It's the next version of Drupal, a publishing system used by websites like the White House and World Heath Organization. So if you're the manager of a site that runs on Drupal 7, you won't have to do anything - data will automatically be in RDFa format. Other adopters of RDFa include the Library of Congress and eGovernment.

W3C started a new RDFa working group at the end of January, to make a 1.1 version of RDFa. The main goal is to simplify the job of authoring RDFa within HTML. Also, an API for RDFa will be defined.

So overall, the W3C is very pleased with RDFa adoption - although Herman added with smile that "we are never pleased enough."

Image credit: Semantic Web Rubik's Cube, dullhunk

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CHART OF THE DAY: Only 40% Of Web Ads Use Adobe Flash (ADBE)

CHART OF THE DAY: Only 40% Of Web Ads Use Adobe Flash (ADBE)

When the iPad was first announced by Apple, ad people moaned that without Flash many websites would lose a valuable source of revenue.

Ian Schafer, CEO of marketing agency Deep Focus, wrote "ads are almost 100% rendered in Adobe's Flash." Because Apple wouldn't support Flash, it would be screwing web publishers.

Turns out that's not exactly true. New data from comScore reveals that just 40% of ads on the web are based on Flash or Rich Media. Plain old images in the form of jpegs are just as popular. And those jpegs show up anywhere.

chart of the day, Display Advertising Creative by Format, may 2010

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Hulu Announces Monthly Subscription, Support for iPhone/iPad, Still Ad Supported

Hulu Announces Monthly Subscription, Support for iPhone/iPad, Still Ad Supported

hulup_jun10.jpgThe rumors about a paid subscription service coming to Hulu have turned out to be true as the online video hub has announced Hulu Plus - a premium service that will give users access to more content on more platforms for a monthly fee. For $9.99, subscribers will be able to access full seasons of shows on Hulu.com, on apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, on Internet-enabled TVs and BluRay players, and on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles.

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UPDATE: The Hulu Plus app is now available in the AppStore to download on iOS 4.0 devices. You can watch some free previews, but full episodes obviously require an account in the trial program. Check out the screenshots below!

hulup_platforms_jun20.jpgHulu is expressing the fact that Hulu Plus is not a replacement for its homepage. Non-subscribers will still get the same new content at the same time, but subscribers can access a deeper back-catalog of shows. Hulu users hoping for an ad-free version of the site will be disappointed to learn that despite the $9.99 price tag, Hulu Plus will still feature ads during shows.

"Hulu Plus is a new, revolutionary ad-supported subscription product that is incremental and complementary to the existing Hulu service," the company said in blog today. "For almost all of the current broadcast shows on our service, Hulu Plus offers the full season. Every single episode of the current season will be available, not just a handful of trailing episodes."

huluiphone1_jun10.jpg

Hulu is keeping the ads and is instead providing subscribers with the ability to watch shows on a plethora of media platforms. Free iOS 4.0 apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad will let users of those devices catch shows on the go via WiFi and 3G, and Internet-enabled TVs and BluRay players will bring the experience to the living room. Hulu also says PlayStation 3 users will have access to its content "soon," and Xbox 360 fans will see Hulu in their dashboards in "early 2011." Plus subscribers are also provided with and HD 720p stream for all shows.

Right now, Hulu Plus is taking requests for preview invites, and is surveying users on how they digest their media. Upon requesting an invitation, users will be asked what mobile devices they own, what their Internet connection is, and what additional set-top boxes and gaming consoles they use. There is no mention of whether support for the Nintendo Wii is coming, or whether Hulu itself will launch a set-top box. With all the support for these various devices, a Hulu box seems unlikely at this time.

huluiphone2_jun10.jpg

This announcement comes hot on the heels of Fox Interactive Media's foray into mobile video with its on-demand service Bitbop. Fox has an exclusive deal with RIM to bring mobile video to BlackBerry users, but with Hulu's broad sweep of the Apple mobile device platform, the going will likely get tough for Bitbop.

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Cisco's Android Tablet Wants to Be the iPad For Suits [Tablets]

Cisco's Android Tablet Wants to Be the iPad For Suits [Tablets]

The iPad is a content-driven machine. That's what it does best, and that's what it's used for. The Cisco Cius, on the other hand, wants to be the consummate professional's tablet. But what's a business-minded tablet do differently? More »



IPad - Cisco Systems - Android - Tablet - Cisco Cius

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Former Facebook Executive Adam D’Angelo Confirms New Google Social Networking Effort

Former Facebook Executive Adam D’Angelo Confirms New Google Social Networking Effort

Google is making a new move into social networking, following past efforts like Orkut, Google Profiles and Buzz, according to a tweet by Digg founder Kevin Rose. He said so last weekend, but his tweet has since been deleted. Now early Facebook executive and Quora cofounder Adam D’Angelo says — on Quora, of course — that Rose was right. Here’s the text of the entry:

Adam D’Angelo, involved in Facebook early on

Here is what I’ve pieced together from some reliable sources:
• This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.
• They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook.
• Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.
• They had assumed that Facebook’s growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn’t be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn’t stop, and now they are really scared.

“Modeling it off Facebook” likely means creating a similar user interface, features like the news feed and personal profiles, if not data polices, developer platform, core applications and other important parts of Facebook today. Between services for mobile phone numbers, email, photos, video-sharing and much more, it has enough components to make its own, as many have speculated over the eyars. Facebook executives have cited Google as a potentially huge threat over the last couple of years. That’s even as other services have competed more directly with Facebook features, like Twitter and status updates.

Yahoo, AOL and other companies are also looking into building more of their own social networking services. They have their own history of failures, and their own need to succeed now; developers on Facebook are in turn gauging these new markets for their potential. So far, Facebook has managed to outpace other efforts, but as Rose and D’Angelo have heard, Google itself is now feeling forced to act.

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Google Backs Down Further From China Exit

Google Backs Down Further From China Exit

We knew it would be one of the big stories of the year, and today the ‘Google vs the Chinese government’ story has taken another twist.

Back in January, Google won praise from many in the west by making a stand against alleged hacking of the Gmail accounts of human rights activists in China, an action possibily carried out by the Chinese government itself. The company considered pulling out of the Chinese market all together if it was not allowed to operate censorship free in the communist state.

Instead, Google ended up taking a ‘half way house’ approach by simply redirected its search traffic to Google Hong Kong, thereby allowing Google users in China to see information about the 1989 Tianenmen Square massacre among other banned topics.

In a post just published over at the comapny’s official blog, Google appears to be backing down even further over its threatened exit from China.

David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer says China isn’t happy with Google’s redirect:

“If we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed (it’s up for renewal on June 30). Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.”

As a result, Google has been testing a new landing page at google.cn, which offers users a choice between searching on the native (censored) Chinese service or using the uncensored Hong Kong alternative. The company hopes that tweak will be enough to appease Chinese officials and allow the company to continue its Chinese operations.

Google is spinning this as being in the interests of its Chinese users, who have been vocal about their desire for the company to keep its services in China. While that may be true, many in the west will see this as the company lacking the bravery to see through what in January seemed like a bold move that could have changed the way western corporations approach China.

If the Chinese geovernment doesn’t renew Google’s ICP license, the company may be forced out of China regardless, albeit without the sense of honour it would have had if it had initiated the exit.

Original title and link for this post: Google Backs Down Further From China Exit

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What Twitter Places Means for the Future of Location

What Twitter Places Means for the Future of Location

Twitter Map Tweets Image


Despite the bungled launch and short hiatus, Twitter Places is back in action. The feature has huge implications for the geo-location space and the location-sharing movement.

Places is a big improvement on Twitter’s previous geo-location offering, which was never widely adopted or embraced by the majority of users. Whereas before users had to adjust their settings and agree to posting every single tweet with their geo-coordinates, now Twitterers are presented with an elegant way to attach a place to their tweet, one tweet at a time.

Right now Places is a Twitter web and mobile experience only, but soon developers will integrate the Places API into their applications and services. Only then will we see Twitter Places reach its full potential. If Twitter can fix the issues crippling the service, then Places has the power to turn location-sharing into a mainstream behavior and significantly boost interest in applications like Foursquare — not to mention the monetization potential of location-based ads.


1. Location-Sharing to Become Mainstream


As trendy and hip as Foursquare may be, it’s still only reaching a small subset of the online population. While Facebook — due to its size and reach — is the most mainstream of the social networks, Twitter might have the best chance at making location-sharing a common behavior.

Twitter is still the primary purveyor of real-time information and news, and location needs real-time visibility to thrive. Location-sharing amongst friends is certainly well suited for Facebook’s purposes, but the value of location supersedes knowing where your friends are.

Just two years ago, Twitter and its 140 character updates seemed silly, if not absurd. Now everyone from all walks of life including athletes, politicians, celebrities and media are tweeting. Location-sharing — via applications that use geo-location to tie locations to places for the purpose of letting users broadcast where they are — is prime for a breakout moment. Twitter can help take it there.

The tweet has proved to be a powerful and revolutionary way to communicate and spread information. Add location, in the form of places, to these messages and we could see a surge of interest.

Places add context to tweets, which means that breaking news — whether it be related to a natural disaster, event, conference or other situation unfolding in real-time — flowing out in the form of tweets can be localized for further value. It’s this context that will finally help location-sharing holdouts understand why location matters and how they could benefit.


2. Boost Interest in Geo-location Apps


As it stands, Twitter is not a threat to location-based social games like Foursquare and Gowalla. In fact, it’s a complimentary service that will positively impact user uptake.

Given that Places integrates with both services, users of Foursquare and Gowalla have double the incentive to continue updating their friends on their whereabouts. Checkins from either service are tied to places on Twitter, which means those updates get sucked into the Twitter Place feeds/streams.

Checkins will also have broader reach on Twitter via the Twitter Place page, which means more exposure for Foursquare and Gowalla. More exposure will translate into more users who checkin more often, and so on, and so forth.

Plus, as location-sharing becomes more accepted, users will begin to appreciate the added values that Gowalla and Foursquare bring to the table. Saving money — whether that be at Starbucks, Domino’s or Sports Authority — is something that never gets old.


3. Promoted Places


With Places, Twitter has an opportunity to serve up highly targeted advertisements in the form of Promoted Tweets.

Ads could appear atop the Places tweet stream — a.k.a. search results for tweets at a particular place — and engage Twitter users with specific messages about a locale. Obviously this a feature that brands like Starbucks — an early Promoted Tweets user and Foursquare early adopter — could use for store-specific promotions or messages. Perhaps there’s even a “Promoted Places” product brewing that will function similarly to the new Promoted Trends feature.

“Promoted Places” may just be a projection at this point, but we are quite certain that Twitter’s current fixation on advertising revenue will extend to Places.

[img credits: MariShelbey and courtesy of iStockphoto, jorgeantonio]


More Location Resources From Mashable:

- What the Future Holds for the Checkin
- 3 Key Location Trends for Moms
- Are Location-Based Services All Hype?
- 7 Ways Journalists Can Use Foursquare
- Why Hasn’t Location Reached the Mainstream Yet?


Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, iStockphoto

More About: foursquare, geolocation, gowalla, twitter, twitter places

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