Zephyrus of the Anemoi

Just an excerpt I thought pointed out how badly Hulu fails to see a paradigm shift they helped create.

Gruber is not one of those who talks about Apple TV as Steve Jobs’ one dud. He likes Apple TV, but says it has a fundamental problem: it’s primarily about watching movies and TV shows through the iTunes store, with the result that there’s a worse selection on Apple TV than there is at any local video store. Hulu is a wonderful solution but when Boxee figured out a way to put it on TV, the Hulu guys freaked out. They have “this crazy brick wall in their heads,” Gruber explains, that perceives computers and TVs and two fundamentally different things. They worry about ad-supported Hulu getting on TVs when they should be worried about people bootlegging their content for free and watching it with no ads. “I don’t see,” Gruber concludes, “how Apple can get from where they are to where they need to be when they are negotiating with people that stupid.”

John Gruber, in an interview with Fortune – emphasis mine

When the iPhone was first released, I quickly bookmarked a specially-designed web app for Mobile Safari that allowed me to access IMDb content quickly and clearly. Unfortunately, as time progressed, I grew tired of the various glitches and missing information that cropped up in the site from time to time.

So when I discovered that an official app was released today, I was overjoyed. I am rather consistently checking IMDb from my iPhone, so I knew that as long as they didn’t frak up their own application, I would make a special place for it on my Home screen.

The first thing that I noticed when I loaded up the app was that they have included more than just the simple movie database in their app. While the search box is at the top of the screen, they’ve made it possible to browse movie showtimes, check box office results and much, much more.

Searching for a movie (or show, video game, person, etc.) is simple: just type something into the search field and get the same results you’d find on the IMDb website. Tap on the result you’d like to view and you’re taken to the same info you’d find on the website, but formatted specifically for the iPhone.

As you can see from the image above, IMDb has ensured that all of the information you’re used to finding is easily accessible. Just scroll downward and you can see the top-billed cast members, trivia, quotes, and all the other info you’d expect.

Here’s a sample screenshot of the trivia section.

Lastly, here’s an example of what it looks like to check showtimes for a movie. The only drawback that I could see is that there’s no links to online ticketing solutions from within the app. However, after clicking on the theater that you’d like to visit, the app does provide you with a phone number for ticketing by phone.

All-in-all, I really love the app and hope that it will gain additional features as time goes by, although online-ticketing is the only one I really want at the moment. Suffice to say, I will be moving this app to a prominent position on my Home screen as soon as I can decide which app no longer makes the cut. Grab the app here.

Several iPhone developers have chosen to have sales this weekend, in the spirit of Black Friday, and Thanksgiving. Some of these sales are pretty nice.

For example, Electronic Arts has slashed prices on a number of their products to 60% or even 50% of their original price. One such game is Wolfenstein RPG, which I picked up immediately, as I’ve been waiting for it to go on sale. While Wolfenstein is famous for being a first-person shooter, it translates really well into an RPG. It doesn’t feel turn-based at all until you enter combat, at which point the enemies just don’t shoot at you until you’ve either moved, fired a weapon, or done some other action. There are puzzles and experience points and all the things that make RPGs great, as well as some great moments of humor (for example, there are chickens everywhere that you can kill in a variety of ways to turn into chicken dinners for health).

In fact, all of id Software’s titles are on sale this weekend, so if you’ve been interested in DOOM Resurrection (an on-rails shooter that’s been very well received) or Wolfenstein Classic (the classic PC game from the early 90s, perfectly recreated for play on the iPhone and iPod Touch), now is the perfect time to pick them up.

In fact, most EA iPhone titles are available (around 30 of them) at the discounted price, so if there are any you’ve been eyeing, but were waiting for a discount, now is the time to check them out.

The other title that I was really excited to find out is on sale this weekend, is Hero of Sparta by Gameloft. When iPhone OS 2.0 first came out, the company Digital Legends Entertainment released Kroll, a beautiful-3D brawler that had some of the most amazing graphics seen on a portable device, but fairly low on gameplay techniques and replay value. Hero of Sparta took it a step further by marrying those beautiful graphics that the iPhone was capable of to a more solid control scheme with more action and a lot more gameplay value. If you are a fan of hack-and-slash action games, then Hero of Sparta is a good choice for you.

Keep your eyes peeled for better deals out there, because if there was ever a good time to find great deals on iPhone software, this weekend is likely to be it.

I read an article recently that told the story behind StoneLoops! of Jurassica and its removal from the iTunes App Store. In the article, it was mentioned that the factor that initiated the removal of Stone Loops was MumboJumbo sending Apple a letter requesting it be removed.

When I discovered this, I was rather upset, as I have long been a fan of this particular genre in general, and StoneLoops! was as great a game as I had ever played. While I have played Luxor 2 on the Xbox 360, I was very impressed with StoneLoops!’s touchscreen implementation. I would have been interested in trying out Luxor on the iPhone, but sadly that day will never come.

Due to the decision by MumboJumbo to use bullying tactics instead of actually trying to improve your product, I will henceforth no longer support MumboJumbo in any way. This means I will stop purchasing games published by you, and I will begin actively speaking against purchasing your products to friends and family. In the future, I hope that you decide to do the right thing rather than simply using your name recognition to remove your competition from the markets in which you compete.

As for your allegations that the developers of StoneLoops! were somehow copying your work, I point out to you that you did not create this genre and have not attempted to use this same bullying tactic against your other competitors (including Stone!Loops!’s other iterations on various platforms).

I hope that this message reaches you as an example of just one of many disgruntled fans of StoneLoops! that could have been fans of Luxor and other MumboJumbo games, but will now instead choose to seek out alternatives rather than supporting a company that uses “the protection of intellectual property” as an excuse to avoid improving upon existing work to compete.

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I have not included any links to MumboJumbo’s website or its games on the iTunes Store due to my decision to boycott them and encouragement of you to do the same. You can, however, contact MumboJumbo by email here. My heart goes out to the developers of StoneLoops! of Jurassica. If you would like to show your support for them, or for indie development in general, you can purchase StoneLoops! for platforms other than the iPhone from their website. For more information about why I am posting this open letter, please visit the AppAdvice article that brought the issue to my attention, and the developer’s blog.

The third page of my iPhone home screen is devoted entirely to games, and is the absolute most dynamic page on my iPhone. In fact, before I started writing this post, I changed this page two or three times in an attempt to get the best selection from my existing apps and the new ones I’d recently downloaded.

As always, from top-left to bottom-right (I’m skipping the Dock because if you don’t know what those four are, you’ve been living under a rock:

• 7 Cities – I love tower defense. The first game I remember picking up for my iPhone when iPhone OS 2.0 hit was TapDefense. So it’s to be expected that some form of tower defense will be on my iPhone at any given time. The problem is that I am a perfectionist when it comes to tower defense and will often stop playing a game in frustration because I let only one enemy through my defenses. Nevertheless, 7 Cities is one of the most unique tower defense games I’ve ever played, as it has set paths for the enemies to travel but doesn’t use a square grid system for placing towers, but rather a hexagonal grid, allowing some fairly unique methods of tower placement. I highly recommend you look into this game if you are a fan of tower defense, even if just for the opportunity to fire at a sea monster as it heads toward the town you must protect.
• Civilization Revolution – I have never been a big fan of Civilization, mostly because I prefer real-time strategy games on the computer. However, it is a perfect fit for the iPhone with a lot of customizable gameplay based on which particular civilization you choose to play as and whether you aim for a diplomatic or conquering gameplay style. I was pleasantly surprised by how polished this game turned out to be.
• Dr. Awesome – I haven’t really been a big fan of games released by ngmoco. In fact, aside from MazeFinger and Topple (both of which have been free for quite some time), I was not interested in any of their games. When they announced the full launch of the Plus+ network and released Dr. Awesome and Topple 2 for free, I was initially frustrated, as Topple 2 was completely unplayable on my iPhone. But thankfully, Dr. Awesome played great, and was a lot of fun. If you’ve ever played Qix, you already know how to play this game. If you haven’t, then I weep for you. I fully recommend getting this while it’s currently free.
• Elven Chronicles – This is a classically-designed RPG with excellent controls (something that can be difficult to accomplish with a Japanese-styled RPG on a touch-screen device). While not as robust or as beautiful as some other RPGs on the iPhone, it’s still an excellent game and a lot of fun.
• Minigore – The iPhone has no shortage of dual-stick shooters, so it takes something special to stand out. Minigore has gorgeous graphics and the promise of periodic updates to add new features. With OpenFeint integration for high scores and achievements, it has several advantages over the competition.
• Pocket God – More of a toy than a game, Pocket God is sort of like an ant farm. Only in this ant farm, you get to torture the ants without all those pesky moral dilemmas. This is an excellent time waster when you only have a few minutes to kill.
• Pocket Tanks – The best artillery game on Mac and PC for years is now the best artillery game on the iPhone, as well. Unlike most artillery games, Pocket Tanks includes 105 different offensive and defensive weapons to use against the computer or your friends.
• Reign of Swords – Turn-based strategies lend themselves very well to the iPhone, and Reign of Swords stands out above many. With a rather extensive campaign, a large number of units, an extensive upgrade system for making more powerful units from lesser ones, and Internet multiplayer, it will keep you busy for quite a while.
• Reign of Swords: Episode 2 – More of the same above. If you like one, you’ll like the other. This one is currently not on the App Store, due to a pending update. I will update the link once it’s back.
• Rogue Touch – Rogue is the first top-down adventure game ever created. It used ASCII characters to represent the game world, character, items, and monsters. It has seen two releases on the iTunes App Store and this is the better of the two, though it is not free like the other one.
• The Creeps! – This is the cutest tower defense game I’ve ever played. It centers around the premise that monsters are coming out of some sort of door to a nightmare world and are approaching your bed. You must build towers to destroy them before they reach you. Unlike other tower defense titles, The Creeps! has various decorative objects in the level that you can destroy for money and that also get in the way of building new towers in effective locations until destroyed.
• Underworlds – This is a remarkable Diablo clone. If you tried out this game in its early releases, you’ll be pleased to hear that the controls have been fine-tuned quite a bit. The developers also recently added an entirely new episode free of charge to the game if you’ve already finished the initial story.
• UniWar – I think I recommend this game more than any other game I have, mostly because it frequently goes on sale and has an excellent multiplayer component. If you like real-time strategy games, it’s a pretty great buy. The developers also frequently fine-tune the gameplay to make it more balanced.
• Vanguard Storm – Final Fantasy transfers well to the iPhone as long as the games are not traditional JRPGs. In this unique take on defensive simulations. It’s a very strategic title with familiar characters and a nerve-wracking time-limit that really pushes you.
• Warfare Incorporated – This game plays very much like Command & Conquer, which is a good thing. An update was released yesterday which added online multiplayer, that actually works fairly well over 3G (though I haven’t tested it over EDGE). If you’re interested in picking this game up, let me know, because I’d love to play with you.
• Words With Friends – Fake Scrabble. For iPhone. With online play. Tell your friends.

Thanks for stopping by. Now go buy some new iPhone games. There are plenty to choose from.

Okay, so page one was so long in the description section, I felt it was only fair to break this up into multiples. But the good news is that it gave me an idea. I will probably do 3 or 4 of these, as I am enjoying explaining to people why I choose particular apps over others. Plus, it lets you see which apps I’ve mentioned before on here but perhaps am no longer using for one reason or another (usually because I found a better app or found I wasn’t using it as much as I had hoped).

Once again, from top-left to bottom-right (excluding the Dock. Duh.):

• App Store – Seriously, if you don’t know what this one is, then how in the world are you going to get all of those pretty icons onto your iPhone/iPod Touch?
• AppBox Pro – All hail the King of all Swiss Army Apps! This thing does a little bit of everything: battery life estimator, flashlight, currency and unit converter, loan and tip calculator, random number generator, translator, ruler, clinometer, and web app portal. This single app gave me back more iPhone home screen real estate than any other. I highly recommend picking it up.
• Transmission – This is a web app that is built-in to the Transmission BitTorrent client application. It’s incredibly cool, as it is essentially a web-based interface for managing downloads and adding new torrents to the download queue. Just turn the feature on in the preferences, make a note of your IP address (or use a dynamic DNS service), and connect using Safari on the iPhone. After saving the app to your home screen, the next time you tap on the icon, it will load the app in a separate instance of Safari with no address bar, giving the illusion of a native iPhone app.
• Glyphboard – This is another web app that masquerades as a native app once installed to the home screen. It provides you with a number of unique characters that can all be copied and pasted into other apps (like Twitter, Mail, Safari, etc.) so that you can use unique characters not available on the iPhone virtual keyboards.
• 1Password – I love the desktop version of this app and was very excited when an iPhone version was released that synchronized all of my passwords, wallet info, and secure notes. With the impending release of 1Password 3 and its ability to synchronize software licenses, this app is a must-have for any on-the-go techie.
• Stanza – This app has been collecting dust of late, due to the large volume of fall television shows I have taken it upon myself to view so you don’t have to. But it’s still the best ebook reader on the iPhone and certainly in the top three readers across all devices. Download calibre for Mac or PC to organize and sync your ebooks from your computer to your device.
• Dictionary.com – I have used quite a few different dictionary apps on my iPhone since they became available, but was always frustrated in the beginning by their dependency on network access to get their information. I can just use Google as a dictionary if I have network access. Thankfully, the team over at Dictionary.com love me and made an app that I can download and use even in Airplane Mode or on an iPod Touch in the middle of nowhere.
• Read It Later – You can thank Echofon for turning me on to this handy little tool. Whenever I encountered a link in a tweet that I wanted to check out later, I used to save the tweet as a favorite. Unfortunately, favorites aren’t exactly private and I’d always forget to go check them out anyway. But by installing this app, not only can I use Echofon to add a link to my Read It Later list (tap-and-hold the URI), and not only can I read the saved links from my iPhone, but I am reminded every time I scroll past that page that I need to check out those items the next time I’m at a computer. Plus, once I’ve read it, I can check it off my list and pretend it was never there.
• TV Forecast – I have been using this app ever since it was a web app. You simply add the TV shows you watch to a list and when you load the app, it tells you when the next episode airs. Unfortunately, with the web app, if you ever removed your cookies, you had to rebuild your list from scratch. Thankfully, the native app only loses your list if you have to completely restore your iPhone. Plus, it has added features like seeing when your TV show last aired, in case you don’t know if you missed an episode or not.
• i.TV – This app and I have had a love-hate relationship since its initial release. I have used both i.TV and What’s On? to get my television listings and while I usually prefer to use What’s On?, i.TV supports Netflix queue management. This app is on my list of apps to one day remove entirely (or at least, delegate to the back page), as there are other Netflix queue management apps and I don’t watch live TV, so I have very little use for TV listings.
• Now Playing – Another app that may one day find itself on another page, this one is also capable of Netflix queue management, but is primarily designed for giving you movie listings. It’s a great app for that, and for buying tickets if your theater supports ticket sales through Fandango.
• Shazam – I don’t keep up with new music the way that I used to, and I rarely listen to the radio. But when I do, I often hear a song that I like and will probably want to buy on iTunes one day. The problem is that I don’t listen to the radio enough to know what the name of the song is. Enter Shazam. Record 10 seconds of the song and Shazam tells you who it is. I used to use Midomi, but found that it just wasn’t as effective as Shazam.
• Wikiamo – I love Wikipedia. It’s my go-to source for anything I just want to understand better. Wikiamo is a perfect example of an app that replaced another app I was fond of recommending. If you’re a fan of wikis in general, then I also recommend WikiSnail. While it doesn’t make page two (due to its rather simplified interface and feature-set), WikiSnail is an app I use to browse all those other wikis, something Wikiamo just can’t do.
• Facebook – This app just got kicked off the front page, as I really don’t use it very often. It’s an incredibly well-designed app, but until push notifications hit, it just doesn’t serve to open it very often, since I prefer to use Facebook as an extended address book more than anything.
• Amazon.com – Another app that I love to have nearby, but don’t use that often. Last Christmas, it was very instrumental in purchasing my brother’s gift, even though I did send it to the wrong damned address.
• Bank of America – Sadly, this is still the best banking app on the iPhone. It’s nothing more than the web app with a wrapper and (I hope) a few cached images. But, when you’re in the store and you need to know if it’s okay to buy just one more keg, you’ll be glad to have this app.

And that’s it for page two of my iPhone home screen. I hope that it was as entertaining for you as it was for me. It was an interesting experience.

My buddy jpar (yes, that jpar) posted a picture of his iPhone home screen yesterday, asking others to reveal theirs. At first, I wasn’t going to do mine, as it was still primarily the stock applications (even though YouTube and Stocks got little or no use).

However, I used his request as an opportunity to finally choose my top apps and get them onto the front screen, moving the less-used apps to other pages (something I’d done with a few already when I added replacements for them). I decided to do him one better and show not only the front-most page of my home screen, but also the second page, as I think it speaks volumes about a person what they keep close by, but just out-of-sight.

From top-left to bottom-right:

• Ping! – An iPhone messenger that does not require you to log in, but instead sends messages directly to your device via push. The nice thing about this is that (unlike SMS) it’s free to send messages and (unlike instant messengers) it never logs you out if you don’t open the app every so often. My ID is zepfhyr. Feel free to contact me.
• Calendar – One of the stock apps, but still my “go-to” anytime I need to remind myself of something far in the future.
• Photos – I’ve thought several times of pulling this off the front page, but I can’t think of anything to put in its place, especially since it’s really the only way to access your photos for sharing. If you know of an app that gives all the same functionality as this but also lets you upload directly to Flickr or adds some other cool feature that makes it worth it, please leave me a message in the comments.
• Camera – I’ve seen a number of apps released that are intended to replace the Camera. I almost came close to switching to Darkroom, but didn’t like how there was no option to turn of the “wait-until-your-hand-is-steady” picture-taking method. Darkroom Premium on the other hand does allow you to adjust the sensitivity, as well as let you shoot with a timer mode. I will be taking a closer look at this app.
• BargainBin – One of the more useful apps I have on my iPhone. BargainBin lets you find apps you like but want to wait to buy until they are at a lower price. You add them to your watch list, set your target price (all the way down to free), and then receive a push notification when the app is available at that price. Plus, it will send you notifications when popular apps become free.
• reQall – This particular app has been installed and removed from my iPhone a number of times since its release as I tried repeatedly to find a way to make it work for me. Then, suddenly, it just hit me: I set alarms all the time to remind myself of things that I almost never am able to accomplish at the time the alarm goes off. But I hate all the other to-d0 list apps I’ve ever downloaded, as they’re either too simple, or too ugly. reQall is brilliant because you don’t have to categorize your to-do’s, it does that for you. And you can just talk to it and have it interpret the words for you if you don’t feel like typing. Your list is synced automatically to the Internet and can be accessed from any computer online. If it’s still not powerful enough for you, you can subscribe to a pro account for $3 per month or $20 each year.
• Maps – I use this app all the time. Even when I know how to get places. And not only to check the traffic. It’s a disease.
• The Weather Channel – The best weather app in the iTunes Store. I’ve used the stock application, Weatherbug (free version only, though Weatherbug Elite looks pretty slick), and Weather Underground’s web app. None of them compare to this excellent app. It’s free. Go get it.
• Clock – I set alarms all the time: as a reminder to take out the trash, to get up earlier than usual, to check a website at a specific time. I’m transitioning what I can to reQall, but I doubt it will supplant this app.
• Calculator – I don’t use this as often as I used to, as I’m often on my iPhone doing something and don’t want to interrupt that by using a calculator. Luckily, I’m often at a computer that has a calculator app on it. Go tech-saturation.
• Simplenote – In the beginning, there was Notes. And it was good. But then the expected synchronization of Notes with my computer did not appear when expected and sadness fell across the land. Then came Evernote and its promises were sweet. Yet the app was twisted and rotten inside and synchronization become something one merely heard about, but never experienced. But lo, on the horizon appeared a savior: Simplenote. Simplenote synced every time without issue and while no desktop app exists in its paradigm, the Simplenote team is eagerly awaiting the DropBox API for Simplenote integration.
• Settings – ‘nough said.
• Palringo – I hate this app, but I hate it less than I hate AIM, which is really saying something. Meebo desperately needs to get their native IM client finished so that I can just get that instead. Oh, well. Ping! and email work great for now, anyway.
• WordPress – I use this app to start a large number of my posts to this very blog, then fine-tune using the web-interface. Both images in this post were uploaded thanks to this handy app.
• Byline – How I get my Google Reader on. If you like to subscribe to RSS feeds, this app is an excellent and affordable program for doing so. With the death of Newsgator’s RSS services and the new version of NetNewsWire sucking like a vacuum (the absence of atmosphere, not that crap we use to clean our carpets, I’m talking reeeeaaaalllly sucking), Byline is my recommended app for RSS feeds.
• Echofon – Best free Twitter client on the market, and while I haven’t used the Pro version, if this app is any indication, best paid Twitter client on the market. Tweetie 2 may be popular, but it still doesn’t have push notifcations.

And that’s it for the front page of my home screen. I will be posting the second page in a separate post soon.

Just a quick update. Last night, The Creeps received an update that added AGON Online support (one of the social gaming networks for the iPhone I talked about here). What was truly surprising, however was that it seemed to have a newer version of the AGON Online implementation that allowed you to tie multiple AGON Online accounts to one device and select the preferred profile from a list prior to starting your game. It is now the service most similar to Xbox Live on the iPhone and that much closer to supplanting OpenFeint as my preferred service.

In other news, I found a rather nasty bug in Plus+’s “Search Contacts” feature for finding friends on the Plus+ network. When scrolling through my contacts list, both MazeFinger Plus and Topple 2 Plus crashed just before specific contacts became visible on the screen. I was able to replicate and isolate the issue (by removing key contacts from my phone and resolving the issue, at least until I hit the next “bad” contact). Hopefully that gets fixed soon, so I can add some more friends.

A lot of media attention (at least, gaming-media) has been given to Plus+ since its announcement. I began this post then to talk about the other lesser-publicized (and in several cases, better) social gaming networks, but stopped due to life getting in the way. At the time, the only game that used Plus+ was developed by the same company that created the service. Since that time, several other games have joined the network, making it something I can actually test out. Thus, I’ve finished this post.

First, let me say up front that I do have a preferred network, and it is OpenFeint. But, as you will see, all of the networks have something to offer, and developers are really the ones that need these services broken down for them so that they can choose the best network for their audience and their business model.

Now, if you’re an iPhone owner, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of OpenFeint before. Or, at the very least, it sounds familiar. That’s because the developers of OpenFeint are the same developers behind Aurora Feint, one of the first apps available for the iPhone 2.0 software and certainly one of the best action-puzzle apps in the App Store.

OpenFeint started life as a chat subroutine in the Aurora Feint app (called at that time, appropriately enough, Feint) that allowed players to talk to each other while playing the app. As the developers added features to it, it began to take on a new life and morphed into something more. That’s when it was rebranded as OpenFeint and made available to other developers. It can now be find in several apps.

However, OpenFeint is not the only option out there, and while it’s certainly my preferred service at the moment, that doesn’t mean my feelings won’t change as other services provide new features and get into more games. So that said, I’m going to break down the various services a bit for you.

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OpenFeint

• Games include: Pocket God, MyBrute, Knights Onrush, Minigore, Stick Wars, MUST.EAT.BIRDS, Sentinel 2
• Uses a “scoring” method (similar to Xbox Live’s Gamerscore) called Gamerscore. Each Achievement earned is assigned a points value. Achievements can be worth as few as 1 Gamerscore, and vary based on difficulty (at developer’s discretion).
• Use a custom avatar visible to your friends.
• Challenge other players: While this feature has existed since the beginning of the App Store, by sending emails to other players from within the app, with OpenFeint developers can set up “challenge” options inside the game allowing players to challenge each other in a variety of ways (beat my score, beat my time, climb higher than me, finish without dying, etc.)
• Offline support: Players can access a scaled-down version of the OpenFeint Dashboard when offline and scores and achievements will automatically be updated the next time a cell or Wi-Fi signal is reached.
• Find friends through Facebook, Twitter, or directly through OpenFeint.
• Compare achievements, challenges, and games with friends.
• No login required: Your OpenFeint ID is tied to your unique device identifier (UDID) for your iPhone or iPod Touch, meaning any new apps you install with OpenFeint support automatically know who you are. Your account can be recovered to any new device using your email address and password used during registration.

My experiences: I’ve played PocketGod quite a bit since it added OpenFeint support, and I’ve found it to be a rather unobtrusive  way to track “progress” in that “game”, as achievements really let you know if you’re trying everything that’s available to you in its experimental world.

To see more of what OpenFeint has to offer, and to check out screenshots of OpenFeint in action, visit the developer site here.

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Plus+

• Games include: Topple 2 Plus+, Star Defense, Rolando, Rolando 2, Scarecrow, LUXOR
• Uses a “scoring” method (similar to Xbox Live’s Gamerscore) called +Score. Each Award earned is assigned a points value. Awards can be worth varying points, though all seem to be listed at multiples of 5.
• Only supports portrait orientation at this time.
• Allows for a custom avatar and status message that other users can see.
• Remembers your user name across all apps on your device, but requires you to login each time you open an app for the first time.
• Does not allow you to import friends from Twitter or Facebook. Can access your local address book to invite friends, but they must be selected individually; will not find friends already using the service automatically.
• Compare achievements, challenges, and games with friends.
• Challenge other players: This feature seems to either be missing from the games that I play, or is only available once a friend has added you to their friends’ list, as I was unable to issue challenges to anyone.

My experiences: Topple 2 Plus+ is an unplayable mess on my iPhone 3G. However, my son seems to have no issues with it on his iPod Touch, so perhaps it’s time for a restoration. However, I played a little bit of Star Defense and found that the network seems to work fine, though I don’t have any friends to play with. Shows promise, but needs more than just adoption by Freeverse before I’d recommend a developer use this service.

Learn more about Plus+ and see some screenshots of it in action here.

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Scoreloop

• Games include: Parachute Panic, Aeio, Zombie Pub Crawl, Circus Acts
• Supports development with Unity Technologies, allowing developers to add Scoreloop support when developing games with the Unity development platform.
• Find friends using Facebook, or invite by email.
• Location-aware leaderboards, as well as a “24 hour leaderboard” to see how you stack up against people playing recently.
• Virtual currency: Earn coins when you first play a game. Then spend those coins to issue and accept challenges. Currency can also be used to purchase in-game bonuses and add-ons.
• Use the Avatar Builder to create your own custom avatar. However, options are fairly limited and you cannot upload your own preferred avatar instead.
• Challenge other players: One big difference in Scoreloop’s implementation of challenges, is that players can actually win or lose the network’s virtual currency in challenges. Winning also earns medals for your profile.
• Does not contain support for achievements, nor does it have a gamerscore.
• Has a stand-alone app specifically for managing your profile, viewing your challenges, etc.

My experiences: Unfortunately, all of the free games I could find to test this out were either incredibly basic, or just not fun. All focus around the concept of high scores and challenges rather than presenting the player with a campaign to play through or multiplayer experience. Not that it’s necessarily bad, just not my cup of tea.

Learn more about Scoreloop’s features here.

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AGON Online

• Games include: Underworlds, Eyegore’s Eye Blast, QuizQuizQuiz, Inkvaders, Samurai: Way of the Warrior, Peter und Vlad, Hot Dog Down a Hallway, Puzzle Girls
• Supports portrait and landscape orientation, switching back and forth on the fly.
• Find friends using Facebook and your local contacts. Searches local contacts to see if any of them are on the AGON network already.
• Uses a “scoring” method (similar to Xbox Live’s Gamerscore) called PocketScore. Each Award earned is assigned a points value. Awards can be worth as few as 1 PocketScore, and vary based on difficulty (at developer’s discretion).
• Leaderboards are location-aware, allowing you to see how you stack up against those around you. You can control if your “Nearby” leaderboard is based on country, region, city, or suburb.
• Able to store profile information in the cloud (tied to your username) so that it can be restored if an app is deleted and reinstalled, or if it is played on multiple devices.
• Supports development with Unity Technologies, allowing developers to add AGON Online integration when developing games with the Unity development platform.

My experiences: While the first time I heard about AGON, it only supported a very small few games that were not fun to play, it’s now in Underworlds, one of my favorite games on the iPhone. Having played around with it, it seems to be most similar in style and step to OpenFeint. If any social network was going to change my preference, it would be this one.

Learn more about AGON Online here.

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Crystal SDK

Not much is known about Crystal, beyond it’s announcement by Chillingo to be essentially the same thing as all the other services out there, but better for some reason. The decision of Chillingo to announce their own social gaming network was actually a bit of a shock, as Chillingo has recently added support in a number of their games for the OpenFeint and AGON Online networks. The only thing I can assume is that, since Chillingo produces games for the iPhone and Android devices, they’re hedging their bets that allowing interoperability of their service between iPhone and Android users will give them the edge in the market.

I’m sure all 30 Android users are thrilled.

The other reason that Chillingo may have support for OpenFeint currently, is that Chillingo publishes lots of games developed by individual studios, leaving the decision in their hands. At least for now. I’ll be watching this one closely, regardless. Especially if Chillingo published games switch networks over to Crystal upon release.

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Now that I’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let me finish with this. None of these services is really in a “winning” position, and is unlikely to be able to be the “de facto” standard, unless Apple picks one of them up. The reason being, they can all add features that the others do, they can all integrate with the same groups of people by adding Facebook and Twitter support, and they can all ultimately be included in whatever game the developers choose for them. The key thing I’m looking for is a stand-alone app (similar to what Scoreloop has published) that lets you receive notifications of your friends’ achievements, challenges, etc. Scoreloop is the first one to get there, but their app is useless unless you want to actually buy their virtual currency, as it merely duplicates features existent in the games themselves. I will certainly be following the future of these services as they unfold, and will give you any major news here.

The iPhone has been for some time the perfect device for a number of different applications, though not all of them seem as readily obvious up front. However, once the first board games began appearing on the device, it became quite clear that asynchronous multiplayer turn-based games would be a perfect fit. UniWar, Monopoly, Lux. All have been fairly successful implementations of turn-based gaming on the iPhone.

However, the iPhone truly excels when multiple versions of the same product exist and can compete for your hard-earned money. This recently became the case when NewToy Inc. challenged the reigning heavyweight in the board games on iPhone arena, EA. The board game at stake? Scrabble.

Here’s a breakdown of the two versions:

Scrabble – The heavyweight champ — EA brought this game to Facebook as an app and then put it on the iPhone and tied the two together. This was kind of a big deal, as that meant that the number of potential opponents grew much larger thanks to the larger userbase of Facebook. Another nice feature of this version of the game is that the app can actually show you what your highest-scoring move is at any time. The down-side? You might be tempted to let the game play itself, and may account for the reason that the only game I was able to find currently available said “no smartphones allowed”. All-in-all, this is a rather impressive application visually and its feature-set has piqued my interest for sometime. If you love Scrabble, and you want to play with friends that don’t have iPhones, then this is the app for you.

Words With Friends – The challenger — When I saw this app announced today, I did a double-take. First of all, it came from the team that brought you the highly-acclaimed Chess With Friends. Secondly, it was gorgeous in its simplicity. With the same basic interface as Chess With Friends, and very basic interface for the game itself, it managed to completely recreate the game of Scrabble without actually looking like a Scrabble board (an important piece of the puzzle, as EA has the rights to the Scrabble artwork and would very likely defend them vigorously). Notifies you when it is your turn via e-mail, just like Chess With Friends (a feature that I can find no notice of for EA’s Scrabble, though surely it’s an oversight and is on its way).

Ideally, I’d like to see push notification for both apps, but in its current state, I’ll accept what they give me. So long as I can play Scrabble without having to pick up all those tiles I knock on the floor when I “accidentally” throw the board across the room in frustration, I’ll be happy.