Long outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a massive counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message when they try to play the game: Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like […]
Long outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a large counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message when they try to play the game:
Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.
Hsbro has long contended that Scrabulous infringes on its trademarks for Scrabble. It licenses the North American digital rights for Scrabble to Electronic Arts, which announced its own Facebook version of the game earlier this month. (RealNetworks owns the international digital rights, and is not taking as aggressive a stance against Scrabulous).
Last week, Hasbro filed suit against the owners of Scrabulous, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla. The same day, EA publicly launched its officially-sanctioned Scrabble game on Facebook. (See screen shot below, which I took that day).
Hasbro and EA planned their moves very methodically and waited patiently for their opportunity to strike. Perhaps EA felt that it could not compete with Scrabulous other than by taking it out at the knees. Scrabulous boasts 509,505 daily active users. EA’s Scrabble Beta has 14,956 (after only five days). Now, the question is whether Scrabulous fans will boycott the official version of Scrabble on Facebook or switch over to satisfy their word lust.
Update: EA’s Scrabble app seems to be down on Facebook. Maybe they weren’t ready for the surge in traffic.
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By Andrew Liszewski Here’s an updated take on the classic ‘test your strength’ hammer game which is a staple of carnivals and midways all over the world. But instead of slamming a hammer down onto a target in hopes of ringing a bell (and impressing the ladies) the Kicker machine simply has you kicking a football/soccer […]
By Andrew Liszewski
Here’s an updated take on the classic ‘test your strength’ hammer game which is a staple of carnivals and midways all over the world. But instead of slamming a hammer down onto a target in hopes of ringing a bell (and impressing the ladies) the Kicker machine simply has you kicking a football/soccer ball to see how strong your kick measures up.
To be honest, my friends and I’ve never sat around a table telling stories about how strong we have the ability to kick in an attempt to one-up the previous guy, but if we did, it’s nice to know there’s now a way to settle that debate. And I imagine if you played football/soccer on a regular basis this could probably also serve as a training aid to help you improve your shot strength. As long as a stronger kick is worth about $7,960 to you.
Mike Schroepfer, the extremely well regarded VP Engineering at Mozilla, is now Facebook’s Director of Engineering. He’ll be heading up Facebook Platform and the main product front end, he said by telephone this morning, even though his exact scope of responsibility hasn’t been nailed down yet. He will report directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg starting in […]
Mike Schroepfer, the extremely well regarded VP Engineering at Mozilla, is now Facebook’s Director of Engineering.
He’ll be heading up Facebook Platform and the main product front end, he stated by telephone this morning, although his exact scope of responsibility hasn’t been nailed down yet. He will report directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg starting in September.
Schrep, as he is known, headed up the engineering team within Mozilla responsible for Firefox. Before that he was the CTO of Sun Microsystem’s data center automation division (responsible for the highly ambitious N1 project). In order to become a leading World wide web platform, Facebook needs to inject more open-source DNA into its engineering ranks. Schrep should help it do that.
Since Mozilla won’t IPO, it could face more defections of top talent over time.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Christian Cantrell, an Adobe employee and editor of WatchReport just sent me a link to his latest project. It’s called Apprise Reader and it’s basically a feed reader with two very compelling features: direct forwarding of stories to Twitter or AIM. On the surface, Apprise Reader hits all the right buttons: Adobe Air, Twitter, AIM, RSS. […]
Christian Cantrell, an Adobe employee and editor of WatchReport just sent me a link to his latest project. It’s called Apprise Reader and it’s basically a feed reader with two very compelling features: direct forwarding of stories to Twitter or AIM.
On the surface, Apprise Reader hits all the right buttons: Adobe Air, Twitter, AIM, RSS. It is, at its core, a feed reader with a dead easy interface. It accepts standard OPML files to import feeds and runs natively on Windows and OS X - Linux support is coming soon.
By Jonathan Kimak I love my dogs, I really do. But sometimes when it’s quite late and I’m exhausted I would much rather let the dogs go out themselves and come back on their own. Dog flaps in the door aren’t an best choice since any critter can come in through something like that. But this electronic […]
By Jonathan Kimak
I love my dogs, I really do. But sometimes when it’s quite late and I’m fatigued I would much rather let the dogs go out themselves and come back on their own. Dog flaps in the door aren’t an best choice since any critter can come in through something like that.
But this electronic dog flap from Pet Doors USA looks interesting. The flap is made of shatter proof materials and an aluminum frame. You put a RFID tag on your dog’s collar that will send a digital code to the doggy door to open when they approach it. It will close once the dog is no longer near it. It won’t close if there is anything obstructing it which means no snagged tails or paws.
These go for $697 and additional RFID tags cost $30 per unit in case you need extras for multiple dogs. Just be sure your dog is trained to come back when it’s finished its business and not wander off through the neighborhood.
One of the biggest draws for massively multiplayer online games (MMO’s) is the satisfaction that comes from earning in-game items and capabilities. Unlike easy Flash games where your accomplishments vanish the moment you step away from your personal, MMO’s grant you to acquire virtual goods and work your way up a skill ladder, in […]
One of the biggest draws for massively multiplayer on the web games (MMO’s) is the satisfaction that comes from earning in-game items and abilities. Unlike simple Flash games where your achievements vanish the moment you step away from your personal, MMO’s grant you to acquire virtual goods and work your way up a skill ladder, in the hopes of eventually becoming powerful enough to dominate over everyone else. Unfortunately, many people simply can’t spare the hundreds of hours a game like World of Warcraft takes to finally reach this leet status.
This day sees the launch of Moondo, a new gaming “world” that’s trying to merge the best parts of MMOs and the casual games that litter the internet. The Moondo world is comprised of a number of multiplayer minigames that feature 3D graphics that rival those seen on most MMOs. Each minigame is intended to require only about 15-20 minutes, though they include multiple levels that should keep gamers satisfied for hours at a time.
What differentiates Moondo from most other multiplayer minigames is the introduction of persistent goods and a leveling system. For example, a shield that a user might acquire during the course of a shooting game could later be used on the platform’s driving game. As gamers continue playing, they progressively acquire more goods and skills, and the platform’s matching system ensures that they are only pitted against players of comparable experience. At launch, there are two games available (an FPS and a racing game), but that number should grow swiftly, as Moondo states that the platform is designed so that it can pump out a new game every 8 weeks.
Moondo’s biggest challenge lies in making the powerups and levels acquired by each gamer seem worthwhile. It’s one thing to be known as a powerful wizard or knight in a persistent world like World of Warcraft - everyone knows you’ve earned it. But when such advantages are carried over to smaller minigames, it might just make them unbalanced and less fun.
For the time being Moondo is only available as a standalone client on Windows, but the company plans to roll out browser support (so that it should be platform-agnostic) by October. The game is the first product from Funtactix, a Benchmark and JVP-funded company that has spent the last eighteen months developing the platform that powers Moondo. Another company that’s introducing persistent accomplishments to casual gaming is CasualCafe which we covered here.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
By Andrew Liszewski The web as we know it would be a very different place if Google didn’t exist. Sure there’d be other search engines to fill the void, but none of Google’s competitors seem as obsessed with scouring and indexing every nook and cranny of the internet in order to make it easily searchable. According […]
By Andrew Liszewski
The internet as we know it would be a very different place if Google didn’t exist. Sure there’d be other search engines to fill the void, but none of Google’s competitors seem as obsessed with scouring and indexing each nook and cranny of the web in order to make it easily searchable. According to the Google Blog, their first index way back in 1998 had 26 million pages, and by 2000 that had grown to 1 billion. But recently that number hit another milestone as 8 years later Google’s index has passed the 1 trillion unique URLs mark. Here’s an interesting quote from their blog that puts that amount of information in perspective:
To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation could calculate the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google’s index for a fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the internet continuously, collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-link graph several times per day. This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times each day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring each intersection of every road in the United Says. Except it’d be a map about 50,000 times as large as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.
And to think, I actually complain about having to check the 100+ websites in my RSS reader every morning. Anyways, good work Google, and we all look forward to celebrating when you pass the quadrillion mark!
By Andrew Liszewski I’m usually not that interested in toasters, but if you’ve ever tried to heat up something like a bun with a conventional model you’ve probably found that it’s not only difficult, but also be a potential fire hazard. But that’s not the case with this model which features a rotating wire basket […]
By Andrew Liszewski
I’m usually not that interested in toasters, but if you’ve ever tried to heat up something like a bun with a conventional model you’ve probably found that it’s not only difficult, but also be a potential fire hazard. But that’s not the case with this model which features a rotating wire basket that not only prevents the buns from touching the heating elements, but also ensures they get evenly toasted on all sides.
Obviously the basket is useless for sliced bread or bagels, so the toaster also functions like a traditional pop-up model complete with extra wide slots for accommodating your Texas toast craving. There’s even a couple of heating drawers that will keep slices of toast crisp and warm until you’re ready to serve them. The toaster is available from Pro-Idee for about $94.
Search engine Cuil launched earlier this evening, claiming a larger index size (120 billion web pages) than Google or any other search engine. The pedigree of the founders and execs, which includes three ex senior Googlers, means the service will be compared to Google from day one. And the way they will be compared is […]
Search engine Cuil launched earlier this evening, claiming a larger index size (120 billion web pages) than Google or any other search engine. The pedigree of the founders and execs, which includes three ex senior Googlers, means the service will be compared to Google from day one. And the way they will be compared is index size and, more importantly, relevance/ranking of results.
We’ve been testing the engine for the last hour. Based on our test queries Cuil is an excellent search engine, particularly since it is all of an hour old. But it doesn’t appear to have the depth of results that Google has, despite their claims. And the results are not almost as relevant.
A search for Dog returns 280 million results on Cuil and 498 million on Google. Judging relevance of results is subjective, but Google returns Wikipedia as the first result, then dog.com. Cuil returns Dog.com, wikipedia isn’t listed on the first page of results. Both are meaningful results, but Google is superior.
More searches, Cuil v. Google: Apple (83 m v. 571 million) - neither mention the fruit. France (102 m v. 1.5 billion) - Cuil’s category refinement makes their results superior for this query. Stonehenge (800k v. 8.5 million). Silicon Valley (3.2 m v. 24 m). Techcrunch (600k v. 6.5 m).
It seems pretty clear that Google’s index of web pages is significantly more massive than Cuil’s unless we’re randomly choosing the wrong queries. Based on the queries above, Google is averaging almost 10x the number of results of Cuil.
And Cuil’s ranking isn’t as good as Google’s based on the pure results returned from both queries. Where Cuil excels is with the related categories, which return results that are extremely relevant. With Google, we’ve all gotten used to trying a slightly different search to get the refined results we need. Cuil does a good job of guessing what we’ll want next and presents that in the top right widget. That means Cuil saves time for more research based queries.
And I want to reemphasize that Cuil is only an hour old at this point, Google has had a decade to perfect their search engine.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
By Andrew Liszewski I’m sure we’ve all seen those long-exposure photos where someone is writing or drawing in the air with an LED which produces cool looking streaks of light in the final shot. Well that’s basically the same idea behind the Flowlight concept, except that it happens in real time without the need for a […]
By Andrew Liszewski
I’m sure we’ve all seen those long-exposure photos where someone is writing or drawing in the air with an LED which produces cool looking streaks of light in the final shot. Well that’s basically the same idea behind the Flowlight concept, except that it happens in real time without the need for a camera. The base of the unit tracks the tip of a special pen as it moves through the air, and by focusing a laser beam 100 times a second where that tip is located, the Flowlight creates small plasma points that appear to hang and glow in mid-air. As the pen moves, the laser creates a series of plasma points which are close enough together to look like glowing streaks. While the d-Vision Design website advocates the technology could be used in various applications from medicine to architecture, I don’t think it will be replacing the traditional whiteboard for sketching out ideas anytime soon. (Sadly.)
Long outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a large counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message when they try to play the game:
By Andrew Liszewski
By Andrew Liszewski
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