Friday, August 28, 2009

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MGM Grand Brings The Casino Feel To The iPhone Minus The Smoke-Filled Room Top
The MGM Grand at Foxwoods is trying to make its foray into iPhone app store with the upcoming launch of a branded-iPhone app that will be one of the first casino branded-applications in the app store. The casino says that the app will have a variety of MGM Grand at Foxwoods’-themed games, which will all use play money. I’m assuming these games will be a take on the standard casino activities-blackjack, slots, roulette etc. The game will attempt to simulate all the sights and sounds of an actual casino, trying to immerse users in the environment of the casino at Foxwoods. The app will also have a "resort experience" feature, which gives users the in-depth property tours, with the ability for users to visit Foxwoods hotel rooms, restaurants, retail shops, spas and more. You can also book real spa appointments and read how-to guides on best strategies for various table games at the casino. The iPhone app seems like combination of a branding gimmick and gaming opportunity. Of course, casino-oriented games aren’t new to the iPhone. Zynga has a popular iPhone app out there and there many apps in the app store that let users play the slots, blackjack, poker and more. What’s interesting is the use of the iPhone app as a branding tool for the resort part of the casino. It looks like there are very few resort and hotel chains which have iPhone apps out there but iPhone apps for popular resorts may be an interesting way to engage consumers. Th only other hotel-oriented iPhone app I could find was the an app for Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin resort in Orlando but something tells me that more of these interactive resort apps may be launched in the future. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
You Decide Who Photoshop Hacked Microsoft The Best Top
We are overwhelmed with the 168 responses to our “It's A Meme! Get Photoshop Warmed Up And Win A Bing Tshirt” post where we asked you, the readers, to come up with a better photoshop hack job than Microsoft was able to do on their own marketing material. One of the submissions will win a Bing tshirt and sticker. I originally said the winner would be selected by our summer interns, but we want to turn this into a poll. We’ve selected the six we like best, but you can write in your own as well. View all of the submissions here Thanks everyone. And thanks to Cameron Christoffers , our star intern , for organizing all the photos. Who Wins The Microsoft Photoshop Poland Contest? ( surveys ) Oh, by the way. We told Bing that if they didn’t retweet this post we’d be forced to burn our Bing T-shirts. This was their cheeky response , courtesy of icanhascheezburger : Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Dads Say The Darndest Things…On Twitter (Probably NSFW) Top
Twitter is used for a lot of things these days, but this has to be one of my favorites. A 28-year-old guy named Justin has set up a Twitter account simply to tweet out random things his elderly father says. The title of the feed: “ Shit My Dad Says. ” Apparently, I’m a bit slow stumbling upon this; even though it was only started at the beginning of August, Justin’s account for his 73-year-old father’s sayings already has over 150,000 followers. But I don’t care, it needs to be pointed out again how awesome this idea is. My parents, while not that old yet, often say things worthy of tweets, like when my mom seriously thought netbooks were computers built for little people. And had Twitter been around when my grandfather was, this would have been the perfect medium for his bits of comedic wisdom. Here are some of my favorites from Justin’s dad: “ Your mother rented this film, What Happens In Vegas. I thought it was going to be non-fiction, but it’s fiction, and it’s about some idiot.” “ Who is this woman?….Kate Beckinsale? Well, you can tell Kate Beckinsale she sucks.” “ Your mother made a batch of meatballs last night. Some are for you, some are for me, but more are for me. Remember that. More. Me.” “ Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down.” “ Love this Mrs. Dash. The bitch can make spices… Jesus, Joni (my mom) it’s a joke. I was making a joke! Mrs. Dash isn’t even real dammit!” “ Why would i want to check a voicemail on my cell phone? People want to talk to me, call again. If i want to talk to you, I’ll answer.” You know how else I know this site idea is awesome? Some random girl at the cafe I’m at just saw Shit My Dad Says on my screen and stopped to tell me that it’s awesome. [via 1to10reviews ] Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Now That AdMob Bought AdWhirl, Will Anybody Trust It? Top
In the budding world of mobile advertising, whoever can control the app developers and gain access to the ad inventory on their apps will eventually win the game. Keep that in mind as you try to understand the very strange acquisition of AdWhirl by AdMob . You see, AdMob is perhaps the largest independent mobile ad network and AdWhirl is a fast growing mobile ad exchange which allows mobile app developers to switch from AdMob to other competing mobile ad networks such as Quattro, VideoEgg, or Mobclix. Although it launched only last April, AdWhirl was quickly becoming the preferred advertising interface for many developers because they could still serve AdMob ads through it, but not be tied to AdMob if a better deal came along. AdMob didn’t really like this so it threatened to stop supporting AdWhirl’s “mediation layer” and basically pull out of it altogether. That plan didn’t go over too well with the app developers AdMob needs to keep happy, so it quickly reversed itself and decided to delay its decision to withdraw from AdWhirl. Since it couldn’t take its toys and go home, it did the next best thing. It bought AdWhirl. Problem solved. Except that now, who is going to trust AdMob to maintain AdWhirl as a neutral exchange rather than use it to funnel more of its own ads to developers? Or worse, to track all of the ad impression data of its competitors to improve its own ad products? Our source who told us about the acquisition claims that AdWhirl has already been giving AdMob this data on the sly in the hopes that it would be acquired. He also claims that ” there is a lot of stuff under the covers to favor AdMob: in the code, in the data, and biased ad calls to AdMob.” The source, who thinks developers will get the short end of the stick in this deal, also seems to think that AdMob will eventually just shut AdWhirl down, blaming the other ad networks for a lack of cooperation or technical integration issues. We’ll see how that plays out. But for now, AdWhirl still generates too many impressions for the other ad networks to simply abandon it. But that is exactly what they should do if they want to counter the combined power of Admob and AdWhirl. “I don't understand how it remains unbiased or why other networks would want to be a part of that,” says Mobclix co-founder Sunil Verma, who has built a competing mobile ad exchange . AdMob is trying to calm fears of bias by promising to open-source the underlying code which powers AdWhirl. But again, it is not so much the code, as how it is used that is the issue. “No matter what, AdMob will still have access to the data and it will become biased as to who gets the first ad call,” worries Mobclix’s other co-founder Krishna Subramanian. If other mobile ad networks and developers share those concerns, AdMob will have a bigger problem than it did with AdWhirl. It will lose the trust of the developers it needs to survive. Update : AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui has given us the following response regarding the acquisition: Our open source solution will be both for the client and the server. We anticipate there will be many independent servers run by developers, and possibly our competitors as well. Once we release the code into the community, we think it will be adopted widely. Most developers use mediation layers for percentage based inventory allocation. This is not something that you can game or manipulate. The mediation component either fulfills the percentage allocation or not. We are committed to making this solution as open as it needs to be to make everybody comfortable. We also expect the market will hold us accountable to this course of action. The AdWhirl team has visited our offices over the past several days as we have worked through this deal. However any claims that we have historically been sharing data with AdWhirl or manipulating how it works for our benefit is completely false. Since the news broke we've been talking to developers and they agree that the key is an open and transparent solution. We expect to be held to that. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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