Facebook policy changes are a tectonic shift for social game developers

Facebook Platform is under going major changes, which I believe are great for the smaller social game developers and everybody who makes quality applications. This great news, because Facebook is cracking down on questionable practices and spam.
Communication features change
On one front Facebook is revamping the communication mediums available for developers. This includes notifications going away, [...]

Lean startup mindmaps

I’m a big believer in the customer development and lean startup concepts championed by Steve Blank and Eric Ries. The concepts have definitely been the most valuable concepts I’ve learned while running Everyplay as they provide a much needed framework around the activities any startup faces, articulate the need to get to product/market fit thru [...]

Taneli’s blog up

Taneli Tikka is one of the most successful, Finnish serial entrepreneurs. He’s been involved with companies such as IRC-Galleria and Dopplr and is currently active in both Muxlim and RunToShop. Taneli is also an advisor to Everyplay.
Taneli’s blog is now up and I for one have already subscribed. Taneli’s post on VC due diligence is [...]

Bigpoint exits for 70 M€

This is old news from June, but it completely has escaped my attention. Bigpoint, which is one of the largest developers and operators of Free To Play games has been sold to private equity funds GMT Communications Partners and the Peacock Equity Fund (part of the General Electric / NBC Universal family) .
The price tag: [...]

Improving productivity

What a great way to start the week to read Dan Cook’s presentation on productivity (via Andrew Chen’s blog). His presentation summarizes key findings from a number of real-life experiments on productivity. Among them:

Productivity for knowledge workers drops at around 35 hours / week
There is always a cost for crunching (we all know this, don’t [...]

Loving Balsamiq Mockups

I’m just loving Balsamiq Mockups. It’s an awesome UI mockup tool that lets you whip up prototypes in a couple of minutes, communicate ideas and iterate rapidly (did I already say I love iterating!).
The full license is $79, and worth every penny. I’ve now done two full featured UI mockups and they’ve proven a great [...]

KZero’s virtual worlds radar

KZero, a consultancy for virtual worlds, has updated their virtual worlds radar, which is a great distilled view of the whole virtual worlds landscape. The radards are organized by age demographics and demonstrate how the services have developed, their popularity and even suggest possible gaps in market.
Highly recommended if you are in the virtual worlds’ [...]

SIME Helsinki afterthoughts

SIME came to Helsinki, so of course I had to go and check it out. I had never been into one of the events previously, as I previously wasn’t in the “space” that SIME targets.
The day began with champagne, which was not quite what I would have expected from a business conference. There is definitely [...]

Facebook’s social games a flash from the past

Back in the years 1992-1994 I was running a BBS called Starport, which was one most famous BBS for demosceners as it was the World HQ for Future Crew. BBS were a lot like the current SocNets, but just with a few hundred users. You dialed in with your modem, posted on forums, chatted, downloaded [...]

TechCrunch50 after thoughts

TechCrunch50 is over, and Yammer (“Twitter for enterprises”) won the top prize. This was the first time I was actively following the conference and the livestream provided by UStream was simply outstanding. It was a rare opportunity to watch the demos live and listen to the Q&A with the panels.
If you are ever serious about [...]