theres-an-app-for-that
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MMObility: Simplifying design for the mobile market
Whenever I write up something about a smartphone MMO, one of the most common complaints I hear is this: "If I wanted to play a game for several hours, I would sit at my gaming desktop." While this is true for many players, it is also true that games like Star Legends and Pocket Legends by Spacetime Studios have met with a lot of success. The developers were surprised to find that players were more than willing to sit for several hours while playing the games on their tiny screens. Still, there is a lot of truth to the complaints about smartphone MMOs. An MMO is typically something a player wants to get lost in. We commonly refer to it as "immersion," but really we're just talking about being sucked into the ideas and design of a title. If you have found yourself daydreaming about a game while at work, you were "immersed." I would argue that this type of deep immersion is very possible on the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets. However, in order to achieve it more commonly, developers might have to adjust many of their designs and theories. Click past the cut and we'll discuss it!
Apple successfully trademarks 'There's an app for that'
From marketing buzzword to international joke, the catchy phrase has officially become one of Apple's legal tools. That's right -- there's a trademark for that now.
Apple tops "Best of" 2009 lists
The end of the year brings the inevitable "best/worst of" lists, and 2009 was no different. We reported earlier that Apple nabbed four of Engadget's "10 Gadgets of the Decade" list, but what may be surprising is just how many other "best of" lists Apple was part of. Philip Elmer-DeWitt over at Apple 2.0 has compiled a list (surprise!) of all the "best of" lists Apple made in 2009. The lists that he found Apple or Steve Jobs on included: Steve Jobs: CEO of the Decade. Fortune magazine. Steve Jobs: Best Performing CEO in the World. Harvard Business Review. Steve Jobs: Person of the Decade. Wall Street Journal. Apple: Brand of the Decade. Adweek's Best of the 2000s. Steve Jobs: Marketer of the Decade. Adweek's Best of the 2000s. "Get a Mac": Campaign of the Decade. Adweek's Best of the 2000s. Apple Releases iPhone: Top 10 Tech Stories of the Decade. CNN.com. Apple: Company of the Decade. Om Malik. There's more in the complete list over at Apple 2.0. Oddly enough, Apple's "There's an app for that" iPhone ad campaign slogan also made it into the 2009 edition of The Yale Book of Quotations, which, Yale states, "is the most complete, up-to-date, and authoritative quotation dictionary ever compiled."
