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Razer and FigurePrints hold another Facebook contest
You'd better level out of those mismatched greens quick, because Razer and FigurePrints are doing that whole Facebook thing again. You actually have to be on Facebook to join since you need to write on Razer's wall and all that. I know, bummer, right? But it's a free $129 worth of three dimensional badassery -- assuming you're not wearing clown suit greens or something -- which should be tons better than playing Mafia Wars. No, really, stop sending me requests to whack somebody. That's just mean.The figures are made through an interesting process (watch the video, it's awesome), and I wish I could get my own characters immortalized in resin powder, too. All you have to do is write on the contest page answering the question, "What World of Warcraft race/class do you play and why should your toon get the FigurePrints treatment?" The winner will be revealed in four days or so, and just like our contests over here at WoW.com, posting more than once will get you into all sorts of trouble with ninjas (or just disqualified, I think). Speaking of contests, we're still looking for some lucky readers to win those World of Warcraft headsets from Creative. So much swag being thrown around these days! Statues? Headsets? What's next, Thrall underoos? Stay tuned.
Razer and Figureprints hold contest over at Facebook
The social media convergence continues! Razer and FigurePrints have teamed up over at Facebook to hold a contest for World of Warcraft players, giving away a custom WoW FigurePrint to fans who write on their Facebook note. The contest is simple -- FigurePrints simply asks, "What WoW Race/Class do you play and why should your toon get the FigurePrints treatment?"The winner will be announced in five days (well, four now... time's running down, tick-tock!) and they remind everyone to answer only once. Fans who submit multiple entries will be disqualified. Exactly what role Razer, a company that makes gaming peripherals, has in this contest aside from promoting it on their Facebook page, I have no idea. But if you've been looking to immortalize your character but didn't have the spare $129 lying around, here's your chance! At any rate, if you don't win, you might want to console yourself with a cute, little FigurePet.
Interview: Netflix on Xbox Live
Last month we spoke with Last.fm about the service coming to the Xbox 360, and what it would mean for users. Then we turned around to get the Xbox side of things as well. We've decided to talk to all of the social media that's making the leap to the Xbox: Last.fm, Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter. In this interview, we speak with Steve Swasey, vice president of marketing for Netflix. Although Netflix isn't in the business of releasing stats on individual devices, an industry source told us that the Xbox has been the biggest of all, over the Roku Box and other options. Over one million Xbox gold members have used the Netflix service on their consoles. Neither Roku nor the LG Blu-ray players with Netflix built-in have hit that number. With the new Netflix experience increasing the functionality by letting users add movies from the Xbox, and providing a new party mode, it will most likely continue to grow in popularity. We spoke with Swasey recently about the new experience on the Xbox 360, what other devices they're looking into, and the future of Netflix in both physical and streaming media. Read on for the full interview after the break.%Gallery-68686%
iPhoto2Twitter 1.5 adds movie and Mobypicture support
Back in June, TUAW reported on iPhoto2Twitter, an iPhoto plugin that provides an easy way to send photos from your iPhoto library to Twitter via TwitPic. Now the developer, Blue Crowbar Software, is back with an update that adds support for sending photos and movies from your iPhone or digital camera to Mobypicture.com. Mobypicture is an online service that lets you upload a photo or movie once, then distribute the media to a number of different social sites and blogging tools. At this time, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, Vimeo, WordPress, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Vimeo, Jaiku, Hyves, and BrightKite are all supported.As before, iPhoto2Twitter is available for €4.95 (approximately US$7.03) directly from the developer's website. Blue Crowbar's Aperture2Twitter has also been updated to add various social media and blogging sites through Mobypicture, and it's now available for €5.95 (about US$8.47).
Dunkin' Run lets you live in the future, Dunkin' Donuts style
Ever wanted to order a bunch of coffee and doughnuts along with your friends online, and then go and pick them up in the store? There is, in fact, an app for that. Dunkin' Donuts has released Dunkin' Run (iTunes link), an app that not only connects you and your friends together (through a strange love of pastries and java), but will allow you to set up an order and then go straight to the store and pick it up.Sound unnecessary and lame? Maybe -- though it is free, even if it's adware as adware can possibly get. And apparently the app is really badly designed, not to mention that we do feel a little dirty telling you about it: you should probably eat something a little healthier, like a banana or even an (wait for it) apple.But let's not forget where we started out here -- back in the day, we dreamed of ordering coffee on our iPhone, and now that day has basically come. Unfortunately, the best parts of the dream haven't yet materialized -- Dunkin' Runs only lets you tally up orders among your friends, not actually deliver them to the store. For that, you've still got to show the cashier your iPhone screen, and/or read them off the order. But it is a step closer to the dream. If companies are going to make apps that are actually useful for us, they have to start with apps like this, no? And if nothing else, it's an app that will tell you where Dunkin' Donuts is -- that's all I use my Bank of America app for anyway.
'Noob' among list of potential one-millionth English words, logic 'pwned'
Though we're just as befuddled as you likely are by the news, the UK's Daily Telegraph recently pointed out that at 10:22AM on June 10th, the English language officially inducts its one-millionth word. Still not befuddled? Candidates for this esteemed position are products of our social media-obsessed age: "defollow" and "defriend," each referring to the act of removing a friend or follower on popular social networking services Twitter and Facebook, respectively. Worse? The third "word" in contention for the position: "Noob." We'll just let that sink in for a second. Back? Okay, so, according to The Global Language Monitor, words must be "used 25,000 times by media outlets, social networking websites and in other public sources" in order to be considered for official inclusion in the English language. If that number accounts for online multiplayer participants across PC and consoles, we're willing to bet that the word "noob" was used more than 25,000 times today alone. Here's hoping the misspelled portmanteau gets "pwned" by logic and doesn't end up as an official English word. [Via VG247]
Curse CEO hints at 'premium subscription' coming later this year
CEO and founder of Curse.com Hubert Thieblot revealed this week that Curse plans to launch a premium subscription service later this year. The service would cost $4 per month and is slated for release some time in July 2008. Thieblot mentioned the new service last Tuesday at a social media conference hosted by Under the Radar. Curse hopes to get 35,000 subscribers to the new paid service by the end of 2008, working up to a total of 100,000 members by the end of 2009. The conference presentation is available on YouTube, but unless you're a masochist or a business conference groupie, you should only watch the video if you have insomnia.We have no idea what this premium content entails -- what you see in the presentation slide is all we've got to go on -- but it's a good bet that it will be out-of-game services. Maybe something like Armory data, player profiles, or even some kind of addon profiling system. Will it be worth another $4 a month on top of what we already pay for WoW? We'll have to wait and see.Update: Mr. Thieblot has commented below and said that whatever the service offers will be "nothing that has been hinted at so far."
HKO's social features are more than meets the eye
There's a certain temptation to believe that so-called casual games are inherently less complex than their more hardcore cousins. Whether it's born of experience, arrogance, or just plain ignorance, most people probably assume that a game like Hello Kitty Online is going to leave them wanting for features. Having just read an interview with Ali Aslanbaigi, Game Master Manager for HKO, this blogger can say that this certainly doesn't seem like the case.Aslanbaigi explains how they plan to integrate email, blogging, and user video from the Sanriotown portal into the game experience itself, making Hello Kitty Online a social media hub as much as it is casual MMO. Say what you will about the relative complexity of an Age of Conan -- Hello Kitty Online isn't just trying to compete with the big MMOs on the block, it's looking to take its place alongside Facebook, MySpace, and other social media giants. It's ambitious, to say the least.
Are Club Penguin's days of growth numbered?
An interesting report on social media by the Nielsen group recently found that Club Penguin, the kid-friendly browser-based MMO acquired by Disney last year for a robust $350 million, may be plateauing or even declining in growth in the face of newer, more competitive social media experiences. While the Nielsen methodology is never made expressly clear (and no direct competitors managed to crack the Top 10), the report does indicate that using the same methodology, they found a 250% growth rate year-over-year just last August.MMO vet Raph Koster is less than surprised by this development, attributing the slight decline in unique visitors more to the increased competition in that space, rather than any specific detriment in Club Penguin itself. Raph speculates that we'll continue to see the market fragment as more kiddie MMOs enter the market. And, judging my store shelves these days, they're coming in droves. While he seems to be of the opinion that the days of these niche MMOs competing in the same arena as MySpace and Facebook are over, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of money to be made and kids to be entertained.
