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SGN Launches Another iPhone Game: iBowl Posted: 02 Oct 2008 02:22 PM CDT A couple weeks ago I wrote about SGN launching the iGolf game. The game went on to become the most downloaded free iPhone application for at least a day or two. The company has decided to move forward with their iPhone development and has released a successful game which leverages the iPhone accelerometer. That game is called iBowl and it’s a wii-like bowling game. I downloaded the application and tried it out and it’s not too bad. The only problem with the application is that it isn’t very sensitive when it comes to putting spin on the ball. I have a feeling that the company will improve the sensitivity in their next release. The other interesting feature that I tried out was the “invite your friends” feature. Unfortunately this simply send them an email to check out the game on the iPhone. Right now the iPhone doesn’t have many social features but once Facebook Connect launches, I think it will be a lot easier to integrate social features into the games. Alternatively, Apple could decide to add their own iPhone profile feature which lets users build their own profiles and connect with their friends through the phone. While this would be competition to Facebook and other social networks, it would be a quick way to enter the social networking space. Fortunately for Facebook, I don’t think Apple has any plans to launch a social network on any platform, anytime soon. The game is extremely simple and my guess is that they will roll out new features quickly as they did with the previous application. The key to success in software is typically release and iterate as quickly as possible. We’ll have to wait and see if that’s the approach they take on this one. Check out the iBowl application and let us know what your thoughts are!

Google’s New Blog Aggregator Posted: 02 Oct 2008 10:12 AM CDT Yesterday Google rolled out the new version of their Blogsearch product with a surprising new feature: a blog aggregator. The aggregator sorts all news articles being linked to across their blog index based on popularity and time. Many are calling the new Google Blogsearch the “Techmeme Killer” but honestly this is flat out inaccurate. If you browse through the top stories on Google Blogsearch they are all around 17 hours old. Techmeme in contrast has the ability to show you the latest stories within minutes of them being written. One thing that is clear though is the increasing importance of content aggregators. The Importance of Aggregators As content on the web continues to grow exponentially, consumers have turned to content aggregators to filter their information. While traditional media outlets like the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and others often serve as a filter of content for us, the limitless user-generated content has made it more challenging to filter information. As the trend from individual websites toward web-based applications continues, one of the most important applications will be the content aggregator. While bloggers and professional journalists have turned to RSS feeds for organizing content, we have realized that content consumption simply doesn’t scale. Each internet savvy consumer currently has their own aggregator that they prefer to visit but I would suggest that all consumers in the information age will soon have their own news aggregator application that they take on the go and access regularly. The Perfect Aggregator Has Yet to be Made There is a long way to go before there is a “perfect” content aggregator. One thing that I would suggest is more valuable on Techmeme and Memeorandum in contrast to Google Blogsearch is that the former aggregators include traditional media outlets in their index. In contrast, Google Blogsearch is completely limited to blogs. In the future I expect to be able to instantly load a single aggregator which includes the most popular items distributed through my favorite media outlets, social aggregators, social networks, and every other source that I visit for the latest content. For now we need to visit our favorite aggregators daily to find the best content. Soon enough, we will have a way to access all our content from a single source. For now though, Google Blogsearch is yet one more place for finding the latest information being discussed around the blogosphere.

Web 2.0 A.k.a “The Internet” Posted: 01 Oct 2008 08:00 AM CDT When Tim O’Reilly first defined Web 2.0 it helped define an emerging industry surrounding new web technologies following the bust of the internet bubble. Yesterday afternoon I read a post about Tim O’Reilly course correcting the definition. The definition was ultimately being expanded to include Google as part of Web 2.0. I found it somewhat entertaining as ultimately Web 2.0 is really nothing more then the internet. While we can place terms for the evolution of how human’s leverage the power of the technologies provided by the web, ultimately the web continues to evolve and no matter what application are built to harness the power of it, it is still simply the internet. Humans simply weren’t used to what is ultimately a “many to many” communication platform instead of one to one as most communication was prior to the web. To be honest, I even have used the term “social web” as though there is a subset of the web focused on communication and technologies which help improve our ability to socialize (or “communicate”). The entire web is about communication though and ultimately we are simply integrating the tools that leverage the power of the web to more effectively communicate. As such any terms which attempt to define anything outside of digital transactions (including “Web 2.0″, the “social web”, etc) is simply placing a term for what is ultimately humans striving to leverage the web to communicate more efficiently. I guess defining terms is a way for us to create a sense of place and time and make us feel like we are progressing. Let’s stop making “Web 2.0″ products though. What we really need to build is great products and tools that help us communicate more effectively. That’s it.

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