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<title>Haaze.com / mpavanpnvv / All</title>
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<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:10:08 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Who is Apple's new Mac guy]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=who-is-apples-new-mac-guy</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=who-is-apples-new-mac-guy</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:10:08 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>mpavanpnvv</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=who-is-apples-new-mac-guy</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Apple&amp;39's Craig Federighi, who is taking over for the departing Bertrand Serlet.(Credit:Apple)Craig Ferderighi is an Apple &quot;boomerang.&quot;Federighi, who's taking over for departing Mac veteran Bertrand Serlet, left Apple in February of 1999 for business software company Ariba, and wound up coming back 10 years later to help Apple build theMac OS, which ships on the company's desktop and notebook computers. Now, according to Apple's announcement earlier this week, he's stepping into a role many are watching closely: he'll be running the Mac OS group at a time of uncertainty as to what, exactly, a computer is--what form factor it's in' what software it's using. The Mac OS has played a crucial role in Apple's hardware strategy over the past decade. Unlike the case with Microsoft's Windows, you can only buy the Mac OS for Apple-made hardware, and the company has built a business out of trying to produce new iterations of it at a faster pace than competitors. The next step in the operating system's evolution, as unveiled by Apple back in October, is to bring some of the features and familiarities of the company's mobile iOS platform back to the Mac OS. How that integration happens, and where it's going, largely rests on who's in charge of the OS.CNET reached out to Apple to speak with Federighi about his new role, but that offer was never taken up.Federighi can most easily be described as a &quot;geek god.&quot; He's a man who after buying an $8 million house in Los Altos, Calif., could still be found staying up late on community message boards, helping people get his company's product to work. Nearly two decades ago he was also a self-described fan of martial arts star Jackie Chan and of bad haircuts.Federighi's first stint at Apple began in 1996 after Apple acquired Next, the company founded by Steve Jobs after Jobs had left Apple a decade earlier. At Next, Federighi had been the Enterprise Objects Framework project manager. EOF was launched by Next in 1994 as an object-relational mapping tool, giving developers a way to hook up multiple databases to one another and to the Web without having to write the code to make that happen. The technology would later become part of WebObjects, Next's object-oriented Web application server, which Apple now packs in as part of its Xcode developer tool set. In 1999, Federighi left his role as the director of engineering at Apple to join Ariba, a business software company that had just gone public. Federighi began there as the vice president of Internet services before later being promoted to executive vice president and chief technology officer. His final role before departing back to Apple was as Ariba's &quot;user interface technology evangelist,&quot; with the company having given the CTO spot to Bhaskar Himatsingka. Ariba continues to be one of the survivors of the dot-com bust. Following its IPO in 1999, which was right around the time Federighi signed on, its stock made a dramatic jump, only to come down again following the crash. The company continues to make commerce software and tools including its Commerce Cloud platform, which it says is used by more than 340,000 companies. Inventor, forum-goer Federighi is credited as a co-inventor on three U.S. patents, all of which are owned by Apple. The earliest of the bunch, titled &quot;object graph editing context and methods of use&quot; was applied for in 1996 and issued three years later to Next. Federighi is listed as the lead inventor on the technology, which encompasses parts of WebObjects. Following the first, a patent that was filed for in 1999 deals with &quot;distributing and synchronizing objects.&quot; The third, which dealt with graphical user interfaces was applied for in 2001 and was a continuation of one of Apple's patent applications from 1997.Federighi's technology background can be traced back to college. He got his masters in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley, just an hour or so north of Apple's campus. There he also earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science.While at UC Berkeley, Federighi penned a technical report published by the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences group at the school's College of Engineering and co-authored with Lawrence A. Rowe, who currently sits as the president of the Fuji Xerox-owned subsidiary FX Palo Alto Laboratory. The report detailed &quot;a design of a distributed video-on-demand system that is suitable for large video libraries.&quot; Such a system was designed to serve video locally for those on Berkeley's campus, as well as over the Internet at large. The idea was that it could be used as a means for people to pull up things like lecture videos, along with personal videos and audio.In doing research for a report on video editing systems two years earlier, in 1992, Federighi turned to a Usenet video recording forum to ask for help, asking for advice on where he could find references and articles. He also used the system to help find a fourth roommate for the shared house he was living in at the time, where he disclosed the group's aforementioned affinity for Jackie Chan movies and bad haircuts. In another posting from 1993, Federighi jumped in on a thread about connecting floppy drives to Next computers, sharing his experience of having a disk drive literally go up in smoke after he accidentally reversed the connector cable: &quot;I tried installing both a TEAC FD-235J 2.88 MB floppy drive in my old '040 Next Cube and ran into some trouble. Apparently one must be extremely careful to get the cable to the floppy drive put on in the right direction. When I put mine on the wrong way and then hit the power-on switch on my keyboard, I heard some funny clicking on the drive followed by a little bit of smoke, and my computer didn't power up. When I reversed the direction of the cable, the Next started up and recognized the drive, but then came up with a 'fd: DISK UNINITIALIZED' message in the monitor window during start up, and failed to work thereafter. I assume that the initial smoke exhalation experience is the cause of its failure.&quot;Federighi has since gotten his revenge on floppy drives, returning to work for the company that is credited, in part, with helping kill them off. The new spotlight Since rejoining Apple, Federighi has made two appearances in Apple keynote presentations. The first was during the unveiling of Mac OS X 10.6 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in 2009, the same year he came back:More recently, he could be seen briefly during Apple's Back to Mac event, where the company first took the wraps off the upcoming point release of Mac OS X 10.7, dubbed &quot;Lion.&quot; There, Federighi went through a quick, seven-minute demo of some of the headlining features that will make their way into 10.7: Federighi is likely to get more of the public spotlight now that he's taking over for Serlet, who had been a regular during Mac keynote presentations at the company's annual Worldwide Developer's Conference. That's when Apple has historically taken the wraps off new versions of the Mac OS. And it's when the Mac product team shows off what's new and how it works to developers who plan to build applications on the operating system. The developer's conference cycle was knocked slightly off kilter with 10.7, when Apple first unveiled the upcoming operating system at an event to press. The public spotlight will also be placed on the Mac OS team itself, since one of the big questions that remains is where the desktop operating system is headed. Will its quick release cycle remain, or will Federighi push to change the pace And how much more of iOS, which was first billed as an offshoot of OS X, will the Mac OS absorb Federighi now finds himself a larger figurehead in that debate.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[With latest accolade, the future is Bing Gordon&'s game (exclusive interview)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-latest-accolade-the-future-is-bing-gordonrsquos-game-exclusive-interview</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-latest-accolade-the-future-is-bing-gordonrsquos-game-exclusive-interview</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>mpavanpnvv</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-latest-accolade-the-future-is-bing-gordonrsquos-game-exclusive-interview</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Few outside of the video-game industry have likely heard of Bing Gordon. But the game pioneer now wields major influence over the future of the Internet, with board seats on companies from Amazon.com to Zynga. Today is a day that Gordon&amp;'s fame may spread wider: he has been named the recipient of a  lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a prestigious video-game association.Gordon spent more than 25 years at Electronic Arts, working with game developers to  produce some of the best video games ever made. That career, which ended  with a long stint as chief creative officer at EA, would easily have  earned him accolades and plenty of praise upon retirement.Then  he moved to become a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins  Caufield &amp;amp' Byers. There, he made investments in Ngmoco, which was  acquired by Japanese mobile game firm DeNA for $403 million, and Zynga,  the social game maker whose recent valuation at above $5 billion puts it  in a league above EA. At Zynga, he has helped the young company nab  game developers such as Brian Reynolds and assisted them in making games  that are played by tens of millions of Facebook users. One of Zyngaa4a4s  games, CityVille, has hit 100 million monthly  active users today &amp;8212' only 43 days after its launch. Gordon, quite  naturally, is already at level 60 in CityVille, as high as you can get. I  know because Gordon regularly shows up in my city to help me harvest my  strawberries.Gordon  has proven that he has a golden touch. And that is part of why he is  going to be honored by the AIAS for lifetime achievement, an honor which  is being announced with this story. Gordon will get the award at the  upcoming Dice Summit, which runs from Feb. 9 to Feb. 11 in Las Vegas.  The AIAS awards are akin to the Oscars of gaming. Gordon is only the  fifth recipient to get the award' others included trade group founder  Doug Lowenstein, former Nintendo executives Howard Lincoln and Minoru  Arakawa, and Sony PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi.Thata4a4s  some pretty rarefied company for Gordon, who has a deep voice and a  casual attitude about everything except making great games. But Gordon  has earned plenty of accolades. Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, says, a4AThe  scariest thing about Bing is he is that he is usually right.a4 Paul Lee, a  former EA colleague and head of VanEdge Capital, says Gordon helped  shape the video game industry and has been a mentor for countless  leaders in the industry.We caught up with Gordon yesterday to talk about the award and his outlook on gaming.VB:  Everybody who got this award before you is retired after a long career.  But you seem to have earned this not only for your first career at EA,  but for your second career as a venture capitalist as well. It seems  like your second career is just as important.BG: When I got a Man of the Year award at EA a decade ago, I thought that was the end of it. Ita4a4s like I should be dead or retired. When we started EA in 1982, our  goal was to make games as big a media as visual entertainment, or  movies. That was how big we dreamed at the time. It seemed like an  outrageous dream. What is so interesting now &amp;8212' some say Facebook will  be a trillion-dollar company and Apple is thinking it can reach a  billion customers and Google is targeting 2.5 billion users &amp;8212' is that  people think 100 million is a niche market on the web. When we started, 1  million was a mass market and 100,000 was a success for a game  audience. These companies like Amazon and Facebook and Zynga and Google  are so huge.VB: CityVille should cross over 100 million users today.BG: It just keeps on getting bigger. The speed with which things grow  constantly surprises me. Mark Pincus talks about mass markets that are  much bigger. At Zynga, we have educated each other along the way. He  says he played video games as a kid. But the market was small. He wants  everybody. Games are not quite at ubiquity, but almost. Ita4a4s like the  social equivalent of texting. Once you find out that someone likes a  certain game on Facebook, now you know what kind of virtual gift you can  get them.You can send them a little decoration. Social games give you  goals where you can help and reward your friends. I think that may make  the next 25 years of games even bigger. Games are becoming like a social  lingua franca. They arena4a4t just an escape for some people. They are so  big and that still surprises me.VB: And just how big will they getBG: We used to talk about the trade-offs when massively multiplayer online  games were getting started. This is relevant to the upcoming Star Wars  MMO, in terms of time versus intensity. You knew you could get 25  million people to commit the time to watch Star Wars, the movie. You  could get 2 million people to buy a Star Wars boxed video game. And  maybe you could get 200,000 people to play the Star Wars MMO and put a  lot of time into it. Now we are seeing entertainment properties that can  get 100 million users. CityVille has gotten it in less than a couple of  months, and doing it by giving more rewards. Games are a metaphor for a  social lingua franca.VB: How did you manage to get a front seat for this revolution, for the second timeBG: You are a pioneer and a visionary because you bet your career on  writing about video games. The 1980s was a time of the great recession  of interactive entertainment. When Atari fell in 1982, until Nintendo  launched its console, video games were an outcast for five years. We  were the goats of the entertainment business. You had to be contrarian  and thick-skinned to be in the game business. With social games, you  also had to have a thick skin. A few years ago, a lot of gamers despised  social games. It was never as bad as the 1980s in terms of the  disregard for games as a legitimate business. But it was still  contrarian. Ita4a4s always nice to overcome that.VB:  When you left EA, did you get a lot of people ask you about why you  would do that Why would you leave a company that was at the topBG: I got it in my own household. My kids grew up feeling like their dad  was a hero because he worked at EA and got them a backstage pass. They  were distraught because it undermined their identity. But kids are  resilient and they figured out they still have an identity. They  couldna4a4t see the next Sims or play the new Rock Band. It was like having  a dad who runs Disneyland.VB: What did you sayBG: To my own family, I said I had made my decision and I hope some day you  like it. The friends came in. It was never that they were going to  these new games. It was more like they were leaving behind the old  games. Someone like Brian Reynolds at Big Huge Games found that they  couldna4a4t afford to do what they wanted to build anymore. I started my  conversation with Reynolds by playing a Zynga game with him. We  rekindled our friendship playing games. It was like the 1980s. You  didna4a4t hire recruiters to be part of it. You found people who made their  way to mobile and social.VB:  Along the way, it must have gotten easier to recruit people. You could  say that you can write some code and millions of people would use it  tomorrow in your game.BG: Brian Reynolds  figured that out early on. With FrontierVille, he found that more people  had played that one game than all of his other games put together. Oh  my god. There is something heady about that. Brian said it reminded him  of the old days, when he wrote 5,000 lines of code, prototyped  something, and then he starts trying it out. In the traditional games,  it got so big that he would design a game, hand it over to 25 artists,  and then wouldna4a4t be able to test it for a year until they finished  their work. Zynga felt like a return to earlier games for him. At  Ngmoco, you could create a game and test it in Canada, where you could  get feedback from 10,000 people. We have a faster turnaround, broader  scale, and ita4a4s a lot fun. Ita4a4s like the games meet the web.VB: How did you get the discipline to focus on the right couple of game start-ups and focus only on themBG: The games business is about betting on people. I was betting on John  Schappert (now No.2 at EA) when others at EA were dismissing him. Or  betting on Don Mattrick (head of Microsofta4a4s game business) when some  people thought he should leave. Or betting on Neil Young (CEO of Ngmoco)  when people thought he was a failure with his Majestic game. Thata4a4s  what it felt like to me. I was confident in the macro. But I have often  been wrong about big changes about half the time. I thought interactive  movies would be big and they werena4a4t. I dismissed the Wii. But I was  right about EA Sports as a franchise or The Sims as a franchise. But  with people, I knew that Neil and Mark Pincus would do great things. I  have confidence in my ability to smell out talent based on micro  moments, like how they behave with a team, how they explain their  vision, what their passions are, who believes in them, the long-term  relationships they have. and how they think through a problem. You find  the most fascinating people to work with and pedal as fast as you can.VB: Why didna4a4t you spray a lot of money out to a lot of companiesBG: I take pride in making a difference for people. It feels like when you  raise a family, you dona4a4t have 100 children. I try to make a  contribution. You could write 100 times as many things, but you make a  choice about how many things you want to be involved in. Ita4a4s not an  analytics-based strategy. As long as your results are good enough, you  can focus. I want an emotional contract with a great leader and I want  to deliver value to them.VB: What do you like going forwardBG: We started our sFund at Kleiner Perkins. The reinvention of the  internet around people is wildly fascinating. In the history of Moorea4a4s  Law, ita4a4s always been valuable to watch the habits of young people. Look  at user behavior. We have a generation growing up that will never use  land lines. They prefer text messages to voice. They prefer  multitasking. They have a heads-up display for life. I find exploring  that wildly interesting. I have the heart of a marketing person. I love  where the rubber meets the road on purchase decisions. Therea4a4s virtual  goods and e-commerce. There is a potential for games to be so compelling  that they help cement friendships. Social, commerce and entertainment  is our focus. At some point, part of you says you have to meet these  people. You feel like you are in the middle of something really cool,  like when you were watching the Xbox guys and they were starting  something big. Ita4a4s so cool to be where we are right now.VB: Do you feel like it is a Gold RushBG: You get to hang out with nationally known figures, like the leaders of  Facebook or Amazon. You feel like theya4a4re really fascinating people.  Games are in the center of the universe right now. In the late 1980s,  games were supposed to be the onramp to the information superhighway, as  they called the internet back then. It never really happened. They were  more like an offramp. Now we are seeing maybe that promise of 20 years  ago that games are an onramp. They are a reason to get the internet, or  to have an iPhone or to get on Facebook.VB: Every now and then people say games have reached a peak. You dona4a4t think that is trueBG: Hah. In 1995, I thought we had reached a peak with games. Casual games  started to work out. The Sims was coming. We would soon have 50 year  olds playing games. It never occurred to me then that there was another  two times to four times growth in the game audience. It was like it  never occurred to me there might be a company more important than  Google. Or, back in the 1990s, it never occurred to me there would be a  company more important than Microsoft. Thata4a4s the miracle of the  internet. Games are so strategic now that game people get to hang out  with the people who are the leaders of the technology industry. They  have a lot of respect. If you look at China, Tencent has so much stature  there because of games.VB: Do you see EA as being a big part of this stillBG: In any business that grows big on one business model, transitions can  throw everything in the air. I used to say at EA that transitions were  our friends. We grew market share through every market transition over  two decades. It was people driven. They took risks. They were some of  the best and brightest people. EA still has that. The future is in EAa4a4s  hands. Ita4a4s pretty hard to predict.VB:  Game designers like Sid Meier are making this transition. He is  designing Civilization World for Facebook. What are their chancesBG: I havena4a4t talked to Sid. He is an amazing talent. He could make great  games with anything. Will Wright could entertain you with a spreadsheet.  Packaged video games are now kind of like special effects movies.  Social games are more like the Blair Witch Project. They have lower  production values, but the story and the characters carry the day. Is  that going to last forever No. But I think Sid is so spectacular that  anything he does needs to be played. Even his old dinosaur game that  got canceled.VB: Do you think Facebook games are at the AAA quality levelBG: They are not AAA quality right now. Ita4a4s more like the early days of PC  games. Developers are making animations happen on a system that was  designed to show bar charts. They have to trick the system. Facebook is  not designed to be an interactive app host. There is still some  awkwardness to it. At the same time, the scale is huge and the pace of  change is fast. Ita4a4s harder to make AAA games in this environment. High  quality means more like a faster loading game on Facebook.[Homepage photo: Joi Ito]Next Story: Who turns down $6 billion Someone who&amp;'s after $15 billion Previous Story: How to drive a successful social media campaignPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: CityVille, Civilization World, Facebook games, social gamesCompanies: AIAS, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' Byers, Microsoft, ZyngaPeople: Bing Gordon          Tags: CityVille, Civilization World, Facebook games, social gamesCompanies: AIAS, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' Byers, Microsoft, ZyngaPeople: Bing GordonDean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google wants game developers to rely on ads for income]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-wants-game-developers-to-rely-on-ads-for-income</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-wants-game-developers-to-rely-on-ads-for-income</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>mpavanpnvv</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-wants-game-developers-to-rely-on-ads-for-income</guid>
<description><![CDATA[As mobile app developers figure out the best ways to make money, Google wants to convince them that mobile ads can be a lucrative option &amp;8212' especially on its AdMob mobile ad network. As one piece of evidence, Google sent me a case study that outlines the success of a company called Best, Cool &amp;amp' Fun Games.The startup was founded by former investment banker Guilherme Schvartsman, who says Best, Cool &amp;amp' Fun Games is a4Athe 1 mobile gaming company in Latin America, by sales, product breadth, world reach and user satisfaction.a4 It has released 30 games that have been played by 10 million people. Even though the company based in Brazil, its biggest audience is in the United States, Schvartsman said.Schvartsman has been developing iPhone games since 2009, and he said one of his key decisions was embracing the a4Afreemiuma4 business model last summer. Until that point, he said, Best, Cool &amp;amp' Fun Games had had some success with games that cost 99 cents. Then it released a free version of its game Ant Smasher, which took advantage of Googlea4a4s AdMob ad network in two ways &amp;8212' it ran AdMob ads, but also promoted itself on other apps in the AdMob network. Google encourages this strategy by offering developers a discount if they spend their AdMob ad revenue on AdMob ads.That turned Ant Smasher into the companya4a4s most popular game by far. It has been in the top 100 games on the iPhone for the past four months and in the top 100 games on Android for the past two months. And it made much more money than Schvartsman expected. The app is now on-track to bring in $2 million in annual revenue, he said, with 80 percent of that coming from ads.Now Best, Cool &amp;amp' Fun Games has followed the example of Ant Smashera4a4s success, releasing its other games in free, ad-supported versions. It cross-promotes its games with house ads. One out of three users who saw the Ant Smasher ad downloaded the free version of the game, Schvartsman said.Moving forward, Best, Cool &amp;amp' Fun Games plans to start offering virtual goods in its games (good thing the Android Market finally supports in-app purchases) and launch tools that make it easier for developers to create games of their own. The company is in the process of raising venture funding, he said.As for AdMob, Googlea4a4s acquisition of the mobile ad company has hit some bumps recently, including the departure of CEO Omar Hamoui and engineering manager Kevin Scott. But Google says the network is still performing well, with more than 2 billion ad requests per day (up four times from a year ago) and more than 50,000 publishers.Next Story: Traditional game veterans adapt to a world with CityVille and Angry Birds Previous Story: Can Cisco be a consumer tech companyPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: AdMob, Brazil, mobile adsCompanies: AdMob, Best Cool &amp;amp' Fun Games, GooglePeople: Guilherme Schvartsman          Tags: AdMob, Brazil, mobile adsCompanies: AdMob, Best Cool &amp;amp' Fun Games, GooglePeople: Guilherme SchvartsmanAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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