Rock, paper, scissors is an international game.  It’s played everywhere in the world to solve disagreements, make bets with, or just pass the time when you were five years old.

Massive Joe Studios are bringing the game back to iOS on iPhone and iPod Touch.  Massive Joe Studios’ most well known member might be Jeff Matsuda.  Previously a comic book artist, Creative Director on The Batman cartoon, Matsuda is the artistic driving force behind Massive Joe Studios.

I met with CEO/Co-founder Mike Su to talk about Age of Monsters – Rock Paper Scissors; what is planned to be the first game in the created universe of Age of Monsters.

Spending time at GDC Online 2011 was interesting.  While the conference is much smaller than the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the specific focus on all things online offered a lot of interesting content and new technologies to learn about.

Digital Harmony Games’ introduction of Dragons vs Unicorns might have been my last meeting before I flew back to San Francisco, but it showed off something I have been waiting for in mobile games for a while now.

True real-time cross platform gaming

When I was contacted and asked to meet Chris Ulm, I didn’t really know much about Chris or Appy Entertainment. My meeting him at the end of day two of GDC Online 2011 was a bit of a last minute thing.

But I am glad to have met him.

His history is epic, especially for a fan of comics and games. He was the Editor in Chief at Malibu Comics and the Ultraverse. Malibu published the first Image Comics. He was part of the sale of Malibu to Marvel Comics. He’s been in the gaming industry on the console side during the days of PlayStation 2 and Xbox, working for and creating his own development companies.

Now he makes mobile games with Appy Entertainment as CEO, being one of the early developers and publishers with the launch of the App Store. He also admits he rambles, but is honest in his opinions and insights.

Appy Entertainment is primarily an iOS developer and publisher.

A couple years ago, the mobile market only really had two types of apps and games: free or paid. Now users are presented with free, free with ads, free with in-app purchases, paid, paid with free updates, and paid with paid updates among others.

That difference has created a new industry. BulkyPix's, COO and VP of Sales and Marketing, Vincent Dondaine answered some questions about development, games, and commerce.

Add-ons are a challenge; it’s difficult to balance functionality with performance

Firefox 4 Mobile officially hit the Android Market yesterday. The final release of the mobile browser is designed to enhance the way Android users view the web on their phones.

We caught up with Jay Sullivan, VP of Products at Mozilla Corporation to speak about the new version of Firefox Mobile. Besides giving us the lowdown on why Android users should switch to Firefox, Sullivan also talked to us about some of the wider issues concerning the browser.

Sullivan insists that Mozilla is not planning a version of Firefox for Windows Phone 7, although it may bring Firefox Home to Microsoft’s mobile platform. He also speaks about the headaches of incorporating add-ons into the browser, as well as solving the biggest mystery of all – where did the Fennec go?

What are the advantages of using Firefox 4 on an Android phone?

From a user’s point of view there are a few key things. One is making web navigation easy through tab thumbnails and the Awesome Bar, which recognizes where you want to go when you type something in the URL bar.

Moving the Awesome Bar feature from the desktop to mobile was very important for us, because it’s harder to type on a phone. We went a step further too, because data in the Awesome bar is not only loaded from your phone, but also from your PC, using Firefox Sync. If you sign up for Sync, all your history, passwords, bookmarks are stored the cloud, encrypted.

We also support browser add-ons. We are seeing a lot of creativity here - add-ons that are using location, add-ons that do special things because you are mobile. They fix typos as you write. For users, easy navigation, sync and add-ons are key benefits.

Have you experienced any problems with the add-ons?

Add-ons are a challenge; it’s difficult to balance functionality with performance. We have to work better on making sure add-ons don’t slow up starting time.

With all the casual games in the App Store, it's great to run into titles that stick in your mind, and are involving from start to finish. Scarlett Adventures Episode 1 is such a game and buying it will not only make you chuckle on the subway: all proceeds go to the Red Cross until the end of March. You can read more about this great initiative here.

Scarlett and the Spark of Life is a breath of adventuring fresh air, with its witty dialogue and memorable characters. We enjoyed playing through the game, and were left hungry for more. We decided to ask creators Tim Knauf and Tristan Clark about the time-line for Episode 2, creating games for iOS and managing a software house with just two members:

You guys are low in numbers (2 and expanding?), yet deliver an all-round experience with your games. How do you manage? What exactly are your backgrounds and how did you get involved in the gaming business?

Tim: First up, we’ve got to give credit to the very talented James Ellis for the beautiful backgrounds and character design in ‘Scarlett’. His help arrived late into the project, yet after a few incredibly intense weekends, he had turned the art style around. You can see why we’re keen to bring him back full-time for Scarlett Episode 2.

Tristan: As for our backgrounds… would you believe we both have degrees in English Literature? Completely related to game development, I know. Actually, our love of stories is what led us to both our degrees and the kinds of games we most want to make, so there’s more overlap than you’d think.

Can the Peer-to-Peer principle be applied to money as well as content? Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson think it can and the result is Flattr - a "social micropayment" system that effectively allows users to pool their resources together and "tip" content and software they like on the net.

Instead of casually clicking a "Like" or "Digg" button, Flattr challenges its users to put their money where their mouse is and financially contribute to software and projects that they use and enjoy. Users pay a small amount every month to their Flattr account (a minimum of €2) and then click Flattr buttons on sites and software they use and like to share out the money in portions as little as 1 cent.

To learn more about the project, I aimed a few quick-fire questions at Flattr co-founder Linus Olsson:

1. Explain briefly how Flattr is different from traditional online payment methods such as PayPal.

It's a system built "backwards" from the notion that people want to pay and how to make it easy to pay for free stuff. Basing the system on a monthly budget that you as a user know you will not exceed and therefor it's "safe" to give money to as much things as you like.

2. What are the biggest challenges you've faced in developing Flattr?

All the laws surrounding handling money.

3. Are many software developers using Flattr and are there any developer success stories using Flattr?

We have lots of open source software that uses Flattr and many of them make quite a lot, so absolutely.

We were convinced we had a hit!

At last week's World Mobile Congress, our OnSoftware France colleague, Alexandre Carlier, caught up with Rovio's head of marketing, Ville Heijari, to ask him all about their hit phenomenon, Angry Birds.

How did you come up with the idea for Angry birds?

In 2009, we were looking into developing something for the iPhone. We were seeing that the iPhone was getting a good market share and apps were selling more and more all the time. Everybody was talking about the ‘hockey stick’ -  that just around the corner the market would really explode. Samsung said here on Sunday that their smartphone sales grew 60% in 2010. So when we released the game in December 2009, we got in at precisely the right moment. In early 2009 we were looking at how to make the best possible smartphone game for as large an audience as possible. Our designer, Jakko Iisalo, came up with the one concept that had angry birds in it and the game was then polished over the year; it took about 8 months from start to finish. The original concept always had the birds in it. We were looking at what was out there in the market, what people were playing, what feels natural, what feels good and so on. We came up with the parameters that it has to be ‘physics based’, have really good direct touchscreen controls that feel nice and then, most importantly, to differentiate from the competition and have really unique characters. Those were the main ingredients that we put together.

How did you manage the launch of the game?

It took us three months to get featured in a major iTunes store, in the UK in February 2010. But before that really it was just word of mouth. As there are relatively few downloads in Finland, we were in the charts there and being number one generates interest. From there came Sweden and Denmark, so small local markets, but then we were number one in several countries and they (Apple) started to take notice and then we got featured in the UK. From there the game started getting some media in the English speaking press, so the leap to the US wasn't that big or difficult.

How did the cost of developing the game compare to your revenues?

We don't have all our figures from last year yet, but on iOS alone we've sold over 20 million downloads. The game cost around €100,000 to make and with all the updates and improvements since its release, I'd say it has cost many times that. It's a big investment to get moving and keep the ball rolling.

With all the new users we are getting, however, it's definitely worth that investment. There are over 20 million Android users too, and by the end of last year that was generating a million euro in ad revenue per month. We are now looking at investing in growth, to branch out to into merchandising and entertainment and to do other things with the brand.

We have to innovate, we enjoy it, so let’s do it!

With the release of Opera 11, I talked to co-founder Jon Von Tetzchner to find out what makes the company behind this innovative browser tick. Back in 2005, Jon had proclaimed he would swim the Atlantic if Opera 8 got a million downloads in four days, so I asked him where he stood with Opera 11.

Do you have any plans to swim the Atlantic again?

When we had this competition thing, it was about getting one million downloads in four days, and now we have that in a single day! So from that perspective I would probably have to swim back and forth to the states multiple times just to cover that. I think I’ve had my swim, it was cold and it  would be even colder now!

Opera 10 was very innovative, what are the biggest developments in 11?

For Opera 11 we’ve taken a different approach. We’ve looked at what are the most important things for our users. What do they like best that we can improve on? And then we’ve looked at the things people are saying they would like to have.

So, for the first part, speed is important, Opera Turbo is important, and we made a smaller installer. But then we looked at tabs. A typical Opera user has around ten tabs open at any one time, and keeping track of these can become difficult, so a better organization is a benefit and this is why we’ve come up with tab stacking. We did the precursor of tabs back in 1994, with multiple windows inside one window, and we’ve been gradually improving this and I think tab stacking is an important improvement for anyone who has a lot of tabs.

Mouse gestures are a very popular feature in Opera, and we’ve made them easier to use in Opera 11, and more accessible to new users.

Turbo is very popular with people who have slow connections, and we’ve made it more efficient. The most user requested feature we’ve added is extensions.

Dofus is an MMORPG from French developers Ankama. It comes in a free-to-play version, and a premium which is much larger. Massively popular in France, it has beautiful cartoon art and an original fantasy setting (yes that is allowed, World of Warcraft!).

Of all the bigger MMORPGs, Dofus is one of the more unusual. We talked to English Content and Community Manager Izmar and Marketing Manager Ingrid about the game, follow up title Wakfu, and its adaption from French into English.

Dofus is very humorous. Was it difficult translating jokes into English? How did you deal with cultural references?

Localization is always a challenge, but our translation team has that great combination of cleverness and creativity that keeps the game text lively and relevant, just like the French version. The translators always try to maintain cultural references when it’s possible for our English-speaking players to enjoy. If the French contains a reference that simply can’t cross the language barrier for whatever reason, they’re not ashamed to draw on American, British, or Canadian sources to make the players smile.

Free office suite OpenOffice.org is becoming increasingly popular with home users and small and medium businesses. According to the company, OpenOffice's market share in Germany, for example, is an incredible 20%. OnSoftware spoke to international marketing head Florian Effenberger about OpenOffice, open source software and Microsoft.

OnSoftware: What is OpenOffice's market share?

Effenberger: About four weeks ago we got new numbers on that, more or less for the first time. According to a Webmasterpro study that asked what users have installed on their system, OpenOffice has a 20% market share in Germany, more or less. I assume that the number of unreported users is actually significantly higher, taking Ubuntu and other users into account.

Microsoft has reduced the price of its own Office package. Do you think this is related to the success of OpenOffice?

Well, we're not entirely free of blame. We look at it as a challenge. There's more to it: although Microsoft may reduce their prices, there's still the whole issue of the open standard philosophy. You can't emphasize that part enough.

Video Interview: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

It might be the depths of winter in Sweden but things at Stockholm based Voddler are really hotting-up. Despite being only available in Sweden, the video on demand service being labeled as “Spotify for films” already has almost 500,000 users and recorded one million streams being accessed across its peer-to-peer network in January. However, such rapid progress hasn't been without its problems. As I reported yesterday, Voddler has temporarily been suspended until March 8th after a security breach of the desktop client and now all their energies are focused on the release of an exciting YouTube style web client due for launch on March 8th.

With a Europe wide roll-out expected by the end of the year (although no North American date set as yet), Voddler is quietly poised to emerge out of the Swedish tundra and take the video entertainment industry by storm. Despite beta teething problems, I was thoroughly impressed with the app when I tried it on both Windows and Mac a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, I finally got the chance to go behind the scenes at Voddler to find out more about what could be one of the most successful entertainment applications of the year.

I was introduced to Mathias Tönnesson, the enthusiastic Vice President of Business Development at Voddler who joined the team after being convinced that its pioneering technical infrastructure and "freemium" business model was onto a winner. A quick guided tour around the work in progress at Voddler’s new offices indicate how rapidly the company is growing. Having recently moved from Stockholm’s old town, the company now occupies a spacious new media complex on the outskirts of the city. After giving me a detailed overview of the basics behind Voddler, I sat down with Tönnesson for OnSoftware to find out more about this exciting project. The interview is transcribed in full below or you can watch the entire half hour video here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Note that this interview took place on February 9th so it was before the recent decision to suspend the service temporarily until March 9th.

We've all marveled at how we can drive up our street on the web or on a phone using Google Street View. But what if you could take a look around the inside of buildings as well as the outside? According to Nokia, this new window on the world may not be that far away.

Following this week's announcement that Nokia's Ovi Maps app has garnered more than three million downloads, we caught up with Christof Hellmis, Vice President, Product Location, Services at the Mobile World Congress, who revealed Ovi's plans for mapping the World - both outdoors and indoors.

Hellmis pointed out that since Nokia bought mapping company Naviteq in 2008, the company has ramped up its efforts to give Ovi users a more immersive experience. Having since introduced 3D and augmented reality features into Ovi, Hellmis is ready for the next stage of mobile navigation.

When we launched our 3D maps platform we didn’t see it as a new chapter in the development of the product, but rather a new book with a clean, white first page. We saw the context of the service as moving to 3D from a flat map, and it was for this reason we acquired Navteq. The company has 100,000 dollars worth of equipment for laser-based point clocks, which can accurately capture images of streets and buildings. This is scalable upwards, so we will be able to get more and more detailed 3D images of buildings to include within Ovi Maps.

Now, the benefit of having such high standards of image capturing is that this (interior mapping) will be do-able if dealt with properly. Nokia has already done research into indoor mapping and we need to decide on the best way to make it scale. I can see a time when public places of interest, such as shopping malls will be mapped and available on Ovi. This would open up a new dimension in advertising, because vendors would be able to push messages to people as they walked past their store. Indoor mapping could also be useful for museums and general places of interest.

Read more »

In case you hadn't noticed, the mobile phone industry is now awash with operating systems. It was just a couple of years ago when smartphones came in only four flavors: Palm, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Now you can add to this list the iPhone OS, Android, Bada and Maemo. It's great to have choice, but can present headaches for consumers, operators, and, perhaps more importantly, developers. So, you may be wondering why Nokia was this week talking about its strategy of having three operating systems.

At the World Mobile Conference this week, the Finnish phone giant announced a new operating system, known as MeeGo. It's a Linux-based platform that merges Nokia's Maemo with Intel's Moblin, and it's designed to bring rich new user experiences to mobile computers, netbooks, tablets and the like. Nokia also produces devices running the ancient S40 platform, and the croaky S60 OS (soon to be replaced with the new Symbian 3 platform). But in a world of increasing fragmentation, is it really a good idea to be offering the bemused consumers and developers three flavors of Nokia?

We caught up with David Rivas, Vice President, Strategy and Business Development Software Platforms at Nokia to find out the thinking behind this strategy.

How and why did Nokia end up with three different mobile platforms?

If we were having this conversation two years ago you’d be asking why it’s not the reverse. From a tech perspective, the three segments are clear. S40 is a mature platform which is very comfortable for the market it’s aimed at, and it’s what I like to call the ‘value’ segment. Symbian, or S60 as it has been until now, is targeted at the ‘value portion’ smartphone market, and it drives capability to lower price points. Meego offers a showcase for the class of experience similar to how we use our laptops in everyday life.

The question we were asking ourselves was how can we take our software offering down the road? The top two things we’ve done recently is to buy the Symbian Foundation and make it open source, and to buy Trolltech, and with it its Qt development framework.

So, what was going wrong before?

In the context of Symbian it was the lack of user interface renewal that was the problem. S60 was written a long time ago and it needed new energy. Programmers don’t like S60 because it’s difficult to develop for. We’ve fixed this with Qt, which is the most capable cross-platform framework in the industry.

Symbian 3 is planned for the first half of the year and Qt will be part of the platform. Because Qt is loved by developers we can expect to see lots of apps for the new Symbian platforms, as well as a decrease in development for S60. It’s true that Symbian S60  had missed a few rounds of UI renewal and it’s time to bring it up to standard, which is what Symbian 3 does. We’ve tripled performance, added multitouch support and a nice UI with lots of cool 3D effects. Symbian 4, which will push for release at the end of this year or beginning of the next year will further improve upon the performance and guts of the user experience.

How worried are you about the coming of Android to the market?

The more operating systems that are introduced, the better it is for us. That’s because it sends a clear statement to developers: you have to be able to hit a broad range of devices with a broad range of interfaces. The value proposition is very clear. In fact, the OS phenomenon is more about making value propositions to developers than it is the user. The only thing a consumer cares about is how cute it is, if it fits their lifestyle, and now, if it has a bunch of apps.

We are watching the Android rollout with great interest. It faces a lot of challenges right now regarding fragmentation. The industry should be asking Google what its motives are, and what will happen with Android in the future. Have any OEMs ever even seen a road map on Android from Google? I’m not sure they will have. When it comes to open source, Symbian is much more open.

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered but I find that the industry seems too preoccupied with the OS war. In actual fact, most consumers aren’t thinking about this. Instead of getting bogged down, we have to laser focus on the developer and offer them a platform that’s fun to developer for, offers a channel to market, and beautiful devices to run their apps on.

It's taken a while, but mobile operators have finally given up trying to fight against VoIP services. That's the assessment from Tobias Kemper, Vice President at mobile VoIP heavyweight, Nimbuzz. Speaking to OnSoftware following the launch of the service's new NimbuzzOut feature he said: "operators have stopped seeing us as enemies, but rather as a value add for their services and networks."

NimbuzzOut allows users to make dirt cheap international mobile phone calls over the Internet via Nimbuzz. Rates are as low as 0.02 cents for calling the UK and China. Traditionally, these kind of services have struck fear into mobile operators worried about losing call revenue to cheap and free VoIP alternatives.

Several operators, including T-Mobile and AT&T have previously banned VoIP services, such as Nimbuzz, Skype and Google Voice from using the company's network. Following widespread criticism these bans have since been overturned, and Kemper now believes the future's looking bright for mobile VoIP and social media messaging.

Operators understand that the future is in VoIP for reasons of quality assurance and scalability. Nimbuzz is a brilliant data magnet that increases loyalty and customer churn for the operator. Operators have been more and more receptive toward us over the recent months and we will have some more interesting announcements coming up, beyond the roll outs with O2 in Germany and Eutelia in Italy. Operators have never been successful in banning third party services and evolution. T-Mobile tried and lost in court. T-Mobile USA has now seen its data traffic increase by factor 10 in the last quarter, only because of social media messaging.

NimbuzzOut has been already been rolled out for iPhone and Symbian devices, with the remaining platforms to be supported in the very near future. Notably, the developer has chosen to retain SkypeOut functionality within Nimbuzz, though it's clear it will be encouraging users to switch over to NimbuzzOut. "It's the choice our users. We have a very diplomatic solution and the user decides what's best for them. NimbuzzOut is a great addition for everyone who is new to the VoIP game or looking for a cheap international calling solution," said Kemper.

Kemper said that Nimbuzz will now focus its attentions to location-based feature to make the program even more useful. There's plenty of competition in the mobile VoIP and social media market and Nimbuzz must continue to evolve if it wants to compete with the likes of Skype, Fring and Google Voice. In fact, they go head to head for the Best Social Network App award at the Crunchies in January, which you can vote on here.