Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Coghead Announces 17,000 Developers Building Applications Visually
from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington
Silicon Valley based Coghead is making a bit of a splash today at the Web 2.0 Expo. They’re officially launching, although it’s largely ceremonial: they’ve been open to the public since October 2006.
I wrote in detail about Coghead last year. The company competes in the “online access” space (a reference to Microsoft Access). We’ve written about Coghead competitors in the past, including Dabble DB, Zoho Creator and WyaWorks. The primary use of these products is to create business applications that deal with everything from task tracking through to purchase orders.
What is special about CogHead is that users building applications with the product require less technical skills because the process is (mostly) all drag-and-drop and visual. CogHead is unique because of just how easy it is to create forms, views and apps - the design view allows users to create fields by dragging and dropping them onto a form. The user can lay the fields out and place them on the page, making the application they build more user friendly and easier on the eyes. Building the logic behind the forms is also a graphical process, the user takes objects and actions and drags them into a flow chart that is similar to a data-flow or logic diagram. There are a number of starter applications to help users get comfortable with the platform.
Coghead is also announcing today that 17,000 developers are now working on the platform.
The company has raised $11.2 million in two rounds of venture capital from American Capital Strategies Ltd., SAP Ventures and El Dorado Ventures. They have 21 employees in their Silicon Valley headquarters and another 15 in China. 
Boonty: The Casual Gamer's Playground
Boonty brings a new wrinkle to the crowded online video game space. Somewhat surprising, the most avid consumer of online games is the 25-45 year old female demographic. These long time causal gamers have taken their gaming habits online. Boonty accommodates them with a free, multiplayer platform that lets individuals enjoy retail-quality games in a community atmosphere with advanced features, such as in-game chatting.
Most of these features are integrated in the recently launched beta version of Boonty's Cafe.com treats each game as a social opportunity. The site's library comprises high-quality casual games specifically designed to feature maximum community functionality. Membership is free, and players can enjoy private and public game rooms, multiplayer chat, and personalization capabilities such as avatar creation and item-level purchases for game play enhancement.
With one billion people online worldwide, Boonty CEO Mathieu Nouzareth believes his market is enormous and plans to monetize the platform by selling virtual goods. Cafe.com's gold-coin microtransaction economy provides a clever ay to monetize the social networks springing up around specific games. When players run out of lives or turns, want to harass an opponent, or stock up on additional ammunition , they can purchase additional goods. The business model lets the teeming masses further growth without demanding up-front subscriptions or full-game purchases. Micropayments are the quarters of the virtual game-playing world.
(source: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/12692)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
