Outspark Launch Adds Weight to Micro-Transactions Trend

from GigaOM by Jane Pinckard

Outspark, a San Francisco-based casual games publisher with offices in Seoul, South Korea, launched its North American games portal yesterday. Like Nexon's South Korean-developed MapleStory, Outspark games will be free to play — in addition to advertising built into the games and the portal, the company will rely on micro-transactions of virtual goods sales to generate revenue.

Their first game, Fiesta, published by OnsOn Soft in Asia, is an MMO currently in open beta. Outspark, which secured $4 million in funding earlier this spring from Altos Ventures and Doll Capital Management, plans to work with other developers to publish community-oriented multiplayer casual games as well.

I put a few questions to CEO Susan Choe and Chief Studio Officer Nick Foster yesterday to get a better sense of the company's plans.

The micro-transaction model has been shown to be very successful in South Korea, where Outspark also has experience, but has been slow to take off in North America. Why do you think that is and why do you think it's time to launch this revenue model here?

SUSAN: The micro-transaction model was slow to gain traction in North America due to a lack of payment solutions like those readily available in Asia. The response of North American gamers, however, to this type of game and item sales model has been tremendous and forms the basis of Outspark's initial releases. Our expertise in running global portals like Yahoo (YHOO) and leading game product management at companies including EA (ERTS), Nexon, Blizzard and NHN will help us continue to deliver great results.

What demographic do you see as your primary target and how will you reach it?

NICK: Outspark's initial target demographic is the youth market, specifically those between the ages of 13 and 24. Friendly, socially driven games appeal to all ages, however, and we're attracting a diverse community of people looking for a different style of play than can be found in conventional console or hardcore games.

Your competition, in my view, is not necessarily World of Warcraft but socially rich Web 2.0 apps like Facebook and YouTube (GOOG). How will your products compete — or integrate — in that space?

SUSAN: Outspark's goal is to provide a socially active virtual playground for online gamers. By providing games that players genuinely want to spend time in and building a community around that shared experience, Outspark can be a good partner for socially rich Web 2.0 companies by providing their communities with additional engaging activities.

You talked [in the release] about Outspark as a "platform." Can you tell us more about that?

NICK: Outspark understands online gaming and the human drivers that make game communities successful. We're combining our expertise in global entertainment with an understanding of virtual item sales and good game design. Outspark's goal is to find media partners and work with them to apply this holistic "platform" approach to help build additional channels for their IP, around which online communities can grow.

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Epson Joins Sprint: They Suck And Their New Website Is Stupid

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

I'm pretty sure there are some consultants out there who are telling big, clueless companies that the way to engage with their audience is to engage with them on an interactive, emotional level. I imagine them saying "let's bolt a few social features onto the product and engage with the MySpace generation." Those consultants convinced Sprint to launch possibly the dumbest website I've seen all year: users fill out a survey and are told which cell phone fits their lifestyle the best.

And now those consultants have conned Epson into doing the same thing on a new site called Epsonality. They ask questions like "You come across a bear in the woods, what do you do?" and "you find $199.99 lying on the ground, what do you do?" and use your answers to somehow determine the right printer for you. All in a sick, highly personalized Flash interface.

My perfect emotional printer partner is, apparently, the Epson C120:

You're an intense, type A-plus with lower-than-average printer patience and a "go, go, go, come one, come on, come on" attitude toward everything from your Internet connection to your microwave oven. You value one thing above all else and the C120 delivers it: blazing speed.

Wow Epson. You nailed me, and I'm a customer for life. Except that I'm not, and never will be. You win the lamest website of the week award and join Sprint as a brand that I will never purchase. The reason? The last time I bought one of your printers the software screwed it up so badly I had to reformat the hard drive just to get it to work again. Since then, I've stuck with HP's.

Fire the consultants, stop trying to be a conversational marketer and just get back to the basics.

Or build a Facebook application. Now that would be cool.

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Do The Right Thing: Save An Alien (and this startup)

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

If a Facebook application supporting Stephen Colbert can get 1 million members in nine days, then perhaps Save An Alien, an Israeli Facebook-only startup, can reach their goal of 10 million users in six months.

I sure hope they do, anyway. Otherwise a bunch of cute little aliens are going to die.

The plot line is straightforward: a meteor is going to strike an alien planet in six months and kill the entire population (10 million aliens, each uniquely generated by an algorithm). We're asked to adopt these aliens. When you've selected the one you like, you adopt it and the alien is transported to safety in Antarctica. You can then do a few other things - download images of it, use a tool to add images of your alien into your own photos, etc.

And if you really like your alien you can buy a tshirt with it on it. I imagine other revenue generating merchandising opportunities may be thought up later, too.

Good idea. We'll see if people's altruistic tendencies extend to fictional aliens. If they do, this company could make a few dollars along the way. 14,000 aliens have been saved so far, so go do your part (or perhaps donate your time and money to a real charity instead)

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DIY balloon sent up 30km

from Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

Alexei Karpenko put together a system consisting of GPS, camera, sensors and communications, sent it to an altitude of 30km, and retrieved it on the ground after a parachute landing. The photos and videos he took are stunning.

High altitude ballooning is an emerging hobby, since price of GPS and communications equipment has gotten quite low. It is an excellent hobby for people fascinated by space flight and telerobotics and has many learning aspects — from systems design to electronics design to software engineering. There is also an exciting risk factor, namely, that you could lose your precious electronics if something malfunctions. In this project, many of my interest and knowledge areas came together. Also, I have verified that the Earth is indeed round and that space is black.

Bre Pettis of MAKE also built and launched a near-space balloon, but never found it. See his videos (part 1 and 2).

Link

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Fuzzy Math That Seems To Work? TrialPay Says They Can Make Money From Free

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

Maybe you want to try Skype-out, but don't want to be saddled with paying for unused minutes if the "VOIP revolution in telephony" isn't your thing. Well, Mountain View-based TrialPay will let you get a 3 month trial of free minutes by buying something on eBay or participating in any of 129 other partner offers.

The Skype deal is just one example of TrialPlay's ongoing promotions to help services make some money, while hooking new users and advertisers gain customers from trying something new, while paying for something familiar. The company is working with over 1,500 businesses to let users "pay" for their products by participating in an advertisers program, which range from buying the Economist, to trying out anti-wrinkle cream.

While TrialPay CEO Alex Rampell can't say how much Skype is making off their offers, he did say that "for most of our merchants, we are yielding between 10-100% in incremental revenue. A company like Skype might make $80 on a consumer not willing to buy their $8.85 calling plan". He went on to say "Skype now yields significant revenue for Staples.com, because people shop at Staples.com in order to get Skype credits for free". Conceivably, users not willing to buy Skype may be willing to buy enough from Staples to actually generate more revenue than Skype's purchase price. He made no qualifications about how commonly the over-achieving offers occur, though.

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Nokia's 5 megapixel N82 with WiFi and GPS spotted?

from Engadget by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

There it is, the first spy shot of Nokia's N82. Don't remember this Espoo candybar? No worries, the last update was way back in May when news was first leaked. Back then, the N82 was rumored to pack quad-band GSM, 2100MHz HSDPA, a 2.4-inch 240x320 display, WiFi, GPS, FM Tuner and biggie 5 megapixel camera with Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss lens. So until we hear otherwise, that's what we'll assume until the supposed announcement on November 2nd. Right, that's just 1 week from today.

[Via Unwired View]

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Brando Adapts eSATA Drives to USB with a Simple Adapter [Easy Attachment]

from Gizmodo by Charlie White

We've already seen a clever way to conveniently adapt eSATA hard drives to USB, and now here's an even easier and cheaper way to do that from Brando. It's a $15 adapter, and sure, you'll have to add $10 to that ticket to get a power supply to fire up that drive, but the money saved by using a bare drive instead of buying an enclosure will make up for that. So do the math: You get one of these and a power supply for $25, a Hitachi Deskstar 1TB drive for $300, and you have a TB for $325. Good deal. Or you can get a slower but arguably prettier Western Digital My Book 1TB external drive for around $350. Either way, that's a heap of storage, ain't it? [ Brando]

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First image of Fisker's plug-in luxury hybrid released?

from Engadget by Darren Murph

You can't be too careful these days, but if the above image isn't just the work of some overzealous fanboy (or girl), that's what Fisker's forthcoming luxury plug-in hybrid will look like. The vehicle itself will be developed in conjunction with Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies, which reportedly hopes to aid Fisker in developing an entire line of "environmentally friendly premium cars." If all goes well, the whip could make its North American entrance at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, but as you can probably imagine, owning such a svelte looking ride won't run you cheap. The company plans to crank out some 15,000 of these creations initially and fetch around $100,000 for each, but until we actually get the word that people are taking delivery, we won't get too attached.

[Via Autoblog]

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Elle MacPherson: The Interactive Storefront

from CubeMe by Hans

For New York Fashion Week, Elle MacPherson Intimates launched an interactive storefront, allowing users to reveal the video footage of the models on the windows through their movements on the street. This is by no means a new medium but it has been executed very well and has received a lot of positive WOM.

Popout

Via [TrendHunter]

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Babel TV set-top-box weds Freeview, PVR, and internet

from Engadget by Darren Murph

We've never been much for using one's television as their primary web surfing display -- after all, how do you expect to get any work done with last week's episode of The Office drawing your attention away from that oh-so-critical PowerPoint -- but for those who'd enjoy access every now and then without having to attach a dedicated computer, Babel TV could be just the thing. Available solely in the UK, this multifaceted set-top-box enables users to tune into and record Freeview broadcasts, stream video clips / programming from the web and even make VoIP calls. Furthermore, the box is "managed remotely by Babel TV's technical team," and copies of all your files can be automatically stored at a secure location (for a price, we presume). Reportedly, the unit should be available early next month for £295 ($602), and yes, that does include a wireless keyboard and pointer to keep you firmly planted on the sofa.

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Internet to Remain Tax-Free For At Least Four More Years

from TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld

The tax moratorium on the Internet runs out on November 1, but the Senate just passed an extension. It just has to agree with the House on how long it will be (the Senate wants 7 more years, the House wants four), before sending it the President. You kind of take the tax-free thing for granted when it comes to e-commerce. But it is not going to last forever. E-commerce is all grown up, and no longer needs the coddling that the original legislation provided. Although, it makes you wonder how much slower Internet sales would be growing (compared to being up 23 percent last quarter) if you had to pay sales tax.

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Patent Monkey Joins Deadpool, Only To Rise Again as Patents.com

from TechCrunch by Blake Robinson

Someone just shot the monkey. Patent Monkey, a Web-based patent database, is closing up shop and selling its assets to domain-name holding company Internet Real Estate Group (IREG) and Monster Venture Partners (MVP). (Disclosure: Patent Monkey is a CrunchGear affiliate). The Patent Monkey search and index capabilities will serve as the back-end technology for Patents.com, which IRG recently acquired for an undisclosed sum speculated to be over $1 million. Patent Monkey co-founder Paul Ratcliffe will make the transition to Patents.com as CEO, while co-founder Cory Sorice has moved on to Black & Decker as Director of Business Development. Patent Monkey now joins the deadpool.

But it shall rise again as Patents.com, which is slated to launch in the next few weeks, coinciding closely with a series A venture round that Monster says should close within the next 30 days. Patents.com plans to serve both the mainstream market and lawyers, but given Patent Monkey's inability to reach profitability in this space, it remains debatable whether or not the new entity, with more overhead, will have any more luck. On the other hand, Free Patents Online currently sits in the Alexa top 3,000 and does business solely through ads, suggesting that Patents.com has the potential to turn a profit through targeted ad sales alone.

More interesting, however, is Patents.com's potential to broach the more professional realm of Internet IP, a field currently dominated by Delphion . Due in part to its ad-supported initiative, it can forgo the $100 - $250 monthly fee that Delphion charges—a move that could help it to gain traction more quickly. The goal then is to create an international patent licensing network wherein patent owners can claim their patents and provide contact information. Patents.com could then serve as a sort of patents brokerage, providing a communications conduit between patent owners and patent searchers who may wish to license them, which is not insignificant. According to McKinsey Quarterly (PDF file) , the licensing of U.S. patents alone grosses $100 billion annually, indicating that a channel for effectively communicating with patent holders could be monetized handsomely.

Monster Venture Partners founder Rob Monster will serve as chairman for the newly structured entity. Through Monster's involvement, the new Patents.com will be translated into 15 languages using Worldlingo, a company in which Monster sits on the board.

While Patents.com will launch serving only U.S. patents, it has ambitions to soon index documents from the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). Stephen Pinkos, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will serve as Patents.com's Executive Vice President. It also probably won't hurt that Monster's Worldlingo currently holds the translation contract for the EPO (a task that it claims to complete with 95% accuracy). Patents.com will be worth watching to see how a domainer firm can do transitioning from a holding company to an operating company.

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Nokia: S60 Gets New Features, Stepping Out of iPhone's Shadow?

from Gizmodo by Benny Goldman

The folks at Crave UK recently got a chance to tour Nokia's R&D facility in Finland; and while they may have seen a robot dog, the real prize here was updated information on the S60 Touch UI. We already knew that the software, accused of being an iPhone clone by some, had a couple of sweet features that the iPhone couldn't compete with (namely, stylus input and tactile feedback response). What we didn't know is that the R&D team is also working on an app that translates foreign words in pictures taken with the phone's camera, and another one that identifies objects by pointing the camera at them (finding product information while shopping is one proposed use). Hit the gallery to see it all up close, and let us know what other apps you'd like to see in the comments. [Crave UK]

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Advertising With Flyers On Facebook - Do The Ads Bring Traffic ?

from Digital Inspiration by Amit

As an experiment, I recently ran two advertising campaigns on Facebook - one used Flyers Basic (CPC) and the second used Flyers Pro (CPM). If you are wondering how effective are Facebook ads in terms of clicks, here are the results:

1. Facebook Flyers Basic - They cost $5 to display your ad 2,500 times on various Facebook pages. I bought 5,000 ad impressions on Facebook and here's what Google Analytics has to say about the number of clicks received from Facebook - Total Visits = 5

[Facebook won't share the click-through-rate for Flyers Basic version]

2. Facebook Flyers Pro - This is a CPC ad program of Facebook where you pay only for the clicks. Flyers Pro The ads made around 800 impressions on Facebook and the number of visitor clicks received was five (CTR = 0.6%).

Though the above advertising campaigns on Facebook were run for a very short period, they do indicate that the click through rates for ads appearing on Facebook can be extremely low.

Sidenote: If you are located outside US, you can make the payment for Facebook Flyers via International Credit Cards but not PayPal. The Payment page for Flyers looks as if it won't accept non-US credit cards but just type your full address and it will work just fine.

Related: How Blogs Can Fix Their Advertising Rates

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Money, Money: Motorola's Mobile Division Drops Nearly a Billion Bucks Compared with Last Year

from Gizmodo by Matt Buchanan

Even if you aren't an accountant (I'm not) you can tell right off the bat things aren't so sunny when you only see the word "sales" leading the press release bullet points, and not the words "net income" or "profit." Such is the case with Motorola, continuing their downward spiral. The release highlights tout $8.8 billion in sales and "financial improvements in the mobile devices business." Ruh-roh. The mobile section choked down an operating loss of $138 million—a nearly billion dollar drop from the year-ago Q3's operating earnings of $843 million—on sales of $4.5 billion, down 36 percent from last year.

They estimate their global handset marketshare to be 13 percent, jibing with an earlier report , which marks a drop from 22 percent marketshare a year earlier. We've said it before, and it's worth repeating, a real flagship would help the languishing brand power and maybe edge it back toward claiming its old number 2 spot from Samsung. Or, you know, you could maintain your image of pumping out RAZR knockoffs and bleeding money like you've got the deadly Motaba virus. [Motorola]

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