Angry Birds Magic Will Combine NFC And GPS
Angry Birds Magic, which was further announced last night in New York at the RWW2Way Summit, will be using both NFC and GPS to enable new features and possibilities for gamers. Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka and Ramine Darabiha, the product manager for Angry Birds Magic have stated in GigaOM, that the new platform will enable both new revenue streams for Rovio, but also new ways for gamers to enjoy the game.
Facebook Places Now Live In Finland
It seems Facebook has finally enabled their Places service in Finland. Facebook members are now able to check-in to different venues using the mobile apps. The feature could be significant for a few different reasons. This enables companies to offer deals for customers, a somewhat similar approach announced by a Finnish startup Dealium last week. There was no bigger announcement of this on Facebook's side which isn't surprising at all as they roll out new features in the US and slowly expand these to other countries.
Shadow Cities Launches And Hits Top Spot In App Store
A new Finnish iPhone game called Shadow Cities developed by Grey Area launched today with a whopping success. The game was available in the Finnish App Store in the morning and by 1.30pm, it was already the third most grossing app in terms of sales. Mind you, the app is free itself. Later last night the game was already the most grossing app in the App Store. The last time it happened, the game in question was Angry Birds.
What Does Facebook's New API Mean For Eat.fi And How Foursquare Could Help
Eat.fi is hands down one the best designed Finnish webservices, if not the best. I love it and use it weekly, but can't keep thinking it could be so much more.
Facebook just yesterday released its new API in its developer conference f8. This is really big news for everybody. Much bigger than we can yet grasp. With their new really(!) big vision, Facebook will now compete with Google in being the one who parses the web together for the rest of us. Google does it with hyperlinks. Facebook will try to do better job with the meta data from our social relationships. That aside for a moment, let's look at what this announcement could mean for Eat.fi in the short term.
Just as with Yelp, who was Facebook's partner at the f8 launch and have integrated their service to Facebook API, Eat.fi could gain similar benefits by simply integrating its service with the Facebook API. This would surely channel more traffic to Eat.fi as it would let people see who else likes the same restaurants (or even meals) that they do and let the users share the restaurant reviews more easily to their activity feed on their Facebook profile. The Facebook integration would help Eat.fi to get more traffic, but I believe they could do much more.
Location, Location, Location! Or Timing and Execution?
Remember Zipiko? The service with a "quick and effortless way to see what your friends are doing and a way to invite them to your chosen venue whether it’s it a local cafe or your own place for drinks, lunch or whatever you fancy."
Unfortunately the company that developed Zipiko, namely Zipipop, put the product development on ice already last June and moved on to service the growing Finnish enterprise customer base that is completely and utterly lost with social media wave that has hit the organizations. To scale their operations Zipipop, lead by its energetic CEO Helene Auramo, has teamed up with the former Managing Director of Accenture's Finnish and Nordic offices.
Richard von Kaufmann of Zipipop states in the company blog the following:
