Brands in Draw Something

The makers of Draw Something were acquired by Zynga a couple of months ago, and since then Zynga has been busily adding “sponsored brands” to the game.

Until recently, the Pictionary-like game had only run spammy banner ads in its free mobile app that, including the paid no-ads version, has amassed a staggering 50 million downloads in five months. Now, with a direct-sales force that’s been on the ground for a whole eight weeks, Draw Something is inserting advertisers’ paid terms into the game for players to literally draw brands.

Here’s how the game works: Pick a word from a list of three, then create a drawing so a Facebook friend can guess that word and you can win points. For the ad product, imagine inserting words like “Doritos” or “Coca-Cola” in among “golfer,” “bikini” or “fireworks.”

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However, as brands begin to come onboard, Draw Something’s popularity with consumers may be waning. Its monthly active users have declined in recent weeks, according to App Data. Daily active users have dropped from 14 million at the beginning of April to about 10 million.

I’m not surprised that people are jumping ship. On the one hand, it’s an interesting business model, particularly as a departure from traditional banner ads. Nonetheless, I bought the paid version of Draw Something before it was acquired by Zynga, and I resent having “brands” shoved at me in an app I already paid for. This sort of thing is the problem with the “make it free and monetize later” model. In the long run, it ends up being annoying for users.

Text editing on the iPad

Daniel Hooper comes up with a great concept video for a better way to edit text on the iPad. Here’s hoping Apple implements something like this in a future version of iOS. If you agree, I highly recommend following the directions to file a feature request.

Building iOS apps in Ruby

A new SDK called RubyMotion lets you develop iOS apps in Ruby. I bet there are a lot of people who will be excited about it, but I can’t imagine many iOS developers think it’s a good idea. Why would you put another layer between you and Apple’s APIs? How do you know the Ruby layer will stay up to date? To me, writing iOS apps in Ruby makes about as much sense as writing web apps in Objective-C. Want to write in Ruby? Build a web app.

NYT on Kindles at Target

The New York Times sheds some more light on Target’s decision to stop selling Kindles. Sounds like it’s not really about books at all, but about Amazon encouraging users to check prices in stores and then buy through Amazon instead.

Target stops selling the Kindle

Target announced that it will stop selling Kindles and other Amazon-branded products, but will continue selling Barnes and Noble’s Nook. Admittedly, Amazon doesn’t help brick-and-mortar retailers out too much by undercutting them on price, but I’m still surprised by Target’s move here. If someone wants to buy a Kindle in a store, shouldn’t Target be willing to take their money? I can’t imagine Target does a big business selling paper books, so what’s the harm?

An elephant playing the harmonica

May 02, 2012

This is incredible. Elephants are so much fun!

More than just a watch

This sounds pretty amazing, although the devil’s in the details. I’m impressed that they get the battery to run for 7 days, although in the back of my head I wonder about whether I’d remember to charge a watch.

Choosing an iPhone carrier

April 25, 2012

Sprint is planning to continue offering unlimited data on future iPhones, even for an LTE model. It definitely introduces a new dimension to the carrier decision for my next phone. The last time I bought an iPhone was the summer of 2010, when Apple released the iPhone 4. At the time, AT&T was still the sole US carrier for the iPhone, so there were no plans to consider. (Fortunately, I was able to grandfather in my unlimited data plan.)

The choice of plan takes on added weight with the addition of LTE. People with LTE-equipped iPads are finding that since LTE is fast enough to do things like stream video, they’re going through their data plans very quickly. Assuming that the next iPhone has LTE and AT&T doesn’t allow me to keep my unlimited plan for LTE, I’ll need to pick a new plan. As of right now, the iPhone is available in the US on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, and each has its ups and downs when it comes to data plans.

  • AT&T: There’s a certain “devil you know beats the devil you don’t” factor at work here. Unlike a lot of people, I’ve been generally satisfied with my AT&T service. I spent most of my time in large cities, and the only places I’ve had trouble are in very rural areas (western Iowa) or buildings that tend to block cell signals. Still, AT&T doesn’t offer anything that sets it apart from the other carriers. If I stay on AT&T, it’ll probably because I didn’t have a compelling reason to leave and not because of something inherently appealing about AT&T’s service.
  • Verizon: Verizon gets a lot of press about having the “best” network, and I’m sure at least some of it is deserved. Anecdotally, my friends who have Verizon iPhones seem to get faster data throughput on 3G than I do on my AT&T model, but it’s not a very big sample size. To me, the most appealing thing about Verizon is that they seem to be building out their LTE network faster than AT&T. My guess is that for the next year or two, LTE will be available in more locations on Verizon than on AT&T or Sprint. Then again, I tend to spend most of my time in cities that already have LTE, so geographical coverage may not be that big a deal.
  • Sprint: The newest iPhone carrier in the US, Sprint has differentiated itself by offering unlimited data after the other carriers stopped. Today’s announcement that they’ll continue to offer an unlimited plan with LTE is certainly enticing, although they haven’t indicated what the pricing might be. I can imagine Sprint charging more for unlimited LTE data than they do for 3G. Coverage is also a question with Sprint, as they generally cover a smaller geographical area than the other carriers. Nonetheless, unlimited data could be just enough to get me to give Sprint a try.

Obviously, we’ll know more whenever the next iPhone is announced. (Looks like it’ll be in the fall.) Chances are, all the carriers will tweak their current plans for an LTE iPhone, but it’s very unlikely that AT&T or Verizon would start offering an unlimited plan again.

Fixing WWDC ticket sales

Apple sold out of tickets for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in about 2 hours today. A lot of developers, notably including those on the west coast, didn’t even wake up until tickets were gone. Ars Technica has some suggestions for how to fix the system in the future. Count me in favor of some kind of lottery system.

Pay for the T with your phone

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Masabi have joined forces to bring a rail ticketing to handheld devices via iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps. Headquartered in London, Masabi has launched similar tech for transit companies in the UK, eliminating ticket lines for many smartphone-wielding passengers. Software will allow riders to purchase tickets and passes that are validated with a barcode scan by conductors equipped with mobile devices of their own.

Using T employees to scan the codes seems a little silly, but hopefully that’s just an interim measure while they install scanners on faregates. I hope to see something like this in DC soon!