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Rick Thompson is hoping that lightning strikes another time. Thompson was the chairman and co-founder of Playdom, the social game company that Disney bought last year for as much as $763 million. Now he has started a new game company, Wild Needle, focused on social games with a location twist.

“Wild Needle represents a shift in the way smart money is thinking of social games,” Thompson said in an interview.

It used to be smart to invest in a game company making social games for Facebook. But Thompson is putting money on the idea that mobile is becoming a larger opportunity. His six-person company will focus on making games for the iPhone and then expand to other mobile platforms. Japan’s DeNA validated this “mobile first” strategy when it bought iPhone game publisher Ngmoco earlier this year for $403 million.

Thompson said he isn’t looking for a similar transaction anytime soon. But because of Zynga’s dominance and Facebook’s crackdown on viral distribution, he doubts that small startups can make an impact on Facebook.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Wild Needle has raised $2.5 million in funding from Thompson and Shasta Ventures. Thompson said that he didn’t need the money to start the company, but he did want access to Shasta’s managing director, Robert Coneybeer, who is joining Wild Needle’s board. Wild Needle’s other top executives include Heidi Carson (vice president of product), Chris Kirmse (vice president of engineering), and Minglei Xu (software architect). Thompson also was founding chairman of online ad networks Flycast and Adify. Kirmse is a veteran game developer who worked at Xfire and was the co-creator of Meridian 59, the world’s first 3D massively multiplayer online game.

Thompson said that there is enormous untapped potential in mobile games that use a device’s location awareness and its always-on connectivity to a social network. Mobile games have lower distribution costs and potentially new kinds of game play around location awareness. Smartphones are also likely to be ubiquitous.

“Things go in cycles,” Thompson said. “Facebook is very challenging for startups now because of high-distribution costs and lack of virality. He said he has investments in a couple of Facebook game companies, one of which is Funzio.

Thompson said Wild Needle is aggressively hiring now. Dan Yue, co-founder of Playdom, and John Pleasants, who was CEO of Playdom, remain at Disney. Thompson said the company’s first game will be targeted at women and feature cool game play. He said he doesn’t think he has direct rivals, but other location-based game companies include Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah.

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With the start of a new semester and a new year, we all have high hopes as students for how this semester is going to turn out; what better way to improve our grades and overall performance in school than with the help of a few great apps. These are five applications that are great for students of all ages, but especially for students in high school and college. With more than 300,000 apps readily available in Apple’s App Store, it can be a daunting process to find the ones that are really worth the memory space on your device and, more importantly, worth the money. Here are five apps that range in price from $0 to $4.99 and are, without a doubt, worth your money. These apps give you what you pay for and so much more.

First is myHomework (free) which is a great way to keep all your assignments organized, accessible and easily searchable. You can enter tests, labs, papers, presentations, readings and more for any class, and set reminders before the due date, leaving no room for “forgetting” an assignment.

There have been studies that have proven students who study with flashcards are often more prepared for tests, and with Flashcard Touch ($4.99), you can now be one of those students. With this application you can create unlimited flashcards from your own definition or numerous online definitions.

Keeping a list of things to do is an effective way of staying organized, and being organized is one of the many keys to success. With PTO, Put Things Off, ($1.99) you can add tasks, organize them by importance, and even “put them off” until a later time. As someone who loves making check lists, this app has become a must-have for me and has helped me keep track of what I need to do in a simple fashion.

As a student who commutes to school, I know how expensive it can be to fill up your gas tank so frequently. With Cheap Gas! (free) in the blink of an eye, I have been able to find conveniently located gas stations with remarkably low gas prices, whether I am at school or at home.

Last semester a professor of mine told me listening to music increases productivity while studying. Although I’m sure he wasn’t referring to the type of music I listen to, I took that advice and ran with it. The Pandora (free) application has also become a must-have app. I’m not a huge fan of listening to the radio because they overplay songs, play tracks I don’t like, and have too many commercials, but with Pandora I can customize my own radio station for free with far fewer commercials.

You can’t go wrong with these five applications, and if you use them properly you will almost certainly feel more successful in no time. What could be better than using your phone to improve your performance in school?  Click here for more apps for students.

Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

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