Playdom has been acquired by Walt Disney for $763.2mn. Playdom shareholders will receive total consideration of $563.2 million, subject to certain conditions, and a performance-linked earn-out of up to $200 million. By acquiring Playdom, Disney will strengthen its already-robust digital gaming portfolio, acquire a first-rate management team and provide consumers new ways to interact with the company on popular social networks likeFacebook and MySpace. [details]
Firefox 4 Beta 2 Released
Firefox 4 Beta 2 is released and packs performance improvements as well as CSS3 transitions on transforms.
In this new Beta, Firefox comes with a new page building mechanism: Retained Layers. This mechanism provides noticeable faster speed for web pages with dynamic content, and scrolling is much smoother. Also, we’re still experimenting with hardware acceleration: using the GPU to render and build some parts of the web page.[details]
Check out the video
Google developing Facebook Rival
WSJ reports that Google is in talks with popular game developer companies to develop a game service that could compete with Facebook.
‘It is unclear when Google may launch the new gaming offering and the plans aren’t finalized, but people briefed on the matter said the games would be part of broader social-networking initiative that is under development by the Mountain View, Calif., company’.[source]
Amazon Facebook Integration
Amazon has partnered with Facebook to roll out a social recommendation feature using Facebook Connect.
‘So when you activate the feature, you’ll see a dedicated Amazon Facebook page within the recommendations section of your account. For example, you’ll see the most popular books, DVDs, and more that are listed in your Friend’s Facebook profile’.[source]
Google Android Checks on Piracy
Android has released licensing service enabling app developers to secure their app from being pirated.
This licensing service operating real time over the network provides more flexibility in choosing license-enforcement strategies, and a more secure approach in protecting your applications from unauthorized use, than copy protection.[more]
Excel 2010 Games: Missile Command and Tower Defense
You can build interesting games on Excel 2010. Read this for more details and have a look at the demo video.
Also see:
- How to develop Qt apps for Nokia devices
- Micromax X600 Launched
