Friday Mobile Roundup: Android Standards, Check-Ins, Patents & More

An Interview Worth Reading With OpenFeint's Jason Citron: Business Insider captures some of the CEO's recent thoughts on gaming platforms, incentivized installs and discoverability in Android Market. He unsurprisingly says he'll stick around for "awhile" at GREE, which recently acquired his company for $104 million. Google Android Compatibility Standards -- According to TechCrunch, a set of documents from the Skyhook lawsuit has revealed that Google is utilizing the "compatibility standards" to bully OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). In order to make user of Android and its major features (e.g. the Android Market), they must adhere to said standards. That in mind, Skyhook Wireless is stating that this is not intended to protect the Android OS, but to stifle competitors. Netflix Comes to Android -- Netflix has come to Android. Unfortunately, the new application is not supported on all devices. Thus far, supported devices are the HTC Evo, HTC G2, HTC Incredible, HTC Nexus One, and Samsung Nexus S. Flipboard Sees over 10 Million Flips a Day -- In a video posted by TechCrunch, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue says the popular social feed reading application is seeing over 10 million "flips per day" -- a metric that's roughly comparable to pageviews. This number was 3 million two months ago. If the company can bump this up into the billions, they might have an interesting base of pageviews for a rich media advertising network. Gameloft Makes Its Own "FarmVille" for iOS -- Mobile developer Gameloft has released a new game for iOS this week by the name of Green Farm. The new title is essentially a mobile-social rendition of Zynga's popular Facebook title, FarmVille. IGN Launches Game Check-In App -- Gaming network IGN is entering the social-mobile check-in space with the launch of its free app, Dominate. With the title, players can check-in with their games and become the "Dominator" of the games they play the most. It's a very barebones app and it sounds like this might be a little late considering recent big ticket acquisitions in the space of companies like OpenFeint. YouWeb Announces Educational Music App for iPad -- Social and mobile incubator YouWeb has announced an upcoming iPad app by the name of Pluto Plays Music, says TechCrunch. The side-scrolling game is an educational title intended to get young children interested in learning music. Gbanga Nominated for Red Herring Top 100 Europe Awards -- Gbanga is the developer behind the location-based game, Gbanga Famiglia, and its Gbanga Puppetmaster API, which allows for interactive quests and separate location-based games. As such, the company has been nominated for the Red Herring Top 100 Europe Awards. Foursquare Hires Morgan Missen -- Social, location-based app developer Foursquare continues to expand. The company has just recently hired Morgan Missen, former recruiter for Twitter, as their new "head of talent." AT&T and T-Mobile USA Break Up Would Cost $6 Billion -- According to a post from Reuters, should US regulators refuse the $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA, the former could lose up to $6 billion. The total would break down into $3 billion in cash, $2 billion worth of spectrum, and a $1 billion roaming agreement. Apple Files Patent for Text-to-Speech Converter -- Patently Apple is reporting a new patent application from Apple. In short, the system would convert speech to text and visa versa. The primary purpose is to aid users in noisy environments, where sound levels would be detected and should it be too loud, convert received speech, automatically to text. However, users can also type messages and have them converted to speech for the recipient. [image via Patently Apple] iOS Developer Threatened With Patent Lawsuit -- An unknown company has sent a letter to James Thomson, threatening him with a patent infringment lawsuit for his use of Apple's in-app purchasing system for his free PCalc Lite application. The letter states that he has 21 days to license the technology with the enigmatic company, says Loop Insight. iPhone 5 Facebook Scam -- A new Facebook scam is circulating where a post stating "Apple iPhone 5G Exposed" is posted, with a link on a friend's Wall, says Redmond Pie. Clicking the link will take users to a CAPTCHA window and survey, upon completion of which will put an automatic wall posting on said user's Wall with them commenting the above quoted text with another link. Twitter Scores a Partnership with NTT DOCOMO: Twitter, which has unexpectedly become big in Japan as they say, has reached an agreement with the country's mobile operator to develop apps and services incorporating Twitter for DOCOMO feature phones and smartphones. Particle Code Attempts to Answer the "Write Once, Run Anywhere" Dream: Another day. Another cross-platform solution. Palo Alto's Particle Code's solution is built on the Eclipse IDE, an environment and suite of tools for Java developers, and supports languages from Java, C# to ActionScript3.

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Friday Mobile Roundup: Android Standards, Check-Ins, Patents & More

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