1）YD Online公司最近发布了一款有趣的iPhone游戏《GEO Hunters》，它是基于地理定位的角色扮演游戏，要求玩家在与其他竞争对手对决的同时，击退自己领土上的怪兽。

该游戏可免费下载，其玩法有赖于谷歌地图功能，玩家可通过卫星视图看到全球各地遍布各种怪兽。有一些怪兽可直接显示于地图，还有些深藏不露的怪兽只有在重大事件发生时才会现形。也就是说，玩家得高度关注世界要闻，才能对付随时可能在世界热点地区冒泡的怪兽。因此有人认为，这款游戏中的阿拉伯地区已经成为怪兽横行的天下。玩家可以选择扮演三种角色：战士、猎人或者魔法师，走到不同地区时遇到的怪兽级别也会有所不同。如果要发现这些“潜伏”的怪兽，玩家最好将屏幕放大后再进行侦察，否则即使是最有经验的GEO玩家也会束手无策。

GEO Hunter

2）亚马逊Appstore与美国运营商威瑞森联手推出了促销活动，从4月25日开始，凡是通过威瑞森购买了Android移动设备的用户，均可获得价值25美元的亚马逊Appstore消费积分，活动截止时间是5月1日。由此可以看出，亚马逊的确很重视其应用商店的发展，有意打造一个杀手级的应用销售平台。（游戏邦注：该应用商店自从上月上线以来，目前共有7500多种应用）

以这种奖励手段刺激用户访问亚马逊Appstore是一个很可行的方法，因为对一些用户来说，访问该应用商店需要经过繁琐的下载流程才能执行操作。AT&T的手机也禁止用户下载第三方应用，以防其用户使用亚马逊Appstore的产品。

Amazon Appstore

3）移动广告网站Adzookie推出了一项创意广告营销活动，如果户主同意把自己的房子漆成一个彻头彻尾的巨型广告牌，那么Adzookie就会为该户主支付每月按揭贷款，但前提是这座房子必须是户主本人的资产，不可是租赁或借来的房子。这项广告合作至少持续3个月，甚至可能延长至一整年，如果3个月后房主不打算继约或者Adzookie中途取消合作，该公司将负责把房子恢复原貌。

adzookie

4）由Kage Games开发的一款Android手机游戏《Dog War》最近遭到动物保护主义者的谴责。该游戏目前在Android应用商店推出了测试版本，支持玩家挑选各自的狗，并让它们相互厮咬进行决斗。玩家可使用虚拟货币购买steroid等游戏道具增加小狗的攻击力，也可以通过体验其中的迷你游戏来增加小狗的经验值。

该游戏在Android应用商店页面的下载量约5万至25万次，但Kage Games工作室辩称他们绝对并没恶意，这只是一款讽刺性的游戏，并表示将把部分收益捐献给动物保护组织，他们一方面致力于保护动物，另一方面也捍卫自由表达的权利。

Dog War

5）手机应用推广服务公司Tapjoy公司首席执行官Mihir Shah在最近的Venturebeat移动峰会上表示，通过与苹果沟通，他们决定自动限制“下载奖励”推广手段，让应用程序通过用户推荐、好评、高使用率或黏性等优势，自然跻身前25强应用榜单。

虽然苹果至今仍未对此发表评论，但已有消息称苹果正与其他受到影响的App Store开发商等公司进行类似的谈判。Shah还指出未来将有更多公司涌入手机应用领域，并通过交叉推广模式争取应用曝光率，这一点会增加应用推广以及检索产品的难度，他还是认为在高度分散性的应用市场中，人们还是需要一些有效的广告推广方式，而下载奖励在过去一直就是很可行的模式。

Tapjoy CEO on venturebeat mobile summit

6）亚马逊最近也加入微软的行列，声称苹果并不享有App Store的商标权，理由是“app store只是一个通用词，亚马逊使用这一词并不会引起任何品牌混淆，也绝不是不正当竞争手段”，苹果应该收回对亚马逊的商标侵权起诉。

7）第二届APPNATION Show Me the Money大会将于4月27至28日在美国旧金山召开，届时将有250名开发商代表出席本次大会。大会主讲人包括Zynga、AT&T、Twitter、Groupon、CNN、The North Face、BBDO、Crispin Porter、PepsiCo和《纽约时报》等行业代表。除此之外，红杉资本、BlueRun Ventures等风险投资机构也将光临会场，与开发商群体进行交流。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

1）GEO Hunters is a location-based RPG for iPhone

A company called YD Online unveiled an interesting game for the iPhone users. Called GEO Hunters, it’s a location-based role playing game (RPG) that lets users defend their neighborhood from monsters while competing against other players for top rank.

Available as a free download, it relies on Google Maps to provide a satellite-view landscape combined with a fantasy world where monsters have taken over areas around the globe. Some monsters stay put, while “hidden” monsters appear depending on what’s happening in world news. In other words, you’ll have to stay informed on the world affairs to better defend the world as monsters will popup in hot spots throughout the world. I bet these monsters are raging all over the Arab world in GEO Hunters as we speak.

You choose one of three characters – Warrior, Hunter or Magician, and as you move to different locations, you’ll battle different classes of monsters. In order to see those “hidden” monsters, you’ll have to zoom in to detect them, otherwise they’ll elude even the most experienced GEO Hunter.（source:intomobile）

2）With $25 Android App Giveaway, Amazon Shows Larger Ambitions

Tweet Amazon is giving new Verizon Android customers who buy a phone on AmazonWireless $25 worth of credits for apps in its Amazon App Store. The promotion ends on May 1 and is limited to one carrier. But it’s another sign of how serious Amazon is taking its app store and how, in a larger sense, it is filling out an ecosystem that can one day be the basis for a killer tablet platform.

The app store promotion builds off Amazon’s already robust handset sales channel and provides a nice boost to the fledgling Amazon Appstore for Android, which launched last month and now boasts some 7,500 apps. It’s a small number compared to the hundreds of thousands of apps in Apple’s App Storeor Google’s Android Market, but by pushing out a $25 discount in conjunction with Verizon, Amazon is showing that it is willing to get creative in promoting the store. Incentives might be a necessary step, because accessing the store requires a multi-step download process that can be tricky for some. AT&T also prohibits the downloading of third-party apps, which prevents its customers from using the Amazon App Store.（source:gigaom）

3）Mobile Ad Network Offers To Pay Mortgage In Return For Branding Your House

The mobile ad network Adzookie is offering monthly mortgage payments for home owners who agree to have their house painted like a giant billboard, complete with social links.

Here’s the low down:

You must own your home. It cannot be rented or leased. We’ll paint the entire outside of the house, minus the roof, the windows and any awnings. Painting will take approximately 3 – 5 days. Your house must remain painted for at least three months and may be extended up to a year. If, for any reason, you decide to cancel after three months or if we cancel the agreement with you, we’ll repaint your house back to the original colors.（source:.mobileinc）

4）New dog fighting Android app draws criticism

A new mobile game that features Pokemon-style dog fighting has some animal advocates disgusted. The game’s maker says its game is being misunderstood.

Dog Wars is currently available in its beta (unfinished) form on the Android market. The studio developing the game, Kage Games, have received threats from animal activists about their mobile game.

In this game you can select your dog, prepare it for battle by buying items like steroids using in-game currency. Players can spend time developing the dogs bite by playing a tug of war mini-game.

Wisconsin Humane Society Jill Kline heard about the game recently. It’s marketplace page shows Dog Wars has been downloaded 50,000-250,000 times.

Kage Games issued a statement saying, “We do not condone violence towards animals or humans. This is a satire about the ridiculousness of dogfighting, and we believe in the power of a modern media tool to educate, and raise awareness of the real horrors.”

The satire may be lost on some who believe the game glorifies dog fighting.

Kage Games didn’t provide any specifics, but said a portion of the proceeds go to animal rescue organizations. They say their effort is part animal service, part freedom of expression.（source:fox6now）

5）VentureBeat Interpreting InnovationVentureBeat Profiles

Tapjoy limits certain promotions to ease Apple’s concerns on gaming the top ranks

s Mobile app distribution is kind of in a state of limbo on Apple’s App Store, thanks to a recent change in policy on running promotions that use one app to market and install other apps on user’s phones.

Mobile app distribution service Tapjoy said last week that a number of its developers have found that Apple has rejected their apps because they were running incentivized app installations, where one app encourages users to download another app as a kind of advertising promotion, in exchange for rewards in the original app.

Mihir Shah, chief executive of Tapjoy, said at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit today that, after a conversation with Apple, Tapjoy has voluntarily put a limit on these so-called pay-per-install promotions so that an app cannot rise to the top 25 list of apps through this kind of promotion alone. Apps should be able to reach that list through user recommendations, good reviews, and longer usage, or engagement.

Shah added that Tapjoy’s pay-per-install system works properly because there isn’t just a “daisy chain” of cross promotion going on between users in the same part of the market. He points out that Tapjoy’s top customers are not just game companies. That means that the cross promotion that is happening is serving a real purpose of introducing new users to new kinds of apps. It isn’t just a circular, or insular gaming of the system going on, he said.

Shah said that more major brands are coming into the mobile app market and are planning on using cross-promotion in a big way to get their apps noticed. That will further broaden the community of apps being promoted and users being reached. Finally, Shah said the mobile app market is so fragmented that it desperately needs advertising promotions that truly work. Pay-per-install has proven itself in this respect.（source:venturebeat）

6）Amazon demands App Store trademark trash, says Steve Jobs made it generic

Amazon has joined Microsoft in calling for Apple’s App Store trademark to be rejected, arguing that “because ‘app store’ is a generic term, and Amazon’s use of the term causes no likelihood of confusion, dilution, 19 or unfair competition” the Apple legal case against them should be dropped. Like Microsoft, Amazon’s argument is that Apple’s own CEO, Steve Jobs, referred to generic “app stores” in the company’s financial results call back in October 2010.

Then, Jobs described the Apple App Store as “the easiest-to-use, largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone.” Amazon reckon that’s tacit agreement that the term is generic, and point to linguistic research that says the same:

“Based on their common meaning, the words “app store” together denote a store for apps, such as the app stores operated by Amazon and Apple. The American Dialect Society, a leading group of U.S. linguists, recently voted “app” as the “Word of the Year” for 2010, noting that although the word “has been around for ages,” it “really exploded in the last 12 months” with the “arrival of ‘app stores’ for a wide spectrum of operating systems for phones and computers.” Indeed, the words “app store” are commonly used among many businesses competing in the app store market.” Amazon counter-suit.

Previously, Apple had attempted to give Microsoft a legal spanking by arguing that “Windows” was just as generic, and pointing to the company’s own history of trademark infringement suits filed to prevent rivals from using it. Whether the Cupertino company will make similar comments about rainforests remains to be seen.（source:slashgear）

7）Second annual APPNATION offers opportunities for developers

Think you’ve got a great idea for a consumer app but don’t know how to take it to the next step? Consider attending APPNATION Show Me the Money conference in San Francisco April 27-28.

Billed as the “Premiere Marketplace Event for the Consumer App Economy,” this second annual event will feature a wide range of speakers from such companies as Zynga, AT&T, Twitter, Groupon, CNN, The North Face, BBDO, Crispin Porter, PepsiCo and the New York Times.

About 250 developers will exhibit.

“The app economy is filled with some of the most dynamic personalities in the tech industry,” said Drew Ianni, CEO and founder of M2 Events, APPNATION’s parent company. “We’re also especially pleased that tech visionary, Tim Bajarin, will attend and moderate.”

APPNATION will also play host to DEVNATION, a large portion of the exposition show floor offering developers of all sizes the chance to exhibit, network and showcase their apps.

The VC community will also be represented. Sequoia Capital is a presenting partner. BlueRun Ventures will host a “pitch desk” for developers.

Matthaus Kryzykowski, CEO of Xyologic, will issue the first ever white paper report regarding the in-app economy, titled “What Apple Just Wiped Out – The Top Freemium US iPhone Game

Downloads Before The Fall” available for all attendees.

There is a discount for early registration until April 24.（source:techflash）