It’s all been about location this week. We visited the world’s largest Apple store near our Boston office to capture on film the frenzy that was the Apple 3G iPhone launch. Take a look at our blog to see for yourselves.

The Prompt UK team has been out and about this week too – we went to Mobile Monday in London to hear about some of the applications that are being developed for mobile devices, and attended a presentation on the future of online games as a marketing initiative. Read on to see what we learned, as well as the usual array of media updates and tech news.

Enjoy.

Hazel Butters
CEO
Prompt Communications

The New Gaming Eco-System

By Sally Forge

This week Prompt attended a fascinating presentation from games developer Errorware. Founder Chris Etches explained how the proliferation of online gaming forums and portals means that brands can no longer rely on their own marketing power to attract visitors to their campaign sites when launching games as a marketing initiative. Instead, they need to engage with gamers at the online destinations where they already congregate.

The event included examples of great grames – such as Wrigley’s classic Polarity game; the effective, a Mr Bump pinball game which attracted over 11 million plays within two months and supported the re-launch of the Mr Men brand; and the ‘yet-to-come’, with a preview of a game created using the new game authoring tool Unity (the game is an update of the old Zaphod and Aztec).

According to Etches, “the new gaming eco-system is the real world that any game created has to live in. The world of online gaming is not a closed off walled garden any more, content moves, changes and survives or dies based on how it interacts within this world.” The old ‘send to friend’ function combined with a few seeding activities is not enough to create a successful and effective marketing campaign. The job of the brands is to develop creative, compelling games that users will want to share. As Etches says, “good content will be passed around.”

Meanwhile Prompt is still recovering from the disappointment of witnessing the enforced modernisation of the Mr Men’s Mr Strong.

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Mobile Monday

By Terrie Chilvers

‘Enabling location in applications’ was the hot topic at fortnightly mobile technology event, Mobile Monday London, with companies such as GoogleGears, BuddyPing, Rummble and Skyhook Wireless all presenting their ideas. Various representatives of Mobile Monday from around the world also attended.

Some of the services discussed included Skyhook’s global wi-fi system for the iPhone and NinetyTen’s BuddyPing service that allows mobile phone users to pinpoint the location of their friends.

Prompt’s Max McConnell said of the event “there was a strong panel containing some of the web’s largest companies and small leading-edge companies. It’s clear that location-based services are poised to take off in a big way.”

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Attack on the clones

By James Gerber

Apple is suing Psystar, a maker of Mac clones. Psystar has been selling computers with Mac OS X installed on non-Apple hardware. Psystar doesn’t come with all the perks of the actual Mac – it’s missing key features like Bluetooth, DVD burning or computer updates.

It seems Apple has become fed up with the Mac clones and filed suit this week in California. The lawyer who provided the initial information stated that “the suit alleges counts for violation of its shrink wrap license, trademark and copyright infringement.”

The company is taking the suit a step further than just getting Psystar to cease and desist selling the system, it claims that Psystar damaged its brand and deceived the public. I find that specious – I had never heard of the company before reading about the lawsuit.

If anything, Apple is damaging its own brand by not allowing outside companies to put Apple operating systems on their hardware. There is a large demand for it and Windows, with the majority share of the software market for the past decade, seems to be doing pretty well with that approach. It’s time for Apple to embrace hardware makers and let them license its operating system in a controlled way, so that companies like Psystar become a legitimate avenue for Apple software, with Apple controlling quality.

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UK lagging in open source league

By Dave Wilby

Computer Weekly featured a report from analyst Forrester this week, which claimed the UK is languishing at the bottom of the open source adoption league.

The new research represents a snapshot of open source adoption across Europe and the US and examines reasons and rates of adoption for the burgeoning software development methodology. The UK apparently boasts just 15 percent of businesses opting for open source.

France had a far better showing, with 24 percent of enterprises and small and medium sized businesses surveyed claiming to have adopted open source software.

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Waterstones jumps on eBook bandwagon

By Dave Wilby

UK High Street bookshop stalwart Waterstones took the plunge this week and announced its first venture into the world of digital books. The retailer confirmed it would launch its first electronic book reader device, or eBook, this autumn.

The Independent said Waterstones, part of the HMV group, had signed up with Sony to sell the Sony Reader through major outlets. Pricing is yet to be confirmed but the Sony device sells for around $299, or around £150, in the US.

Rival Borders was the first UK bookshop to sell eBooks when it began marketing the iLiad for £399 in May this year.

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Games N’ Roses

By Terrie Chilvers

The first official track from the new Guns N’ Roses album will be released as part of video game, Rock Band 2. The last album from the band was The Spaghetti Incident? back in 1993 and fans have been awaiting new material ever since.

The BBC reported that the track in question is Shackler’s Revenge, taken from the album Chinese Democracy which is set to be released in the US in September. Probably best not to hold your breath though, release dates have been bandied about for years now. The Rock Band franchise is clearly going from strength to strength with some seriously big names signing up to be included.

Paul DeGooyer of MTV Games who publish the Rock Band game said, “We are honoured that such legendary artists as AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Bob Dylan and more have chosen Rock Band 2 as a new platform for fans.”