Nine Over Ten 9/10

One dilemma faced by developers of iPhone apps would be how to market their apps. In the age of social media, there’s just plenty of stuff to do in order to promote your game. Fortunately, this is where PR companies like Fusion PR Group step in.

Check out the following press release to find out more about their new affordable rates and comprehensive services:

Fusion PR Group Launches New Pricing Model for iPad and Mobile App Developers

Full-Service Communications Firm Recognizes and Addresses Specific Needs of App Companies Competing in Extremely Cluttered Space

LOS ANGELES –(Business Wire)– Feb 09, 2010 Fusion PR Group, a premier public relations and social media firm, today announced a new pricing platform to help mobile developers get attention for their new applications and games. The agency now has five distinct pricing packages, offering scaling activity levels and different combinations of press outreach and Internet marketing. Pricing now starts as low as $750 a month for a basic media outreach program.

“Fusion PR Group has worked with several app developers since launching last fall, and we’ve received inquiries from dozens of others,” said James Little, co-founder, Fusion PR Group. “We recognize that many of these companies often cannot afford traditional PR retainers, yet PR services are critical for each product launch. The mobile apps marketplace is crowded, so developers need help attracting users via press coverage and social media.”

“The iPhone now more than 100,000 apps on the Apple iTunes App Store, Google’s Android mobile platform has 20,000 apps and Blackberry’s App World has about 4,500. Apple’s iPad will certainly expand the app world even further,” said Jennifer Campana, co-founder, Fusion PR Group. “Fusion PR Group can help new apps get noticed among this incredible amount of competition. We have built relationships with key reporters and bloggers in the space, and effectively use social networking tools to get results.”

The Fusion PR Group team believes the Apple iPad app market will also quickly become crowded, as many iPhone app developers will simply port their apps and games over to this exciting new platform. With its expertise in the mobile space, Fusion PR Group is already well suited to address the needs of developers looking to do so.

For more information on Fusion PR Group’s five new pricing tiers, please email info@fusionprgroup.com.

About Fusion PR Group

Fusion PR Group is a full-service marketing communications firm made up of only senior level communications professionals who specialize in launching new companies and products in the video games, mobile, consumer products and technology sectors. As a departure from the traditional agency model, we represent a new way of thinking about how to most efficiently meet the communications and business goals of our clients.

Our strategically executed campaigns fuse the best tactics from PR and social media, so every campaign we develop lives at the crossroads of new media and old school tactics. We also understand how important value is, so we have eliminated overhead costs, and pass the savings on to our clients. With the team and the tools in place to achieve great results, we are confident about delivering results that will meet and exceed client expectations. For more information, visit www.fusionprgroup.com.

This guy must be a genius. I’m talking about Charles McGinnis, creator of several iPhone games. When he first approached me to review his first game,  Battle Trivia, I came away thinking that the amount of effort put into the game was tremendous and the fact that he was doing it part time was just, astounding.

Charles is back, and this time his latest game is a totally different kettle of fish.  Eschewing trivia for playing cards, his latest game is titled Poker Tower. Now, I’m pretty sure that most people are familiar with the game Solitaire, thanks mostly to Microsoft bundling the game with Windows.

Poker Tower has a similar concept, but instead of arranging cards in a sequence, you are supposed to arrange the cards into poker hands!

Different poker hands net you different amount of points. A straight flush is worth 10 points while having two pairs in a sequence of 5 cards nets you a single point. Each level has a target score to reach before the entire deck is consumed. Reaching the target score allows you to carry forward your score to the next level to reach the next target score.

With three lanes, players can form three different hands at a time. It really boils down to strategy and luck on which lane you want to shunt an open card to. I’m not sure whether the tactic of counting cards would work here, but hey, if it does, do tell.

The game conveniently shows the type of hands and the number of points they are worth on the left hand side of the screen. At the bottom of the screen, you get to see the remaining cards available (that are not yet opened).

The concept of using poker hands instead of the plain old Solitaire-style sequence of cards is a pretty smart one. I’m not much of a poker player, but the game allows me to reacquaint myself with the different poker hands in time for Chinese New Year.

Poker Tower also measures statistics but this feature can be switched off from the main menu. The only thing I find missing here is OpenFeint or some other form of global leaderboard.

At 99 cents, you can’t go wrong with Poker Tower;  click here to download it. And someone please give Charles an award.

It’s big, has a pretty screen, but has plenty of meh, or according to some people: “it only does what??”. Yup,  ladies and gentlemen, Apple gives you its most “advanced technology”, the iPad and it still doesn’t support multitasking and Adobe Flash.

A good mind is a terrible thing to waste, and wasteful is what Apple has become with the iPad’s 1GHz processor. Maybe it’s just hubris on their part: “The iPhone didn’t do multitasking and yet we sold millions!”.

With such a nice screen I would probably want to browse YouTube from the comforts of my lazy boy, but nooo, the browser doesn’t allow that. Can I enjoy some Flash-based games like Tower Defense? No to that as well.

This device will most likely cause some “sheep” to question Apple. And if you were to ask me whether is it ok to plonk USD 500 for such a device? My advice would be hubris = rubbish.