We recently have had the blessing and pleasure of partnering with the Flash game developer JackSmack (www.jacksmack.com) to port the hit online game, Globs, to iOS, Android, and Nook Color. Globs has had over 70 million plays online since its release. The last couple weeks we have worked on bring this game to mobile and we would like to share with you some of the challenges and design considerations we worked through in the process of porting Globs.

Touch Changes the Game

This may be a painfully obvious statement, but the way you interact with your computer is much different than the way you interact with your mobile devices. On a computer where a mouse and keyboard drive your interactions it makes sense to have UI (user interface) elements like navigation and buttons at the top of the screen. This is largely due to the fact that in the western world we read from top to bottom and left to right. So we put the important stuff at the top and left sides of the screen. On a mobile device those conventions don’t work as well though because you are holding the device. Have you noticed on your device that there are a lot more navigation bars at the bottom of your screen? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t noticed, it took a while for my brain to actually catch that fact because intuitively it just made sense to my hands. Why is that? Some people have coined this the rule of the thumb. Because we hold these devices in our hands while interacting with them our thumbs become the main drivers. From typing on the keyboard to clicking on links, your thumbs do the majority of the heavy lifting on mobile devices—which brings us back to Globs.

From the screenshots above you can see that game controls were flipped from being anchored to the top of the screen in the desktop version to being anchored to the bottom of the screen in the mobile version. The desktop version gave players freedom to choose how they wanted to play by either clicking on the globs in the control area or to pressing the corresponding keys on the keyboard. On the mobile version we did not have such freedoms. We obeyed the rule of the thumb and kept the buttons within thumbs reach. We also had to take into account that the most popular smart phones have abandoned keyboards all together in favor of full sized touch screens. We increased the size of the buttons to accommodate thumb presses and tried to give as much room between them as we could to minimize accidental button presses.

Smaller Screen Sizes

Out of necessity mobile screens are considerably smaller than computer monitors. Its true that smart phone displays are starting to catch up to their desktop cousins in terms of resolutions, but mobile screens will always be relatively small in comparison. To accommodate smaller screen sizes certain concessions need to be made when porting a game to mobile devices. In the case of Globs we tried simplifying the game to its core gameplay elements. You can see from the screen shots that we removed the busy tiled background and went with a solid blue. The look of the game board also had to be simplified, so a solid off-white colored board was chosen to help the globs pop on smaller screens.

When designing for smaller screens its important that the elements in your design pop. Increase the contrast in the graphics from the desktop version so elements are easily distinguishable at the smaller sizes. This might be weird to designers from other mediums, such as print and web, but for games its better to error on the side of overly contrasty bright bold graphics. In Globs, bright saturated colors were chosen and highlights and shadows were added to all the elements through the game. Readability can also be an issue on smaller screens so we went with with text and black drop shadows for the hud (need to explain the same way you explained UI) elements and white text with black outlines and drop shadows for popup elements. Through the colors and treatments chosen we were able to give the game a visual hierarchy where the white board has prominence while the black bar of buttons at the bottom and the hud weigh in second and third.

As I mentioned at the beginning, when porting a game over to mobile you don’t want to change the core experience of the game. Glob’s square grid system is one of its core game elements and we quickly realized that any changes to this system would need to be handled with gloves. Because the mobile version of Globs is in portrait orientation, we toyed with the idea of changing the proportions of the board to better fit the space. After some discussion we came to the realization that moving away from a square grid would actually change the strategy of the game. To remain true to the original version we had to keep the square grid, however, to accommodate the smaller screen size and to simplify the experience for new players, we opted to start the game with a 6×6 grid instead of the 9×9 grid. We feel that this makes it easier for new players to quickly understand the game and gives them a chance to ease into it, while keeping the core game play experience intact for existing fans.

Shorter Play Times

If I’m like most mobile gamers, my play times are considerably shorter than when I’m on my computer or console. My typical usage pattern is a few minutes here and there when I have some down time. Mobile games should be built with these short play sessions in mind and not penalize players for needing to quit. In the mobile version of Globs we always allow you to continue from where you left off, no matter which mode you were playing. If you loose a level you can simply retry the level. As a gamer, one of my top frustrations is investing a good amount of time into a game and then being forced to start completely over from the beginning upon losing. We made it a point to constantly save the players progress to make it easy to resume play and encourage player to pick up the game again and again.

It’s yet to be seen how well Globs does in the mobile space, but we have worked very hard to preserve fun experience JackSmack created in the online version of Globs and we have done our best to improve the experience where we could. I believe there are great opportunities for mobile developers who are willing to work with flash game developers to port their games to mobile. This is especially true since Flash has still not been able to match the performance for mobile as other platforms such as Corona SDK.

You can play the original version of the game at www.jacksmack.com/games/550/globs.html

If you’re interested in playing the mobile versions of the game you can download from the Apple Appstore and Android Marketplace below.

• Purchase Globs on Apple AppStore
• Purchase Globs on Android Market

The post Porting a Hit Online Game to Mobile appeared first on Paper Tower.

Watch the video, be inspired, and help Charity: Water bring clean water to the world.

Scott Harrison – charity: water from Big Omaha on Vimeo.

The post Charity Water appeared first on Paper Tower.

Hiring an app marketing agency can be costly. On the low end you’re going to be spending $3,000 and the high end runs into tens of thousands of dollars. Most of them have different packages that include submitting to review sites, tweeting, managing your  Facebook page, putting out press releases, etc. To most independent developers an app marketing agency is not a luxury that can be afforded. Other developers, like us, even though we could afford an agency we choose not to because in our eyes increases the risk of developing the app. So what do I mean by that? The lower the cost to bring an app to market, the lower the risk to take of developing that app. If you spend $10,000 in real money or opportunity costs, your app has to make that money back before it is profitable. If you add a few thousand more dollars of marketing costs after the development costs you just added more to your total investment and risk.

Now let me be clear about one thing—you have to market your app. Marketing can have a huge impact on the success or failure of an app. It is not option, it has to be done. Before you point to apps like Tiny Wings and Bubble Ball let me point out that those are exceptions or flukes. For every Tiny Wings app, there are thousands and thousands of apps on the app store that no one has heard of. And they receive only a few downloads a year. You can’t just put out your app and wait on people to discover it, you’re going to need to invest in marketing. The good news is that investing in marketing your app doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money.

Before we talk about where to spend your time and money marketing your app, lets start with what doesn’t work. In our experience investing in ads doesn’t work. We have seen absolutely no up tick in our sales based on ads we have bought. It might work for larger developers that can afford to canvas review sites with their apps, but if you’re a little developer don’t waste your money. The only possible exception to this rule is what I’m going to call a payoff. There are some sites that offer a deal where if you purchase ad space they will review your app. That won’t guarantee you a good review, but it will get your app reviewed in more places and that has been worth it to us in the past.

So where should you invest your time and resources? First, we spend a lot of time making sure all our marketing materials are polished. This includes the app description, screenshots, trailer, and website. Writing should be brief and enticing, written for normal people and stripped of all marketing speak. A few sentences to a paragraph is plenty for the description. Include a bulleted list of the features. Screenshots and trailers go a long way to convince people to check out your app. The idea of a trailer may intimidate some people, but it can be as simple recording yourself using the app. If your app is a game this is especially true, people love to see game play footage.

Second, invest your time in trying to acquire app reviews. We believe that app review sites are the second place people go to find out about new apps. The first place is the app store. We have not control over the app store lists, but you can have impact on the review sites. Spend time compiling a list of all the top review sites. Here is a list of the top ten to get you started. There are many many more sites out there, put them in a spread sheet and include contact information/submission guidelines. Each site is different in how they want people to contact them for app submission/reviews, so make notes on the spreadsheet. Develop relationships with reviewers at these sites. Don’t overlook the lesser trafficked sites, many will jump at the chance to review a cool new app. Finally when it comes to reviews, don’t forget about youtube. Do a search on youtube for app reviews. You’ll be surprised how many individuals review apps—its not just companies. Make a list of those reviewers and contact them as well.

What do you say when contacting reviewers? When emailing reviewers it is important to be polite, brief, and provide them with enough information to entice them into making a decision to review your app. Here is an example of an email we sent out for Float.

Would you like to review our new game Float for iOS devices? Its current on the New and Noteworthy list and its starting to get some good attention. Let me know and I’ll send you a promo code. Thanks.

Description

Float is a game that makes you feel happy. Try to keep the balloons in the air and off the spikes. Tap, bobble, and bump your way to fun. With multiple games modes, achievements, and leader boards there is something for everyone.

• 4.5 out of 5 – Appsmile.com
• 4.5 out of 5 – CrazyMikesapps.com
• 4 out of 5 – Appspy.com

Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxnH3aWf38

iTunes

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/float/id409855273?mt=8

Features

• Multiple Game Modes
• Retina Graphics
• Open Feint & Facebook Leaderboards
• Over 40 Achievements
• Post Your Scores to Facebook
• Increase Your Fun with Game Mode Packs

Price

$0.99

More Info

www.floatgame.com

On some review sites there is another opportunity to market your app and that is in the fourms. One of the most vibrant hubs of app discussion is the toucharcade.com forum. Most of the app forums have dedicated channels where developers can announce their new app. Similar to the email example above, post important information about your app like pricing, screenshots, and trailer links. Encourage feedback in your post and don’t be afraid to give away promo codes. Don’t forget to subscribe to the post, that way you will be notified when someone posts a comment and you can keep the post activity going.

Third, get involved in social media. With over 600 million people on Facebook and 100 million registered users on Twitter these are clearly online hubs of communication. Since most people in your social circles are presumably interested in you and the things you are doing its low hanging fruit. But go the extra steps, especially in the case with Facebook. Not only setup a facebook page for your company or apps, but develop your apps with social integration in mind. In the case of our games, we give the player the opportunity to post their score to their facebook stream, compete against their friends in Facebook leaderboards, and like our company and the game. If people like the app and you give them the tools, they will market it for you.

Fourth, always develop a lite or free versions of the app. People want to try before they buy. Even if the price is only $0.99, there will always be a portion that people that just won’t purchase without trying it first. Like a digital drug dealer, give away a taste for free and then when people are hooked charge them for more. We have done both free and lite versions of games. Both work well it just depends on your strategy. We have made more money off the free version of Float that serves ads than the paid version in the Apple store. Our strategy going forward is to release the paid version with a lite version that drives them to the paid version. Depending on how well the paid version performs, we will then remove the lite version and put out a free version with ads. You can always put out a free version later, so hold off and see how well your paid version does.

Finally, consider doing giveaways. There are lots of ways to do this, as I mentioned above giving away promo codes through forums, review sites, twitter, etc is a great way to spread the word. Consider large giveaway programs and sites. Most of them require revenue sharing or a fee upfront, but they can get you a huge amount of exposure. One example is FreeAppADay.com. It has a large amount of followers and can be used as a calculated risk. We used them to promote Float Free. We paid them $3,500 to participate in their give away and it catapulted Float Free to the top of the free charts. This calculated risk paid off for us through $12,000 in ad revenue. Another great give away program is through Open Feint. If you use Open Feint in your app you can participate in their give away program. The terms for their program are revenue share or an upfront payment. If you don’t want to spend any money, you can always just change the price of your app to free in the store. Simply by making the app free will get your app on quite a few sites’ radars, which can lead to new reviews and increased exposure. All giveaways and free periods need to be thought out though. Making your app free will increase exposure and downloads, but your app’s ratings will suffer. People don’t value free so you will get a lot of people downloading your app just because it is free, not because they have any real interest in it. Bad comments and one star reviews are sure to follow, so be prepared going into it. One good strategy is to have an update ready to roll out after the free period to wash away the bad reviews and get your ratings back up. Calculate your risks and plan ahead to make the most out of giveaways.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas to try. Having little or no marketing budget doesn’t mean you can’t generate exposure for your app. We believe using these techniques that we can do a better job marketing our apps for far less risk, enabling us to continue to make games.

The post Marketing Your App on a Shoestring Budget appeared first on Paper Tower.

Recently I’ve been reading several business books and one book in particular has given me several nuggets of wisdom. Founders at Work is comprised of a series of interviews with founders during their startup years. In the first two chapters, Max Levchin (Paypal founder) and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail Founder) talk about how their businesses had built in virality. In the case of Hotmail, when someone sends you an email from Hotmail at the bottom of the email is a little advertisement letting you know that the email came from Hotmail and you can get a free account there too. From a business standpoint that is absolutely brilliant. Free advertising built into every single email sent. That little link was a huge contributing factor of why Hotmail went viral and it turned into the success it has become.

So here are some questions I’ve been wrestling with lately—How do we make our games more viral? How do we reward people for telling their friends about our game? How do we build a fan base/community around our games? If you’re a game developer I’m sure you have asked yourself the same questions. As I look around our social media landscape, its obvious that Facebook is the big player. And whether you like it or not—their “Like Button” has become a very powerful tool to spread the word about something cool or believe in. With that in mind, I’ve spent the last few days diving into the Facebook Api trying to understand all the ways we can use Facebook to encourage virality and setting up a system which we could use in all our games going forward.

Right now we have decided there are four actions we want to encourage users to take within our games. That is to say, we want to encourage four other actions in addition to the standard post your score to Open Feint and Facebook, which are standard fare. We want to encourage players to Like Crawl Space on Facebook, Like Our Game, Rate the Game, and Tell a Friend About the Game.

Lets jump into some code. In our main.lua file we define some variables. The code below shows our default variables being defined using the CrawlSpace Library.

Defaults{rateGame=false, likeUs=false, likeGame=false, tellFriend=false}

These variables come into use during our game through two classes. The first class is adBar.lua. The adBar class allows us to place an ad bar wherever we like on the screen. You can define if you want to show external ads like AdMob or “house” ads which in this case is what we want to do. If you understand how to make text or graphic with a listener then you understand the adBar class. I’m not going to go into all the code, but I will show you one of the listener functions in the class.

openLikeGame = function(event)
    if event.phase == "began" then
        local url = websiteUrl.."likegame.php"
        easyFB:showLikeBox(url)
    end
end

As you can see its a pretty standard listener function. We are listening for a touch phase. The if statement is looking specifically for the beginning of the touch phase, so the function isn’t called multiple times. After declaring our variable, url, we pass it into the work horse class “easyFB” where we call the showLikeBox function.

All Facebook interaction is handled in our easyFB.lua file. The easyFB class stands for “easy Facebook”. We took the Facebook example code included with the Corona SDk files and made a class that we reuse across our games—which I’m giving away today to all our lucky readers. Easy FB handles logging in and out, posting to wall, showing leaderboards, checking likes, and show like boxes. We will only touch on a few of these functions for this article, but feel free to post any questions you have or send me an email.

The first function, easyFB.login(), does what is says…it logs you into Facebook. You pass in your Facebook App Id and an optional callback function. The callback function will fire after you are logged into Facebook. The important part to highlight in this function is that we are requesting a few permissions from the user when they connect. They are giving us permission to see their likes and publish to their stream. We obviously don’t want to abuse these permissions, but they are needed to be able to post high scores to their wall and to check if they like our company and our game.

easyFB.login = function ( event, facebookAppId, cb )
    callback = cb
    facebook.login(facebookAppId, fbListener, {"user_likes", "publish_stream"} )
end

When logging into Facebook we attached a listener called “fbListener”. This function handles all the event login for the communication between facebook and the game. I apologize that the function is a little long and complex. The listener is the listener in the Facebook example code, bundle with corona, with a few additions.

fbListener = function( event )
    if ( "session" == event.type ) then
        -- event.phase is one of: "login", "loginFailed", "loginCancelled", "logout"
        if ( "login" == event.phase ) then
            setVar{"fbLoggedIn", true}
            facebook.request( "me/likes")
            if fbCommand == SHOW_DIALOG then
                facebook.showDialog( {action = "stream.publish"} )
            end
            if fbCommand == POST_PHOTO then
                facebook.request( "me/feed", "POST", attachment )
                Achieve("share")
            end
        elseif "logout" == event.phase then
            setVar{"fbLoggedIn", false}
        elseif "loginCancelled" == event.phase then
            callback = nil
            native.cancelWebPopup()
        end
        -- if there is a requested callback function, execute it
        if callback then callback() end
    elseif ( "request" == event.type ) then
        -- event.response is a JSON object from the FB server
        local response = event.response
        -- if request succeeds, create a scrolling list of friend names
        if ( not event.isError ) then
            response = json.decode( event.response )
            local data = response.data
            for i=1,#data do
                local name = data[i].name
                if name == company then
                    setVar{"likeUs", true}
                elseif name == game then
                    setVar{"likeGame", true}
                else
                end
            end
    elseif ( "dialog" == event.type ) then
    end
end
end

When someone successfully logs in to Facebook the login event.phase runs and we first set a variable to let the game know that the user is logged into Facebook then we request the users likes. Within this same listener, at the bottom half of the code, we see a check for “request”. This code receives the json data, decodes it then we loop through the users likes and check if they like our company or our game. We set respective variables to true accordingly.

elseif ( "request" == event.type ) then
        -- event.response is a JSON object from the FB server
        local response = event.response
        -- if request succeeds, create a scrolling list of friend names
        if ( not event.isError ) then
            response = json.decode( event.response )
            local data = response.data
            for i=1,#data do
                local name = data[i].name
                if name == company then
                    setVar{"likeUs", true}
                elseif name == game then
                    setVar{"likeGame", true}
                else
                end
            end

At this point we have determined if the player likes our company and if he/she likes our game. For illustration lets assume they have not liked either our game or company on Facebook. At this point we would provide the player with an enticing offer to like us, such as unlocking extra content if they like us on Facebook. The player clicks on the ad and it calls this function:

easyFB.showLikeBox = function(self, url)
    local urlPath = url
    local showLike = function()
        callback = nil
        native.cancelWebPopup()
        native.showWebPopup(centerX - 150, centerY - 200, 300, 400, urlPath, {urlRequest=webListener})
    end
    callback = showLike
    if retrieveVar("fbLoggedIn") == true then
        showLike()
    else
        facebook.login( facebookAppId, fbListener, {"user_likes", "publish_stream"}  )
    end
end

The showLikeBox accepts a url parameter, which is the url for the web page that we will popup. That web page contains a title, Facebook Like Button, and a close button. You can load all the code at the bottom of the post.

Anytime we call a web popup in the easyFb class we attach the same listener called “webListener”. This listener listens for three events, “corona:close”, “corona:likeUs”, and “corona:likeGame”. If a user clicks like in the popup, we have a javascript listener that will hide all content except for a thank you message a link to return to the game, which our webListener in the game listens for.

webListener = function( event )
    local shouldLoad = true
    local url = event.url
    if 1 == string.find( url, "corona:close" ) then
        -- Close the web popup
        if externalAds == true then
            adBar:openAds()
        end
        shouldLoad = false
    elseif 1 == string.find(url, "corona:likeUs") then
        setVar{"likeUs", true}
        shouldLoad = false
    elseif 1 == string.find(url, "corona:likeGame") then
        setVar{"likeGame", true}
        shouldLoad = false
    end
    return shouldLoad
end

We will be rolling out this system in all our games going forward starting with Globs and Bounce to Win both coming out in June. If you have any questions about the code let me know and I’ll be glad to assist.

Download Source Code

The post Likey Likey: Integrating Facebook Like Buttons & Corona SDK appeared first on Paper Tower.

It is our job to competently maintain high-quality intellectual capital while continuing to continually facilitate progressive meta-services

Our mission is to proactively coordinate emerging sources in order to solve business problems

It is our mission to completely utilize mission-critical opportunities to stay competitive in tomorrow’s world

Because of my rejection of mission statements, a couple years into our business I realized that we never hadn’t taken the time to capture the vision of Paper Tower. We were starting to be at a place to bring people onto our team and we needed something we could point to and say this what we are about. But ultimately it was something Brenden and I (founding partners) needed just as much as a new employee. Something for those difficult days, every business goes through, that would remind us why we’re putting in all the long hours and sacrificing to build a business.

Author and Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki believes that a mantra is a better way for businesses to communicate its purpose of existence. He recommends that mantras be three to four words long. Tops. Between Guy’s book The Art of the Start and another book called The Starbucks Experience those books helped me figure how I wanted to communicate the essence of Paper Tower. I like lists, so I settled on five guiding principles.

So, here are the principles that guide Paper Tower

1. Honor God
2. Be A Blessing
3. Do Great Work
4. Always Learn
5. Be Profitable

In a future maybe I’ll go into detail about each one of the principles, but for now I just want to share them. These principles are Paper Tower.

The post Our Guiding Principles appeared first on Paper Tower.

Whether we’re working on a website, app, or game—wireframing is typically the second step in our process. For web, we organize the pages into a visual hierarchy known as a sitemap. On the app side, in place of a sitemap, we create flow diagrams to understand the different routes a user will travel through the app. One important point to make here is that if this is client work we make sure the we get client sign off on step one before ever moving to this step. Inexperience interactive designers have a tendency to jump right into the design phase and make the mistake of skipping over these early architectural stages, which usually results in wasted time and lower profits.

Wireframing is of crucial importance, especially when interacting with clients. We have found that some clients struggle with sitemaps and conceptually trying to understand how a site fits together. In those cases, a wireframe is the first tangible visual that a client can sink his/her teeth into and get a sense of what their new app/site will actually look like. I tend to think of a wireframe as skeleton for the final design. As you are creating the skeleton important decisions are being made, such as what is the most important piece of information or action for the user? How much screen real estate does an element deserve? And how will users navigate through and interact with this site/app? The wireframe ends of dictating a large part of the design.

Here are some examples of the wireframes I’ve been working on. I wireframe in Photoshop. There are ton of different tools that can be used and I’m not the type of person that has a religious devotion to any one tool. I believe that the best tool for you is the one that you are most comfortable with and that enables you to get your work done in the most efficient manner—for me that is photoshop. The reasons I like Photoshop is that I am extremely fast in it and it segues nicely into the design phase. Typically we do our web and app designs in Photoshop. If we have vector assets we create them in Flash or Illustrator and them bring them into Photoshop. We do this because its a lot easier to save out graphics for web and apps through Photoshop than other tools. If the wireframe file is setup correctly in Photoshop, it is very easy to pass to any designer and begin work on the design phase. The site site/app will be in the correct dimensions, resolution, and elements should be close to their final locations.

The amount of detail we put into a wireframe really depends on the complexity and the client. From the above examples you can see that the home page for MCHC has a lot less detail than the interior page. This decision was made due to the complexity of the home page. The home is much more complex than the interior, so we stripped out almost all of the details, so the client could focus on the hierarchy and not get distracted by details. The interior page was so simple that we felt that more detail would be help the client understand what exactly was going on. As a rule, the simpler the better, but should be handled on a client by client basis.

What are your thoughts? Have a favorite tool or technique? Have questions? Let us know.

The post The Importance of Wireframing appeared first on Paper Tower.

My response to the company was a polite challenge—think differently about apps. Sure making the catalog app might mean that they can say their company has an app and they can pat themselves on the back during board meetings, but ultimately the proposed app really has little to no value for customers and would be a waste of the company’s resources. I’m not sure they were ready to hear my advice because I have not heard back from them. I tell this story not to try and embarrass anyone, but to point out a common mistake companies have in their thinking about apps.

At the most basic level a good app does one of two things—it solves a problem or simplifies a task. I use the Google Maps app because it solves my problem of getting driving directions, which by the way I’m kind of terrible with directions. I think it has to do with growing up in the country and now living in the city, but Google totally solves that problem for me and I love them for it. With their app, all i need to know is the name or address of my destination and the app gives me the quickest route. I don’t even have to know where I am, the GPS quickly pinpoints my location and I’m off. I have an affinity with the Google brand because they have solved my problem with directions.

Simplifying a task also makes a good app. Mint is a fantastic example of simplifying the task of money management. The Mint app helps me to keep tabs on my money by allowing me to easily setup a budget and see my bank and credit card balances. It also sends me reminders of upcoming bills and warns me if I’m going over my budget. If that wasn’t enough value, it even makes recommendations that could save me money. The Mint app on my iPhone great simplifies the task of managing my money—no longer do I need stop by the bank, or have a program on my computer or let alone a computer. The apps Google and Mint give a way for free do more for building their brands than millions of dollars in advertising could ever do.

So could your company benefit from an app? Yes, I bet your company has experience and insights that could really help people, but stay away from the herd mentality of wanting an app because they are the hot new thing. Do some research and see what apps are already out there in your field of expertise. Brainstorm to identify problems and cumbersome task your company solves or that your company experiences. If you put out an app that helps your company, I’m sure it will be of value to others. Finally, stay away from the “Look how great we are” type of app. The world does not need more valueless apps clogging up the app stores. Don’t tell us how great you are, show us by giving us something of value that makes our lives better. We will love you for it and we will grow a stronger bond with your brand than through all the marketing in the world.

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Today, we have a multilayered backup strategy that is employed through out the studio. While a project is active we create a folder in Dropbox organized by client and project. We purchased the 50gb account and that one account is synchronized across all our computers in the office. Hands down it is some of the best money we have spent. Our dropbox setup has a few advantages. First, all of our active projects are constantly synced across all computers, so we always have access to the most recent versions of files. Two, because they are synced across all the computers there is hardly ever a need to transfer a file to someone else in studio because everyone has a local copy of the active projects. Three, Dropbox has built in subversioning of files. If you make a mistake and need to roll something back, simply login and roll the file back. Four, you can share project folders with clients. Sharing this way is nicer than giving client’s ftp information or having them burn a dvd. The other main tool we use for active projects is Git. Git is a distributed version control system. We use this for app development, but are considering using it for web development as well. I will spare you the geeky technical details but here is a link to the advantages of git over some version control software. To make things a little less geeky and more approachable to the average user we use a program called Tower, which provides a nice gui interface when interacting with repositories, so you don’t have to do everything command line. Finally each computer has an external hard drive attached and performs an automated backup each day using SuperDuper. Dropbox, Tower, and SuperDuper are all awesome tools and well worth the money…go get them.

Once a project is closed, we archive the job folder onto our Drobo, which is attached to a mac mini. The folks at Drobo refer to their products as “storage robots”. Its basically a box of hard drives—like a raid, but way smarter. The mac mini acts as our server for the office, which hosts our git repositories and backups our files. The Drobo is our central archive for past jobs and assets. One of the beauties of Drobo is that as our storage needs expand, we can simply replace a hard drive with a larger one. Backing up your files on site is great, but unless you also have offsite backups your data is not really safe. If you only have onsite backups and you have a fire, your data is hosed and all your data will have been melted into a little shiny puddle. We use Backblaze to handle our offsite backups. Its constantly running in the background and takes all the data on our drobo and backs it up to their servers in the cloud. There are a number of backup products like Mozy and Carbonite, but Backblaze offers the best value in terms of pricing, so they our vote.

Thats our backup strategy at the moment, but as new products and technologies come our strategy will continue to evolve. It really doesn’t matter what tools you use, just make sure you backing up your data. It needs to be automated and it needs to be in multiple locations. Save yourself a costly lesson and learn from our mistakes. I would love to get some feedback—do you have any backup tools that you like? Do you have any horror stories of losing data? Post a comment.

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Description

Float is a game that makes you feel happy. Try to keep the balloons in the air and off the spikes. Tap, bobble, and bump your way to fun. With multiple games modes, achievements, and leader boards there is something for everyone.

Features

• Retina Graphics
• Open Feint Leaderboards
• Facebook Leaderboards
• Open Feint Achievements
• Share Your Fun on Facebook
• Increase Your Fun with Game Mode Packs

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