Mobile Content Bits: Music-editing Phone; Social Features For IPhone Games; UK Gambling

Music-Editing Phone: Design firm Pilotfish has shown a concept for a music phone which “will enable good quality recording of three separate sound tracks and allow editing of the music by physically twisting and bending the phone…The phone’s main touch-screen, which is similar to today’s folder phones, consists of three ‘sticks’ that can be removed and separately clipped onto a musical instrument or a person to capture live sound,” reports Reuters. The phone won’t be on the market for at least a few years, and considering the pace of innovation probably won’t make it at all — but some of the concepts are likely to make it into the market via various handsets.

Social Features For iPhone Games: Now that the iPhone app store is becoming crowded developers are seeking ways to distinguish their wares, and social features are an obvious way of doing that. Several companies are setting up services which let other developers add social elements to their games, reports VentureBeat. Perhaps the best opportunity is from Aurora Feint VentureBeat. It has a feature called One Touch iPromote, which lets players gather in lobbies for specific categories “where they can see who is playing a game, discuss the game with fellow fans, and make a purchase on the App Store via a single click”. Several companies have signed up, so there are cross-promotional benefits.

Gambling Deal In UK: MFuse has signed up Probability to be the first to use its payments platform for mobile gambling. Probability recently signed a deal with TV show producer Fremantle to “develop slot machine games based on some of its programmes including the X Factor and the Price is Right. It markets its games direct to consumers through the Ladyluck brand, which has more than 400,000 UK users” reports The Guardian.

Today Show On iPhone: Todayshow.com (of the morning news program) has launched a free iPhone application which delivers videos, top stories and photos from popular Today topics, as well as interviews and features on health, food and wine, entertainment, relationships and fashion. Zumobi developed it.

Marketing Apps: The New York Times has a story about the man behind the iPhone app RunKeeper, who will advertise his service by running the Boston Marathon in a giant iPhone costume.

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