Tapulous

EMI Music to Developers: Take My Music, Please

Peter Kafka in Media on November 3, 2011 at 4:57 am PT

A deal between the label and music tech start-up Echo Nest gives coders access to songs they’ve heard of, with a minimum of fuss. Imagine that!

Gleek Alert! Slushy Your Friends and Tap Tap to the Music of “Glee”

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on August 3, 2011 at 6:00 pm PT

Fans of “Glee,” the four-time Emmy Award-winning TV comedy, can now tap into their inner diva with the new mobile game Tap Tap Glee.

Here Come the Apps: Google's In-App Billing for Android Goes Live

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on March 29, 2011 at 6:47 pm PT

Google turned on in-app billing in the Android Market today, which opens up a new monetization method that will make it more competitive against Apple’s iOS.

A Flood of Apps to Hit Android Market Next Week Thanks to In-App Payments

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on March 24, 2011 at 1:51 pm PT

A lot of what has kept the Android Market from being a true alternative to the iPhone is about to be eliminated.

Zynga "Acqhires" Social Web Browser Maker Flock

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on January 5, 2011 at 6:13 pm PT

Zynga has acquired Flock, a five-year-old start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif., that was working on developing a Web browser.

Casual Games Start-Up OMGPOP Raising a Serious Funding Round

Peter Kafka in Media on November 2, 2010 at 1:55 pm PT

Does the casual games boom have more life in it? Here’s another bet that it does: Investors are pouring more money into OMGPOP, via a round that could bring in more than $10 million for the game site.

[UPDATED] The Next Deal in Online Gaming? Sources Say Angry Birds Publisher Chillingo Could Be Next in the Hand.

Kara Swisher in News on October 20, 2010 at 2:46 am PT

The online and mobile gaming sector has been a hotbed of deal activity over the the last year, from Playdom to Playfish to, most recently, Ngmoco. So what’s the next to go? Several sources said that U.K.-based Chillingo, arguably the hottest downloadable game publisher–mostly via apps for the Apple iPhone and iPad–is close to a sale to a bigger company. The likely acquirer: EA.

Voices

Tapulous Investor Jeff Clavier On Casual Gaming "Explosion"

Timothy Hay, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on July 7, 2010 at 12:00 am PT

Last week, the Walt Disney Co. acquired Tapulous Inc., a game company whose first home was Palo Alto, Calif.-based SoftTech VC, a seed-stage venture firm headed by noted angel investor Jeff Clavier.

Video: Here Are the Dudes Disney Got With Tapulous

Kara Swisher in News on July 2, 2010 at 8:13 am PT

Last year, BoomTown visited the downtown Palo Alto, Calif., storefront office of Tapulous, the maker of the hugely popular iPhone music game app Tap Tap Revenge. Disney confirmed it bought the Silicon Valley start-up yesterday, which sources said had been for sale for a while now, part of an inevitable consolidation in the online games space. Here’s the interview I did then with co-founders Andrew Lacy and Bart Decrem–both of whom are staying with Disney to work on mobile games initiatives–about the iPhone ecosystem and where it is all going.