Rovio’s FB App, Angry B...

Well, well, well. As if you couldn’t get your fix of sling-shotting irascible fowl on every other mobile and social platform known to man, Rovio announced this morning that Angry Birds for Facebook (officially known as Angry Birds Friends ) has finally done flown the coop and left the warm nest of its beta. Avian double-speak aside, what does that mean exactly? It means that, having gone through the requisite user testing, tweaking, and multi-billion-dollar IPO-ing, Rovio’s Facebook app — with a handful of new features in tow — is finally ready for public consumption. As to those features, Angry Birds Friends brings a number of trendy social gaming features to Angry Birds, including tournament mode, new weekly levels, new ways to earn power-ups, rewards, and, of course, tons of social integration. As Angry Birds fanatics are well aware, Rovio launched Angry Birds Friends in beta earlier this year . On top of those things I mentioned earlier, the beta version of Angry Birds Friends has also been a testing ground for Rovio to test out new business models, like offering $1 power-ups beyond pay-to-download options or the infamous Mighty Eagle. The game’s port to Facebook likely had the social network excited, considering that Angry Birds has been a presence on Google+ and other Goog products for awhile now — not to mention the fact that massively popular games like Angry Birds could mean good things for Facebook’s revenue. But, as to Angry Birds Friends’ (what an awkward and clunky name to say aloud, by the way) new features, they’re pretty much self-explanatory, but its new tournaments feature allows user to compete with their friends on four different levels — from Monday to Sunday. The pig-popping user with the highest overall score earns a gold trophy, with silver going to second, etc, etc. And, thankfully, unlike crowns, users get to keep their trophies for ever. For. Ever. The “New Weekly Levels” refer, specifically, to those four new levels being offered in tournament mode, although Rovio hinted that it will be launching further levels every week. Third of all, there are those power-ups, which, on top of the daily rewards users can already collect, users can now earn power-ups in tournament mode. Earn three power-up bundles and you’ll receive a shiny gold trophy. As for context, in case it wasn’t already abundantly clear, Angry Birds is popular. More than five people use it. In fact, earlier this month Rovio announced that its coven of Angry Birds apps had amassed 1 billion downloads. To date, Rovio has released the original, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, newer arrival Angry Birds Space, and now, what one might consider its newest arrival, Angry Birds Friends. If you’d asked me two years ago if Angry Birds merchandising would be extremely popular, and that an Angry Birds movie would be in the works, I would have laughed at you. But, considering I’m wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt right now, eating Angry Birds cereal, and that Rovio’s 2011 earnings were about 10-times its estimated revenues from the year prior, with 30 percent coming from merchandising, well clearly I didn’t get the last laugh. Updating in realtime

Punch! Launches A Platf...

It’s a familiar story in the tech world: A company wants to build a consumer product, finds that the necessary tools aren’t available, creates its own tools, then realizes it has created a broader platform. David Bennahum offers some examples: Zip2 . Vignette . TypePad . And yes, his startup Punch! , where Bennahum is co-founder and CEO, and which is launching its publishing platform at Disrupt. Earlier this year, I wrote about the launch of the Punch! app , which offers current event themed games, usually with a satirical bent. (Or, as Bennahum describes it, “culturally relevant content that could only exist on a tablet.”) Some of the early games included one where players choose the wardrobe of then-presidential candidate Rick Santorum, and a general pop culture quiz with challenges like ranking Farrelly Bros. movies based on box office success. Behind the scenes, Bennahum says the challenge was to add content in a timely manner, so that it was “topical and relevant” — relatively easy for a newspapers or magazines that are only uploading new articles and other content, but harder for Punch!, which doesn’t create articles but rather “mini apps.” To introduce new content at the right pace, Punch needed to cut down on the development time, and it needed to avoid triggering the App Store review process whenever it added a new game. So that’s what the Punch! publishing platform does. It offers a content management system where companies can create apps without writing any code in Objective C. Like Punch! itself, these apps shouldn’t just offer a tablet-optimized version of a printed product, but instead include interactivity and gaming. It includes templates for content types like maps, “drag to fill,” and games and quizzes. And Bennahum says that by “creating an environment that sends scripts to effectively render these app-like experiences,” publishers can introduce mini apps without adding code, which means that once they get the initial approval from Apple, they don’t need to wait on further approval for every new piece of content. The Punch! platform will allow publishers and other media companies to pay Punch to license the technology and, optionally, to provide additional services to help get them get started. As for the Punch! app itself, Bennahum says it has now seen 35,000 user sessions. The next challenge is getting on a more regular publishing schedule, which should hopefully happen in the next few weeks. You can read more about the publishing system here . Disrupt Q&A Q: What existing tools is this replacing? A: To create app-like experiences, most publishers are hiring app development studios. Or they’re using tools that are replicating the print experience. Q: Tell us more about the pricing. A: $15,000 license for the year, versus $150,000 on average for app development. Q: Who are the ideal clients? A: Media/entertainment companies that have already experimented with tablets and been frustrated with what’s available. Also, brands that want to engage their audiences. Punch! could also partner with companies to create new publications. Q: What about distribution and discovery tools are you offering? A: None yet. This is probably for customers who are already engaging an audience on another medium.

Facebook Buys Social Gi...

Karma is its fifth mobile-based acquisition of the year.

Microsoft Announces Its...

Microsoft, just like Apple, usually runs a major back-to-school promotion every summer that is meant to give students (and their parents) some extra incentives to buy a new computer. The company’s just-announced back-to-school deal for the U.S. and Canada is pretty much the same as last year’s. A year ago, Microsoft gave students who bought a new PC and Xbox 360 and this year it’s doing exactly the same. There are some differences to last year’s program, though. This time around, Microsoft isn’t just partnering with Best Buy in the U.S., but also with Dell.com, Fry’s Electronics, HPDirect and NewEgg.com (its own Microsoft stores , of course, will also honor this promotion. In Canada, students can buy their PCs from Best Buy, Dell.ca, Future Shop, Staples and The Source. The program is scheduled to start on May 20 in the U.S and May 18 in Canada. To be eligible, students need to buy a Windows PC worth at least $699 ($599 in Canada). Apple vs. Microsoft Apple also used free products like an iPod touch as an incentive for shoppers. Last year, however, it switched to handing out $100 gift cards to its digital stores instead . Apple usually announces its annual back-to-school promotion in June. By the end of last year’s summer promotions, some analysts noted that Apple handily beat Microsoft 8 to 2, with around 80% of incoming students opting for Macs instead of a Windows machine. This year, Microsoft hopes that Ultrabooks like the Samsung Series 5 ULTRA and the Dell XPS 13 will make students think twice about buying a Mac.

Analysts: Nokia On Trac...

The Facebook IPO is expected to usher in a day of massive trading volumes on the markets, and some believe that might translate to a lift for some tech stocks . But one that could really use some help has just been served another course of bad press: Nokia is apparently burning through its cash reserves — fast. The company, for years the biggest mobile phone maker in the world, has fallen on very tough times, as competition from companies like Samsung, Apple and a barrage of inexpensive device makers, have translated into declines in sales, market share and profitability. That’s now translating into what has been identified as another issue: the burning of the cash pile. In the last five quarters, Nokia has burned through €2.1 billion ($2.7 billion) from its cash reserves. Analysts polled by Reuters on average believe that at the rate Nokia is going, it will go through another €2 billion ($2.5 billion) in the next three quarters, with the total current cash pile of €4.9 billion ($6 billion) gone within two years. To put that in some context, in 2007 Nokia had cash reserves of €10 billion in 2007 ($12.7 billion). That points to its cash pile burn accelerating — a result of the fact that the company has been trying to transform its business, which requires investment, while at the same time seeing massive sales drops: In the company’s last quarterly earnings , reported April 18, Nokia reported that overall revenues were down by $4 billion (€3.4 billion) to $9.7 billion (€7.4 billion). Smartphones, the core of Nokia’s fightback strategy, declined by more than 50 percent both in revenues and unit sales, and the company saw a 40 percent drop in revenues from devices, its biggest business, with sales in those now at €4.2 billion. Nokia also swung to an operating loss of $1.7 billion, blaming the double-whammy of competition from Apple/Google as well as restructuring costs, as the company has pushed to put a stronger emphasis on its new line of smartphones in a race to gain back its rapidly disappearing market share in the higher-margin end of the smartphone market. That market share has been slipping for some time now, but it was in the last quarter that it finally slipped enough to put Nokia into number-two behind Samsung. According to Q1 figures out earlier this week from Gartner , Nokia now has 19.8 percent of the mobile market to Samsung’s 20.7 percent. While Samsung’s sales have been rising, up to 86.6 million units from 68.8 million in the quarter a year ago, Nokia’s have been going in the reverse direction: now at 83.1 million units compared to 107.6 million a year ago. Nokia currently has two tranches of credit bonds outstanding: bonds of €1.25 billion euros at 5.5 percent maturing in 2014 and €500 million of notes at 6.75 percent due in 2019. These have now reached the lowest investment grade status at S&P , Fitch and Moody’s  with negative outlook. “I would not rule out the possibility of Nokia being downgraded further,” Nancy Utterback, a credit strategist at Aviva Investors, told Reuters. “The company is in a negative spiral that will be hard to reverse.” Reuters does also point out some bright spots. The company is expected to sell 20 million of its new Windows Phone-based smartphones this year, and 46 million next year. And if the company continues on its cost-reducing course, it could end 2012 with €2.8 billion ($3.6 billion) in net cash this year. And there is another possibility that we will likely see raised more and more: a “white knight” in the form of a Microsoft acquisition. The software company  is already heavily entwined with Nokia over the use of the Windows Phone OS — paying Nokia $1 billion annually for this — a relationship that could well deepen if Nokia’s problems continue to grow.  [Image: Images of Money, Flickr ]