Category: Video Games

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News Video Games

Bill Kara’s Hallpass Media soft-launches casual gaming crown jewel: Dressup.com

dressup

Hallpass Media has soft-launched its “crown jewel” Dressup.com, a casual gaming website loaded with dress-up games.  The categories of games available range from world tour to celebrity, to careers and fashion, to family and makeover, along with a section that highlights the newest and most popular dressup games.

The launch of Dressup.com, is undeniably one of Hallpass Media’s most anticipated website launches.  

As I wrote earlier this week, Bill Kara’s Hallpass Media entertainment network is one of the largest in the U.S., and the launch of dressup – will certainly improve its ranking.  Parked, Dressup.com received nearly 60,000 unique visitors per month, according to a rough estimate provided by Compete.

Developed, the site stands to quickly increase its traffic as users immerse themselves in gameplay.

Casual gaming is a huge market and dress up games are one of the most popular types. 

Want to dress up one of your favorite celebrities like Justin Bieber or Ashley Tisdale?  You’re in luck.  Dressup’s celebrity section lets you catch up on all the Bieber fever and more.  You can get Justin Bieber to sing, dance, act all on Dressup.com.  Here’s a look at another megastar that you can dress up: Ashley Tisdale.

dressup ashley tisdale

According to Dressup.com:

With hundreds of unique Dressup games, this is the best place to get creative and design your own great styles! We offer almost every type of Dressup game you can think of and add more every week.

We have so many different Dressup games, there are so many things to do! Discover cultures and styles from all over the globe as you take our World Tour! Do you wish you could be a stylist for the stars? Get your favourite VIP ready for the red carpet with our Celebrity Games! Browse around our Job Fair and find your perfect career or just relax with the family in our Kids section.

FPS Networks

If you’re wondering how Bill Kara gets it all done, he is also the CEO of FPS Networks, a full service design and programming studio with over a decade of experience in Internet consulting.

FPS Networks owns and operates a network of websites reaching over 4 million unique viewers monthly. As an owner of multiple website properties and a vast portfolio of domain names, we are constantly evolving and learning. We bring this industry experience to our clients and as a result are able to provide solutions which are cost effective and efficient. Our office is located in Edmonton, Alberta Canada and we employee 23 full time programmers, designers, and engineers enabling us to provide a one-stop shop for all our clients needs.

Expect Dressup.com to gain top internet search ranking, like many of Hallpass Media’s launches in 2010.  CookingGames.com for example, ranks # 1 in Google for the search term: cooking games.  VirtualPets.com, another casual game site launched in 2010, has also landed on the first page of Google search results for the keywords: virtual pets. 

Hallpass Media is building a best-in-class network with all of its properties, so check out Dressup.com during its “soft launch”.

You can also follow Dressup on Facebook, to get the latest updates on the web site and games.

Categories
News Video Games

Activision creating a buzz over domain name that contains the word “Murder”

Murder Your Maker

Registered on Nov. 11, 2010, the domain name MurderYourMaker.com has been creating a buzz in the gamer community. 

Although the domain is registered under MarkMonitor, the company that helps companies with brand protection, it’s owned by Activision who has been releasing teasers for the upcoming Spike TV Video Game Awards where the game (which is rumored to be Prototype 2) will be unveiled.

Videogames and domain names

I come across interesting “domain” stories since I’ve started a new blog about military video games over at MilitaryGamer including stories about BuyDomains: here and  here.  But none of the material I’ve come across has been as interesting as the commentary on Activision’s murderyourmaker.com URL.

Bloggers and journalists in the gamer community have been talking about the domain name MurderYourMaker.com for weeks, not only because they’ve been guessing at what game is behind the web site, but also because of the use of the word “murder” in the name.

Here’s a look at what Catalin Alexandru, who writes for TFTS had to say:

We don’t get why the word “murder” attracts so much attention. People say they’re going to kill each other all the time, but just try yelling something about murder to your wife in a crowded restaurant. Don’t get us wrong, people will be looking either way, but just say the word “murder” and those stares will gain some heavy implications instantly.

Murder domain names

While the word “murder” in a domain certainly draws attention, publicly reported sales of domain names with the keyword “murder” have not.

According to sales history provided by DomainTools, only a handful of sales have taken place.

Domain Date Sold Price Location
murderballmovie.com Feb 12,2010 $99.00 SnapNames
hollywoodmurders.com Nov 10,2009 $65.00 SnapNames
smileyfacemurders.com Jan 8,2009 $150.00 Sedo.com
murdertube.com Nov 5,2008 $70.00 Sedo.com
attemptedmurderattorney.com Oct 14,2008 $99.00 SnapNames
murderpictures.com Oct 11,2008 $69.00 SnapNames

The keyword “murder” according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool had about 60,500 exact search last month, globally.

Categories
News Video Games

Bill Kara’s Hallpass Media Entertainment Network, one of the largest networks in the U.S.

Hallpass Media

Hallpass Media, a collection of casual gaming websites owned and operated by Bill Kara, is now one of the largest networks in the United States.

According to Quantcast, the Hallpass Media network which includes websites like StickGames.com, Hallpass.com, GirlGames.com and more, is currently ranked #1,381 in the U.S.

Unlike rough estimates provided by sites like Compete, Hallpass Media’s network traffic is directly measured by Quantcast. 

Since first tracking the network of sites back in January 2009, traffic has quickly climbed to nearly 4 million visitors per month, reaching nearly 3.8 million visitors globally in October 2010.

Soon enough, Bill Kara will be unveiling the crown jewel of Hallpass Media: Dressup.com.  According to a rough estimate by Compete, Dressup.com (which is currently parked) receives nearly 60,000 unique visitors per month.

While an exact date for launching Dressup.com is not known, fully expect to see the Hallpass Media network to soar in the Quantcast rankings.

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Disputes News Trademarks Video Games

Activision knows a thing or two about ‘Call of Duty’ domain names (or do they?)

call of duty black ops

You might remember when news broke that Activision had registered a number of domains such as callofdutyfuturewarfare.com and codfuturewarfare.com.  The website superannuation had announced a fresh new batch of names registered by Activision shortly after the company purchased the names in May. 

Mary Tuck, one of the company’s attorneys, is not only responsible for registering the names, but she also files trademarks on behalf of the company according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site at uspto.gov.  The same day the company registered the names on May 11, it also filed for the trademarks.

The superannuation article linked to the Whois records on the popular domain company site – DomainTools and it sparked a flurry of stories across gaming and technology sites. 

Out of those dozen or so names though, nothing yet has been developed.  In fact, none of the names resolve to any kind of website at the time of this story. 

While rumors swirl about Activision’s next Call of Duty game, the company seems to be improving its understanding of domain names. 

Call of Duty Domains

Call of Duty Black Ops, its latest title released earlier this month, is being considered a game-changer with sales shattering records all over the world.  Activision does own callofdutyblackops.com, but it failed to register other variations.

If you notice the domains registered in May, the company picked up a number of variations of possible titles.  For example, instead of just registering futurewarfare2.com – the company also registered codfuturewarfare2.com and callofdutyfuturewarfare2.com for a possible Call of Duty Future Warfare game. 

No surprise, futurewarfare.com had been registered for years before, so Activision didn’t get its hands on the simplest version of the name.  The name is owned by BuyDomains.  And if shorter and memorable names are any indicator of value, Activision should probably buy the name now while its listed for a reasonable price of $3,788 (before someone else does).

Blackops.com, another name it doesn’t own, has seen a huge spike in traffic to its web site over the last several months, which is likely to grow with the game’s popularity.

Trademark infringing domains

glaswegianWhen it came to registering domain names for its most successful title to date, Activision missed registering names like codblackops.com – a habit it’s now getting into by registering domain names with ‘cod’ (as in, Call of Duty) in the front. 

With codblackops.com, the owner Stephen Girvan currently has a web site online that has seen a surge in traffic. 

Visit the site, and click on the home page, and you’ll be taken to an article entitled: ‘Video Game Giants are Bullying Me’. 

The article discusses Stephen’s dispute with Activision over domain names, which started after: ‘he created a “clan” website in January to allow him and his friends to post scores online of their favourite game, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  At the beginning of March, Stephen, of Maryhill, says he renamed the website to codblackops.com after asking members to come up with a name.’

At this point what comes of the dispute isn’t known, but one thing is for sure: Activision is starting to get better at registering domain names. 

My only advice is that the company should purchase FutureWarfare.com while it can. 

futurewarfare.com

The phrase ‘Future Warfare’ is generic, and used among military and military scholars.  But that hasn’t stopped Activision from filing for a trademark – which it did on May 11, 2010 (along with Call of Duty Futurewarfare).

Categories
News Video Games

Tiny Speck continues private alpha testing of Glitch.com (for at least four more months)

glitch

I broke the story this past February about the domain name Glitch.com being purchased by the co-founders of Flickr.  Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake had resigned from the company to launch Tiny Speck.   If you’re not familiar with Tiny Speck, the company was founded in early 2009 by four of the original members of the Flickr team.  

At that time of my story, the Glitch.com web site had nothing more than a picture of an animated pig on the home page. 

 The domain had sold for $19,000 on Sedo giving the seller a nice profit.  According to DomainTools sales records, the seller paid only $3,000 in 2007 on Afternic.

Working on a hunch that something big was going to be unveiled, I contacted TechCrunch and other news sites – and a day later TechCrunch announced the news.   Though TechCrunch didn’t give us a mention, it was not all for naught: The Guardian backlinked to our story about the sales price.

Private Alpha Testing

I haven’t been following the story of Glitch since earlier in the year, until yesterday when I received an email about alpha testing from the Tiny Speck team.  Alpha testing has been taking place for several weeks already.

I tried it out with my kids and was amazed at how much they liked the game.  It runs in the browser and the quality is something I would expect to see on an Xbox 360 or Playstation.

Because of the terms of the alpha testing, I can’t post details about the game (from screen captures and movies to details about game mechanics and styles) until Tiny Speck is further along in development.  The screen shot above is from the Glitch.com public site.

According to the email I received from Tiny Speck: ‘We are still very early in development and have only recently switched our focus from the underlying technology platform and tools to the actual game design and play. Much will be changing in each testing
cycle. Testing will last for at least the next four months.’

One thing I have noticed about the game as I have played – is the amount of new terms throughout the game that I could see becoming popular with users once the game goes public.  Terms such as ‘glitchling’ – which isn’t registered at the time of this story.

You can follow @isglitchopen on Twitter to be notified when the game opens and closes for testing.

Glitch’s main Twitter account is here: http://twitter.com/playglitch

Stewart Butterfield also has a YouTube channel, where he occassionally shares videos demonstrating some of the ins and outs of the game and development.  The latest video is about the game’s avatars: