I don’t play Facebook games with one exception—a game that a friend built. I guess this makes me unusual (I do play iPhone games though) because the stats on Facebook games are crazy. It’s hard to believe that anybody gets work done these days. If only there was a Facebook game where winning meant you’d landed an internship. That’s not going to happen, so if you insist on Facebook gaming your way through the internship search, then you better be looking to work for a company like Lolapps. They’re based on San Francisco, and they make Facebook games. They actually started with a user-generated quiz business, then they moved on to building games for well-known brands. Now, they’re focused on becoming their own gaming brand. Their current products include games like Garden Life, Band of Heroes, Diva Life, Yakuza Lords, and a few more. I’m sure they’re working on plenty more as they try to grow their name in the ultra-competitive world of Facebook games. Continue reading about Lolapps…
Early in the recession it seemed as though the video game industry would never be affected. Traditional game publishers were busy selling their wares to the unemployed and hiring to keep churning out games—so there were plenty of internships in video games. Things seem to have slowed down over the past year, but I think it’s more about a change in the games that people play than macroeconomic conditions. Facebook and the iPhone have created new markets for cheap and free (ad-supported) games to gain a lot of traction. There are a ton of gaming upstarts entering the market, and traditional publishers are changing the platforms that they develop on. One of the upstarts is Watercooler, a Redwood City, CA based social games developer that has already reached “over 25 million application installations.” The company started as a network of online fan communities focused on sports and TV, but they’ve switched focus and used their “social product expertise to create innovative and engaging social games.” Continue reading about Watercooler…
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Yesterday I came across a New York Times article about how Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, recently donated money to a non-profit called Charter School Growth Fund so that they could acquire online education startup DreamBox Learning, which creates web-based games to teach elementary school students math skills. As far as I can tell, the Bellevue, WA based startup will remain a for-profit entity even though it will be owned by a non-profit fund. Along with the donation Reed Hastings also invested $10 million into DreamBox to help them expand the number of subjects that they cover and to reach more schools with their software. You have to think that a large portion of that investment will be spent on hiring new people in the not so distant future. Continue reading about DreamBox Learning…
Here’s another one from Fast Company’s list of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.” Firstborn is a New York City based digital agency with “a knack for hard-core programming most of its hipster colleagues can’t match.” By combining advertising smarts with a firm grasp on technology, they’re taking the art of advertising to the next level. Firstborn claims major clients like Ford, SoBe, Aflac, and Wrigley. But they’re not just making commercials. They’re creating interactive experiences that combine branding initiatives with user generated content. Firstborn has been around since 1997, so they’re not new to this Internet thing. That’s why they’re the ones putting out the kind of stuff that gets true ad geeks really excited. Beyond Firstborn’s portfolio, you can also get a more in depth look at how they work by going through their case studies. Continue reading about Firstborn…
It’s Opening Day of the baseball season, and I’m thrilled that I’m looking at 6+ months of meaningful games for my favorite sport. Last night was disappointing in that the Yankees blew a solid lead in a sloppy game against the Red Sox, but even that can’t drown out my excitement about the hope brought by a new season. Along with a new season comes new technology. Television and online broadcasts are constantly getting better, and not just in quality. There are all kinds of new technological innovations that are making sports more fun to watch, and a lot of them are coming from Chicago based Sportvision. It all started with the FoxTrax “glowing” hockey puck (which was pretty much a miserable failure), but now we have things like the “virtual yellow 1st and Ten line™, KZone™ virtual strike zone, and the RACEf/x system on NASCAR broadcasts.” Each of these was created by Sportvision. Continue reading about Sportvision…
Apparently my parents and sister have engaged in a never-ending series of online Scrabble games played via iPhone. I’m with my parents in Florida right now, and every five minutes they’re bugging each other to make the next move. It’s crazy. Free online gaming has hit the masses, and it isn’t pretty. There are tons of new online gaming companies, and while some are focusing on bringing new gamers to the market, others are more focused on gaining ground with serious gamers. Culver City, CA based Riot Games is a perfect example of the latter. They are behind League of Legends, a free online role-playing game that is set in an imaginative world. The game has been downloaded more than a million times, and Riot Games has received $20 million in venture capital investment based on the game. $8 million of that investment came from a Chinese gaming company that has a huge user base, so this is very much an international play. Continue reading about Riot Games…
I’ve already written posts about internships at Activision (Guitar Hero) and jobs at Harmonix (Rock Band) and Tapulous (Tap Tap Revenge), but can you ever really get enough of the music playing video game genre? Of course not! That’s why we’re looking at JamLegend today. How are they different from the other game makers that I just mentioned? First, JamLegend is free. Second, it offers more songs. Third, you can use your computer keyboard as a guitar. Fourth and most importantly, it’s social! You can play your friends, you can play the world, and you can even enter tournaments to win prizes. JamLegend isn’t just the name of the game, it’s also the name of the company, a small startup based out of San Francisco. Continue reading about JamLegend…
About a month ago we looked at internships with Niche Media, a company that “produce must-read, luxurious magazines that mirror the sensibilities and spirits of the unique, vibrant communities to which they cater.” Today we’re going to look at Greenspun Media Group, a company that takes a similar approach to the Las Vegas market and that happens to be a strategic partner of Niche Media. Greenspun Media’s properties include In Business Las Vegas, RalstonFlash, Las Vegas Weekly, Home News, Las Vegas Home & Design, Las Vegas Magazine, Vegas2Go Vegas Magazine, Style: The Magazine of the Venetian and Palazzo Resorts, Wynn, and Wynn Macau, while Greenspun Interactive’s properties include LasVegasSun.com, LasVegasWeekly.com, VegasDeluxe.com, RecruitingNevada.com, and 702.tv. It’s all about hitting niche markets with targeted media (and advertising, of course), and when it comes to Vegas, Greenspun Media Group is the clear leader. Continue reading about Greenspun Media Group…
Here at One Day, One Internship, we’re big on storytelling. The reason that we feature a new company every day is that a lot of companies aren’t very good at telling their own stories, and even if they are, there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard their stories. Brooklyn, NY based MediaStorm is one of those companies that excels at telling its own story – probably because their “principal aim is to usher in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism, interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media.” They’ve worked on some amazing projects that include Intended Consequences, a chronicle of the lives of Rwandan women who “were subjected to massive sexual violence, perpetrated by members of the infamous Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe,” and The Marlboro Marine, the story of a marine whose photograph became famous and how “tried to return to his previous life but found his nights haunted by images of war and his life fractured by depression.” MediaStorm seems to deal with a lot of heavy topics, but they certainly have mastered multimedia storytelling. Continue reading about MediaStorm…
I just found out that my car is on its last legs. It’s a ’97 Ford Explorer, and I’ve loved it since I bought it as a senior in high school in 2001. These days American car manufacturers have a pretty weak reputation with consumers, but I was a happy customer. Unfortunately the decline in reputation has been part of the demise of the Big Three, and it’s seriously hurt the entire Michigan economy. That’s why you see these commercials with Jeff Daniels that try to sell businesses on a Michigan location. Armstrong White is exactly the type of company that is going to bring jobs back to Michigan. They have built a business in Bloomfield Hills, MI that directly serves the auto industry, but is also high tech and extremely innovative. No, they haven’t developed some sort of alternative energy technology. They specialize “in rendering reality out of automotive 2D and 3D assets and digital landscapes for print, broadcast and interactive mediums.” Continue reading about Armstrong White…
