Tag: Women »

Earlier this month, Elizabeth brought a few fantastic mobile game heroines front and centre, and I'm so excited to see more of them in recent titles and the promise of titles to come.

If a game is good, personally I'm not too fussed on who the leading figure is. Man, woman, frog hybrid, racoon, dog, alien, whatever, I'm down for it. However, growing up there was always one protagonist that I admired more than any other – Lara Croft.

This week at 148Apps.com, site founder Jeff Scott interviewed Kevin Dent, creator of P4RK: The Game Achievement Network. Dent says, "So right now gamers on mobile can engage in different rewards platforms, most of these firms reward gamers for having “moments” I am not making this up. Once you hit that “moment” you get a bag of Pop Chips etc. Now I am sure there are people that enjoy Popchips! P4RC is different in that we go in altogether different direction. We created a platform where gamers accumulate points regardless of whether they have their “moment” or not. With those points they can spend them on whatever they want, we are empowering the rewards business.

They are your points, it’s your choice and they are your rewards.

Also we do not cap the points so you can go big, medium or small; they are your points."

Read more about P4RK at 148Apps.

At GiggleApps.com, Amy Solomon reviewed another game from the celebrated PBS Kids series Martha Speaks: "Martha Speaks Story Maker opens with a series of questions for the players about the story they would like to create – be it characters, locations or items of interest to be used in their own fun and creative adventures. These choices are then used in a creative and fun story and there are enough variables to choose from that each story can easily be different from the last and can be stored in this app’s library to be enjoyed in the future."

Find out more about Martha Speaks Story Maker at GiggleApps.

And our AndroidRundown.com KickStarter spotlight of the week was for Trellie. Joseph Bertolini writes, "Enter the Trellie, a metallic key chain that attaches to the outside of any woman’s purse and has two lights that illuminate and blink when ever the connected phone is receiving or has missed a call. This really does two things because, especially at night, the blinking will be a great visual alarm as well as something that lets the user dig into their bag and check their phone less. This secondary use really does free up social situations and keeps the user engaged in the people around them instead of constantly rummaging through their purses."

Read more about this new device on AndroidRundown.com.

Thus ends the week that was, but there's a great big beautiful tomorrow right around the corner. Join us for the latest app news, reviews and more, and keep track of everything by following us on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. See you next week!

Fotopedia’s mission has always been to create a photographer and user-friendly Wikipedia for photography. Their iOS apps take a category and compile the best shots in a wonderful package. Their latest offering, Women of the World, a collection by Olivier Mantel, is free and “A tribute to the diversity, beauty and strength of women around the world."

A joint project with the World Bank, the photos celebrate the indomitable strength of women all over our planet with hundreds of extraordinary images and a small selection of photo-stories that showcase women in traditional and decidedly modern roles. From a mosque in Senegal to a road works project in Vietnam and even on to Wall Street, the collection spans 35 years of women at home, at work, and on the go in moments of joy, contemplation, toil, and sorrow, but often doing everyday things in everyday settings, too.

The stories are updated: at present they focus on the “Women of Africa," “Eternal Mothers," and just added, "Forever Yours" - a look at marriage.

Like all Fotopedia apps, the interface is simple to use and the images sharp and striking. There are also lots of sharing options built in to help bring attention to, as World Bank president Robert B. Zoelick so aptly puts it in the app’s forward, “women [who] make up 50% of the global population, 40% of the global workforce, yet … own only 1% of the world’s wealth.”

Download this visual treasure trove and celebrate the world's mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, friends, colleagues and inspirations.

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Silicon Sisters' Brenda Gershkovitch at GDC last week, and chatted a bit about the studio and the new game coming from them to the iPad.

Silicon Sisters is a newly created development studio founded by women with a goal of creating games that can "tickle the female brain." More than just pinkification, the studio aims to create games and apps that speak to women of all ages, using a thorough review of current research to create a game development bible that will inform the development process and subsequent games. Their first app, School26, is aimed at girls aged 10 - 16. It's a game of social interations, in which the protagonist, Kate, navigates the social environment of a high school, making friends and helping her peers with a variety of real-world problems that may tweens and adolescents can face in our modern world. Created for the iPad, School 26 uses a variety of game and quiz mechanics to tell the story of Kate and her friends and hopefully help the girls playing the game learn better ways to get through their own school days as a result.

The play build we were able to look at had a school locker dashboard, and involved some gameplay to help Kate and her two friends manage their own complicated and realistic friendships. There was a teen-magazine style quiz along with some dialogue response choices that we tapped our way through, hoping to calm an angry friend, and support another who needed some cheering up. The colorful, cartoon-y graphics rounded out a solid package, even for an early build.

We're looking forward to seeing more of this and future games from Silicon Sisters. Not only do we applaud the efforts to make games for a typically under served target population (pink isn't how we make games for girls!), but to make them with style and fun only enhances the package. No doubt many people, kid and adult, male and female, can benefit from such an appealing experience, and more developers can take a note from the concept of research studies to inform their development process.

[gallery]