Yearly Archives: 2011

Lord of the Rings Online Revenue Triples

I’ve long been a fan of the “freemium” business model, especially when it comes to online games. I’ve enjoyed playing Dungeons & Dragons Online partially for this reason, and was excited to hear that switching to their freemium approach increased their revenue by 500%. Following that success, Turbine eventually made the same move with their Lord of the Rings Online game.

The results are in: Lord of the Rings Online is making three times as much money as it was before it went free back in September.

This is a big win/win scenario for game developers. They have the opportunity to gain more users, as the barrier for entry is lower, and potentially make more money than their usual monthly fee from their most hardcore users. (Imagine $12.99 a month becoming $20 a month in additional quest packs and emergency mana potions…) I’m still hoping Blizzard will experiment with this for World of WarCraft.

Now, if only Turbine would work on OS X clients for their growing MMORPGs…

The iPhone Comes to Verizon — For Real This Time

The iPhone is finally coming to Verizon in the United States. No, it’s not April Fools’ Day. The blogosphere is overflowing with news about the just-announced end of AT&T’s exclusivity. By February 10 you should be able to get your hands on one. (Verizon,…

What Everyone Missed About the Gawker Password Scandal

A few weeks ago the internet exploded with news about the servers that host the Gawker blogs (Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Jezebel, etc.) being compromised by a distributed group of crackers known as Gnosis. Though the attack itself was covered fairly well by various tech publications…

BlogBuzz January 8, 2011

Mac App Store Launches…Along With Tweetie 2 for Mac

Apple just launched the Mac App Store yesterday, bringing with it a welcome surprise. The much-awaited Tweetie 2 for Mac is finally available, in the App Store, under the new name of Twitter for Mac. I’ll get to that in a little bit, though.…

How to Explain Network Neutrality

How do you explain network neutrality to your less-than-tech-literate friends and family? It’s a broad and complex topic that is rather difficult to persuade people to care about. Of course, the best way to explain an issue like that is to demonstrate how it…

The Pragmatic Guide to JavaScript

There are plenty of books that teach JavaScript from a basic introductory angle. The Pragmatic Guide to JavaScript is a bit different. It’s a lightweight guide (around 130 pages) for those of us who already know a programming language or two. Instead of covering…

Best of 2010

Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that I’ve been actively posting on Webmaster-Source for about five years. This past year has been pretty busy for me. I did a bit of work on WordPress as part of the Google Summer of Code, I…