Finish gaming company Rovio is hoping to replicate the success of the Angry Birds series with a new game called the Amazing Alex.

A Billion Angry Birds

Gaming companies know that you are only good as you last title (pretty much the general rule of thumb in business, no?). Even the most storied developers can make one ‘wrong’ move and have fans turn on them like a Roman mob. And although Rovio’s Angry Birds has been downloaded over a billion times, the Finish company is not putting all their Easter eggs in one basket.

Meet the Amazing Alex

Gamasutra reported last week that Rovio has acquired the rights to Casey’s Contraptions from developers Mystery Coconut and Snappy Touch. The first game based on this acquisition will be Amazing Alex. Even with just a cursory glance, you can see the similarities between Casey and Alex.

Rovio’s VP of Franchise Development, Ville Heijari, stated that the company had acquired all rights for the brand. “Working with Noel [Llopis, Snappy Touch founder] and Miguel [A. Friginal, Mystery Coconut founder] has been fantastic, and this is a game that we all fell in love with from the first play,” said Heijari. However, it is not clear if the two developers behind Casey’s Contraption will be staying on to work with Rovio on the new title.

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WhoSay is another social media website making a name for itself. But you will never get to use it — not unless you can win a daytime Emmy, hit a ball out of Fenway, or write a critically-acclaimed collection of short stories.

“It’s Not Easy Being Me”

Celebrities don’t have it easy. Anonymity is a luxury they do not have. Paparazzi follow them wherever they go. Their every indiscretion (real or fabricated) ends up in the tabloids. Sure, there are the perks — the accolades, the adoration, the hedonistic lifestyles — but being famous is no free ride (well, not always).

An area where a lot of celebrities are starting to venture into is the realm of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Mobli — celebs are all over the social Web. However, many are still a little camera shy when it comes to social media. Enter WhoSay.

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The Pixlr-o-matix or Pixlr app for the iOS is yet another photo-editing application at the App Store — but we guarantee that this one is definitely worth your while.

Pixlr

Like so many mobile applications, the Pixlr app began as an online application. Pixlr is an online photo-editing software that requires no downloads and gives you various methods to tweak your photos, including a seamless integration with image hosting and sharing site Photobucket.

Pixlr may not have secured a billion-dollar deal like Instagram did, but its partnership with design software mega-giants Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD, was definitely newsworthy.

Pixlr App for the iOS and Android

The Pixlr app went mobile in August of last year and has since been developing a steady following, although its numbers have dipped slightly over the last few weeks. The recent drop in popularity might of course be the result of Instagram’s mercurial success, but if you are interested in a broad range of editing tools, this app is a must.

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The newly updated Triposo app may very well change the way you travel. Triposo has been around for about year, and we pick them as one of our top startups to keep an eye on.

The App Complex

The problem with existing websites and products going the app route is that for the sake of preserving the integrity of what their Web incarnation looked like, developers often get bogged down and do not fully allow the creative process to flow. We will not name names, but because of this, there are many app versions of websites and products that simply fall flat in their mobile form.

This is why often some of the best mobile applications come from startups who are building a product from the ground up. One such team is Triposo.

Triposo Travel App

The Trioposo app is a “self-starter,” which means that it does not wait for you to run a search before making a recommendation. The Triposo blog explains it like this:

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A total of 25 retailers, including Gap, H&M, and Sephora have teamed up with the Swedish social gifting company Wrapp to bring their services to the United States. In a world where everything has gone social, it is no surprise that gift giving has, too.

Wrapp — A New Way to Give Gifts

If you ask the average person what an app is, they will likely tell you that it is one of those little icon/programs on an iOS device. But before the iPhone and the iPad became so prominent in the social psyche, there was the Facebook app. It is quite possible that Facebook will reach a billion users this summer. And although developers are scrambling to create apps for the iOS and other smartphone platforms, a billion users is hard to deny.

Many companies and developers have tried to leverage the Facebook platform to generate revenue, but few have done it as well as the Swedish social gifting company Wrapp. In less than six months, Wrapp has given out more than 1.4 million gift cards and is growing at over 30 percent per week.

The Wrapp model works like this: You first sign up for an account on the Wrapp website, which integrates it with your Facebook account and a mobile application for the iOS and Android. (Spoiler alert — not that kind of spoiler) Now, this is where it gets a little icky. If you have any qualms about social media, then look away.

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Back in February, San Francisco–based Chomp was acquired by the Cupertino-based Apple Inc. This is not the only startup that Apple has acquired — but this purchase has a little extra something behind it.

Chomping Chomp

In just a few short years, Chomp has become one of the more popular app search engines. In the first two months of its launch, the search engine had amassed more than 300,000 users. One of Chomp’s most successful features, at least in terms of marketing, is Chomp Search Ads. Developers can bid on key words that will deliver their ads to users that search for these key words with the Chomp engine.

In February of 2011, Chomp brought its service to the Android platform, introducing an Android app to go along with it. This is where things start to get interesting. Shortly after Apple’s $50 million purchase of the search engine, speculations started to surface as to whether or not Apple would drop Android from Chomp’s database. Remember that at one point Chomp powered Verizon’s Android searches.

Now it appears that Apple has finally carried out the amputation. Is this really surprising? The smartphone market is so competitive at the moment that no one wants to give any undue advantages. With the soon to be released Windows Phone featuring Windows 8 and Metro, the competition will only get more savage. It should also be noted that the Chomp app is no longer available on Google Play.

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The MyHeritage website recently released the My Heritage app for the iOS and Android. It has many similar features to the more ubiquitous Ancestry.com app as well as a surprising one, too.

My Heritage App

The My Heritage app has some nicely-laid-out features, including your Family Tree, a Research tab that has billions of records, and a place to share photos with your extended family. There are two subscription options for users.

The first is a payment option that allows you to have up to 2,500 people in your family tree and comes with 500 MB of photo and video storage (roughly 500 photos). You can locate family connections with Smart Matches, which compares your profile and family tree to the millions of profiles in the database. The cost for this service is $5 per month for a total of two years.

Paid subscriptions also offer unlimited access to billions of historical records; birth, marriage, and death records; census, military, immigration, and legal records; newspapers, yearbooks, directories, and guides; as well as family trees, photos, documents and maps.

The free plan comes with limited photo storage and can only add up to 250 people in your family tree. Of course, the no-cost option has other limitations with respect to the many resources the MyHeritage website offers, including the Family Pages where the full range of services are offered.

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You know those memes that are floating around the Internet (especially on Facebook) that have a picture and some kind of pithy phrase attached to it? The comments are sometimes thought provoking, usually funny. Well, with the meme generator app, you can start producing some ‘memic’ gems of your own.

Meme Generator App for Android

You have seen those memes. There is the one of Animal, the Muppet, looking his usual crazy self, and the meme says, “It’s not so bad being crazy. You’ll never run out of friends; even if they are imaginary.” Then there is the one with the dude with the grammatically incorrect tattoo that reads, “Your far from the usual,” although that one could be interpreted to mean, “I am ‘your far from the usual.’”

The official name of the app is Generate All the Memes, which sounds like a good title for an Depeche Mode reunion album. The app is very simple to use. You can choose from 140 different existing memes and add your own phrase to them. There are also 10,000 other memes that you can share with friends and family. You can also create your own memes by either using a photo from your photo gallery or library.

Content is updated weekly, so there is always a new selection of memes and images to choose from. The meme generator app is also linked to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Gmail, and Dropbox so that your fresh new memes can easily be shared with friends as soon as you create them.

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The new GiddyUp App was released for the iOS and Android a week ago, and we predict that it will be a hit with all you social butterflies. But it’s a pretty cool app for the rest of us, too.

Giddy Up App

How many more ways can we plan an event, you ask? Facebook’s event setup is nicely set up, but what do you do for all those friends that are not on the social networking site (yes, there are still a few)? Email is okay, but it can be inefficient and, let’s face it, a little boring (you want to add a little fun and anticipation to your event, no?). Phone calls? Who still makes phone calls?

Enter the GiddyUp app. The GiddyUp app uses the contacts from your smartphone, so you can create an event and a message and alert will be sent to them via their contact info (i.e., email or phone number). The setup is pretty much the same as the Facebook events feature. You select a title for your event, a date and time, and who you want to invite.

Once you activate the event, a message is sent to all those invited. Everyone can see who is invited and what their status is. Responding is easy, too. You do not even need the app to receive text alerts. The message contains a link that directs the individual to a mobile landing page, and from there they can respond to the invitation.

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The new Send to Kindle app from Amazon makes it easy to send documents from your PC to your Kindle. The Send to Kindle app was launched this week, and it is Amazon’s latest step to stay vital in the competitive tablet and e-book reader market.

Send to Kindle App Is the Missing Link

Perhaps when they look back on the evolution of the Kindle, they will point to the Send to Kindle app as being a significant turning point. With the eclipsing success of the iPad and the new Windows 8 tablet on the horizon, manufacturers are looking for ways to expand the capabilities of their devices.

And although supporters of these different devices have very specific reasons for their choice of one over the other, manufacturers also understand that limiting the scope of a tablet or e-book reader can only be a detriment, despite the claims of the niche.

The Send to Kindle app makes it possible to send Microsoft Word files (.DOC or .DOCX), TXT (.TXT), JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG), GIF (.GIF), PNG (.PNG), BMP (.BMP), and PDF (.PDF) files straight from your PC to your Kindle. The files can be stored in your Kindle library or in the Amazon Cloud.

The Send to Kindle app is compatible with Windows-based PCs running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (64 or 32 bit). Presently, the only Kindle-reading applications supported by the Send to Kindle app are the Kindle app for Android (version 3.5 or higher) and the Kindle App for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

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