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 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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Most weather apps give you the straight facts, your basic meat and potatoes. Now, there is nothing wrong with a staple of weather facts, but there are two new apps that bring something a little different to the radar screen: Dark Sky and SF Climates.

Dark Sky

Dark Sky is another successful Kickstarter project. The project received nearly $40,000 from over 1,000 backers. What sets this app apart from other weather apps is its focus on short-term weather predictions. We often want to know what the weather will be like during the day, but often what affects us the most are short-term weather patterns (i.e., if you will step outside, will you be poured on 15 minutes later?).

The Dark Sky app is fully interactive, so you can scroll through a storm to see how it began or how it is progressing. In this way, you can explore many hours of storm data and you can also see what a storm or a weather pattern might look like up to an hour in time.

Because most weather apps only update every five or ten minutes, you end up with jittery satellite images, which makes it difficult to access in which direction a storm is moving. What the Dark Sky app does so ingeniously is use the same algorithm that predicts the weather for those 5-10 minute intervals and uses it to predict the weather in between. The result is a beautifully fluid animation that is unlike anything you have seen.

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The SideCar app is a new application that not only wants to ease the burden on travelers; it also wants to help create a community of environmentally- and socially-conscious commuters.

Carpooling — An Old Idea

The idea of carpooling is not a new one. As far back the Second World War, the U.S. Government advertised the virtues of sharing rides. A famous poster from the Office of Price Administration stated that to ride alone was akin to sharing your car with Hitler. The idea, of course, was not necessarily politic. It had to do with the real issues of supply shortages, which included metal for production and petrol for transportation.

Carpooling fell out of favor in the 70s and 80s, but with the rise of the Internet and environmental consciousness in the 90s, carpooling and ride-sharing services started to find supporters again. And now, with the popularity of smartphones and mobile applications, these types of services are popping up all over North America.

SideCar App

The SideCar app is not the only one of its kind. There are other ride-sharing applications available in different parts of the country, such as Carticipate and Avego. Based out of San Francisco, SideCar is aiming to provide a similar service in the city by the Bay.

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The Know Skateboarding app Street Fundamentals is the best skateboarding application on the market. Period.

Elements

The people behind the Know Skateboarding app are some of the most respected names and board designers in the business: Element. Element was founded by Johnny Schillereff in 1992 and has become in the last 20 years a leader in skateboard apparel and equipment. Element is also behind the International Skate Contest Series, which brings together talent from all over the world.

The Element team also runs a number of youth-oriented events and workshops, including the Element YMCA Camp near the Sequoia National Forest where kids can experience and explore the beauty of nature as well as receive instruction from professional skateboarders, artists, and musicians.

The Know Skateboarding App for the iOS

Two of Elements pros, Chad Tim Tim and Levi Brown, walk you through two free lessons in the Know Skateboarding app. Here you will learn some of the most important and fundamental skateboarding tricks. The video demos and step-by-step video tutorials can be slow-motioned with a touch of a button. There is also a feature that allows you to capture and share your own stunts and manoeuvers.

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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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First, video-sharing app Socialcam added 4 million users over a weekend, and now it has become the number one free app at the App Store. Since the sale of Instagram to Facebook, everyone is speculating on what company will be the next Instagram for video — everyone except maybe the folks at Socialcam.

Socialcam Glam

Socialcam is not the only video-sharing app vying for top spot. Viddy has also enjoyed some flash flood of success, recently adding 5.5 million users in eleven days and securing investment from celebrity A-listers like Will Smith, Jay-Z, Shakira, and soccer star Gerard Pique. Similarly, Socialcam has quickly ballooned to over 20 million users and raised millions in angel funding from some big names that include Ashton Kutcher and Miami Heat’s Shane Battier.

All the glam name-dropping and the millions of dollars that are footnoted in all these articles detract a little from the very practical reasons behind the success of these apps. And it may be that they have done so because they got there first, but in the end, only the value behind the product will keep customers their coming back.

The Socialcam app, like Viddy, run on very simple platforms and interfaces. And like Instagram, there is a social media component to the application, which is in part the reason for its success. It seems that to succeed, most apps these days have to exploit this social component as much as possible. In this post-America’s Funniest Home Videos, Jackass/viral-video world we live in, a video is meant to be shared.

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The Gain Fitness app is one of the latest in the growing number of fitness applications for mobile devices. Gain Fitness began as Web application and it has some stiff competition, but it also has some pretty unique and remarkable features that set it apart from the pack.

Gain Fitness App for the iOS

Mobile fitness apps are perfect for today’s busy professionals who spend much of their time on the road and who do not have a lot time to work out. Gain Fitness app for the iOS was in fact developed with these hyper-mobile professionals in mind. Of course, the very intuitive interface and platform make this a perfect tool for anyone wanting to inject some new life into their workout routine.

The Quick Workout section of the app has over 300 exercise routines to choose from. You can select fitness goals in terms of Health and Longevity, Fat Loss, or Muscle. You can also choose the muscle groups you wish to focus on. Then all you have to do is click Build Workout, and the Gain Fitness app generates a personal workout routine for you.

The app suggests specific routines, and it will provide you with images to show you exactly how to position yourself. There are also images that show you which muscle groups each exercise is working on. Finally, the Quick Workout section will keep track of your reps, duration, and the number of calories burned.

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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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