Happy Demolition Day 2011!

Happy Demolition Day, 2011! BOOM!




Video courtesy of YouTube and Controlled Demolition, Inc.

Demolition Day is coming

It's been a while since we mentioned it, but it's time to recover the tradition of Demolition Day. It's coming... get ready. Boom! For more info, go here

Ads on Android's Angry Birds Are Annoying

Right now, Angry Birds is doing extremely well on the Android platform, but I have a proposal. I want Rovio Mobile to make a paid version of the Angry Birds Android game. I know what you're thinking, "Is this guy crazy? He actually wants to pay money for a game he can get for free?" The answers are no and yes. The reason is that Angry Birds has the intrusive advertising I've ever seen on an Android application.

The problems start when you start the app. Sometimes it will play a full-screen video advertisement when it starts up. You can skip it, but it's just a roadblock on my way to the fun.

Then you get into the levels, and a banner advertisement will appear. It used to be in the lower-right version of the screen, where it overlapped some scenery, so it was out of the way. I guess that was too out-of-the-way, because they moved the banner ad to the upper-left corner of the screen. Coincidentally, that's smack-dab in the actual game-play. On some levels, it's just an annoyance. On others, it actually blocks your view of part of the structure you're trying to destroy, requiring you to move the level around to see what you're doing. It actually interferes with my game-play.

I understand that Rovio decided that problems with the pay system on the Android Market would keep them from making as much revenue as the iPhone version, so they made it free. I would politely ask Rovio to re-consider and release a paid version of Angry Birds without advertisements. I think there are a lot of customers who would pay to get rid of those ads. If you're one of them, click here to sign a petition. We can show Rovio they can make money on this app through direct sales, just like they did on the iPhone.

UPDATE: I just found out a few minutes after I posted this that Rovio Mobile is developing an in-game payment system called Bad Piggy Bank. Finally.