Apple Introduces iCloud

Store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Apple® today introduced iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch®, Mac® or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices. When anything changes on one of your devices, all of your devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.

“Today it is a real hassle and very frustrating to keep all your information and content up-to-date across all your devices,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it—it all just works.”

The free iCloud services include:

• The former MobileMe® services—Contacts, Calendar and Mail—all completely re-architected and rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Users can share calendars with friends and family, and the ad-free push Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inbox and mailboxes are kept up-to-date across all your iOS devices and computers.

• The App Store™ and iBookstore? now download purchased iOS apps and books to all your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. In addition, the App Store and iBookstore now let you see your purchase history, and simply tapping the iCloud icon will download any apps and books to any iOS device (up to 10 devices) at no additional cost.

• iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up your iOS devices to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi when you charge your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Backed up content includes purchased music, apps and books, Camera Roll (photos and videos), device settings and app data. If you replace your iOS device, just enter your Apple ID and password during setup and iCloud restores your new device.

• iCloud Storage seamlessly stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all your devices. When you change a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all your devices. Apple’s Pages®, Numbers® and Keynote® apps already take advantage of iCloud Storage. Users get up to 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup—which is more amazing since the storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream doesn’t count towards this 5GB total. Users will be able to buy even more storage, with details announced when iCloud ships this fall.

• iCloud’s innovative Photo Stream service automatically uploads the photos you take or import on any of your devices and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices and computers. So you can use your iPhone to take a dozen photos of your friends during the afternoon baseball game, and they will be ready to share with the entire group on your iPad (or even Apple TV®) when you return home. Photo Stream is built into the photo apps on all iOS devices, iPhoto® on Macs, and saved to the Pictures folder on a PC. To save space, the last 1,000 photos are stored on each device so they can be viewed or moved to an album to save forever. Macs and PCs will store all photos from the Photo Stream, since they have more storage. iCloud will store each photo in the cloud for 30 days, which is plenty of time to connect your devices to iCloud and automatically download the latest photos from Photo Stream via Wi-Fi.

• iTunes® in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from iTunes can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that replaces your music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if we can match it to the over 18 million songs in the iTunes Store®, it makes the matched music available in minutes (instead of weeks to upload your entire music library), and uploads only the small percentage of unmatched music. iTunes Match will be available this fall for a $24.99 annual fee. Apple today is releasing a free beta version of iTunes in the Cloud, without iTunes Match, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users running iOS 4.3. iTunes in the Cloud will support all iPhones that iOS 5 supports this fall.

Apple is ready to ramp iCloud in its three data centers, including the third recently completed in Maiden, NC. Apple has invested over $500 million in its Maiden data center to support the expected customer demand for the free iCloud services.

Pricing & Availability
The iCloud beta and Cloud Storage APIs are available immediately to iOS and Mac Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iCloud will be available this fall concurrent with iOS 5. Users can sign up for iCloud for free on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 or a Mac running Mac OS® X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available for $24.99 per year (US only).

iTunes in the Cloud is available today in the US and requires iTunes 10.3 and iOS 4.3.3. Automatic download of apps and books is available today. Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Unity Technologies Celebrates Six Years of Indie Game Development Goodness

The leading Indie game engine celebrates its sixth birthday.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – June 06, 2011) – Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity development platform for awesome games and interactive 3D on the web, iOS, Android, consoles and beyond, today celebrated Unity’s sixth anniversary.

Unity, launched onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in 2005, is commemorating six years of steadfast leadership and relentless innovation in democratizing game development and making it possible for everyone to create rich interactive 3D content.

“We bet on broad democratization of game development and have been aggressively coding and innovating to realize that vision,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “We just surpassed the 500,000 user milestone, our customers continue to amaze us with their creations, and we are expanding our team at a rapid rate. It’s exciting to be both an instigator and a participant in this revolution.”

A few of the things that have happened in the last 12 months:

Unity was named the #1 Game Engine by Game Developer Magazine readers, received Develop Magazine’s coveted Grand Prix Award and won the prestigious Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award Unity became the platform of choice for teaching students how to design and develop games

The company’s registered user base surpassed 500,000 users; 150,000 of these users are active monthly users representing well over a million hours of game development every month

The free Unity browser plugin for playing web games exceeded 60 million installs

Unity and the Unity Web Player were certified by the US Army and Air Force so they can be installed on their secure networks

The third generation of Unity, with dozens of major new features, 100+ additional enhancements and up to 10x performance improvements, and support for Android were released

The company teamed with Qualcomm to bring Augmented Reality (AR) to Android The number of Unity games in the Apple iOS App Store exceeded 1500 — “best of” and “top selling” games include Battleheart, Gears, Samurai II, Skee-Ball and Snuggle Truck

The company rocked Game Developers Conference (GDC) in a big way and won Best of Show The company announced a deep partnership Electronic Arts (EA)

The company launched the Unity Asset Store, a digital marketplace where developers can share and sell assets to accelerate development, and it’s quickly become the #1 marketplace for Unity developers

The company introduced Union, a business unit dedicated to distributing high quality 3D games on mobile phones, tablets, set-top boxes, connected TVs and other new platforms — Union announced a partnership with Sony Ericsson to enable rapid development and porting of Unity-based games to the new Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY smartphone and a partnership with RIM to bring dozens of Unity-based games to the PlayBook

For the full list of awards and accolades, simply visit:
http://unity3d.com/company/fast-facts.

Moshi Monsters Hits 50 Million Registered Users Worldwide

Publisher claims Moshi Monsters is one of the fastest growing kids entertainment brands in the world with 50 million registered users worldwide.

PRESS RELEASE

New York – June 6, 2011 – Two years ago, London-based startup Mind Candy launched Moshi Monsters (www.moshimonsters.com), with the goal of giving 6-12 year old kids a fun, social and safe online experience. Today, Moshi Monsters is a new form of children’s entertainment. The website forms the heart of the experience, which combines adoptable pet monsters, safe social networking, games, stories, missions and educational puzzles.

The site has become hugely successful over the last year growing at the rate of one new sign up every second, with the fastest growth being seen across North America.
Following its online popularity the brand has made a successful transition into the offline world with the launch of best-selling toys, books, video games, trading cards and a Moshi magazine within the UK and Australia.

Spin Master is onboard as U.S. toy partner and Moshi Monsters toys will launch in North America this summer via an exclusive partnership with a major retail partner – to be announced imminently. Books from Scholastic and trading cards from Topps are on shelf in the U.S. currently and many other categories including the magazine and video games will roll out in the coming months.

Hot on the heels of its retail success, Mind Candy is also now working on music, live tours, a revolutionary TV platform and a Moshi film.
From near bankruptcy in late 2008, Mind Candy is on course to generate over $100 million in gross retail sales across all Moshi Monsters related product during 2011.
“North America is a huge growth area for us right now,” said Michael Acton Smith, CEO and creator of Moshi Monsters.
He continued, “We’re delighted to hit 50 million registered users and have even more ambitious plans ahead. Our vision is to build the largest entertainment brand in the world for this new digital generation of kids.”

For those who don’t know … what is Moshi Monsters?

Players choose from one of six virtual pet monsters – Furi, Poppet, Diavlo, Zommer, Luvli and Katsuma – that they can create, name and nurture. Once their pet has been customized, players can navigate their way around Monstro City, taking the daily puzzle challenge to earn ‘Rox’
(virtual currency), playing games, solving Super Moshi Missions, personalizing their room, showing off their artwork, reading stories and communicating with friends in a safe environment. Now kids can enjoy Moshi Monsters in a variety of forms whether it be online, via books, a magazine or playing with their favorite toy.

About Mind Candy

Online gaming and entertainment company, Mind Candy was founded by internet entrepreneur Michael Acton Smith (CEO) in 2004. The company created Moshi Monsters, which has 50m players around the world and is now expanding rapidly offline into books, toys, trading cards, TV and film.