Our indie team, Kindling Games, is currently developing a game for Windows Phone 7. We’re in the final throes of getting this thing out the door and the other day we had this simple, well proven idea for generating a little more revenue and adding a different dimension to our game. For a small fee, you would be able to customize your rainbow duder (we need a better name) with a few skins and also be able to customize your levels. For example, you’d pick up a Zeus skin and a tiny Zeus sits on top of your rainbow cloud and extra lighting particle effects rain down terror on the townspeople. Essentially, the purchase would include a small bit of additional functionality along with the cosmetic change. We’re well beneath the maximum package size so we thought this would be a great way to add extra content and some extra fun! After having this idea, I had a flash of sudden realization that the Windows Phone 7 does not support micro-transactions. Arrrrrggggh!!!

Sony’s huge PlayStation Network (PSN) has been down for a week now following the theft of ID and credit card data on some or all of the gaming and video entertainment network’s 77 million customer accounts. Readers have been asking for comment but I stay out of these things unless I have something new to contribute. That something finally comes a week into the crisis as gamers begin to wonder why the network is still not back in operation and speculate on what this all means to Sony? It’s a huge loss of face, if course, but beyond that the damage to Sony is minimal. And the upside for PSN members, including those involved in the many emerging class action lawsuits, is likely to be bupkes. Nothing.

At GDC this year, I was given ten minutes to speak at the Game Educators Rant. I actually went over by a few minutes (with apologies to my fellow panelists) so I had to cut the end of the presentation a little short. What follows are my notes (sans slides, and edited for strong language since this is not meant to be an M-rated blog)

A quick romp through some of the categories and companies that the Godfather of technology blogging sees as being particularly hot, disruptive, interesting, useful and trend setting today.

Every month Opera conducts the definitive analysis of the key trends affecting the mobile Web worldwide. We publish these findings as the State of the Mobile Web. Each report provides the most frequently visited sites, key data metrics from Opera Mini and a snapshot of a specific trend chosen by the analysis team that month.