ZENTITY coverage in LiveMint
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in Uncategorized on February 20, 2010
Touch Carrom and ZENTITY covered in LiveMint a Hindustan Times and Wall Street Journal publication in India. Here is the article as it appears in print:
Touch Carrom goes Bollywood
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in Uncategorized on February 1, 2010
Touch Carrom became the first ever official iPhone game of a Bollywood film (Striker).
This is an exciting partnership, which helps us to bring a world class gaming experience to traditional Indian games. This is the first integrated movie and gaming experience and we believe that it will be an important trend. Studio 18 are truly an innovative partner to work with.
Thank you all who helped us get Touch Carrom this far and you know there is a lot more to come.
Touch Carrom: Striker Edition is available at: http://itunes.apple.com/app/touchcarrom/id337993724?mt=8
Touch Carrom in Apple iPad
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in iphone on January 29, 2010
While the world debates whether iPad is revolutionary or just a big dumbed down iPhone. We have made sure that Touch Carrom will look and play great on the iPad.
Generally, our take on the iPad is that it’s a decent first gen device. A great applications and content consumption platform. As it matures with software upgrades, new applications and even hardware, it will be the platform to beat in the tablet segment. In all the hype and hoopla leading up to the launch and then the “disappointment” people often forget it’s still the best device in the tablet form factor till date.
For your viewing pleasure checkout Touch Carrom in the iPad simulator:
Touch Carrom is a five star app – Daily App Show
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in iphone on January 20, 2010
Touch Carrom just got reviewed on the Daily App Show. Having no background in the game, the presenter compares the game with pool/billiard and table shuffle. Which is actually a very good way to look at it 
The presenter likes the game and gets addicted while playing even without having prior knowledge about the game. Check it out at http://dailyappshow.com/touch-carrom.
As always any comments/feedback welcome.
Touch Carrom 1.1.2 launches
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in iphone on January 17, 2010
Checkout Touch Carrom 1.1.2. The best version yet featuring the new faster controller.
Other changes include:
- Improved board visual
- New font across all screens
- New instructions video
Download at: http://itunes.apple.com/app/touchcarrom/id337993724?mt=8
Please provide your feedback in the App Store or comments below.
Isn’t the new game screen gorgeous?
Touch Carrom for iPhone – be a striker! OR touchcarrom.com
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in Uncategorized on January 9, 2010
Touch Carrom gets its own home page at http://touchcarrom.com. Please let us know what do you think at http://www.zentity.com/contact.html.
We at ZENTITY thank all Touch Carrom players and fans for their continued support! There is a lot more to come.
Is Nexus One the iPhone killer?
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in iphone on December 30, 2009
Gizmodo broke the story on the Nexus One (NO – the Google Phone) pricing earlier yesterday. There is nothing innovative about the price it’s fairly standard way in which the mobile phones are priced: locked version which is subsidized by the carrier and unlocked full priced version. There had been a couple of earlier posts about the features and the form factor. All in all, NO is shaping up to be a competitive device and will further the cause of Android phones. It would be interesting to see how it all pans out with so many device manufacturers, carriers and now Google getting into the game so directly. There is also an indirect VoIP story in the NO launch somewhere and carriers will be sensitive to that. In a lot of ways, iPhone is actually a better play for carriers then anything Google can ever offer because the Google business model is so directly dependent on cheap bandwidth, ads and control over content discovery and delivery.
So what do I think about Google NO? It’s no iPhone killer. It will further cement Android’s position as a distant #2 in the smartphone category and become a second platform of choice for App Developers.
Oh and everyone at ZENTITY wishes you a very happy and prosperous year 2010.
New Touch Carrom Review
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in iphone on December 30, 2009
Checkout a new review of Touch Carrom on http://www.amitbhawani.com.
Book Review: Inbound Marketing
Posted by Abhishek Balaria in Startup on December 21, 2009
Inbound marketing by Halligan and Shah is as practical as you can get about SEO and Social Media without actually describing the installation of blogging software, HTML code and HTTP server configuration files. The book starts by explaining what is inbound marketing and how it is different from outbound marketing (the current interruption based advertising model). Inbound marketing is all about driving leads towards your business, when they are seeking information or reading on a topic relevant to your business. The authors then build a case for why inbound marketing is important in today’s world and why it’s much more effective than outbound marketing.
The book is divided among four sections:
- INBOUND MARKETING
- GET FOUND BY PROSPECTS
- CONVERTING CUSTOMERS
- MAKE BETTER DECISIONS
The structure is quite logical having first explained you the basic concepts, it then moves on to increasing your reach within Google and Social Media, converting prospects into customers and eventually measure how well your inbound marketing efforts are doing.
The interesting thing about the book is that most of the advice is common sense and probably not new to anyone who has been following last 6-7 years of Web 2.0 and Social Networking boom (yes, I used the dreaded word). After convincing you, that inbound marketing is the most effective lead generation tool you have online, the authors then explain how to use modern social networking sites and Google to get found and build a following. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon – it’s all covered. There is some practical advice on SEO, but this is not an SEO primer. The book contains basic and most important (and legit) SEO advice and doesn’t go overboard in telling you tricks to exploit current bugs and loopholes in search engine algorithms. The whole promise is to build long term assets which would keep on giving after you have long stopped attending to them (however, if you want to keep maintaining and growing your leads quantity/quality you are never really done with SEO and content creation).
The last few chapters contain good pointers on how to effectively measure everything you do online from lead quantity/quality to internal staff efficiency. This is good enough for a start, but I believe every company would like to build their own matrices and measures. As Jack Welch said in his famous “Straight from the Gut“ book: what you measure is what you get.
I try to keep up to date on online trends and read most new books on the subject. Some of my recent good reads include The Long Tail, Everything is Miscellenous, Groundswell and Free along with whatever Gladwell and Godin write . This is a different sort of book and a comparison is not Apples to Apples, but this book stands tall even in such distinguished company. And that’s saying something about the first book by the authors.
Having said all that, there is one caveat, the era of outbound marketing is not over yet. You have to explore both inbound and outbound marketing approaches to make sure you attract the right segment for your product/services. The authors say this much even in the book that outbound marketing can be useful especially in the beginning when you are just starting to build your inbound assets.
Grab it at http://bit.ly/inboundbook, it will enrich you in every sense of the word.
iPhone SDK – How To Add CheckBox Control
This is quite a common requirement to be able to add a custom checkbox control in an iPhone app. In the Interface builder -> Tools ->library there is no CheckBox control while other controls like Label and Text Field are there. Here is how I implemented it. I would be interested in hearing about how others went about doing it.
You can use the UIButton control to make a CheckBox.
In your project, in the resources folder add the images e.g. the ones attached with in this post “checkbox-selected.png” and “checkbox.png”.
Define the members as follows in “CheckBoxViewController.h”
@interface CheckBoxViewController : UIViewController{BOOL checkboxSelected;UIButton *checkBox;UILabel *checkBoxLabel;}
Uncomment the viewDidLoad in “CheckBoxViewController.m” and use the following code.
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
checkBox = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(60, 100, 16, 16)];
checkBox.contentVerticalAlignment = UIControlContentVerticalAlignmentCenter;
checkBox.contentHorizontalAlignment = UIControlContentHorizontalAlignmentCenter;
// Image for normal state
UIImage *newNormalImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"checkbox.png"];
[checkBox setBackgroundImage:newNormalImage forState:UIControlStateNormal];
// Image for highlighted state
UIImage *newHighlightedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"checkbox-selected.png"];
[checkBox setBackgroundImage:newHighlightedImage forState:UIControlStateHighlighted];
// Image for selected state
UIImage *newSelectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"checkbox-selected.png"];
[checkBox setBackgroundImage:newSelectedImage forState:UIControlStateSelected];
[checkBox addTarget:self action:@selector(checkBoxSelect:)forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
checkBox.adjustsImageWhenHighlighted = YES;
[checkBox setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
[[self view] addSubview:checkBox];
checkBoxLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, 90, 200, 40)];
[checkBoxLabel setText:@"Check Box"];
[checkBox setBackgroundColor:[[ self view] backgroundColor]];
[[self view] addSubview:checkBoxLabel];
}
And add the following action method
-(void)checkBoxSelect:(id)sender
{
if (checkboxSelected == 0)
{
[checkBox setSelected:YES];
[checkBoxLabel setText:@"Check Box - Selected"];
checkboxSelected = 1;
}
else
{
[checkBox setSelected:NO];
[checkBoxLabel setText:@"Check Box"];
checkboxSelected = 0;
}
}
Build and Run the application, this will work as checkbox control.
