Think of Utterz as Twitter for audio, pics and video. Utterz is a very simple concept where registered users call a pre-set number (712-432-6666) to leave short sound clips (or Utterz) that are automatically posted on the users Utterz profile. With this release, Utterz now allows users to accompany their posted messages with both pictures and video that can be submitted via email or site upload. The pictures and video are automatically matched to the previous voice utter on the website.

The company also followed the advice from my previous post and added a selection of widgets (Ok…I’m sure they were planning on it anyway) that allow you to publish your latest Utterz to your blog or online profiles. Notice my Utterz widget in the sidebar – not much of a set I must admit but I’m not sure if I am the real target.

One of the interesting parts of the overall concept is that it allows a 2-way conversation through a blog-like comment system. Users have the ability to post responses to each message through the website or directly through the phone number. When you call in, the automated attendant will notify you that their are replies waiting for your messages and give you the ability to respond…almost voice texting in a way.

This new “micro-blogging” service still has a few bugs to work out and I will be curious to see how they will handle offensive content even in a community policed format. However, I think that the new feature set combined with the site’s clever branding (a bit refreshing for east coast standards) have the potential to turn Utterz into a very popular service.

RPM Communications, the maker of Utterz and Foonz, also announced a $4 million Series A round of funding led by Morgenthaler Ventures.

Technorati tags: utterz, boston web 2.0, maynard, mobile, technology, sms, video, audio, twitter, start-up, launch

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The Boston.com article points out that Boston may not the be the powerhouse location of the industry but the number of game developers in the area is quite impressive and may lead to Boston being crowned the game development capital in the near future.

This list of 25 companies comprises entrants from the gaming space, our contribution to the virtual world and several game related companies. Even though I have spent a bit of time researching the economics of the virtual world, I will admit that my expertise is not in the pure online gaming space (outside of hours of Counter Strike, Stars Wars Battlefront and a former career playing online poker).

This is also by no means a complete group of all local companies. Special thanks go to Boston PostMortem, Waltham’s Zoominfo and, of course…Google who I used heavily to put the list together. If you interested in the space you should check out the PostMortem site and their complete list of local game companies.

Want a job in virtual worlds or video gaming? Just about all of these companies list jobs on their career pages. You can also check out Semper, the Boston-based staffing agency that has opened a division specifically focused on staffing all aspects of the industry.

Please let me know if I missed any companies that should be here.

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Harmonix Music Systems (Cambridge, MA): Are you a jukebox or Guitar Hero? Maker of the very popular Guitar Hero , the company was started by 2 MIT alums and focuses primarily on music based video games for multiple platforms. I have not picked up the game for my PS2 yet. They also produce game titles including Karaoke Revolution and Amplitude.

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Turbine Entertainment (Westwood, MA): Highland backed Turbine produces both the Dungeons and Dragons and the recently released subscription based Lord of the Rings 3D MMORG games. Their earlier claim to fame was the popular Asheron’s Call title.

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38studios (Maynard, MA): Formerly Green Monster Games, 38 studios is the much anticipated and publicized game operation from Red Sox pitcher Curt Chilling, Spawn creator Todd Mcfarlane and fantasy novelist R.A. Salvatore. The very “stealth” game is rumored to be an MMORPG ala Everquest but with a twist that could involve a serial novel concept. From their site – ” 38 Studios is redefining conventional multi-player gaming with the deployment of new game concepts, distribution methods, technologies and IP that have never been seen in the MMORPG space.

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ActiveWorlds (Newburyport, MA): Founded in 1995, this is one of the pioneers of the virtual world industry. The company produces numerous online virtual worlds where users create their own environments and even provides a license for it’s technology as well. Check out their futuristic version of Mars or their latest stock quote from the NASDAQ.

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Conduit Labs (Cambridge, MA): Founded by local entrepreneur Nabeel Hyatt of Ambient Devices fame, Conduit Labs just landed a nice round of funding from Charles River Ventures and Prism. The much anticipated gaming company is very stealth right now but is rumored to be developing a casual game meets MMOG type product that the founder promises to deliver soon.

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Worldwinner (Newton, MA): Want to play for real money online and not be gambling? Woldwinner hosts “skills-based” games between users including titles like Solitaire, Bejeweled 2, SCRABBLE, Cubes, Luxor and Cubis. Players compete against one another for real cash and prizes. This is no small operation the company boasts 30M+ registered and hosts more than 20Mtournaments every month.

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Ingeeni Studios (Cambridge, MA): “Artifical Intelligence in Your Browser Today” – Ingeeni is looking to build out the next-generation of AI (artificial intelligence) for gaming and virtual worlds. Ingeeni recently released the Borneo platform, a set of tools for companies to build out their own character portals. Just as cool as the technology is the involvement of Cynthia Breazeal, ScD. of MIT’s Kismet. fame on the companies management team. Check out their CreaturePark for a demo of the technology.

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Tilted Mill (Framingham, MA): Tilted Mill creates strategy, RPG and simulations for the PC and other gaming platforms. The company is currently producing a spin-off to the massive SimCity franchise called SimCity Societies. Their current titles include Ceasar IV and Children of the Nile.

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ImaginEngine (Framingham, MA): Part of Foundation 9 Entertainment (Emeryville, CA), ImaginEngine focuses on developing children’s titles and considers itself to be the largest independent game developer in North America. Although, I’m not sure that Chris Moneymaker’s World Poker Championship would be considered a childrens title in the same way that Blue’s Room: Blue Talks is listed?

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Iron Lore Entertainment (Maynard, MA): Iron Lore was founded by veteran game developer Brian Sullivan and successful entrepreneur Paul Chieffo. Brian is the co-creator of the epic game that even the causal gamer has heard of, Age of Empires. Now the company produces the PC games series TitanQuest.

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Floodgate Entertainment (Boston, MA): Founded by executives from the former Looking Glass Studios (pour out a bit of your 40 out for this defunct Boston game developer), FloodGate produces is a top mobile game developer and producer of titles like Daycare Nightmare, NASCAR 07, MoPets, Madden NFL 05, Madden NFL 06, Age of Empires and the multi-player Pirates of the Caribbean.

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Irrational Games / 2K Boston (Quincy, MA & Canberra, Australia): Irrational Games, another spawn from the old LookingGlass studios, was acquired in 2006 by Take Two (I am resisting a Rob Base joke right now) and was recently re-named 2K Boston. The company produces RPG games for the PC and console including the Bioshock title which won ‘Best of Show’ from IGN, GameSpot and GameSpy.

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DigitalBrix (Nashua, NH): I met founder Naveena Swamy at the last Webinno and was impressed by their “build your own game” flash technology. They have 2 products online right now including GameBrix, a community of creative people, and GBoss a web 2.0 browser based utility that enables community members to build simple flash games.

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Tri Synergy (Upton, MA): Founded by former Best Buy, CompUSA and Electronics Boutique executives, Tri Synergy provides an alternative publishing and distribution model for game developers. Where typically a developer will hand over the business side (PR, marketing, sales, etc.) to a publisher, Tri Synergy provides a turn-key way for developers to “self-publish” their titles.

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Blue Fang Games (Waltham, MA): An independent developer focused on creating “compelling, emotionally engaging games focused on the animal kingdom”. Blue Fang developed the Zoo Tycoon game title first released in 2001.

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Cecropia (Lexington, MA): Founded by ex-Papyrus Design Group co-founder Omar Khudari, Cecropia (a large, colorful moth) is looking to build a new part animated film, part video game concept. The project is animated by former Disney animators based in their Orlando office and combined with a game engine technology produced in Lexington. It sounds vaguely like the 80s arcade game Dragon’s Lair (also Disney animated).

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Windward Mark Interactive / Second Life Boston (Waltham, MA & Boston, MA): Now part of Second Life, Winward Mark was founded by Harvard students looking to make a play in the real-world visualization arena producing highly realistic 3D environments for games and simulations. The company produced a game titled Alliance, as well. You may have also noticed their introduction of realistic weather to Second Life. The entire team will join the Second Life Development office that was recently placed here to take advantage of our local talent.

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Demiurge Studios (Cambridge, MA) An independent video game development house and service provider. Demiurge has worked on over a dozen PC, console and online titles, including Brothers in Arms, Titan Quest, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

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Emagination Computer Camps (Woburn, MA): American Pie had band-camp, Boston has video game camp. Emagination Game Design operates a pre-college video game design school for teens ages 15-18. The Woburn based company provides a 14-day training camp teaching kids the ins-and-outs of video game development including tours of game development shops.

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Minerva / Cyberlore Studios (Northhapton, MA): Minerva operated until 2005 as Cyberlore Studios until it switched it’s focus to “serious games” and changed names to Minerva. As Cyberlore, they produced PC video games including titles such as MechWarrior, Might and Magic, Risk, and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. They also produced a title called Playboy: The Mansion. Minerva now uses it’s game technology for sales and customer support training.

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Creat Studios (Canton, MA): Creat produces a list of handheld and console games out of their Canton, MA office. Their title include Coded Arms (Konami), HotBrain and the very cool looking Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro-Am for the PS2.

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Dragonfly Game Design (Westborough, MA): Dragonfly is a small game development shop that has produced games for Hasboro (Pawtucket, RI) and is often brought in by other development shops (including Demiurge) to work on game projects.

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Funkitron (Boxford, MA): Develops a list of downloadable “casual” video games for the PC. They are currently promoting the release of an 80s trivia game (with Boston-based board game company, Intellinitiative Game Co) featuring former MTV VJ Martha Quin as the spokesperson.

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Orbus Gameworks (Boston, MA): Is a very new start-up that is developing a gaming analytics service that allows game developers to track and analyze how their games are being used through a heat map technology – sounds very cool.

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Cambridge Interactive Development Corporation (Cambridge, MA): Hidden down by the Alewife T stop, CIDC considers itself more of a “software” company than a gaming company but one of it’s main outputs is the development of multi-player gaming title including online poker sites like Everest Poker.

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Technorati tags: Games, Video Games, Virtual Worlds, Online Games, MMORPG, Metaverse, Harmonix, Turbine, Turbine Entertainment, 38studios, Green Monster, ActiveWorlds, Conduit Labs, Conduit, Boston Web 2.0, Worldwinner, Orbus Gameworks, CIDC, Ingeeni Studios, Tilted Mill, ImaginEngine, Iron Lore Entertainment, Floodgate Entertainment, Irrational Games, 2K Boston, DigitalBrix, Tri Synergy, Blue Fang Games, Cecropia, Windward Mark Interactive, Second Life Boston, Demiurge Studios, Emagination, Minerva, Cyberlore Studios, Creat Studios, Funkitron, Casual Games

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The company is comprised of 3 main principles from multiple industries including Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, New York Times best-selling fantasy author (and Leominster native!) R. A. Salvatore, and video game industry leader Brett Close.

The main issue that I see from the article is the expected release date of the game – 2010! That’s an eternity in the online world. The company is planning on releasing additional products outside of the game but to think that far in advance the creators may need to be more than just visionary’s, they’ll have to be fortune tellers.

The company plans on releasing some early concept art at the show. I’ll keep an eye on 38pitches blog and the Gamebunny blog who is promising and update from the Comic-Con in San Diego show soon.

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Technorati tags: online games, virtual worlds, wow, world of warcraft, 38studios, curt schilling, boston web 2.0, boston, maynard, web 2.0, gamers, spawn

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Utterz is an audio version of the popular website Twitter where registered users call a pre-set number (712-432-6666) to leave short sound bytes that are automatically posted on the Utterz website. The UI is incredibly simple and very easy to use. Anyone can send an Utter in minutes using this well designed and simple website.

Although I am not sure what the commercial viability from the service is just yet, I do love the clever branding and play on words that make up the company name.

The one glaring thing that I do see lacking from the website is content portability. There appears to be no tools or widgets that allow users to post their utterz to other sites or blogs. I could be missing it but it seems that they are missing an important viral marketing aspect for their service. For example, I would put an Utterz widget on my blog for tonight if it was available. Instead, check out my Utterz page to see if I actually deliver one tonight.

UPDATE: I did find a way to embed single Utterz but I am still looking for an embed for all Utterz that dynamically updates with my latest entries.

This appears (I have not spoken with them) to be a small start-up that also has built an interesting product called Foonz, a free conference call from any telephone service that I will profile at a later date when I dig deeper into the Utterz site.

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