The promise of video entertainment on mobile devices is a theme that quickly emerged in our hacker in residence group.  Matt Hackett was particularly frustrated that despite the simplicity of an iPhone and iPad, it’s incredibly time consuming to find video entertainment worth watching.  Traditional mobile video apps did one of two things - they either pulled uninteresting video from social streams, or they relied on extensive keyword searching only to find a semi-entertaining 30 second clip.

At the same time, traditional television, for all it’s flaws, still does one thing well - when you turn on a TV and switch to a channel you like, you’ll get professionally programmed video designed to (hopefully) entertain you.  Why can’t we do the same thing on an iPad or iPhone?  

Matt and a small team of builders, including Jason Morrow (product design), Juan Alvarez (iOS), Mike Byhoff (editorial), Grant Custer (front-end extraordinaire) spent the next 3 months working to fix this problem: Enter Telecast.

We believe in what makes TV special, professionally sourced and programmed shows.  At the same time, we feel the most interesting video content now exists on the Internet.  Telecast brings you three 5-minute bursts of seriously good, personally tailored video every day.

One thing’s for sure - you’ll love the shows.  Download Telecast now and give it a shot.

- paul

Telecast is currently only available in North America, additional markets coming soon!

We recently launched Dots to an amazing response.  In just one week, Dots has been downloaded 1 million times, has become the #1 app in 8 countries, and is a top 5 app in 15 other countries.  Our Twitter and Facebook streams were quickly filled with friends, colleagues, celebrities, and complete strangers talking about the game and challenging others to beat their Dots score. Needless to say, we’re thrilled with the response.

There’s a lot to do, and we’re working hard to release an update shortly with a few bug fixes, new features, and iPad support.  Check out the blog on Dots to see what we have planned (plus a few tips and tricks).

- patrick & paul

About 3 months ago, Patrick Moberg started experimenting with various iOS interaction designs as part of the hacker in residence program.  We didn’t set out to build a game, but quickly realized there’s a desire for well designed mobile entertainment so that’s where we focussed.  Patrick worked for a few weeks to build something that looked beautiful and provided you some level of stimulation.  After a few days playing one of the initial concepts, we were all completely hooked.  Several betaworks employees and their partners clocked hours and hours of playtime off a fairly rudimentary pilot.  Over the next few months, we refined the scoring, design, and overall aesthetic to come up with what we simply call Dots - a game about connecting.

As you play you earn “dots” which is the game’s currency for advanced powers.  You can earn these by playing or via in-app-purchases, but both routes produce the same outcome.  One of the principles Patrick established from the start was to never take advantage of players — so you can always earn your way to powers if you don’t want to pay for them.  You’ll never reach a point in the game where you have to shell out cash to keep playing or advance.

We think it’s simple, beautiful, and fun.  Give it a try and let us know what you think.

- paul