I announced earlier today that my company had acquired Creastoric. I have to admit, I wasn’t looking to acquire a company or product at the time, so this deal kind of fell into my lap. However, it made a lot of sense to me as far as product fit, my interest in the product itself, and financially.
This got me to thinking: could acquiring apps be a reasonable way to jump start Fortunate Bear? Right now the company is still in its infancy, and the product portfolio isn’t complete. Ideally, I’d write all the apps myself, but that’s not reasonable in the amount of time that I want Fortunate Bear to become viable in. Thus, acquisition begins to look like a interesting option.
So if you’re a developer with a product or company you’d like to sell, send me an email and let’s see if we can work something out.
Today I completed the acquisition of another small software company, Creastoric. If you don’t know, Creastoric was the creator of Log Leech, an application that has an innovative way of viewing and navigating system logs. If you’re the kind of person who needs to deal with logs, I encourage you to check it out.
I think the product (as a system utility) fits well with my existing Mac product, Illuminate. Both are kind of power user products, and I’m hoping there is some overlap in the audience. Either way, it’s exciting to see my product portfolio expand. I have a lot planned for Log Leech and Illuminate.
Anyway, you can get all the details of the acquisition in the press release.
I’ve been hard at work on Fortunate Bear’s next product, but I wanted to lift my head long enough to give a quick preview of what I’m working on. Keep in mind, it’s very early in development and maybe 20% (if that) of the features are done. But without further ado:
(Video is HTML 5, so you’ll need a recent browser.)
As a bonus you get to see my fantastical art skills. The codename for the project is Vectorspring, and I hope to be showing off more as it progresses.
I’ve officially launched my new website Hearts & Tactics today. Ever since I started work on Black Maria, I’ve been wanting a website where I could talk about hearts, and pick up tips on how to play better. As a rule, the better I can play a game, the more I enjoy it.
Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot out there when it comes to places to talk and learn about hearts. Don’t get me wrong: there are tons of places to play hearts. There were two dozen iPhone apps last I counted. It’s hearts strategy and tactics information that’s lacking. There is information out there, but it’s scattered and hard to find. I lost count of how many broken links I ran into when doing research.
Anyway, Hearts & Tactics addresses all that. It has a comprehensive strategy section covering everything from passing, playing, and shooting the moon. It’s not just for advanced players either: it contains strategies for beginners too. It has place where you can talk with other hearts players about strategy, your favorite variations, or where you like to play. It even has a brief bit about the history of hearts, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The goal of Hearts & Tactics is to get more people playing and enjoying hearts. I think teaching some basic strategies and providing a place for those interested to congregate and help each other out will do a lot. So go check it out.
I officially released Black Maria today. If you like card games — especially if you like ones that require strategy — and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should give it a try. If you don’t know how to play hearts, no problem, the game will teach you how. It’s also free, so there’s no reason not to go try it right now.
