We covered AboutUs way back when the office was setup in Lahore  

http://greenwhite.org/2007/09/21/aboutusorg-dev-office-in-lahore-what-do-they-do/

AboutUs kept going ahead Ray King was a smart entrepreneur even at the height of economic crises AboutUs secured a 2.5 Million USD Funding, and recently went ahead and bought another startup Jyte in January.

How ever it seems all is not well,  they recently closed their Lahore office, here is the post from Ray’s own blog to confirm it. What could have gone wrong?

Read the rest …

So its been raining facebook games recently on Green and White. Here is another entry to our aspirant young entrepreneurs making games specific to facebook.

Forgive me if i seem a little biased towards this game but my whole child has passed around a carom board as it was kind of a family game .

So back to the game, it is one of the things most of us have thought about why not take our local game on line, why don’t we have a version of ludo, but then a lot of us are just thinkers and few go ahead and do it. same is the case with these two gentle men Ata Krimani and  Shakil Awan, one of them is the developer other is the artist a killer combination for small app production.

Game playability is outstanding, the graphic do bring vivid memories of my childhood. Currently you can play against an AI Computer Characters but they do have plans for multiplayer capabilities in future, other things are similar to a typical facebook game in which your score is displayed on profile etc. The only thing i missed in this game was the delicate cutshot,  and boric powder filled hands. here is the link do give it a shot and don’t blame the wasted time on us

http://apps.facebook.com/carromchallenge/

Here is a short video/

We have not seen a lot of activity on Facebook development end, rarely do I meet or hear about some one who is doing development for Facebook. But then there is always some one waiting to surprise us. White Rabbit an Islamabad based setup has gone ahead and released their first facebook Game Feline Frenzy.

The gameplay for feline frenzy is that you have to throw boots at birds in sky and cats falling from sky, the game is as crazy as it sound yet has a very addictive nature to it. And i loved the tag line.

“ Not all animals are lost, sad, different, suffering from chronic loneliness, ridiculously emo, or begging to be caged in your virtual zoo or barn or farm or island or sock drawer.
No, some animals are uber badass. Beware!”

Read the rest …

Every once in a while we receive or get to review some thing which makes Green and White so much worth for the time and effort that we put in to keep this thing up and running.

Yesterday was another such day, I received this link to review a side project that Mr Ghulam Akbar had developed based on google tools and in his spare time. What this does I will quote from his blog here

Dynamic Language Tools lets you type Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi and many other languages on any web-page, plus it also converts any of the these roman languages words on any web page to the corresponding phonetic language words. With this tools you can type comments or write blogs in your native language. You can also convert any existing contents like poems, comments and stories on the web pages to the your language

Read the rest …

The space of online shops is becoming some what crowded. Though it’s still open but if you map it to number of people who have internet access and even from them identify the ones who will ever buy a thing online its a pretty slim audience that these online retailers are fighting for.

Seems the site is backed or is another venture from the people who are behind Mustakbil which is a job site. They are starting initially with Laptops. digital cameras and multimedia projectors. Technically speaking there is no major innovation and i believe there can not be a lot of changes from one online retailer to other, the only things which can be a diffrentiating factor would be the payment and delivery modules, because in our country where few people with credit cards and fewer still comfortable with online credit card transaction, and most of all the absence of any merchant services in Pakistan the only innovation they can provide is through the payment and delivery services

Read the rest …

While going through my usual read lists of the feeds I got a heading from Engadget which had the following title

Scrybe from Synaptics brings new life to your tired touchpad

now if you have been following the Pakistani tech scene for some time most of you would be aware of the hype and excitement Scrybe generated in the local IT Industry.

their innovating flash based product was not only noticed all over the world but it was appreciated and was termed as the next step in web apps by many of the renowned bloggers including Michael Arrington of TechCrunch

Scrybe Could Set a New Standard In Office Apps

and by Robert Scoble on Scobelizer

Scrybe gets you organized

and CNet went as far as to term it the Demo of Gods

following this they were funded by Adobe (first for a Pakistani Firm to be funded by such a corporation ) and LMKR

However unfortunately we did not hear a lot from them after these huge waves, their blog has been silent for a long time. And though the site is functional and i can still use it for my calendar but there is no more activity.

How ever all this aside, I am sure that Scrybe did get their trademarks registered because without it, it would not have been possible for Adobe or any other firm to invest in it. and the tm on top of their logo also suggest it

How can some other firm and that too some one as high profile as Synaptics can ignore this while naming their product google Scrybe still returns as the iScrybe site as the top most result, what went through their initial research still eludes me. and for my untrained eye and legal sense this is a clear infringement of copyright

In my personal opinion Scrybe (iScrybe) should go after them with litigation if they can.

UPDATE

As researched and mentioned by our long time reader Anthony here apparently iScrybe did not register a trademark and it was open for grabs googling scrybe still results as iScrybe as the first hit though.

here is his comment which i think should be made part of original post.

Scrybe had its trademark application filed September 24, 2009. It received trademark 77834002. The trademark is live and belongs to Synaptics Incorporated. There is only one live trademark for Scrybe. There is no trademark issued for iScrybe.

It appears that iScrybe did not register a trademark, in favour of attempting to use Scrybe as an unregistered trademark, as the ‘TM’ above indicates.