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Need the Facts? Death Panel Has You Covered

BOSTON–In the weeks since the House passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, claims, figures, and statistics have been passed off as facts or lies depending on who you ask, as people struggle to educate themselves on the U.S. health care industry. Now, iPhone users can gauge their knowledge of health care reform with the launch of Death Panel, a free iPhone and iPod Touch game from People Operating Technology. The game is 100% non-political, non-partisan and incorporates third-party facts into game play via a quiz-like interface.

Death Panel is the first and only iPhone game that incorporates fun and interactive game play backed by third-party government-documented data. When the game is over, users are encouraged to share their scores online with friends via Facebook and Twitter in hopes of driving awareness and comprehension to the most important social and economic issue today.

“Mobile technology provides a fascinating medium though which businesses and other organizations can gain mindshare,” said Jason Petralia, co-founder of People Operating Technology. “We made Death Panel to shed some light on a hot topic in a compelling way.”

According to US Census, last year saw the number of uninsured increase to 46.3 million from 45.7 million in 2007. The percentage and number of children under 18 without health insurance were 9.9 percent and 7.3 million. The uninsured rate and the number of uninsured for children are the lowest since 1987.

In order to educate users to these facts, Death Panel puts users in the role of their local office holder. To build a strong constituency and progress in the game, the user must stand on a virtual platform and answer questions correctly about health care from an anxious public.

Death Panel is available for free in the App Store or at http://bit.ly/deathpanelgame. For more information please visit www.peopleoperatingtechnology.com

(BOSTON)– November 24, 2009– Today, People Operating Technology, publishers of premier iPhone and iPod Touch games announced the launch of Wildfire Fighter, the latest addition to their game lineup.

Now iPhone users can pilot the controls of the Bell 205 Helitanker, fully equipped to take on even the most blazing fires across the country. Swiftly navigate your choppers around the map to extinguish kindle before it engulfs the terrain, while avoiding harsh winds and airborne collisions.

“We’re very proud to have developed a game that is not only a lot of fun but also generates awareness to a persistent environmental issue,” said Jason Petralia, CEO of People Operating Technology.“We want to remind users that wildfires are a real problem, and by linking to the Smokey Bear mobile site, we are hoping to encourage safety and responsibility outdoors as well.”
In 2008, human-caused fires accounted for over 70,000 wildfires across the United States, burning nearly 3,500,000 acres in their wake, according to data from a report published by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. The severity of those figures are being mirrored in 2009, which has already seen more than 5,662,900 acres burned by wildland fires. By raising awareness of the wildfire issue, People Operating Technology aims to help extinguish those numbers and support efforts towards fire safety. For more information on current and historical wildfire information and statistics, visit www.nifc.gov.

Along with interactive game play, Wildfire Fighter takes full advantage of the iPhone’s tap-happy design platform featuring:

• Linedraw-based gameplay
• Multi-finger controls and functionality
• Openfeint leaderboard integration
• Innovative map-crawl GUI

Wildfire Fighter is the only iPhone game that combines entertainment with a social message about fire prevention. The game lends a donated media placement of Smokey Bear’s message that“Only You Can Prevent Wildfires,” the first ever on the iPhone platform, and links through to Smokey’s mobile website, www.smokeybearmobile.com

Wildfire Fighter is available in the App Store or at http://bit.ly/wildfirefighter. For more information please

About People Operating Technology
Founded in 2009, people operating technology is a premier publishing house devoted exclusively to creating iPhone | iTouch applications. people operating technology draws on a global pool of developer talent to create, develop, polish and promote mobile applications in gaming, social networking, utilities and more. The company currently has several other applications available for download, including Rocket Monkey, Kero, The Fun Time series, AudioPeople, and the best gag entertainment of 2009 Blockdrop iCon Trick.

For more information on people operating technology, please visit www.peopleoperatingtechnology.com.

World…meet children operating technology.  We are dividing our company into a hardcore game division and a kids division, “children operating technology”.

Other updates:  Rocket monkey 1.0.1 submitted.  This is a service update that improves the Openfeint integration and includes some incremental improvements.  We are working on Rocket Monkey 2.0 which will radically enhance gamplay.

Magnetic Personalities received a major shout out on Smashing Magazine and was cited as a great example of button design.

New Apps:  We will be submitting ABC and Number Funtime! this week for the kids and developing some serious games for the grownups to enjoy.

As I write this, I am in a session at the 360idev conference.  This conference has been a great time so far.  We are connecting with other leading iPhone developers for partnerships, acquiring additional resources, app design and development and to share war stories amongst peers.

There is currently an iPhone game jam which is really exciting to think about.  Some of the world’s leading game designers and developers for iPhone are working to make innovative games in a day.  Yilmaz Kiymaz of people operating technology has been involved in organizing this jam and will be of course participating.  I saw a rough prototype already and he’s been developing at light speed.  We will post the results as they become available.  This is game development at its finest.  Thanks to everyone involved and to the the 360idev guys for putting this conference to together.

ON a side note, the huevos rancheros in Denver is amazing.  What better way to fuel a game jam?

So… Rocket Monkey was approved and is now up in the store. We are setting up for a serious campaign to make this game known. It is arguably the best game in this genre and has a production value that is unsurpassed on the Phone.

Some tid bits about the launch:

- Posted a coming soon thread on Touch Arcade and it was approved 20 or so minutes later. Re-posted Rocket Monkey release on apps thread forum. The app was approved way before we thought it would be.

- A new video is going up today. We made an indie style video that has been interesting to watch.

- We are localizing Rocket Monkey now. For those of you who do not make apps for this iPhone, this is Apple speak for supporting other languages in the app store.

- Like the song in Rocket Monkey? So do we! Thanks to Jonathan for making the perfect song for this game.

We decided to start posting release threads of our apps on the Touch Arcade forums.  Our interest in Touch Arcade began at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference.  We were late to a release party at the museum, however we ventured in anyway.  It was undeniably the best party of the week and we met many of the leaders in the industry there.

There was a space flight competition for Rocket Monkey in which a world record was set and the competition has demonstrated that gamers rule the competition.  More to come.

The below article says it all. 3 Million Users on Openfeint. There is a good reason we are going to integrate Openfeint into all our games in the foreseeable future.

Three Million iPhone Users Joining OpenFeint Social Community With OpenFeint(TM) 2.0 Launch

— Aurora Feint Inc., developer of the series
of award winning social RPG puzzle games for the iPhone(TM), unveiled
OpenFeint 2.0: Social Discovery at WWDC at an event attended by dozens of
iPhone developers, press and industry executives. OpenFeint has been submitted by Top
100 titles bringing over 3 million users from these games into an extended
social discovery network that connects the iPhone, Facebook, and Twitter
with the ability to ask: “What are my friends playing?” anywhere, anytime.
This discovery capability is available inside a game, in an OpenFeint Game
Lobby, or on Facebook by simply clicking on a newsfeed item and launching
OpenFeint 2.0: Social Discovery.

Update 9/23 – Apple took it back to 100 apps in category. Perhaps sales went down when there were more consumer choices. Hard to guess why they took it back to 100. I will update it if I find out.

I originally wrote the following on 9/10/09:

“With more apps in the app store every day and limited virtual shelf space, what is a developer to do?  I am sure many have been hoping and perhaps praying for a revamped app store.  That’s essentially what we got with iTunes 9.

First of all, the store is more intuitive and the filters improve searching.  This is nice, but the real improvement developers should pay attention to is the total volume of apps you can view within a category.  It used to be 100 and now it is 200 if you are counting.  This means that about 2000 (since there are 20 categories currently on iTunes if you do the math) apps that were previously searchable, but not easily scanned will now be in the open for all to see.   Subcategories found on the iPhone and iPod have yet to appear on iTunes, however this is clearly a positive step and we hope to see more.

We also saw the introduction of a new category, top grossing apps.  This will help apps in the money stay in the money, so iTunes 9 should have a positive impact for apps on top and those on the way up.  I’d expect Apple will also see a nice bump in sales moving forward.”