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Eddie Hobbs’s US “partner” firm in court accused of Ponzi scheme of mini-Madoff proportions
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NAMA Wine Lake It should be said upfront that Eddie Hobbs’s Brendan Investments Property Management has issued a statement here in which it states that it is aware of legal action against a Michigan USA company called “Metro Property Group” but stresses that there is no claim or alleged impropriety being made against Brendan Investments. Brendan Investments is jointly owned by Eddie Hobbs, Dermot Flanagan, Hugh O’Neill and Vincent Regan, with each being a director. The company in its statement expresses confidence in the US company now being sued. This week in a Michigan District Court, a group of investors represented by celebrity lawyer Deborah Schlussel has filed a case alleging serious misconduct by a Michigan property company, Metro Property Group and associated companies and individuals. The 116-page complaint is here and it makes for fascinating reading. In brief, a group of UK, Australian and Yemeni investors are claiming shenanigans on the part of Metro and others and want their investment b

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NAMA cancels Project Club sale amid general concerns over borrower involvement – source
NAMA Wine Lake

Last week, NAMA announced that it has at last sold its Project Aspen portfolio of €810m par value loans that related to Dublin developer, David Courtney. But what about Project Club, the c€300m portfolio which relates to loans to developer, Eamon Duignan. Sources are this afternoon claiming that NAMA has pulled the sale amid general concerns that borrowers are teaming up with potential buyers which is undermining the reputability of NAMA’s processes. You will recall that when NAMA sold Donal Mulryan’s €250m of UK loans to Morgan Stanley that Donal then became a consultant to Morgan Stanley after the sale. Out of sight, out of mind it seems and the involvement of Donal never made news in Ireland. But in the case of the recent sale of David Courtney’s Project Aspen, there was considerable comment on David’s involvement with Starwood pre-sales and before the portfolio was offered to the market and that he will act as a consultant for a period post-sales. In the case of Project Club, NAMA

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Following the Money
Wind Wise ~ Massachusetts

Confirmation that wind turbines in Fairhaven and Kingston violate DEP noise  guidelines surfaced this week. Resident complaints have already resulted in lawsuits–or soon will. Noting the expense of litigation, Laura Griffin’s Guest Editorial in the Milton Times, (“Time for Debate on Wind Turbine” 5/23/2013) says “…lawsuits about health and noise are dogging turbine projects across the state. Falmouth even considered dismantling its turbine. Litigation costs more than wind power earns, so the lost time and the litigation may have worked in [Milton's] favor. What’s needed is a public discussion and that’s never been the case with the wind turbine.” The Milton turbine is currently on hold since a binding arbitration order was issued, ruling that the turbine cannot be run during hours when golfers are present at the Quarry Hills Golf Course on the Quincy/Milton line. Griffin spells out the costs to date: “As of May 15, the town had spent more than $1 mil

Get your game published in the Brazilian Windows Phone or Windows 8 Store Developers Guide
gadget tidings

For years, publishing games in the South American nation of Brazil was a laborious and mysterious process. While most countries allow developers to publish games with no additional certification beyond those of the platform holder, a few states like Brazil, South Korea, and Russia add on their own approval processes. As you’d expect, the challenge of navigating Brazil’s certifications without speaking Brazilian Portuguese has long prevented many games from releasing in that territory. Thankfully, the Brazilian government revised their certification policies a few months ago. Now games that have an ESRB or PEGI certification can be submitted for approval through a fast and simple process. Should your game not have one of those certifications, you can alternately request the Brazilian DJCTQ certification. Windows Phone Central has created a guide for both processes. Follow it, submit your games, and don’t miss out on all those potential Brazilian Windows Phone and Windows 8/RT customers!

Google to stop paying Argentine developers because of government restrictions
Techtonic Guides

Google sent a letter to Argentine developers notifying that they’ll stop sending payments to them on 27 July 2013 due to government restrictions on currency exchanges. The change applies to developers who created paid apps or free apps with in-app purchases using an Argentine account. Completely free apps are not affected and Argentine users can continue to buy Android apps. Google suggests that Argentine developers create a new Google Play Developer Account based in another country and then transfer their apps over using the instructions here. Developers who will not make the payment threshold should close their account before 27 July 2013 to receive their money. Google hopes to bring back payments for Argentine developers in the future, but has no plans in place at the moment.

Wearable-technology pioneer Thad Starner on how Google Glass could augment our realities and memories
Wearable Computing Review
Amazon Launches App Engagement Reports, Allowing Appstore Developers To Track App Usage & Revenue
TechCrunch
Dope Stars Inc Tracks Hit APB Reloaded
Scottish Games Network
Stouffville Farming Heritage, Part One
Camera Combo
Appboy expands to help Android developers avoid heartbreak
PandoDaily
Can a Social Video Series Save HubSpot $31K?
The Official ZoomTilt Blog
How to be a manager
Pointy-Haired Startup

People talk a lot about “the startup life” and how it is to dive into it from regular employment, but what about the other way round?  Having recently completed a rare stint managing developers at a large-ish company of about 400 people (don’t laugh – that looks big to me) I wanted to share a few thoughts on how it is to go from raw startup life, to life in a big company. The best part of managing devs at a big company is that if you do it right you can have a substantial number of people writing production quality code together at the same time, doing great big things you can’t dream of at a two-man startup.  I never fully appreciated the joy of that phenomenon until I went big. No demos, no wild pivots, no fire drills, no due diligence, no clueless angels or arrogant VCs, actual QA, a Build Guy (Hi Mike!), no working with crazy people and C players because they’re the only people crazy or desperate enough to work with you. Just big monitors, pricey

Microsoft Says Windows Phone Store Now Features More Than 130K Apps, 40K New Developers Registered Since WP8 Launch
New iPad Gadget

Microsoft only provides sporadic updates to how the Windows Phone Store is doing, but today, it used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to offer a few new numbers. According to Microsoft, there are now over 130,000 apps in the Windows Phone Store, and the average Windows Phone user has now downloaded 55 apps. App downloads, the company says, have increased by 75 percent since the Windows Phone 8 launch late last year, and paid app revenue has increased 91 percent. The Windows Phone developer ecosystem, too, is growing quickly, according to Microsoft. More than 40,000 new developers registered with the company in the first 90 days since the launch of Windows Phone 8, and there are now over 15,000 apps in the store that leverage features only available in Windows Phone 8. SDK downloads, too, are up and have now topped 500,000 since October 30, 2012. One thing that’s worth noting when looking at the number of new developers is that Microsoft reduced the price of registering as a

Shuttleworth raves about Dell XPS13 developer edition
Barton's Blog

At the OpenStack summit last month we caught up with Ubuntu and Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth. Below is a quick snippet taken from our chat with Mark where he talks about the Dell XPS 13 developer edition aka Project Sputnik.  Mark dubs the system “freakin’ awesome” and the “environment of choice for anyone doing web or cloud development.”  Extra-credit reading Laptop Week Review: The Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition With Ubuntu – TechCrunch  It just works: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review – Ars Technica

Unity: Now Free For Mobile Developers
Scottish Games Network
Mass Effect 4: Mass Effect Developers Want YOUR Input!
GIRLPLAYSGAME

Hey guys – so according to Examiner.com, Casey Hudson (exec producer of the ME franchise) wants fan feedback on what we want from the next Mass Effect game!  In particular, he wants to know if it should take place before or after the main game’s events. Casey Hudson also mentioned the possibility of game spin-offs, like a game featuring Garrus Vakarian.  While he is one of my favorite characters, I feel like the whole point of Mass Effect is the level of personalization and actually feeling that you ARE Commander Shepard.  Having spent so much time getting to know Garrus already, I feel like it would be difficult to play as yourself and not him. Anyway, here’s what I want from Mass Effect 4: 1.  Timeline after the events of Mass Effect 3 Yes, I know ME4 won’t feature Shepard 2.0 nor would I want it to, but I want to see the ripple effect of my Shep’s existence on the new main character’s environment.  It would be interesting if the events took place

Mailbox for Android: Will Anyone Care?
ScreenGrab

Popular iPhone mail client Mailbox is now available on iPad. An Android version appears to be on the horizon, too. Via Droid-Life: “In a sitdown with Read Write, Mailbox’s founder Gentry Underwood said that a presence on Android is next on their list of things to do. He wouldn’t specify a time frame, only that it’s on their radar now that the iPad app is out. “ Mailbox flourishes on iOS for two reasons: 1. It’s Gmail-centric. It’s arguably a great Trojan horse for Google on iOS, despite not being made by Google. It gives users a way to prefer Gmail and override iOS’s own agnosticism to the relative merits of different email providers. 2. Its swipe gestures differentiate it from the iOS Mail app. 3. It’s more functional and stable than the Gmail iOS app, plus the latter is not preinstalled and hence doesn’t have much of an advantage or headstart. These advantages do not exist on Android. To wit: 1. The Gmail app for Android not only supports swi

Pebble Smart Watch Raises $15 Million, Releases Official SDK
Wearable Computing Review
Pinterest API Documentation Briefly Reappears On New Developer Site
TechCrunch

Remember how over a year ago, everyone was all excited about the forthcoming Pinterest API? CEO Ben Silbermann even teased its release in a March 2012 email to Pinterest users detailing a Terms of Service change. And API documentation even once popped up on the site, only later to lead to a 404? Well, don’t get all excited again, but the API documentation has returned…um, sorta.* This week, when Pinterest announced support for more pin types (product, recipe, and movie pins) as well as a new Pin It button that works in mobile apps, it also launched a developer site at developers.pinterest.com. The company says the site will be the home to some of the existing documentation and resources that had previously lived on the Pinterest Business site, as well as the new information on the pins and the mobile Pin It button. “Over time, as more tools become available to third parties, we will continue to post resources on this site,” a Pinterest spokesperson says. New too

Developers say open standards will win in the native v. web war
VentureBeat

PHP company Zend has just released the results of its annual developer survey. The exhaustive poll of 5,000 developers highlights a few interesting trends and one particularly heartening mobile web factoid. Clearly, everyone and their dog is thinking mobile first these days. But what’s more interesting in the survey is that the majority of developers aren’t looking to iOS or Android to do so. From a release on the report: When asked how they intend to deliver content and services to their mobile audience, 79% of developers identified their intent to leverage web apps and open standards such as HTML5. Of course, the devops trend marches onward with the increased need for efficiency in deployment. Zend’s results show 87 percent of developers experience delays in moving their app from development to production, and a full 90 percent have worked weekends, vacations, and holidays because of production emergencies. Here are the results in a handy infographic form: Image cre