Our love for superheroes would be taken to new heights with this application that lets you share the thrills and pains that come along with being in the shoe of one. Follow the code of “United we stand, divided we fall!” as you form alliances and take on the role of being a life saver.Craft your sidekicks and buy cool vehicles to add to your arsenal as you take on villains who don’t know when to quit. Then again the job wouldn’t be any fun if they did!

The Pros

-The greatest strength of the game lies in its simplicity. The sense of being lost in the clutter of options provided is a common experience and woe of casual gamers. The developers deserve a pat in the back for creating the game with that factor in mind.

-The second thing that got my attention was the color scheme and the images used in the application. Although correct usage of these have become bread and butter for any decent game in the social network for example Street Football, Mafia Wars etc but the creation of the correct theme is a difficult hurdle that even many talented developers fumble over. Playing Superheroes Alliance would make you feel that you are a part of the colorful world of Superheroes and the images compliment the theme perfectly.

- The options of building an empire that helps in funding the superhero life, unlocking & mastering new abilities for the hero, choosing from a variety of missions all help in adding variety to the game that would not let you get bored.

- Fighting your allies and other hero alliances and the option of putting up bounty on someone’s head catalyzes the possibility of clan formations which means intensely competitive matches.

- Loved the chat room. Every game should have a similar one designed for it. It helps in communicating with my alliance members a lot easier and also helps in recruiting new members.

The Cons

- Images should have accompanied the smaller missions and some descriptions regarding the hostile situations should be added alongside.

- The necessity of forming big alliances to have success later on the game makes the game a bit tedious.

- The automatic energy fill-up takes too long.

Summing it all up, I can say that if you are into games in the social networks and have a large number of like-minded friends then this game deserves to be given a shot.

Try it out here – Superheroes Alliance

4 stars out of 5

este é um verdadeiro futebol de rua

Thursday

When we awoke, we all knew we had a hard day of us because we were in a street football tournament and had a climbing course.

The climbing course came first, with everyone taking part in it. Teams of 3 would take it in turns to climb both top as a team. I myself was part of a team of  3 people who had to do it blind folded. This took a lot of nerve and team work as we had to relay on each other more.

The street soccer was next and the group split in to 3 teams. Everyone played well and had a good time and the team showed good team work after we had a great barbecue. The Irish night followed with the Northern Irish group giving the German group wealth of information about our country. This was followed by games and dancing. After we had a group meeting and sorted out a lot of problems within the group and shared a lot of thoughts and feelings. This helped the group to grow closer.

Beautiful black and white picture of children playing street football where else but in the street.

License: Creative Commons 2.0 Generic
Props: http://www.flickr.com/photos/picdrop/ / CC BY 2.0
Pay it Forward: Found <a href=’http://imagesblog.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/street-football-pictures/’>Street Football Pictures</a> via ImagesBlog.

Football, or soccer as its known in America, is a truly global sport. Countries and people are united by it and interest is monumental. With international football competitions, the whole world really is watching.

In 2006, 284 million people worldwide watched the World Cup final. That same year, an estimated 5.9 billion total viewers watched at least part of the month-long tournament for an average of 93 million viewers per match By comparison; America’s Superbowl had an estimated 94 million viewers in 2006.

Football fans are very enthusiastic about the sport and take it very seriously. On Facebook, the two FIFA 2009 fan pages have a combined 300,000 fans worldwide, with other football fan pages having numbers near or above one million. In the three weeks since April 15, 2009, the number of fans on these pages has grown between 0.2% and 8.2%.

In the United States alone, Facebook counts over 1.35 million of those users as having soccer (football) as one of their interests. The fans sites that these and other like minded people around the world join, turn what used to be a pastime relegated to individual matches into an around the clock marathon.

Social media enables football fanatics to post stories and videos, as well as submit additional stories or commentary. Football-related social media provides fans to keep up with news about teams in other cities or countries. In short, it allows for fans to become more engaged in a sport that previously relegated fans to a spectator role during selected periods of time.

IBT Games is helping football fans express their passion for the sport in an application that allows users to build teams and compete against other fans. IBT Game’s Street Football application has over 121,000 monthly active users. Their application reflects the international nature of the sport and the global enthusiasm for the game. While 14.7 average pages a day spent on Facebook as a whole per unique user. Users of IBT Games’ Street Football application spent a significantly larger 24.6 pages per day on the application.

My point to all these statistics is that football is a universal pastime. People across the world watch and discuss the games. Most of these people are quite passionate about the sport and want to be engaged in their pastime a lot more than just the periods in which games actually take place. Social media makes it possible to take that passion beyond the football stadium and this benefits football fans everywhere.

Sports is a topic that generates huge amounts of passion in people. Everyone has a favorite team or player. Sports fans love to discuss their teams or favorite players, brag about their performance, and make predictions about as to which team will beat which and by what score.

Social Media makes it easier to do this. With social media, fans can react to stories or videos, share them, as well as submit additional stories or commentary. Additionally, sports-related social media allows fans who don’t live in a team’s city to keep up with news related to their team and to connect with like-minded fans. In short, social media provides a means for sports fans to become more engaged with their teams, their players, and other fans.

In the United States, 74% of those aged from 18-34 have either a Facebook or a MySpace account. In America alone, Facebook counts 5.5 million people as having sports listed as an interest in their profile.  These fans have joined thousands of fan pages created by the teams or players themselves, third-party organizations, or simply by other loyal fans. Such fan pages include news, videos, and pictures, of the team or player, as well as commentary and general expressions of fandom. Several pages have over 1 million fans and many more number in the 100,000s.

The growth of sports in social media has been explosive. Just this past week, fan pages on facebook grew anywhere from 0.5% to 5.3% on the week. Cricket pages had grown even faster, with growth ranging from 6.4% to 31.1% in the same time period. To put that in more understandable terms, a 0.5% weekly increase sustained over the years is equal to a 29.6% annual increase. Likewise, a 1% weekly increase becomes a 67.7% yearly increase and a 1% weekly increase results in a 67.7% yearly increase.

On Facebook, gaming and sports account for the second and third most added type of application respectively. Games make up six of the top ten and four of the top five most addictive Facebook applications.  In early 2009, the average age of a gamer was 29, with over a third of gamers being female.

IBT Games has been a leader in sports-related gaming applications for social media. According to a recent study, average users spend an average of 2 minutes, 35 seconds interacting with applications in total. On IBT Games’ Applications, users spend 15 minutes DAILY interacting with each application; 6.5x greater than the total average application time. 85% of users who installed IBT Games applications returned for multiple interactions. Currently, dedicated users of IBT Games Applications produce over 1 million page views a day on average. 56% percent of users returned 9 or more times during the first month.

IBT Game’s Twenty Cricket application has nearly 99,000 monthly active users. IBT Game’s Street Football application has over 121,000 monthly active users. 50% of IBT Game’s titles have received accolades and recognition from prominent organizations in social media including the fBfund and Bebo. While an average of 14.7 pages a day are viewed on Facebook per unique user. Users of IBT Games’ Casino Empire application spent a whopping 40.4 pages per day on the application alone.

Marketers are taking notice of these exponential levels of growth. In a recent survey by Adology, 25% of small businesses surveyed indicated that they would increase spending on advertising in social media in 2009 versus in 2008. A 2009 survey of 880 marketers found the 88% of marketers use some form of social media in their advertising strategy. Today, sports-related companies like Adidas, Nike, Spalding, and Gatorade, all have fan pages or advertise on Facebook or other forms of social networking sites.

Social media allows companies like these to connect with the sports fans that use their products. More importantly, social media has given fans a chance to connect with their favorite teams and players, and share their passion with other fans. In doing so, a fan’s ability to express a love of sports is no longer relegated to just a ballpark.

French humourist Remi Gaillard has released a few new videos on his website N’ importe qui.

First, and tremendously hilarious, is his human Pacman on a supermarket. Remi is Mr. Pacman while some of his friends are the four ghosts trying to catch him. But they haven’t thought of extra enemies they’ll find on their way…

Secondly, Remi celebrates his town football team ‘Montpellier Herault Sports Club’ promotion into the first French Football league with some stunning kicks. His sports skills are evident on the video.

For those whom didn’t know who Remi Gaillard was, go to his website and check some videos out. His humour is not only funny but necessary as he does it free and its casual, you don’t know when, where or what is his next step gonna be like.

Keep working please Remi!!

Ricky for the Homeless World Cup

It all begins again. The Homeless World Cup of Street Football happens from September 5-to-13 in Milan, Italy. It’s THE international tournament of homeless folk: boys & girls, men & women. It’s 3:00am. I just got up and I can’t go back to sleep. I guess it’s a fine time to start this seasons diary. We will need anywhere from two to three million pesos to make this event happen in a good way. Last year, for the 2008 Melbourne HWC, we raised over one million pesos. It was quite good. This year, we’ll need more for 2009 Milan. And this year we’ll have some events designed to create awareness, promote the cause, raise the funds and take care of our Ninongs (Godfathers) and sponsors better. We also need to show that this is much more than the game. It’s about homelessness. I turn to the Good Book to help me cope. The Bible, today March 6 at 3:22am. Matthew 7: 7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” I think about that for awhile. It’s the catholic reading of the day. What a nice thing to read. This is all meant to be isn’t it?

It’s the Eye-In-The-Sky speaking to me. Here I am dwelling on the requirements of 2009 Milan and the Bible jumps right out and speaks up.

It’s really quiet outside. The dogs bark. I’ve also got a headache…it’s probably because I’m typing with no light. In a few hours, the rest of the city will be up. But for now it’s me and my thoughts. It’s also a great time to pray. I think about my friend Leo Arnaiz, president of the Baguio-Benguet Football Association. He gets up to pray at 5am daily. We’ll I’m way ahead of him this time. I’m also happy to say, 2009 Milan is officially on. Forward this diary to your friends and help it on its way.

Here is a small review on the different types of football all over the world:

Association football: This is commonly known as football or soccer, mostly played in Europe and Latin America.

Indoor football: It is basically the same as Association football, however, as the name establishes, it is played indoors. There are several types:

Five-a-side football: played throughout the world under various rules including:

• FIFA approved Futsal which is played between two teams of five players each, one plays as a goalkeeper, and up to seven substitutes per team
• Indoor soccer: A type of soccer played mostly in North America that was adapted to be played at an indoor arena such as a turf-covered hockey arena or skating rink.
• Paralympic Football: A type of soccer modified to be played by athletes with a disability.
• Beach soccer: Self explanatory this is football played on sand, commonly known as sand soccer.
• Street football: Played informally, rules are set taking into consideration several varieties of football.
• Keepie uppie: Also considered as a match up in some places, keepie uppie is the art of juggling with a football using feet, knees, chest, shoulders, and head.
• Footbag: A kind of keepie uppie football played with a small bean bag or sand bag used as a ball in a number of keepie uppie variations, the most common being a hacky sack.
• Freestyle Football: a modern style Keepie uppie. The players are called Freestylers are graded for their entertainment value and expression of skills. Requires lots of training and practice.

Soccer as you can see is also called football in most places around the world and the type of football played in North America is defined as American Football only, which is played in the NFL. In England the most common variation of football is Rugby.

Agenzia: Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

E’ naturale chiedersi se sia tutto vero o no….e così è stato subito dopo il go live di questo video…a questo cosa fare??? WK e FIFA girano la video intervista al team ryouko.

Sarà vero? guarda il video!!

Street football – nice
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Uma pequena seleção de gente que SIM, sabe jogar bola =D