It had to happen sooner or later... I find out about a new NMK day on MMORPGs, which looks rather interesting, particularly considering some of the folks I've met recently and the Playtime event I spoke at yesterday. And who's speaking at the event but Dr. Esther...

Female and casual gamers to push revenues over $10bn by 2009: "Creating games specifically with the strengths of the mobile handset in mind will be key to driving revenues in the mobile gaming sector, and not trying to replicate console or PC titles, said the research."

Calculating the ROI of blogging: "One issue that keeps coming up over and over again is how to measure the ROI of blogs. I’ve written about this in the past and have been stewing over how to go beyond the intangible 'blogging is good for your business' exhortations to quantify blogging’s benefit to organizations."

I'm not going to list exact figures, but in the years I've been blogging (about 5 I reckon), I've been able to directly link a large volume of business that Future Platforms has won - well into 6 figures - back to my personal weblog. Without a doubt it's the most successful single tool, aside from word-of-mouth, for generating our business... and this doesn't take into account the indirect or intangible benefits, which are undoubtedly there but are less measurable.

Interesting list: " the top camera makes and models used to create photos uploaded to Flickr, the best online photo sharing application in the world."

Less representation of camera phones than I'd expect... maybe reflecting a US focus for the service?

Nokia, Orange in Software Pact: "The focus of the collaboration is to create an Orange specific software package to complement S60 software on Symbian OS and to accelerate the Orange device customization process. This will in turn help S60 device manufacturers, who will benefit from greater cost efficiency and shorter time-to-market."

Handset vendors and operators collaborating on customisation of the device? Interesting to see how or if the conflicts between these two parties are resolved in the final product...