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The Stories Behind The Names of 15 Gaming Brands You Know

Posted by Harshad

The Stories Behind The Names of 15 Gaming Brands You Know


The Stories Behind The Names of 15 Gaming Brands You Know

Posted: 11 Mar 2013 03:28 AM PDT

I’m an avid gamer, and I’ve devoted a bulk of my time in my bedroom playing games without giving a single thought to what goes behind the doors of the many players in the gaming industry, apart from what games they are releasing next. Inspired by earlier behind-the-name stories here on the site, this time we are going to look into the stories behind big names in the gaming industry.

Some of these names might not be familiar to you but their games were probably part of your childhood. Read on to find out how these brands in the gaming industry got their names.

Find other Behind The Name stories:

XBox

In 2001, when Microsoft’s software of interface programming (Direct X) was ruling the market; the developers of the company wanted a graphical hardware called “DirectX Box”.

They consequently named it XBox.

Amazon

SEGA

If you haven’t figured out the etymology of SEGA, just split it in Service Games.

That’s how it originated.

KONAMI

Konami is the portmanteau of the three creators of the first games from the company: Kagemasa Kozuki, Yoshinobu Nakama and Tatsuo Miyasako.

Only Kozuki, 73 still serves on the board.

CAPCOM

The founders named their arcade gaming machines CAPsule COMputers, the shorter version became CAPCOM.

Deviantart

Ubisoft

When it seemed like almost all the gaming companies had names related to Japanese phrases, UBISOFT originated differently.

They picked the following French word: Union des Bretons Indépendants plus SOFTware.

Instagram

SNK

The name is an acronym of the Japanese phrase: Shin Nihon Kikaku which means “New Japan Project.”

Nokia

Wii

Former engineers decided to name it Wii because the two characters (ii) nicely symbolize the gathering of two individuals playing together.

Wii also sounds like “We”.

Digg

Hasbro

Hasbro is actually the shortened version of ‘Hassenfield Brothers’, the three brothers who founded the toy company responsible for Transformers and Monopoly.

Nintendo

The name Nintendo are three Japanese characters that roughly translates to “leave fate to the heavens.”

The name was coined in 1933 and has so far stood the test of times.

Flickr

Zynga

Zynga was named after the CEO’s late American bulldog, Zinga (which explains the dog in the logo).

GaiKai

GaiKai is Japanese for large open space which basically means you can go in any direction, anywhere

A perfect concept for cloud gaming.

Square Enix

Square, the game developer, was founded on a Japanese island named Shikoku, whish sounded very similar to Shikaku – Square.

Enix was a play between the name of the bird which rises from the ashes, the Phoenix and the world’s first computer, the ENIAC.

After the merger in 2003, the two former rivals became one, Square Enix.

NAMCO Bandai

NAMCO got its name from the abbreviation of Nakamura Amusement Machine Manufacturing Company, which operated children rides’ on the roofs of department stores. The company bought Atari in 1985.

The founder of Bandai, Naoharu Yamashina was inspired by a Chinese phrase: Bandai Fueki which means “eternally unchanging.”

The two merged into one in 2006.

10+ Google AdSense Alternatives

Posted: 11 Mar 2013 06:35 AM PDT

If you make money from your website or blog, chances are you’ve heard of or at least used Google’s CTR-based advertising network – Google AdSense.

Google Adsense has, if we may, 2 distinctive type of publishers. Those who constantly receive monthly cheques from Google, we call them the happy publishers. The others, the not so happy publishers.

google adsense

This article is catered for the latter group. Publishers tend to look for an alternative for all sorts of reason. Here’s a list of contextual ad networks similar to Google Adsense, meaning they reward you monetarily when visitors clicked on the contextual ads displayed on your website.

In short – they are the Google AdSense alternatives. We hope you find them useful.

Disclaimer: We have not used most of the ad networks here before. This is an attempt to discover and bring to your awareness more options of contextual ads publishing. We urge you to spend time carefully checking out more details (ad performances, ad size/format, payout threshold, payment method, online reviews, etc) of any particular ad network you intend to use on your website.

The Infamous 3

Chitika

Chitika is probably one of the top choice when publishers come to seek for an Adsense alternative. Chitika’s ads are search query driven, that means your visitors will not see the ads unless they are coming into the website via search engine.

chitika logo

The image below gives you an idea how a Chitika ad would look like:

chitika ads

Despite being one of the most popular AdSense alternatives, Chitika’s ad performance are still a bit on the low side for most publishers. Publishers ought to have a high quality site and apply for Chitika’s Silver level or Gold level ad program in order to see surge in terms of revenue.

Related links:

Misc info:

  • Minimum payout: $10 (PayPal), $50 (cheque)
  • Payout time: Net 30

Yahoo Bing Network

This new ad network is a collaboration of two of the biggest search engines on the internet, and it should not be confused with Yahoo’s existing YPN and Microsoft’s adCenter. Publishers of the Yahoo Bing Net manage their ad units via Media.net.

yahoo big network logo

One of the advantages of Yahoo Bing Network compare to Google AdSense is perhaps its ability to allow publishers to customize their ad units in terms of style (size, color, shapes) so it blends better with their respective website.

yahoo big network ads

The Yahoo Bing Network is currently not open for public sign up, but if you are keen enough and most of your website’s traffics are coming from United States, Canada and United Kingdom, you can request for an invitation.

Related links:

Misc Info:

  • Minimum payout: $100. Paypal or Wire.
  • Payout time: Net 30

Kontera

Kontera uses the in-text advertising model. In a nutshell, in text ads do not take up additional ad spaces, rather, they analyse your site’s content and turn relevant keywords or phrases into hyperlinked text ad.

kontera logo

Here’s how a Kontera in-text ad would look like:

kontera ads

Kontera is based on a CPC model, in another words publishers get paid when visitors click on the ads. The ads customizable, that means you are able to alter the color of the hyperlinks, control the density of text links or even restrict turning any specific keywords into a text ad.

Related links:

Misc Info:

  • Minimum payout: $50. Paypal, Wire or Cheque.
  • Payout time: Net 30

A few More:

If you’ve tried the above mentioned 3 and they don’t quite work out for you, here are more advertising networks you can explore.

Clicksor

Clicksor has a range of different types of ad formats. The two popular ones you may want to look into are their text ads (Google AdSense alike) and in-text ads (Kontera alike).

clicksor logo

Clicksor’s payout term is Net 15, and you can opt for cheque or Paypal payment option as long as your earnings exceed $50.00

[Sign up] [Publisher's page]

Vibrant Media

Similar to Kontera, Vibrant Media is another ad network notable for their in-text ads. Vibrant Media has recently launched two types of ad formats for extra revenue streams, respectively the in-image ads which integrate text ads within images, and display ads which works on a Cost per-thousand Impressions (CPM) model.

vibrantmedia logo

[Sign up] [Publisher's page]

AdSide

AdSide’s banner ad format looks very similar to Google AdSense with one exception – it has a thumbnail on the left side of each row of ad. The following image gives you an idea how the ad looks like:

adside logo

AdSide ads target heavily on United States, Canada and United Kingdom visitors. If you have an amountful of traffics coming from these mentioned locations, it may work for you.

[Sign up] [Publisher's page]

Infolinks

Infolinks is yet another in-text advertising network. They can also be considered a good alternative if the current in-text ad network is not performing well.

infolinks logo

[Sign up] [Publisher's page]

The Rest:

Here are more that we’ve heard of:

Table View of Everything

Networks Ad types Payout Min/ Method Payout Time      
Chitika
  • Targeted text
  • Mobile
$10 (PayPal), $50 (Cheque) Net 30 More info Sign up FAQ
Yahoo Bing Network
  • Targeted text
  • Display
$100 (PayPal/Wire) Net 30 More info Sign up FAQ
Kontera
  • In-text
  • Mobile
  • Display
$50 (PayPal/Wire/Cheque) Net 30 More info Sign up FAQ
Clicksor
  • In-text ads
  • Text banner
  • Display
  • Pop-unders
  • Interstitial
$50 (PayPal, Cheque). $1000 (Wire) Net 15 More info Sign up FAQ
Vibrant Media
  • In-text
  • In-image
  • Display
  • Screen takeover
$50 (Cheque, Wire) Net 45 More info Sign up FAQ
AdSide
  • Targeted text
  • Mobile
  • In-image
  • In-video
  • Interstitial
  • Pop-unders
$50 (Cheque) Net 30 More info Sign up n/a
Infolinks
  • In-text
  • In-search
  • In-tag
$50 (PayPal, Wire, eCheck, WU) Net 45 More info Sign up FAQ
Link Worth
  • Targeted text
  • Display
  • Sponsored post
  • In-text
$25 (PayPal), $100 (Wire) Net 30 More info Sign up FAQ
Intellilinks
  • In-text
PayPal Net 30 More info Sign up FAQ
Reachli
  • In-image
Paypalm $1000 (Wire) n/a More info Sign up n/a
Bidvertiser
  • Targeted text
$10 (PayPal) Net 30 More info Sign up FAQ
Qadabra
  • Display
$1 (PayPal), $500 (Wire) Net 45 More info Sign up FAQ

Heard of more? Leave a comment below and share with the rest of us.

Web Design: Clipping and Masking With CSS

Posted: 11 Mar 2013 03:20 AM PDT

Masking in image editing is a method of ‘hiding’ a portion of an object based on another object. This method has long been available in Image editors like Photoshop. A similar method can also be done in CSS with some of its properties.

But before we proceed, let’s take a look at how we do this effect in Photoshop first, and then you will see how we can mimic a similar effect with CSS.

In Photoshop

In Photoshop, we need to have at least two objects for a ‘masking’. After that we can simply hold the Alt (Win) or Option (Mac) key and position the mouse pointer between the layers of these two objects (see screenshot).

In this example, we clipped a circle into a rectangular.

Masking can also be applied to other types of layers. In this example, we mask an image to a text.

So, the question is, can we apply similar things on the Web? In short, yes we can. Let’s see how it is done.

In CSS

There are some properties in CSS we can use to recreate similar effects on the Web, they are ‘overflow’, ‘clip’ and the new CSS3 property background-clip:

Overflow

The overflow property defines the areas that exceed the CSS box model. In the following example, we recreate our first example in Photoshop.

Regarding the HTML markup, we will have two div to form the circle and the rectangle, and we put the div for the circle inside the div for the rectangle like so;

  <div class="rect">  	<div class="circle"> </div>  </div>  

Then, we style it a little bit and position the circle slightly out of the rectangle to the right.

  .rect {  	width: 200px;  	height: 200px;  	background-color: #eaeaea;  }  .circle {  	width: 200px;  	height: 200px;  	border-radius: 100px;  	background-color: #601785;  	position: relative;  	left: 100px;  }  

At this point we will get the following result:

Now, to hide the part that exceeds the rectangle area, we simple declare the overflow property to hidden on the rectangle, like so;

  .rect {  	width: 200px;  	height: 200px;  	background-color: #eaeaea;          overflow: hidden;}  

There we go; we accomplish the same result as in the Photoshop method.

Clip

Another way is by using the clip property. This property has been in existence since CSS2, so we can rest assure that it is supported in old browsers. As we will be using clip property, we won’t need the rectangle div. So, our mark will just be the circle, as follows.

  <div class="circle"> </div>	  

With the same style we form this div into a circle. Then, we use clip property to hide half of this circle. The clip property at this time only supports the rect() function; it contains four values that define the rectangle coordinates that is described as follows rect(top, right, bottom, left).

Lastly, for the clip property to work in hiding the element, we need to define the element’s position to absolute.

  .circle {  	width: 200px;  	height: 200px;  	border-radius: 100px;  	background-color: #601785;  	position: absolute;  	left: 100px;  	clip: rect(0px,100px,200px,0px);  }  

This code will result in the following. Unfortunately, since we define the rectangle through the rect() function we are not able to add background color for it, but the idea of masking elements is there.

Background Clip

Recently, CSS3 has a new property called background-clip, it determines the background painting area. With this property we are able to limit the scope to where the background will be applied.

The full syntax of this property is: background-clip: border-box|padding-box|content-box;.

But the Webkit browser is one step further in this area by also adding text value, which makes it possible to use text for the mask. In the following example, we would like to recreate the second masking effect from our Photoshop example. First we add the text, like so;

  <h1>Galaxy</h1>  

Then, in the stylesheet we add the background-image to this text as well as declare the background-clip. To make the background appear we also need to decrease the color fill in the text with RGBA color mode.

  h1 {  	font-family: Arial;  	font-size: 5em;  	text-align: center;    	background-image: url(Galaxy.jpg);    	-webkit-background-clip: text;  	background-clip: text;    	color: rgba(0,0,0,0);  }  

This code above will give us the following effect for the text.

Final Thoughts

In this post, we have covered three different approaches to masking objects on the Web. There is no one best way here. It depends on the purpose. Have you tried these properties on your website? Do you have some other tips to do something similar? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

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