links for 2009-08-23

• NeoGAF: Create the Official Box Art for the EU Release of BlazBlue! - NeoGAF
  The European publisher of the video BlazBlue is hosting a contest on NeoGAF where users will design the box art for the release.
  (tags: crowdsourcing UGC pr marketing games webcommunities NeoGAF)
• Cheating the App Store: PR firm has interns post positive reviews for clients
  "Reverb Communications, a PR firm that represents dozens of game publishers and developers, has managed to find astounding success on Apple’s App Store for its clients. Among its various tactics? It hires a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client’s applications. Yeah, that 5-star iTunes app review you saw for the once top-5 paid app Enigmo? It might not be written by a real user, but rather by Pangea Software’s PR firm. Reverb isn’t the first to try and game the user review process, but they are definitely one of the most blatant cases."
  (tags: pr astroturfing webculture bad_PR Reverb_Communications apple app_store)
• Apple ‘Still Pondering’ Google Voice App for the iPhone - NYTimes.com
  Apple takes a shot at Google in their response over the rejection of Google Voice from the App Store.

  "Apple also raised concerns that Google Voice copied all of the information about a user’s contacts onto Google’s servers. 'We have yet to obtain any assurances from Google that this data will only be used in appropriate ways,' the letter said."

  
  
  (tags: apple google app_store iPhone google_voice technology business)