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Thanks for watching Loaded today. We will be off Monday for the long Fourth of July weekend. Why we get off July 5 when the holiday is a day earlier, I am not quite sure. But I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth! Have a happy and safe Independence Day!

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

The U.S. government releases four new smartphone apps Disney purchases Tapulous Google acquires travel software company ITA Microsoft is licensing technology that allows batteries to work no matter how you put them in your gadgets Sex.com … Read more

iOS developer Tapulous acquired by Disney

Disney has agreed to buy app developer and publisher Tapulous, according to a report from TechCrunch, and later confirmed by CNET's own sources.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tapulous is probably best known for its iOS apps, which include the Tap Tap series, Riddim Ribbon, and Twitter app Twinkle, which made the jump from a jailbroken application to a legitimate one on the App Store.

Tapulous' creations have also been featured in several Apple advertisements and keynotes, including the one for iOS 4, where Apple CEO Steve Jobs used a Tap Tap game to demonstrate multitasking for the first … Read more

Tilt to follow the Riddim Ribbon

Riddim Ribbon attempts to move the iPhone music game genre forward using a tilt-based control mechanism instead of Tapulous' usual button-pressing system for playing along with the music in App Store mainstay Tap Tap Revenge. After playing a few rounds of Riddim Ribbon, it becomes clear that your enjoyment level largely depends on how much you like the music playing in the background. The concept is a lot like another music game, Audio-surf, in which you race along to the rhythm of the music. In Riddim Ribbon, your job is to keep a ball in a groove (like a needle … Read more

Tapulous and the shadow social network

Sometime in next day or so, Tapulous will announce that it has accumulated 1 million users for its free iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge. That's an accomplishment, but what's really interesting about the company is its overall strategy, since Tapulous is not, ultimately, a games company. I met recently with Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem and COO Andrew Lacy and to learn more.

The company is a social networking play. As Decrem said with glee as he demo'd the two-player version of Tap Tap Revenge with me (when you play, you and your opponent take up position on … Read more