December 2009 Archives

While attending a Poker Awards Banquet earlier this year hosted by the good folks from Flop Magazine here in Brazil, I had the great pleasure of meeting Gustavo Andrade the legal counsel for The Brazilian Confederation of Texas Hold'em as well as legal adviser to the Sao Paulo Circuit, Poker Tour. We hit it off from the beginning, finding that we had lot's of things besides an overly healthy interest in the business side of online gambling in common, so it was always fun to get together and compare notes about the industry of online poker in Brasil, I recon Gustavo knows as much or more about this industry as anyone in the country, especially as it pertains to the laws.

For several months Gustavo and I would get together on Thursday nights for a few cold beers at the "Blue Pub" in downtown Sampa (Sao Paulo) and talk shop, then one day I suggested to Gustavo that he should publish a blog, focused on poker in Brasil and promote some of the companies we know, including Reefer Poker. Well back in August we came up with the name "Poker Brasileiro", registered it and I set-up a personal publishing system on the Domain and gave Gustavo a short tutorial about how to publish stories, now some 4 months and 100 articles later Gustavo is really getting some traction on his blog, with as many as 250 readers per day and a growing syndication via RSS to some leading Brasil poker portals. He's a true natural, loves blogging and people love reading his stories.

Poker Brasileiro is not just about poker in Brasil but also sheds some light on the popular players from here who play poker professionally, as well as sharing some travel stories and photos about the great lifestyle, beaches, cities, the food, plus the wonderful culture of Brazil.

Having been a huge fan of Movable Type personal publishing platform for so many years, I was thrilled to learn that MT founders had inspired and empowered an Open Source software called Open Melody. Now there's a group of web developers joining forces to collectively foster the evolution of a better content management system.

To test the software I installed a sandbox on www.macumbabeach.com, connected my web server to the Github (for social coding), joined the mailing list and community, I'm set-up to add my contributions to this great work in progress, while simultaneously developing a "Rio de Janeiro Travel Blog" called Macumba Beach.

About Melody;
Melody is an open source content management and publishing system derived from the popular blogging tool Movable Type. Melody is for those who find value in belonging to, supporting and contributing to a community of helpful, passionate and devoted users, but it is also for people who want a secure, proven and high quality publishing environment for their personal web site or their business.

PROJECT GOALS

Melody is actively maintained by a community of passionate individuals committed to the following goals:

• Make personal publishing easier and more enjoyable.


• Create the most progressive and innovative personal publishing application available.


• Inspire a thriving community of users, developers and contributors.

Contributions to Melody's code base is held in trust by the Open Melody Software Group, a non-profit created expressly for this purpose.

Distance gaming or "live deal" casino gaming, call it what you want, is a concept that embraces everything that's best about Internet casino gaming technology with the fun and excitement of gambling for real money in land-based clubs. Since the beginning of online casino development there have been attempts to bring a live casino experience to the Internet but only in the last few years have we seen sites like Dublinbet and Smartlive Casino begin to breakthrough.

DublinBet.com is a truly exciting online experience, using the latest Distance Gaming™ technology, DublinBet.com delivers Live video, and True Live results from real live tables located in the Fitzwilliam Card Club & Casino in Dublin, Ireland. Also Ladbrokes Casino have recently adopted the technology as a featured section of their popular online casino and other leading gaming sites are following suit slowly but surely.

The EGR Awards for 2009 were held this week in London and a were attended by over 900 of the online gambling industry's major players. The awards are billed by eGaming Review as the industry's equivalent of the Oscars, recognizing excellence across the spectrum of net gambling categories including casino, poker, sports betting, bingo and regionally focused operations. For the first time, this years EGR Awards included a category for "Live Casino" which (won by Unibet Casino) indicates how new this niche is.

Several gaming companies now offer "Live Deal" for Roulette, Black Jack, Baccarat and Sic Bo. Live deal casino games are the natural evolution in online casinos' battle to win over the skeptics of the Random Number Generator (RNG), associated with all other online casinos but the live dealer also provides an enhanced gambling experience to the players. This type of gambling technology is a platform that's been steadily gaining traction, as connection speeds and streaming technologies have improved. Live streaming video with real dealers or croupiers conducting play are the closest thing you can get to a traditional 'land based' casino experience and may be more enticing for players and may attract existing 'brick and mortar' companies to produce the live streams, so they can join in the media convergence.

I predict that within a couple of years live dealer casino gaming for Roulette, Black Jack, Baccarat and Sic Bo will become the standard for all online casinos. Silicon Palms will be right there to provide the product, technical support and management.