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Generally, when simple rewards are offered in return for acts that should have intrinsic rewards, people start to forget the real reason they are sharing and optimize their game-based scores instead. For example, instead of giving 1 comprehensive answer, they give 3 partial answers for 3x the points. Or people may withhold answers until they can maximize their points – ceasing to co-operate.

2) Where mastery developed in the game is a re-usable skill.

Differentials in reward can de-motivate the many to the benefit of the few. Just as high salaries for the top 5% can breed resentment in the other 95% and make them less productive, so can an element of competition can switch off the masses who feel their efforts won’t make a difference to the leader board, even if it would have made a difference to  the real-world problem on the Q&A forum.

1) Making intrinsically dull tasks more interesting.

Usually games are rewarding for a while and then people tire of them – they hold limited appeal for mastery. If you’ve made it central to your collaboration approach and this happens, then what?

3) Where the only purpose you can offer is recognition

I hope as the field matures some good case studies emerge, but for now  if you want employees to share knowledge or collaborate more effectively, then games are low on purpose, irrelevant at best to autonomy (and at worst they may get in the way) and may also suppress creative thinking.

Operating income was $13.0 million, with an operating margin of 17.9 percent, compared to operating income of $4.7 million, with an operating margin of 6.3 percent, in the third quarter of fiscal 2003. Operating cash flow was $23.1 million with a cash balance of $158.9 million, compared to operating cash flow of $12.1 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2003, an increase of 91 percent.

For the nine months ended June 30, 2004, revenue totaled $223.1 million, compared to $205.5 million for the same nine-month period in fiscal 2003, an increase of 9 percent. Operating income for the nine months ended June 30, 2004 was $42.5 million compared to $23.4 million, which included a goodwill impairment charge of $9.3 million, for the same period last year, an increase of 82 percent. Operating margin was 19.1 percent for the first nine months of fiscal 2004, compared to an operating margin of 11.4 percent for the same period last year. Operating cash flow was $44.7 million for the first nine months of fiscal 2004, compared to $26.1 million for the same period last year, an increase of 71 percent. Net income was $36.7 million, or $.97 per diluted share, compared to $5.2 million, or $.15 per diluted share, an increase of 604 percent for the same nine-month period in fiscal 2003.

During the quarter, the Company added 13 new customers while maintaining a worldwide presence of 76 countries. ACI Worldwide, the Company's largest business unit, added seven new customers during the quarter. Solutions licensed to these customers included BASE24®, BASE24-es™, WINPAY24™, and ACI Proactive Risk Manager™. ACI Worldwide also licensed capacity upgrades to 13 customers and licensed seven new applications to existing customers during the quarter.

Insession Technologies, the Company's e-infrastructure business unit, added six new customers and licensed 12 new applications to existing customers during the quarter. Solutions licensed to new and existing customers include GoldenGate™, WorkPoint®, VersaTEST™, WebGate, SafeTGate, ICE™, Automated Operator™ and AutoDBA™.

IntraNet, the Company's international payments and message processing solutions provider, added one new Money Transfer System™ customer. IntraNet also licensed one capacity upgrade and entered into 17 services contracts with existing customers during the quarter.

The Company completed the third quarter of fiscal 2004 with $232.8 million in backlog. Included in backlog are all software license fees, maintenance fees and services specified in executed contracts to the extent that the Company believes that recognition of the related revenue will occur within the next twelve months. Recurring backlog includes all monthly license fees, maintenance fees and facilities management fees and amounted to $173.6 million. Non-recurring backlog includes other software license fees and services and amounted to $59.2 million.

"We are pleased with the quarter's and year-to-date financial results," said Gregory D. Derkacht, President and CEO. "We continue to make progress on our tax-planning initiatives and other projects, and we look forward to building on our worldwide leadership position in the financial services sector with our proven software solutions."

The Company has revised its revenue estimate for fiscal 2004 from a range of $282 to $292 million to a range of $291 to $296 million. The Company has also revised its EPS estimate from $.74 to $.83 to $1.10 to $1.17, which includes the $.28 net one-time tax benefit.

Commissions on those Credits netted Facebook $557 million in revenues in 2011. (Facebook writes in the S-1 that the “other fees” that it designates on the same line as Payments was “immaterial.”)

At this point, Facebook doesn’t take any commission on Credits that are purchased via mobile: that service—which uses the premium SMS channel to send a code to a user to redeem Credits on the main site, and then charges the amount directly to the user’s mobile bill—already has some other parties taking a cut, including the provider (eg Zong or Boku), the mobile carrier and even another processing middleman. Rather, Facebook’s cut comes in the form of a commission on the payments, similar to what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) takes for transactions on its App Store. That fee is 30 percent.

Could Facebook eventually take more control of its payments, and potentially cut out some of those middle people? Probably not soon, in Court’s opinion. “Zong brought something to Facebook that it didn’t know how to do, and it became very deeply integrated,” he said. “I don’t see them starting to do what Zong does, which is connecting hundreds of operators.” Then again, he added, “When they have a worth of $100 billion with $10 billion on the balance sheet they can do pretty much anything they want.”

What’s interesting is that as Facebook starts to expand some of the other functionality on its mobile platform, that will also open up a lot more opportunities in terms of mobile transactions as well.

As Facebook enables and opens APIs to get publishers to build apps for its mobile platforms (via the web and apps), “Facebook will make sure those are monetized,” he said. “I have no doubt Facebook will be making money on mobile games and other content given the engagement and scale on mobile. There is an amazing opening there.” Paying for Credits that will actually get used on the device itself, he said, will be “even more natural.”

Facebook in the S-1 said it had 425 million monthly active users accessing the social network via mobile devices, with that number outpacing the growth of overall subscribers.

“Credits is a wallet that you can top up in all kinds of ways,” he said. “Facebook has created its own currency and has imposed that on anyone offering digital goods on Facebook.” If anything, that currency might have a life outside the platform, to to buy things outside of Facebook.

But even with the opportunity for Credits, Court doesn’t see this eventually overtaking revenues from whatever advertising Facebook plans to put on its mobile services “for a very simple reason,” which is down to how those games are played today. “If you look at Zynga, only between two and three percent of people who play actually pay. The rest play for free. Tt will be the same for Facebook on mobile, with only a fraction spending money,” he predicted. “With advertising, 100 percent of the population is exposed.”

Even though Facebook has listed “no mobile ads” as one of its risks on the S-1, it could be playing its cards very close to its chest: the last few days has been a lot of speculation already about how soon Facebook will launch those mobile ads.

Razorfish (via Digiday) says that it is already working on a pilot for rich-media ads for the social network.

The blog Inside Facebook, meanwhile, has put its money down on sponsored stories to be the “most likely” first stab at mobile advertising on the site, with running a mobile ad network the second-most likely option. (That’s one that we explored a bit yesterday as well.)

Update: Razorfish’s VP of mobile, Paul Gelb, has made a correction on how his comments were portrayed in the Digiday story (via Twitter): his agency is not working on any mobile ad buying with Facebook. “In the interview I was referring to rich media featured stories, not paid ads,” he said.

A Facebook spokesperson, via email, added the following: “We want to clarify that we are not working with any agency to create paid ads on our mobile platform.”

Much has been made of the mobile risks that Facebook laid out in its S-1 IPO filing earlier this week. Essentially, it’s seeing/pushing massive growth in mobile, but it still hasn’t tried out advertising, its most effective route to revenues, on this platform. That’s not to say it won’t. But meanwhile, there is another area where Facebook is already making money through mobile.

There are some steps people can take to counter the castles and keep their data mobile. If you use Twitter, then cross-post your tweets to Identi.ca. With Facebook, do the same with Diaspora. With Google, keep a log of all your search recommendations. If people keep control of the data they put into the world, they will be able to search it themselves as the social networking providers do. An open-source revolution could decentralise the data and bring the castles down.

Amazon’s DRM-free downloads are not only be cheaper but they will work on a range of different devices – including an iPod – so if a tablet buyer has music on the mind, an Amazon tablet would be a good place to start, after-all it’s a brand trusted by millions all over the world.

Amazon, despite not having a device to backup to its Cloud, pipped Apple to the punch with the launch of the Amazon Cloud Player. The service isn’t necessarily revolutionary (it requires a user to upload their entire music collection to an online digital locker or synchronise new Amazon MP3 purchases), but it provides a dedicated storage platform for a user’s music, regardless of where they bought it. In fact, users can upload any file they wish to the service.

Amazon’s decision to launch an Appstore was a surprising one, especially because there was no shortage of alternative Android marketplaces at the time. Incorporating its patented recommendation system and its “Free App A Day”, the third-party application store won many fans in the US primarly because it has been providing customers with downloads of some of the most popular Android apps and games.

Because Google has restricted the use of alternative apps on its operating system, Amazon requires the user to download the app to their smartphone or their tablet before they can browse or download apps. This poses a risk for the company in the general market but if it intends on releasing its own tablet, it can bundle the necessary software (including its MP3 store and Cloud Player service) before the device is even powered-on by its owner.

In July the previous year, Amazon announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year. According to Jeff Bezos, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon was selling, it was selling 143 Kindle eBooks. In just the U.S. Kindle Store alone, there were more than 810,000 books.

Kindle fans worried that Amazon would kill its e-ink reader, don’t worry. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has already said “we will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device.” Throughout the article I have referred to the Amazon tablet as a singular. However, there it is highly likely that Amazon will release a family of tablets; one a 10-inch model and a smaller, more portable 7-inch tablet. Chinese sources have indicated that both devices will sport LCD touchscreens, but in the very near future will move to technologies that will be able to switch between e-ink and a colour LCD screen.

Analysts have already issued reports suggesting Amazon will sell 2.4 million tablets in 2012. Whilst that figure doesn’t even compete with the 10-12 million iPads that Apple is expected to sell in its third quarter alone, Amazon has time on its side. By subsidising its devices, it can heavily reduce its offerings to get customers investing into its technologies, hitting them with the upsell once they are onboard. Amazon can push its value-added services to boost revenues, whilst slowly building sales of physical devices.

It is known that short term exposure of microwaves exuded from a cell phone, depending on how far the antenna is from the head, can penetrate as much as 1 1/2 inches into the brain, but this study focuses more on the long term effects and how EMF impacts specific brain proteins. This provides new evidence of the potential relationship between EMF and health complications stemming from EMF such as headaches, dizziness, sleep disorders, and even tumors and Alzheimer’s disease.

Another study conducted by a Russian team of researchers also showed that EMF and cell phones cause significant long-term cognitive decline in children. It may be time for parents to re-determine if young children should really be using these devices with growing bodies and developing brains.

A number of foreign countries are attempting to adopt precautionary protocols to limit cell phone use in an attempt to mitigate the number of adverse effects they have on human health. In 2011, the WHO/IARC released a report stating that cell phone radiation may have a carcinogenic effect on humans. In fact, the World Health Organization actually said that cell phones are in the same cancer-causing category as lead, engine exhaust, and chloroform.

#4: Use "relative goal values." 

#5: Use $1 as the goal value for all the outcomes. 

Inaugural Words An interactive graphic published this January shows the number of times words were used in inaugural speeches. Readers could view the use of the word in context, and then read the entire speech, or compare the words used by every president to date. Published Jan. 17, 2009

Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl Using data gathered from Twitter's API, this mash-up shows what words people around the country were tweeting minute-by-minute as the Cardinals and Steelers battled it out on the field. Published Feb. 2, 2009

Where Immigrants Settled An interactive map shows where immigrant groups settled across United States over the last century. Readers can drill into more than 20 different immigrant groups and see the number who lived in each county in the U.S. at the time of every census since 1880. Published March 10, 2009

The Year in Markets An interactive graphic produced for the nytimes.com home page explains how 2008 became a dismal year for the financial markets. Published Dec. 31, 2009

Mapping Parking Tickets A interactive graphic mashes up data on the number of parking tickets given on each of 80,000 blocks in New York City with a Google street map. Published Nov. 28, 2008

The Danger of Digging Deeper An information graphic explains the risks involved in a new project that attempts to harvest geothermal energy from hot bedrock in an area prone to earthquakes. Published June 23, 2009

Failed Prostate Procedures An interactive graphic explains how brachytherapy — a procedure to treat prostate cancer — is commonly performed, and how a cancer unit at the Philadelphia V.A. botched 92 of 116 procedures. Published June 20, 2009