Location aware leaderboards for iPhone

The original iPhone SDK shipped with a game called Crash Lander. The game's high score system used the NSUserDefaults preferences system to store and retrieve scores. Upon game completion, a name and score were entered into the non-volatile preferences system. This high score table and players names persisted between application runs. What's interesting is that all the user names and scores are stored. It's incorrect to assume that many people are playing a single iPhone. It's as if this we were all standing in line, dropping quarters an 80's arcade game!

The iPhone is a Generation M device. If you're building an application for Generation M you should assume there is only one person playing on that machine. You're mobile, you have a location engine, you have internet connectivity - use them.

Unlike when the iPhone SDK came out there are now serveral projects that will handle the server side and in many cases much of the client side of the equation for you. Features include geotagged scores, awards and achievements, online/offline management, Facebook / Twitter integration and scalable servers. Most services use Google App Engine or Amazon S3 server services.

Most services are currently free. It's unclear how they will eventually be monetized, and as such one can only imagine there is some risk in integrating them and then having them later disappear.


http://devsupport.agon-online.com/
Polished interfaces, supports landscape.

http://code.google.com/p/igetscores/
Very simple, you'll have to handle all the UI.

http://www.cocoslive.net/
Fairly simple, you handle most of the UI.

http://www.z2live.com/
Supports voice-chat too?

http://www.openfeint.com/
Feature rich, and polished interfaces.