Jeremy Laws at Cabana Mobile has an interesting little analysis up about mobile gaming that claims it may not be as big as it's cracked up to be. Laws says there's no way the mobile gaming market can hold up $5.4 billion, as was reported earlier this year by Juniper Research. Laws looks at the top 10 companies releasing mobile games (at retail -- that will become important in a minute), and claims that even if those companies make up 70% of total mobile games, the total amount of mobile game sales only comes up near $1.7 billion, far short of the Juniper number.

So where's the discrepancy? It's almost certain to lie in the App Store, where Juniper says growth more than made up for the dropoff of sales in other areas, like Java-based games. Laws does list companies like EA Mobile and Gameloft, whose games are selling on the App Store, but almost all of Laws' companies are old-school mobile developers, who created games for mobile phones before the App Store was ever open for business. Plus, his "retail" mention might mean the App Store isn't included in his calculations at all -- can you call the App Store "retail"? In fact, if any mobile games marketplace is going to make up over $3 billion in the mobile games market, it's got to be the App Store, right?

So this means a couple of different things: one, the App Store very well could be remaking the face of mobile gaming, to the point where old-school numbers are just plain insufficient to compare to modern App Store sales. Second, if there is a bubble, it'll likely be in the App Store: another recent report says that if you spend more than $40k on a 99 cent game, you're losing money. Laws may be underestimating the long tail of the App Store -- certainly no single developer has pulled in billions, but there are a lot of developers out there. Still, at the same time, $5.4 billion does seem high. And if games companies are convinced there's gold in the App Store hills, that's where the bubble will eventually burst.

Fortune's Apple 2.0 got a nice little graph up of just where and when the iPhone's hype machine went into overdrive. There's no question it was a gigantic brand last year, but what's interesting is just how manufactured and "by design" each of those spikes are. B on the chart above is the actual iPhone launch, and E and F are the 3G debut and store launch. Fortune relates point A to the Cisco lawsuit against Apple over the "iPhone" name, but let's be real: that was just part of the story of the gigantic iPhone reveal (which took place one day before, not two).

So the real story here isn't necessarily that Apple masterfully created a smartphone that revolutionized the industry and made tons of money doing it, but that they coordinated a hype machine that marched to their tune whenever they wanted. The red line above, as you can see, is Palm, and while there are a few spikes along that line (probably interest in various new products and releases), there's nothing like the excitement and hype that shoots up around a big Apple event. The iPhone is a feat of engineering in itself, but the hype machine behind it is pretty well-built, too.

With my girlfriend in the process of refurbishing her kitchen, I found myself in need of (and without) a carpenter's level yesterday afternoon. But then I remembered Bubble Level, an application for the iPhone and iPod touch.

A penny short of a dollar later, I had myself a working, surprisingly accurate level right in my iPod touch.

Bubble Level allows you to calibrate it (for example, with an actual bubble level) so its measurements are accurate enough to use for household chores and hobbies. (Professionals may still need the precision that a traditional liquid bubble level provides.)

Bonus: it tracks how level the device is in two dimensions: laying your iPod or iPhone on a table allows the bubble to travel toward the center circle on the interface.

Bubble Level is 99 cents, and available in the App Store now. You can also check out A Level, a similar app that's expected to support calibration in the next release (it's from Posimotion, winners of TUAW's Most Risque iPhone App Name award).