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Disney has purchased iPhone gaming company Tapulous. They are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney Interactive Media Group.

Tapulous builds mobile games for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Three weeks ago M.T. Richardson's job disappeared, his employer ran so far out of money that it said no one was getting paid and offered computers from the office as compensation instead. Yesterday, M.T. had one of the best days of his life. He's the junior-most developer in a still unlaunched company riding high behind the scenes of the iPhone 3.0 launch.

M.T. works for Urban Airship, a mobile company that most iPhone users will be touched by, but will never hear of. The company powers the new push notifications and in-app purchasing features for app-making client companies who can't or don't want to do all the heavy lifting themselves to implement these new capabilities of the mobile device. Three weeks ago Urban Airship was an idea and some code, a side project of one of the men who would become a co-founder. Yesterday Urban Airship helped Tapulous, its first customer and one of the biggest gaming companies on the iPhone, launch push notifications before almost anyone else.