Economic/Geekonomics/Freakonomics:
A look at fears of a 'lost decade' and more – Includes interview with Paul Krugman. Two points arise out of this – one, there's some justification that the economy of the world will level off but not improve, and two there's extreme demographic shifts in jobs going on in older markets.
Let me add to this, geek-career wise: I see a decent change for either a future "dip" in 3-5 years or not so much a lost decade, but a lost few years (or a long slow recovery). Those of us in geeky jobs, those of us used to leveraging technology and hobbies and fannish contacts, might as well go into overdrive just in case we need those edges to deal with a nasty 'new normal.'
Social Media:
For teachers, journalists, and social media enthusiasts, a look at how journalism schools can and are teachign social media.
Technology:
Google reserves 1 MILLION phone numbers – As part of Google Voice, a one-stop phone number service. This sounds insanely ambitious, and not cheap to do, so I'm curious as to how it'll be monetized – I can also see copycat services popping up easy. This could be good for Google, but its sort of "way out" so I'm going to watch.
Video Games:
Activision CEO threatens not to make games for the PS3 next year. Big ouch here considering how big Activision is. For those of you looking to work at Sony or working there, consider this a definite alert and follow the story – this may be hot air, but could be the start of something. Sony does need to cut prices, but looks like they can't, so they may have to figure a least-worst situation.
EA gets John Schappert as COO – Schappert left EA to go to Microsoft, and then has come back. I'm taking this as a good sign – he has plenty of experience, has been on "several sides of the fence", and seems pretty savvy. With other news, I'm tentatively leaning to EA getting its act together, but . . .
Playdom hires away EA's past chief operating officer, John Pleasants – It sounds like he's big on social media. I'm also going to move Playdom into the "send them a resume" category since they seem to know what they're doing and then some.
Finally, let's talk a geek singularity and a Doctor Who model of Open source
-Steven Savage