China has a financial bubble? Godaddy leaves China? Facebook and social disease demographics? It's a strange mix of must-know geek news today!
Career:
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Economics/Geekonomics:
China has its own financial bubble? Some compelling arguments that China's asset prices, the speculation and investing, actions by the authorities, etc. mean that China, to put it mildly, is going to suffer a downturn that disappoints many investors. Those worries about Greece don't seem as prominent do they? Plus China has its role in the Geekonomy . . .
Media:
Hey movie/culture scholars, PopMatters is looking for papers on Alfred Hitchcock. You know what to do!
Publishing:
YA books are big at the Bologna Fair in the UK – eBooks not so hot. YA certainly isn't slowing down, but I'm getting the impression that "triolgies of YA" books are the big hot trend.
Social Media:
Don't know if this will have legs, but some health experts in the UK are claiming Facebook has led to increases of syphilis in some parts of the UK, apparently as it's used for hook-ups. I await seeing the actual studies, but am concerned that the sensationalism of this story could get it out in the larger world without much context.
Facebook's development platform may have trouble scaling to deal with all the usage. Not good for them and for developers if this isn't improved/fixed. I'm sure some people will blame syphilis.
And Woah. Heyzap lets people turn their Facebook games into embeddable web components – All while retaining most or all of the social media features. Imagine writing a Facebook game and knowing people can also put it on their site, a blog, etc. They're even partnered with Hi5. I want to see how this idea of a "game broker" works out, but it does seem pretty gutsy.
Technology:
Someone got some sweet funding: Akorri, an infrastructure management company raised A bit over $10 million – Infrastructure is big, they're in Massachucetts, you know what to do with a resume. Plus Flash-widget maker Wix got $10 million in funding as well – though with the Flash/HTML 5 wars I wonder how their business model will go.
GoDaddy will stop registering domains in China, following Google's leads.
Video:
Fox Mobile reveals Bitbop, a subscription video service for smartphones. Something else to watch to see if it sets trends one way or another. It feels like we're back to the video side of The Everything Wars as of late . . .
QUESTION OF THE DAY: How do you think people will respond to Heyzap?
-Steven Savage