Games into movies into . . . TV shows? Greece melts down further, EA's star rises, and IMVU is doing great yet no one is paying attention. It's must-know geek news time!
Career:
Some reasons to have an online resume. Not sure it's for everyone – or posting a straight up resume is a great idea – but there's a few things to think of.
Economnics/Geekonomics:
And there goes the Greek Bond Market, which basically says there's low confidence in Greece at least for the short to mid term, or at least their chance for loans. It also doesn't sound like current loans will cover much. My take is that Greece can be kept from collapsing totally, but I don't see anyone wanting to prop it up until a full recovery (or re-alignment). At best, the damage will be mitigated – and this will affect the Eurozone (though keep in mind Greece has an economy smaller than some US States).
Big tech companies hoard cash – There seems to be less merger, acquisition, and funding from some of the big names, who appear to be playing it safe overall. This obviously doesn't help economic re-alignmnet (still not saying recovery . . .), but suggests that when the economic situation does improve, there's a chance for a waterfall of cash being used for investments, acquisitions, research, etc.
Population Boom? Nope according to this author, a population crash is coming, and it'll reshape our economy. I also predict a remake of Rojin Z.
The Bearded One Speaks, Paul Krugman notes people are missing the fact that 93% of Subprime mortgage securites rated AAA are now junk. In short, a lot of those fancy investment vehicles turning subprime loans into investments? They got rated high and turned out to be lousy. Rating agencies are important to the economy, and this points at some nasty corruption.
Geek Law:
No charges yet, but there could be legal, criminal action over the 'lost' iPhone. Just so you know.
Movies:
Avatar is the fastest selling Blu-Ray disk of all time. And so it continues. Avatar's success is due to more than 3D, and I think this confirms it – it had spectacle, a classic-basic plot, and some pretty good actors under all the CGI.
Multimedia:
SyFy channel wants to do a Movie based on the game Red Faction that may, in turn, spawn a TV series, and they're hopeful it influences the next game. They also are aiming for a kids show based on game DeBlob. Goofy name aside, SyFy has had some interesting productions (Alice and Tin Man), and this sounds like some rather ambitious synergy.
Social Media:
Twitter buys Text-Messaging infrastructure/software company Cloudhopper. Twitter has been using them for awhile, and they're a small company, but it shows twitter is still moving forward.
A large-scale look at what the Facebook announcements mean as well as what can go wrong. A good read for everyone involved in Social Media (which, tangentally, is everyone), and it shows the ambition of Facebook's goals.
IMVU has a revenue jump. It looks like it's virtual goods-based. Pretty good for them. IMVU seems to get forgotten in many discussions of social media – as we can see, you shouldn't. Also more money? Wonder if you should see if they're hiring . . .
Technology:
Now spammers are eploying people to get around captcha. The never ending-war against spam and spam blocking produces some pretty strange results. I'm fascinated by the idea spammers will use cheap labor for such technocal endeavors.
People think of Apple products as relatively closed, but interestingly openness has been a benefit for them. A thought-provoking look at their merger of open and closed over the years.
Sony to stop making 3.5 disk drives. And thus an era is over.
Large amount of Godaddy WordPress blogs hacked – Story is still coming in. WordPress is pretty widely used, as is Godaddy, so I want o hear more about what's gone on.
Video Games:
Trion Is Back – With 3 games and a lot of drive – and some interesting new technology. No idea how they're going to fare after their recent ups and downs, but some of the technology and ambition intrigues me.
EA breaks into the Fortune 500. Another gaming milestone. I'm sure EA feels even more pressure now, but this also makes them look good.
Five more employees leave Infinity Ward. No one expresses surprise.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: Will EA's breaking into the Fortune 500 change their fortunes?
– Steven Savage