News and Analysis – Page 19

Links Of The Day 10/8/2013

October 8, 2013 by Steven Savage

What’s up today?

Let’s get depressed in looking at how . . . well dumb Americans are compared to other people. The computer skills part flips me out, frankly. Well this tells you about your audience – and maybe some opportunities to train or help people.

Speaking about training, here’s an excerpt that trashes crap advice books fro 1909. NOTHING has changed, has it? No. Worth reading – and a warning on the advice you may be getting from various sources, it may have been crap for 100 years.

I just found out about this evolving writing site, Describli. Keep an eye on it . . .

Games-wise news: SquareEnix is porting some Dragon Quest games to smartphones. Well you’ve got my attention – and this is a beloved series which has it’s mobile series as well. Smart move – and a reminder again that phones are a great way to re-release games.

Amazon wants to lure in Kindle developers and is offering rewards. They want this pretty damn bad apparently – if you want to take advantage of it is another question.

The BBC has gotten into its own store for downloading and keeping shows. Interesting move. So who’s next – and how will this affect media alliances?

– Steven “Now Available On Mobile” Savage

Links of The Day 10/7/2013

October 7, 2013 by Steven Savage

Hardware has a long tail you may not have considered. Some pretty deep stuff here on hardware, long tail, and hobbyists that you should just READ.
Why do products fail? People don’t know what the hell they do. Worth reading and why “build what you want” can be a blessing and a curse depending on who you are and who you know.
Google released a quick HTML5 building tool for non-coders. May be worth checking out if you want to get a bit of web under your belt easily.
Blackberry’s future is software? I’d say “Duh” as they’re sort of the Sega of mobiles without the Hedgehog. This may revive them and save jobs or provide them, but I’d hold off getting contrarian with them.
A WB exec REALLY wants that Wonder Woman movie. Big danger is that they shoehorn one in and it fails. Contrarian view they throw some unexpected people at it and its a surprise. May I suggest Del Toro because Del Toro?

– Steven “User Friendly” Savage

Link Roundup 10/6/2013

October 6, 2013 by Steven Savage

Twitter isn’t revealing all it’s financial data. Yeah, maybe we need to keep an eye on this – though with the financial shutdown in washington, Twitter is facing a lot of challenges now.
“Gravity” is getting great reviews. Last I checked it had a 98% fresh rating at RottenTomatoes. I’m hopeful this renews interest in space and space stories that are a bit more grounded in reality, even if Gravity has it’s flaws. Worth keeping an eye on culturally.
Ok there really are lost Doctor Who episodes and we will see them. I’m going to be curious as to how they get deployed and distributed over time – as we have a huge amount of ways to do it that weren’t as prominent five years ago or as sophisticated ten years ago. You could learn a lot watching this.

– Steve “Full Financial Disclosure” Savage