Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
If you were on an interview for your ideal job, would you have mentioned the most recent Comic-Con? The latest game releases? The recent travails of smartphones or tablets?
Maybe you should have.
One of the things about being, well, the geeks and fans and otaku we are, is we're often painfully well informed about news issues, at least with stuff we like. We know about conventions and releases, games and manga, shipping issues and scandals. We know a lot of stuff.
Twitter was going to die.
Privacygate was going to destroy Facebook.
The iPhone 4 will turn Cupertino into a wasteland and Apple will fall.
Anyone else getting tired of the Media Internet Deathwatches? Because I am.
Career:
Dan Schwabel on colleges, value, and personal branding – He makes a good and rather disturbing point on how colleges don't prepare people to connect and promote themselves in the career world.
Blogging leads to job opportunities – A NO BS account of how a blogger used his blog and networking to land a job.
Economics/Freakonomics/Geekonomics:
Recent economic number in graphs – Pure graphrotica for econofans. Possibly not so useful for people not into heavy economics, but presented for interest.
Anime and Manga:
How to get your anime/manga proposal rejected – Ten ways to completely screw up.
Social Media:
Nintendo DSi's Facebook connect goes life – It really only posts photos, but it's a further example of social integration – and ahead of the PSP obviously. However this is also another boost for Facebook, further cementing them in the social media space. Between this and phone apps social media/portable/mobile integration is pretty much a given, its just how much companies will do. Jobwise of course, connecting portables to social media is obviously a good area to be-in . . .
Technology:
The Everything Wars continue as Google launches an ad campaign clearly targeted at Microsoft Office. Not a bad idea – and it covers up the embarassment of the Twitter leak issue (even if the person getting into the company's Google apps just used some social engineering). It continues – so what's Microsoft going to do in retaliation the next week or two?
Appropriate to the above, a look at why Microsoft Word should die – This is a must read for technicians, writers, and anyone using a lot of word processing. He makes the simple point that word stopped being ABOUT document delivery awhile ago, while retaining all the features of it and then some.
Who's fault is it Google Voice was rejected off of iPhone? AT&T points the finger at Apple. Thus it continues. Apple is further under the spotlight now, and they handed competitors a marketing opportunity. I want to see what other rejected apps may come out and what ic an mean for Apple.
Video Games:
Zynga is now number one in amount of online gamers using its services – I see nobody is surprised. For those of you in the job market, please note there are a LOT of open jobs there . .
170 Million Americans play games – Part of a larger report. Note that this covers almost all kinds of gamers.
Is it impossible to launch a new IP in the holiday game market? – Michael de Plater of Ubisoft thinks so. Gaming's success has altered it's own market dynamics, and gaming will need to adjust. I think this is a big enough issue that people in gaming need to pay more attention to release schedules than they did even a few years ago – both on development and support. It also suggests to me that new IP really needs to avoid Christmas and find a "killer" time to get put out.
– Steven Savage