News of the Day 8/26/2009

Career:
5 Typical Job Search Problems and how to solve them.

Economics/Freakonomics/Geekonomics:
The stock market seems 'broken' to one expert – it doesn't seem to be making much sense. A quick but thought-provoking read.

Awesome: an automatic graph to let you see how a lot of famous companies grew. Play with it a bit and see if it gives you any ideas of where to work or what business to start.

Must read: how banks (and others) diversify themselves into incompetence – Full article here. This one strikes home for me as I watch large, lumbering companies survive only by leveraging debt and past success, and as business gurus talk nicheing. I think we can all name companies right now engaged in expensive battles by trying to do everything.

Tips on becoming a freelancing powerhouse, especially in writing.

How to work in the Japanese gaming industry.

Anime and Manga:
Hulu adds 'One Piece' to it's library – Meaning of course they keep up with those big titles. Wonder how these will go over when they work out the UK distribution?

Publishing:
A small press picture book publisher isn't worried about the Kindle – And makes some good points about the psychology and issues and designs of some books. Food for thought – and makes me wonder about digital comics and the like and their viability. Some things are ephemeral – some people want to keep.

Sports:
More sports geek news? You bet – NBC is working on a sports video site in India. With the news of Yahoo's move to the Mideast, I am now wondering if we're going to see an increased trend of companies moving to specialized regions or expanding out of their normal geographic/cultural limits. Brush up on and keep track of your language skills if this trend continues.

Social Media:
A quick overview of the growing Teens don't Tweet meme going around, including comment from a Twitter co-founder and plenty of links. Frankly this isn't worrysome as I think Twitter is doing well enough, though it does suggest they'll want to monitor demographic usage to see if people use Twitter more LATER in life, or if theres a demographic that is not changing.

Resistance to social media is fading – so how can you use this on the job and career? Might be useful to show this to a recalcitrant client, boss, or partner!

Technology:
Amazon moves to it's cloud computing offering – I just can't help but feel they're starting to go way afar from their initial goals.

Further WTFery: Apple's new Snow Leopard OS may not work with all apps – At this rate I am concerned Apple is flailing and not thinking ahead (this pretty much feels like a get-a-jump-on-Windows 7 effort). Is Apple confused in the Everything Wars?

Geek Need alert: Telecos likely to increase spending. This means technology sales and geeky jobs. You know what to do!

Video Games:
Ouch. Turbine is suing Atari over nasty issues involving the D&D franchise. Not pretty. I reccomend no resume-sending to either until resolved, this has the smell of potential ugliness.

-Steven Savage