News Of The Day 6/1/2010

People daring backs to evict them, Harry Potter may move to eBook after all, and plenty of game companies appear to be making smart moves. What's in motion for today's must-know geek job news? The answer is below!

Career:
A lovely rant on how 'real life' is not an excuse to not respond to people via various communications methods. A good reminder personally and for business.

Crafting your 30 second elevator pitch.

Laurie of Punk Rock HR invites you to explore what you really want to do. Listen to Laurie. Don't mess with her.

Can't outsource innovation? Don't bet on it. Richard Florida provides some insights.

Economics/Geekonomics:
Looks like more people are telling the banks "go ahead and try to evict me" when they can't afford home and business mortgages. This was originally an oversensationalized story, but the last six months or so it seems to be a legit issue – and it seems to be a bit of a social movement. Some personal cases and actual numbers help give you a picture of how some people are staying in places where they pay reduced or no mortgages. If this is a big trend, I can see it delivering another blow to banks, though some good may come of it if lenders remember this and are a lot more cautious in the future.

Eurozone unemployment at 12 year high. Not surprising considering the problems there. My concern, beyond the obvious, is that this tale will become another one of those 'look at all the problems Europe has' stories from which talking heads will derive incredibly wrong conclusions.

An investigation of BP? Not surprising at all. Check out the stock dive.

Anime and Manga:
A discussion of the trends in manga publishing, the future, and how we got here. General sense is a slowdown, but with a stronger future.

Pubishing:
Publishers pine for universal E-Book format – Well there is ePub, but yeah, you buy a book from one source and you can't transfer it easily. The limits – and the format issues – have gotten ridiculous. I'm just not sure if publishers, who want to make money in tough times, can really, effectively put their feet down to get something to work out. I'd like it, because as I've noted, I've had enough crazy to deal with in my own e-Publishing efforts. Oh, and as Borders is doing it's own e-reader and bookstore it just gets more complicated.

Harry Potter may go eBook. If it happens at the right time (say a release of a certain movie), this could result in big sales, and of course further awareness and enthusiasm for eBooks, if that's statistically possible. If this happens and the books sell well, expect the bandwagon to get a lot more people jumping on it.

Social Media:
Hijacking Facebook 'Likes'? Apparently so. If you do a lot of work with Facebook, be sure to read this.

Technology:
HP just cut 9000 jobs. Not a huge part of their force, and there's hiring going on too, but a sign of some reorging and shifting priorities. Not enough for me to say 'take them off your ideal company list' but merely worth keeping in mind that changes are afoot – again – at HP.

Looking for a place to use your IT Skills? Health IT is behind the curve, which tells me people who are ahead of the curve may find some good career options there.

Video Games:
Nexon buys a stake in GameHi. World domination is on course apparently. Keep Nexon in your sites both for what they do (and what effect it has), and for career options. And I really do need to get back to Dungeon Fighter . . .

Three Canadian companies form a virtual universe consortium – A giant one-stop place for virtual universe services and creation. Here's a group of companies to watch (and send resumes to) – they've obviously got plans. This is also a good reminder that companies that provide services and support to game companies are good, effective places to work.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Who will make the first move to creating a universal, exchangeable ebook format?

– Steven Savage