News of the Day 8/5/2010

Google/Verizon weirdness, live-action CGI single celled adventure, and plenty of Social Media news! Grab some Natto and let's check what's up?

Breaking Nerdity:
There's been a story going around that Google and Verizon were planning some "special delivery" for Verizon services, which spawned assorted denials. The story is still going and growing, so tune into Techmeme here. It looks like it is more of a separate agreement on some content but is doubtlessly going to tie into the larger net neutrality debate. By now, it's just confusing so I'm going to wait to see what happens – or some of this could be a kind of force-the-FCC's hand trick. Yeah, I know . . .

Career:
Useful advice to fail at your job search.

Interested in the Hidden Job Market? Some tips for leveraging it.

Economics/Geekonomics:
One of the Calculated Risk folks on why he thinks we'll see a slowdown in the second half of 2010. I think he has a point.

Hotel occupancy appears to be up, which may be a sign of some recovery in tourism and travel. There's also some good signs in job postings.

Even more from Richard Florida on the geography of high-paying jobs. I'm hoping he's going to do a whole book – or paper – on THIS, because I'm seeing some megaregion shifts that intrigue me – and I wonder what the cultural impacts are.

Anime and Manga:
OK, Moyashimon was a manga that got an anime and now has a live action with CGI version on DramaFever.com. I guess talking to single-celled creatures is popular, but I'm also more curious to see what's up with DramaFever.com – which looks to be a Crunchyroll.com rival . . .

Social Media:
Google to buy Social Application Maker Slide. Slide is big on Facebook and MySpace. Sounds like it's Google's expand-and-dilute strategy as usual – and probably a good strategy to have a local company. More Everything Wars . . .

Zynga buys Japanese social game firm Unoh. Zynga's expansion into Asia continues . . . and their rival may be DeNA in Japan.

Meanwhile on the Facebook front, Facebook has been buying social networking patents. These seem awful broad, but they're obviously trying to shore up against competitors and potential competitors.

Technology:
Is the answer to your business future in sites where people ask questions. Never thought of this one, but question sites also allow for targeted advertising.

Video:
Chinese Video site Tudou raises $50 million. Don't know too much about them, but that's a lot of money and it sounds like they have ambitions for original work.

QUESION OF THE DAY: So are Question Sites the Answer for a new business?

Steven Savage