News of the Day 12/17/2010

Delicious may not be dead, Kindle on Android gets upgraded, and some directions at Amazon become apparent.  Lets go!

This Holiday Season, here's Over 75 ways to do good with social media

Geek Law:
More details on the siezure of domain names by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Didn't know about this? Exactly.

Comics:
Well if it wasn't enough people get angry over the actor playing Heimdall in Thor, they're angry that the French Batman is an Algerian Muslim. Again a reminder that comics and comic properties are getting more and more attention, because people with way too much time on their hands and a need to feel superior to others are ragging on them.

Movies:
SyFy to team up with Universal to make movies. These are small/moderate budget films. Jokes aside, not a bad venture – and I bet they get a heck of a first run deal from . . . themselves.

Publishing:
Kindle for Android will be the first to get an upgrade that allows subscribing and reading to newspapers. There's a win for Amazon, and a technological middle finger to Apple. Combine this with their "Cloud Kindle" and Amazon is improving things at a nice clip.

A look at the Kobo strategy. I still think Kobo is doomed, but this may give you some ideas of features e-Readers need, and a good point is made that you can target people who don't want tablets.

Social Media:
The fear of Delicious going away may be mitigated by the fact Yahoo wants to sell it. Hmmm, hey AOL . . . .

RIM may be raising it's social media profile with an acquisition of social data aggregator Gist. Also interesting, that 92% of RIMs growth is outside of the US. Sounds like whatever RIM does (and from what I'm seeing people have VERY strong differences over their future) it's going to need to be global.

Technology:
Jon Rubinstein joints the Board of Directors at Amazon. He's got quite a lot of experience at Palm HP< and Apple (one of the guys behind the iPod). He knows his media, which gives you big hint where Amazon is heading.

Video Games:
OpenFeint launches its game channel with group discounts. They've been pretty scrappy (and the backing they have gotten hasn't hurt) so I give them a good chance of making something of this. Social-mixed-with-games seems to be a big trend anyway.

Steven Savage