News Of The Day 1/28/2011

MAJOR NEWS:
For those of you not following, Egypt has been largely or mostly taken off the internet – an analysis is here. The massive Techememe roundup is here. This is huge and is something all of us need to follow – geeks and nongeeks, progeeks and regular.

  • The sheer human factor
  • It is historical.
  • It will affect government and technical policies all over the world.
  • It will likely result in snake-oil solutions and scams we need to watch.

Twitter has already stated it's support for free speech

Demographics/Demogeekness:
How social structure relates to success – an interesting post that also suggests just why Silicon Valley did better than other areas. This article focuses too much on the "Midwestern attitude" (which I actually think isn't as prominent as the author thinks), but the overall picture is fascinating, focusing on social clusters. Frankly, I think the social clusters ARE a big success because being in Silicon Valley, it definitely is A) a culture, and B) surprisingly connection dense – which you can experience quite differently being an outsider.

Economics/Geekonomics:
At the Davros meeting Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan says banks should be allowed to fail. I think a lot of the world's financial elite are feeling the heat if he says something like this.

Publishing:
Ebooks outselling paperbacks at Amazon? I'm in no way surprised.

Technology:
Did Steve Jobs out Japan Japan? A fascinating analysis (plus some analysis of Sony that is compelling).

Adobe versus Apple? Not when cash is on the line, so Creative Suite 5.5 is going to have iOS, Android, and other development tools.

Video Games:
Sounds like the NGP has interested people in the gaming industry.

Steven Savage