Avatar photoSteven Savage

News of the Day 2/24/2010

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More financial meltdowns, less adult content on Vudu, and more money for Zillion TV! Change your channel to "Geek Career News" and let's see what's on!

Career:
10 ways LinkedIn helps in a job search – Short, sweet, and useful.

Poewar, a writer's resource, has a dynamite job hunting to do list that's good advice for anyone.

Economics/Geekonomics:
Freddie Mac seems to be worried about more home foreclosures – I'm more concerned about commercial real estate, but only in that seems to have a bigger chance to go bad. This is Not Good.

Geek Law:
Yelp is involved in a class action lawsuit over review removal and claims of blackmail pay-to-remove-bad-reviews. This is one I just found out about, so I bring it up due to Yelp's prominence. I'm not sure how legit the claims are. On the heels of discussion of Zynga's past and the ever-increasming prominence of internet reviews and data, this is important to follow as it may set precidents.

Video:
ZillionTV gets $10 million investment from Qwest. Good for Zillion, which launches in a few months. Good for Qwest who gets a piece of the action. Possibly good for you if Zillion goes and uses that money to hire people. ZillionTV, for all it's doing, often gets overlooked in the news, which might be an advantage to them as they can come out of no-where into the market.

Wal Mart buys streaming movie startup Vudu, and closes its adult section. Not surprising, but it brings up the question of what else Wal Mart may remove to maintain it's image (as one commentor notes, you can't get pornography, you can get horror films). I'm not sure Wal Mart really knows what its getting into with the streaming movie business and think this isn't the last time we'll see them pulling things out of Vudu.

Video Games:
Bluehole Studios of Korea has created a new gaming company, En Masse Entertainment in Seattle. First – well new company in Seattle, so send resumes. Secondly, they have a good starting staff. A company to watch – even if you don't send a resume.

Take Two opens a Japanese office – Previously they did it via partnerships. Considering some of the great properties they have, this is a good move for them.

Question of the Day: Does Wal-Mart's move to clean up Vudu weaken their hand in getting people interested in the service?

– Steven Savage

Free, Fremium, and More in the Great Recession

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So recently I put the game Dungeon Fighter on my Asus Netbook.  Dungeon Fighter is an interesting game – a side-scrolling beat-em-up game and an MMO at the same time.  You play one of several unique classes (that at times vary from fantasy archetypes or expand them), fight monsters in modular dungeons, and have colorful sprite-based fun.  It's easy, simple, surprisingly deep, and the Priest class whacks enemies to death with giant crosses, scythes, and rosaries, so how could I resist.

The game is of course free-to-play, but you can blow cash on getting extra equipment, respecs to re-build your character, and, of course, character clothing so you don't look like everyone else.  Very standard model.

So as I played this game, I debated if I wanted to get some credits in the game for extras.  It suddenly struck me that the freemium, free-to-play, and other free-but models differ from the usual monthly-charge MMO games in another way besides the obvious.

They allow you to timeshift your expenses.

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Thank a Recruiter

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Take a moment to thank a recruiter.

Recruiters don't have an easy time in this tough economy.  Many people are suffering unemployment and underemployment – and the same happens to recruiters.  Their goal after all is to place people in jobs and no jobs means no placement.

Recruiters face the depressing facts of the economy day in and day out.  It's there in status reports, in interviews, in every customer that withdraws a request, in every potential recruit who is told no.  Recruiters face every facet of the Great Recession as part of their job; that has to be depressing.

Recruiters have to move with the times in technology, knowledge, and understanding professions.  A person may need to understand their job and career, but a recruiter needs to stay on top of many professions.  They need to stay on top of this news even in a troubled economy because . . . well it may just be important.

Once, a recruiter called me to see if I knew someone for a programming position that involved more Java experience than was possible.  When I told them that, frankly, the client didn't know what he was talking about, the recruiter said that's why he called.  He wanted his fear confirmed – and to blow off a bit of stream with a friendly voice.

Take a moment to remember the recruiters.  It's not just good networking – it's a sign of respect and empathy to people who probably need it.

– Steven Savage