Steven Savage

Career:
The key to success? Hustle. Getting moving. A nice succinct summary of a serious truth – if you want success, get moving. As a person who once spent a good chunk of a 5 hour airline flight writing columns, I can say hustle works.

Getting your hustle on in blogging may help Technorati reports on bloggers who make money blogging is interesting – I'll note that the economic situation probably skews this, but a good read – and may give you some ideas. And hey, keep up the Hustle . . .

Economics/Geekonomics:
7000 people a day exhaust their unemployment benefits. That's a million people in less than 150 days. The Senate is still holding up unemployment benefit extentions. This isn't good news for the unemployed or the economy.

The US may not be able to help the global recovery, consumer-wise. The numbers certainly don't look hot. We can expect more global economic shifts with weakness like this.

A jobless recovery looks more likely – Says the Atlanta Fed. Jobs are scare, small businesses are shedding them disproportionately, record job cutbacks, record high permanent job separations – all add up to an unpleasant picture. This may actually reflect a new trend in the modern economy as is – it seems a lot of recoveries of the recent past have been jobless.

Law:
(Yep, I added a law section. These days, I think Geek Law and Fan Law have come into their own)

Nokia files patent infringement lawsuits against Apple – Not sure why it took until now, part of me wonders if this is general Everything Wars strategy, and the recent trend has been dogpile-on-Apple as of late.

John McCain jumps into the Net Neutrality issue – and is against the FCC's rules. I think this is more symbolic than anything else (and probably a play for political relevance). Not sure it'll have much effect on the ongoing issues.

Movies:
If you thought Dune or Lord of the Rings was Unfilmable (even after the films), try and imagine the complex Culture novels adapted as movies. On the negative side . . . it'd be hard to find people that 'get' these books. On the other it's an incredibly rich setting to mine. I'm concerned an adaption of this size is an indicator that media companies are looking to mine past product even more.

Publishing:
A lot of journalists want their companies to move to digital faster. The demograhpics sound unusual as well. A good read if you're in news, and maybe in publishing in general.

Check out these Twitter Users who are shaping the future of publishing

What? Amazon.com's UK version of the Kindle is very limited and restricted – Another bad play in my book – and another opportunity for competitors. With the Nook coming out, this makes them look worse.

Technology:
OK, Windows 7 is out. Here's an obligatory review.

Video Games:
GameStop looks to jump into Digital Distribution with a mix of expand-and-acquire. Note the acquire part – it'd probably be easier for them to jump into DLC by buying a service or company than making their own. They also want to "aggregate" downloads. Clearly they're busy re-inventing themselves early. I smell job opportunities . . .

– Steven Savage

OK today's whole news is, like our last news, insanely publishing-centric. So strap in folks, because this is one wild day . . .

Media:
Nickelodeon acquires Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise – Expect them to tap this epically for cash, merchandise, etc.

Music:
Google partners with companies for a new music service. Looks like it involves some new features for music in google search – and an alliance with iLike, which was acquired by MySpace. Note these are alliances, not acquisitions, which bodes well for the allied services – and their employees. Hint, hint.

Not to be outdone by Google, Facebook will also do a music service. So far it seems the winners may be services like LaLa and users, but the Everything Wars are starting to get even more bloody confusing.

Publishing:
5 reasons the Barnes and Noble 'Nook' is a Kindle Killer – Pretty compelling reasons to tell the truth. I'm concerned that device diversion is going to make it harder for authors to get distribution as they may be limited or locked into certain e-readers. Though as the Nook reads PDF I'm more reassured on this end. B&N may have a winner here.

Hewlett-Packard jumps into the publishing fray. THere's Bookprep which publishes out-of-copyright books. There's also Mag Cloud that lets you turn wikia pages into magazine-like printings or do your own magazines. I certainly didn't see this coming – and the combinations of Wiki with publishing promises some intriguing possibilities – as well as hideous potential copyright battles.

Amazon versus Walmart? Target jumps into the fray? Books could become loss-leaders for stores? It's all in a day's analysis in the Everything Wars. Booksellers could suffer from a lot of these price battles, especially at discount stores. On the other hand I don't think the discount stores are interested in, say, Print-on-demand, or are they going to make their own e-readers – though they might sell some. More headaches in the book world.

Social Media:
Microsoft is supposedly going to sign deals with Facebook and Twitter to include updates and Tweets in searches for Bing – Not sure it's true, worth watching – and worth seeing if other deals get signed. Oh, and if Twitter makes any more. Good news for Facebook and Twitter if true.

Technology:
Apple's declared war on the PC, and the PC is eating itself – A must-read article for anyone remotely touched by tech. I hadn't considered how the netbook market would affect PC's at this level, and it's fascinating reading because it could affect what you use, what you program for, and what you deploy at work.

Video Games:
Transmission Games shuts down – Always sad to see closures in the industry.

Game outsourcing company Babel teams up with Enterbrain to service their customers – Sure testing and localization doesn't sound exciting, but there's a lot of it, it pays the bills – and it can be more interesting than you may think. Nice bit of UK/Japanese synergy here – if you're in the UK, look Babel up, sounds like they're thinking ahead and made a good deal.

– Steven Savage