News and Analysis

A bit of a light news day – but with the big Apple Story and Open Feint horning in on technical territory left by Apple, this gets pretty interesting . . .

More Apple Fallout:

Tim Cook says Apple isn't going to change. Smart, as there's no reason to change. Cook sounds like a good choice for CEO – though he might be transitional as he's a bit wonkish (which to me is a plus but I AM a process wonk)

The politics of Apple's change also enter into the arena of LGBT: Tim Cook is talented, process-oriented, gay (though he doesn't talk about it). Me I'm more thrilled to see a good process wonk in charge, but in a time of shall we say heated issues on gay rights, this may have implications for Apple and the Geekonomy.

Or to put it frankly, this'll bring out the homophobes in our charged atmosphere, and this will have implications. I'm hoping the Geekonomic culture sector makes a stand on this.

Have a roundup of resignation stories.

Economics/Geekonomics:
Warren Buffet invests in BofA. Ritholz has some thoughts here. Naked Capitalism is rather dismal about this. My take is Buffet did this to help the economy and make the point – but it's not a save.

Anime and Manga:
Ouran High School Host Club goes live TV? I didn't see that coming, but interesting – and might have a chance to be a live-anime crossover in America ('Myoshimon' sadly did not achieve that.).

Video Games:
As you probably heard Apple is changing it's identification system on mobile devices, which make it hard to track data and screws up things for games, advertisers, etc. Open Feint dives into the gap with their own identification system. Big play by Open Feint and intriguing as it means they're trying to become a kind of broker – and gives them advertising advantages. Very intriguing.

News Of The Day: What more is Open Feint going to try?

– Steven Savage

Steve Jobs left Apple. Yeah, what kind of lead did you expect?

Yes Another Big Story:

Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple Yes, Steve jobs has resigned as CEO. I'm sure we can analyze the bejeesus out of this, so let's just wait a bit.

Career:
The thing to remember about the short-term is that we'll almost certainly be around when the long-term shows up..

Economics/Geekonomics:
A federal judge put all foreclosures in Rhode Island on hold, apparently due to the MERS mess. It gets better as a ruling opens the door to questioning any foreclosure based on MERS data. MERS sounds like a mess anyway, so if this keeps going we could see a massive stop of foreclosures . . .

This could provoke (more) federal action and expose MERS to more public scrutiny. That could result in the story getting into mass public consciousness, and believe me people aren't sympathetic to the banks and MERS is going to make them look worse.

More Bank of America Death Watch IF you're up for some serious analysis – an attempt to look at their financial situation, which isn't reassuring and is damned hard to sort out. Bank states are hard to assess in good times anyway . . .

Film:
Score one for originality, the 'Ouija' film appears to be halted. Now for terrifying, Taylor Lautner may still be Stretch Armstrong.

Technology:
This is either stupid or brilliant, but as it's Bunchball I'm gonna side on Brilliant: Bunchball has gameification tools for Salesforce. Yes, making using Salesforce more gamelike. This is weird yet also kind of cool – take note as it shows Gameification can enter some unexpected areas.

Video:
Perpetually-doomed Hulu may become more of a network. At this rate I have no idea anymore and kinda think it's doomed one way or another. Certainly not-resume-worthy, and I think a lot o networks are now monetizing content on their own.

Netflix is relocating and expanding in Silicon Valley. Sounds like more is up – so why not toss them a resume (hey, also remember someone's gotta do property and operations management).

Video Games:
OK, this is interesting. Deus Ex Human Revolution's PC version comes with a coupon to play it on OnLive. GameStop is removing these coupons saying that they were not informed of them previously and they don't want to promote a competitor. Remember that GameStop has it's own service coming anyway. A hint of future and current conflict – and a look at an interesting possibility of purchase-once-run-anywhere gaming options.

OnLive continues to grow with voice chat and parental controls. They're still not getting as much press as I'd expect, which intrigues me since I kind of figure they'd be all over the news. I guess GameStop (and others) have more to compete with . . .

QUESTION OF THE DAY: So . . . let's get it over with. What's gonna happen to Apple sans Steve Jobs?

– Steven Savage

RIM isn't quitting: Witness the latest Blackberries.

Bank of America: More Death Watch. Actually when you look at the details they're pretty hosed.  If there's no bailout, socialization, or other plan this could cause  . . . er or make . . . the double dip . .  . recession worse.  Damn.

– Steven Savage