News and Analysis

Email for Facebook? eManga for a bunch of Japanese publishers – targeted at North America? Disney’s new game strategy? Wow, we’ve got a lot of market-focusing news today!

 

Career:
Andy Robinson hits it out of the park with how to work LinkedIn so it works for you.

Ways volunteering can work for your career. A lot of this applies to geeky and fannish activities . . .

Location:
Interstate migration? Down less than you’d think, and apparently the census models aren’t that good.

Anime and Manga:
Must Read: 37 Japanese publishers set up a joint online manga portal for North America (and I assume by default, Australia and Britain). This has potential to be huge considering the names involved, the power of a joint effort (and cross-marketing), and of course the ability to not need the middlemen anymore. Power shift back to Japan, cultural shift to more online, and more reasons for a cultural shift to online delivery.

Social Media:
Paul Buchheit, who created Gmail leaves Facebook for startup incubator Y Combinator. That makes the incubator even more attention-worthy, but also makes me think that his work at Facebook is done as . . .

Facebook is supposedly going to launch a Gmail killer, Project Titan. The Techmeme roundup is here aind includes rumors of Microsoft Office integration, speculations on what this means for Google, and more. Me, I want to wait to see what happens, since Facebook is so in the spotlight these days, and has made some stumbles, I’m not sure how this’ll work out.

Tumbler gets a bunch of investment, we get no details.

Technology:
Cisco profits below expectations, as are others, due to cuts in government spending. Something to be aware of if any company you work for or business you have depends on government contracts. I’m still bullish on Cisco as an employer, however – they’re smart and solid. Also some think government spending is poised for growth – which I actually believe, but not necessarily for good reasons.

You’re probably familiar with the Vocaloid phenomena. I did NOT know that one of them had a concert. We’re in science-fiction-film territory here.

Video:
An analysis of the Boxee strategy. Rough summary, get its software used by as many as possible and use that for revenue – not the Box itself. Some things to think about as we try and get a handle on what’s up between Boxee, Roku, Apple, Google, and a host of others . . .

More delicious Netflix statistics to give you a better handle on this Crush Object. Shows how some statistics aren’t always clear, but Netflix’s dominance is obvious (and if I dare say, well-deserved).

YouTube mobile usage seems to be up. That’s not surprising, but it’s just something to pay attention to.

Video Games:
Among all this other Transformer news, the Transformers MMO will get ported to other countries. Congrats Hasbro, you have a new money printing machine.

Sigh. Former crush object Emergent is putting the Gamebryo engine up for sale and looks to go bankrupt.

More depressing news: InstantAction goes under. They even had the rights to Tribes . . .

A bit more insight into Disney’s game strategy which is pretty telling and helps point out some trends: consoles are risky, multiplatform seems very effective, and consumer choice is broad.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Is Disney on to something with their game strategy?

– Steven Savage

The Samsung Galaxy is out, the economy of Ireland is down for the count, and plenty of gaming news! Let's get to the must-know geek news!

In Passing: Dino DeLaurentiis passes away. HIt's amazing how many films he's been involved in.

Career:
Seth Godin notes that it's easier to build a tribe to make your goals happen than hope to get picked for something.

Economics/Geekonomics:
Ireland's attempts to recapitalize has failed. Bailout possible, and even more bitterness in the Eurozone will result. I don't think there's the same level of negative feelings towards Ireland as Greece, but people aren't going to be happy.

This Friday's Rolling Stone has is going have Matt Taibbi's look at the high-speed 'Rocket Dockets' used for foreclosure in Florida, and an excerpt is here. Taibbi gets a lot of attention for his work, so I expect the Fraudclosure issue to get more attention. Florida also looks to be ground zero of lots of Fraudclosure tomfoolery, so what's found there will hopefully get attention paid elsewhere – if only right now Florida looks so damn bad.

Publishing:
Next Issue Media wants to be Hulu for magazines. They're starting on Android though – though this might pressure Apple into changing some policies turning publishers off (like keeping data and that 30% cut). Let's see what the company can do – I see this model having some legitimate potential – and let's note that people now use Hulu for COMPARISONS . . .

Technology:
MUST READ/VIEW: The decline of Yahoo in handy timeline infographic form. It actually helps me realize Yahoo's situation is far worse than it seems. Also it looks like there's going to be some cuts coming to their product division, about 10%. So how long until the AOL buyout?

Reviews are coming in on the Samsung Galaxy, and I find them a bit mixed. A more positive one is here, a more negative one here. My take from what I'm hearing is positive, but I think right now having two tablets on the market to compare makes comparisons a bit iffy.

Teleivision:
Ron Moore apparently wants to do a reboot of 'Wild, Wild West'. Well it's got steampunk potential I'll give it that, but not sure if that's what audiences are clamoring for. I myself am clamoring for people to stop remaking so many things . . . but he has geek cred which may power the project through.

Video:
Boxee is shipping it's set-top boxes and is partnering with Netflix and Hulu. Interesting as is, but more interesting is the fact that Boxee seems to be viewing Google as more a partner – or at least not a comptetitor. Not much else for me to say here – at this point the video tech market is so chaotic I'm not sure what to say. A quick teardown is here, revealing one big heat sink.

Video Games:
Activision makes $360 million on Call of Duty. Already.

Viacom wants to sell Harmonix for the sake of focus. It actually sounds like an awfully honest assessment of the situation, so I'm buying that a need for focus is actually part of the reason. I'm also guessing the crazy game market doesn't help focus either.

Meanwhile the focus of Warner Brothers Montreal is download games

EA knows what it wants: They're taking over all the publishing duties for the next Star Wars MMO. Smart move.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Yahoo – when did it become essentially doomed?

– Steven Savage

Lots of venture capital and investment today in geeky job news!

Economics/Geekonomics:
A look at home ownership percentages.

The markets hate uncertainty? Barry Ritholtz disagrees. He notes pundits may hate it – but markets thrive on it.

Video:
Video distribution startup Real Gravity nabs $3.2 million in investment. It's a video distribution tool company that provides ad supported video push. Interesting ideas, they got some money, and they're in geektastic San Francisco. Put here to note you should check them out – and their service might be useful as well.

Get the stats on Hulu here.

In case you havent thought of it Google TV is going to mess up web analytics. OK I hadn't thought of this, but yeah, Google TV will change how they're done, collected, and what they mean.

Video Games:
Methodology watch and resume watch: Social game company Summerlight comes out of stealth mode, won't put a version of its game (Spa Retreat) on Facebook, and is forming an alliance with an indie TV company. No I'm not sure if this is going to work, but it takes enough risks I'd like to see what happens. Even if this fails, it took a lot of cajones to try.

Online game-development platform and monetization company Turbulenz got $5 million in VC. They have a good pedigree, so I'd see what they van do – it's a little late in the game though.

Atari sales down, but losses not so bad. Sounds like they're changing their business model to mix online and freemium and fewer but more profitable games.

Bonus Geekery: Someone making a GameBoy emulator in Javascript and HTML 5.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Can social games make it without Facebook?

– Steven Savage