News and Analysis

We're out of the Recession despite things still being lousy, There's more anime-based film on the way despite a big cancellation, and the Move isn't really inspiring anyone despite being motion control. Despite the ups and downs, let's look at your must-know geek news!

Career:
Why only 1% of people make money online.

Economics/Geekonomics:
Buying a foreclosed home? Guess what, you may find you don't have a right to it, and your insurance doesn't help. Remember how we were discussing issues in determining actual ownership of a home? Gets worse when banks are selling them. Even worse if you bought one . . . so expect more lawsuits, and when this hits the wide news-o-sphere, people more reluctant to buy foreclosed homes.

Pension fund managers are sticking with stale assumptions. Yes, yet another economic time-bomb.

We are apparently out of the recession. It's just that the economy still stinks, and stinks badly for a lot of people. I still buy a potential for a double-dip, but even if not things are going to be tough for awhile.

Where did our money get invested in the last decade? Yep, housing.

Location:
Richard Florida shows us Artistic/Cultural Creative density of various regions – and there's a few surprises. More on his great population-density series, and invaluable for people thinking of moving.

Culture:
Is 'The Social Network' a kind of hit piece against Facebook founder Zuckerberg? This author thinks so and goes into some depth.

Anime and Manga:
Looks like the Cowboy Bebop film is dead. Meanwhile we have a spectacular live adaption of Space Battleship Yamato coming. The latter I see, with a good dub or sub, doing well over in North America – that might do more to open western-eastern adaptions.

Multimedia:
Doctor Who Games get a 'second season'. Looks like this bit of multimedia synergy is paying off – and I've heard the games are decent to good. The fact the games are apparently in continuity (for such continuity Doctor Who has) is also intriguing – I'd love to find out if that adds appeal, though I suspect it does.

Technology:
Citras, a cloud-storage technology company comes out of stealth mode, has raised $10 million, and some neat new technology to make cloud data management easier. Plus they're in San Jose. Resume time people . . . they can't spend $10 million all on their own.

Video Games:
Slashdot has a rundown of Playstation Move reviews, none of which sound surprising – works good, some calibration issues, not a lot of titles. As I'll post later this week, I think motion controls are just going to be "normal" . . .

Gameloft has sold 20 million games through the app store. They've published 100 different games in that time – I'd love to see some stats on what sold.

QUESTION: If Space Battleship Yamato does well internationally, what other adaptions could it spawn – and could live-action anime be a boost for Japan's media?

– Steven Savage

Crunchyroll continues to conquer the world, interesting movements in China's search market, and AuroraFeint is on a roll!

Career:
3 tips on formatting your cover letter.

Economics/Geekonomics:
Housing boils down to two strikes against it. Some nice exploration and graphs to keep you on top of things.

Creative class density from Richard Florida. A few surprises as well.

Anime and Manga:
Crunchyroll continues to add title again and again.

The Scanliation Wars continue as Libre serves several sites with notices. Libre apparently is putting titles on the Kindle, suggesting that their electronic presence is the reason for their sudden notices.

Mobile:
One in four adults uses mobile apps. Anything else need to be said? There's a big market there, programmers.

What Nokia's CEO should do. Some thoughts.

Social Media:
Social Media means new trends in Social Good. A bit of psychology and ethics to make you think about what social media is doing to change social good.

Technology:
China's largest phone company is making it's own search engine. This challenges one of it's competitors, Baidu, but also suggests, as we've seen, Chinese companies are working on building strong foundations for their markets. That means other companies may have trouble getting into the market . . .

Video:
Yahoo is putting it's TV widgets on some Toshiba products – We often forget but yes, Yahoo is in the video-internet-gadget market too. A subtle issue people may miss among all the other news.

Video Games:
Aurora Feint launches it's socialized game platform. It appears they're really on a roll – perhaps resume-worthy? Building a strong game presence now in the Android world sounds like a good strategy.

Bigpoint Games is hiring. You know what to do.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Is China's Internet market getting locked down?

– Steven Savage