News and Analysis

News Of the Day 7/20/2010

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The Android Invasion is here – only it's OSes, not humanoid machines. Plus, why you want to be in the business of consumer electronic doodads. If it's weird geeky career news, it's here!

Career:
Do people really know how to use Social Media to evaluate job candidates?

What Eggnog taught one person about getting hired.

Economics/Geekonomics:
China and control of world resources – a paper. The presentation (and title) is sensationalistic. However the analysis is more sober – China's attempts to access and control resources gives them power while opening access.

Publishing:
A roundup of information on the growing e-book market. A good read and some good links – and it helps you get a grasp of how e-publishing is taking off.

How will the Fashion Mag Industry survive? Shopping, localization, and more. A nice review of what they're likely to be doing and doing now – which sounds like turning into a media/shopping fusion.

Technology:
Here come the Android Tablets: Lenovo developing an Android Tablet for late 2010, and Asus' Eee Pad in early 2010. The Asus move, away from Windows CE, though not unexpected is significant, since it's another blow to Microsoft. It appears Android's place is becoming assured – and it always seems to be a counter to Apple, doesn't it? Android is even more important for you developers out there, so get learning.

Skinit raises $60 million. What do they do? They make vinyl skins for laptops, phones, etc., often with branding. So all those cute cell phone covers and laptop skins and the like? One of the companies behind them just raised tons of money. There's a market I never thought of – and one apparently you may want to consider – technology doodads.

Is your career helping Defend the US against cyberattacks? This story has been making the rounds, about how the US isn't up to snuff.

Video Games:
Game streaming service Gaikai raises undisclosed amount of cash. Also a bit more on their strategy – which is more business-to-business and portal support.

Capcom and Namco to make crossover fighters? Sounds like money in the bank to me if done right. And it sounds like several games, which sounds like some opportunities for people in gaming . . .

Social Games to be a $1.5 billion market in 2014.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Who else do you think is going to come out with an Android Tablet?

– Steven Savage

Profan Career Ambiguity

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There's a peculiar ambiguity to turning your hobby into your career, the life of the progeek, profane, and protaku.

Work and hobby fuse.  What we love to do and what we do for money are fused and seemingly impossible to separate.  What we do at home teaches us lessons to use on the job, what we do on the job gives us new ideas for our hobbies.

Co-workers and friends become hard to define.  You hang out with co-workers because you understand each other's unique experiences.  You introduce friends to your industry due to shared interests.

Casual reading?  What exactly is that when what you read for fun also gives you ideas for work?

You get the idea.

So when we, the profans and progeeks, look at our lives and careers, we ask ourselves "what is hobby, what is job" in that vague quest to figure out just where the division is.  Maybe we're compelled to find the division so we can relax more, or work harder, or just because we figure we ought to know where the division is.

Here's what I've found: stop looking.

The ambiguity between hobby and job is not a problem in the profan lifestyle – it's a feature.  The ambiguity is what makes you a hobbyist-turned pro, a working geek, a protaku.  You can't find a separation point because there isn't one.

When you do what you love as a career, what you're really doing is finding a way to connect the different parts of your life together.  At times things are more "recreational", at times more "professional" but at all times it's about your life – one giant, wriggling, connected mass of you, your past, and your future.

If you could pick it to pieces, then your life would not be unified.  If you could divide it up you probably wouldn't be that working geek or successful fan because then your life would be composed of several separate pieces, and your passions and interests would be constrained.  Sure that's not the case for everyone who turns what they love into a career – but it's true for most I'd wager.

So if you're a profan and you're having trouble finding work/life division, maybe it's time to accept the ambiguity of your situation.  Maybe you need to focus on different issues like "relaxing" or "working harder" or "spending more time with family" as opposed to trying to break your life into convenient chunks.

Chances are, some time ago, you didn't want it broken into chunks anyway.

– Steven Savage

Fandom Geekonomics, and What’s Ruining Commercial Real Estate

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As anyone that follows my news summaries and geekonomic posts knows, I'm following the meltdown of commercial real estate. No, don't stop reading, this is probably less boring than some of my geekonomic posts.  Promise.

So, anyway, if you've at all been following the news about the economic apocalypse, commercial real estate is proving to have problems.  Much like housing, prices are down, occupancy is down, and the market is kind of screwy.  Offices and places of business just aren't that occupied

Beyond all the usual reasons about why this is, I'm wondering if commercial real estate now and in the future is going have trouble not just because of the economy and overdone loans but because of changes in business and technology – because, in short, well, kind of because of people like us.

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