News and Analysis

You're probably helping with Greece's debt, the iPad doesn't seem to need any help, and Crunchyroll owns you all. It's must-know geek news!

Career:
Some advice on body language and your career.

Economics/Geekonomics:
Here's something I missed – since some of the bailout of Greece comes from the IMF it's going to really get bailouts from many countries, including the US and Canada. Want to bet this will not go over well when it gets out?

There's some rather upsetting evidence that the housing market problems were soft-pedaled in the US. This is an area of concern to me as I keep wondering what we don't know just what's wrong or has gone wrong. On the other hand, these activities, if brought to the public's attention, may get more movement towards better financial regulation.

Anime and Manga:
Tokyopop will be publishing the Hetalia Manga in the US. For anyone whose been paying attention, the surprise is it took this long.

Crunchyroll sees amazing growth in Q1. Try a 25% growth in unique visitors. Know what they need? A streaming presence on game consoles. Once again, Crunchyroll is ruling the world.

Green Tech:
Google invests in wind farms. This is one of many of their green efforts (in fact, they are regulated as a potential power utility). This will help raise the prominence of wind power just a bit more – and green tech is an awful geeky area to work . . .

Publishing:
iPad Sells a million copies, but iBook sales are slow. Not sure what this says, but I figure this is a simple case of 'it's going to take time.'

How quality of published content has changed in a digital age. Worth reading, and I think he points out a few things people miss – including issues of correctness and craftsmanship.

Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine now accepts electronic submissions. A historical change.

Technology:
A quick profile of Crunchbase – Which I include not just for curiosity, but to give this great resource a quick plug. Fantastic for doing company research.

Kindle getting social media tools. Interesting. I'm wondering if the goal of Kindle is to create a "minimal media" footprint on it – to have just enough to get people to buy it, without overdoing it, and pricing it right.

IronKey raises $22 million for secure flash drives. Lots of money, a good product, and you have a resume . . . see a connection?

Video Games:
Sports Illustrated makes a Fantasy Football Facebook game – Try saying 'Fantasy Football Facebook' five times fast. Social Media, video games, and sports come together? Quite interesting. This is one to pay attention to, as other media-oriented magazines may take note of how well this plays off – and there's plenty of other sports out there begging for a game.

Playdom closes most Green Patch games – Green Patch was one of their past acquisitions, but apparently the games don't fit their business plan.

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Finally, a beautiful story of how Make-a-Wish let a boy be a superhero for a day.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Should Crunchyroll create their own streaming service on game consoles? Can they?

– Steven Savage

A chance for economic improvement, and tons of Apple news.  Let's get to the news!

Economics/Geekonomics:
The US Economy has had three quarters of economic growth. It seems consumer-driven as well, which makes me suspect more long-term sales and pent-up demand. Interesting takeaways and some thoughts:

• Government spending shrank overall, despite stimulus spending, so this is consumer driven. This might be used for an argument for – or against – more stimulus. To be fair, I am biased towards more since I think it'll be needed, even though I loathe debt.
• It's improving, but we still have a lot of unemployed people to get back to work. However unemployment seems stable
• I'm still concerned about countries with more troubled economies, such as Greece, Japan, and Spain affecting any re-alignment. I am also concerned banks are not regulated properly.

Looks like we've got a criminal investigation of Goldman-Sachs coming up which surprises . . . well pretty much no one. This isn't a done deal, but considering Goldman's dismal performance in their latest hearings, they're looking very vulnerable, and the SEC, when it gets going, can be vicious and tenacious. I frankly consider this a good thing as this will lead to more airing-out of issues and better regulation, but you can be sure some of the findings will produce at least a few mini-panics and stock-market drops as the investigations reveal just how unstable some parts of the world economy are.

Relocation:
Canada gaining or surpassing US in educated immigration. Of course you've been hearing me talk about this for awhile – Canada has learned how to lure talent. Trust me, I've seen it in action.

Anime and Manga:
Gainax has a part-time, short-term position open. Will hire Japanese-literate people.

New Manga/art/illustration print quarterly starts up – F*X*T. Sounds interesting and contribution-worthy. THey're alsu using Kickstart for funding, which is worth investigating for your own projects.

Movies:
A still from the Thor movie is out and it looks reasonably true to the character designed. Based on this and other discussions, it seems this has a LoTR-meets-Kirby feel (and if you squee over Tolkein and Kirby in the same sentence, you're like me). I'm actually more positive on the movie all the time as it seems to be keeping to its roots – plus combining heroic muscular guys with great hair, fantasy, and superheroics sounds like a way to appeal to, well, everyone. If it is indeed it will continue to embolden Marvel/Disney on their various projects (and of course may mean job openings).

Music:
Apple is shutting down Lala, which everone suspects means iTunes.com – and Apple's continual move to more services. Hmmm, if that's true, will we also see the iBookstore move to the cloud?

Publishing:
A comparison of iPad and Kindle, why iPad will probably win – and how Amazon can come out ahead anyway.
Amazon-Penguin tiff results in price cuts for Penguin books, apparently to make a point.

Technology:
HP drops its Windows 7 Tablet Project to concentrate on Google/Android and, of course, Palm. I agree with this reporter, I don't know how to make Palm WebOS a go considering the limited market, but with a strong fanbase, maybe they see it as foundation-building. Not sure what HP is up to here, so I don't know what the impact will be for careers, jobs, and if HP is resume-worthy.

Steve Jobs discusses problems with Flash. Adobe appears to be moving on. Though blogs are playing this up as a big fight, it's actually being handled with civility as far as I'm concerned. Frankly I think Adobe is just givign up on the iPhone conflcit (but not the iPhone, I bet they are still hoping for some later deal) and moving on. What is odd to me however, is that few people are addessing Adobe's market dominance, though I suspect some of them are biding their time for HTML 5 (and if HTML 5 takes off prepare to see a shift in needed skills – and it appears Microsoft is big on HTML 5). By the way some people think this conflict will be good for media companies.

More on the Big iPhone Issue that looks more into who was involved, and with plenty of useful links. Unfortunately, it also makes it even more confusing, with go-betweens, ignorance, the fact the phone may have been lost for awhile, and people claiming to be from Apple wanting to search the sellers house. What's going on? I have no idea, and it's made all the more confusing by the fact this is Silicon Valley/Bay Area, which is pretty unusual anyway.

And if you haven't had ENOUGH Apple news, here's an interesting speculation that Apple's goal is a cloud-based device ecosystem and that it wants to get there before the PC market craters.

Get a profile of the ceo of Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian company (with some backing from all over the world, including China) that has a lot of investments in Silicon Valley. Remember they just got ICQ. My take? Watch this guy – he's got a science background (which I can assure you, helps with predictions), he plays smart and he plays long.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:Do you think we'll ever get the full story of the iPhone incident?

-Steven Savage