News and Analysis

Newsof the Day 4/9/2010

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States running out of unemployment money, Adobe runs out of patience with Apple,and Netflix just keeps running forward.  Here's your must-know job news for geeks, fans, and otaku!

Economics/Geekonomics:
33 US States (and the Virgin Islands) run out of money for unemployment, have to borrow from the U.S. government. Some of this seems to be due to extremely bad planning in good times (being in boom-bust state California, I know what they mean). This just further spreads the impact of the recession and means states will have to (hopefully) plan better next time. This actually indicates that to an extent unemployment insurance is working – people are getting money – but points to better planning being needed in the future and the fact that, if the fed funds dry up, a lot of people are in trouble.

A look at how Greece can get rescued, and why the IMF may not be the one to do it. Even if you're not an econogeek, the looks at how Greece can get bailed out are interesting and easy to get. Actually the whole blog this comes from looks pretty useful . . .

Yeah, we really can call it The Great Recession.

Oh. Look. Banks hiding their debt. That's what you get because risky behavior drives out good behavior when rewarded. This is why you need financial regulation.

Geek Law:
Adobe versus Apple is ramped up with Adobe making a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange comission. They call out the dangers of not including Flash on some apple devices. This seems to be a bit more posturing (with the possibility of other actions). Frankly, despite my concerns about Apple, I think Adobe may be pushing things – they come off as unsympathetic, and their technology, though widespread, is often very buggy (my last virus infection was thanks to an Adobe product, so I am biased). See more below – this continuing friction will be here for awhile, but I'm curious as to what HTML 5 can mean for Adobe – and don't believe some people aren't thrilled being beholden to Adobe.

Copyright issues are near and dear to many a progeek heart. The Economist argues they need to get scaled back in duration. I'm in agreement – 14 or 28 years seems reasonable to me. The extended copyright times seem to decrease innovation, and frankly encourage lawsuits.

And it continues. Remember the whole mess with Infinity War's former bigwigs suing Activision?Activision is countersuing them. I'm not shocked, this will drag on.

Anime:
Crunchyroll adds The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, other titles. World domination continues.

Media:
Netflix renews deals with Universal, 20th century Fox. Sounds like on-demand overall is increased, and a few other deals were hammered out. Netflix continues to make deals and move forward – and do they have any real competitors that aren't online-only?

Technology:
New iPhone Developer agreement limits developer tools – This rules out a some development tools and of course Adobe's Flash compiler. It's an odd bit of control that doesn't seem entirely outside of Apple's normal scope of maintaining strict standards. An interesting perspective here is that Adobe is trying to lock developer's into it's own platform – Flash – while Apple wants people to use only specific tools for their platforms and take advantage of their features.

Demandware, which provides e-storefronts, lands $22 million in funding. Is it just me or is a lot of e-funding flowing into Massachucetts? Anyway, get the resumes out! (And do we need a "resume-worthy" section?).

Nokia buys digital text search company Metacarta. Not sure what this means, it's a small purchase, but I suspect it means Nokia has far more integration and online plans. Certainly they seem to have location/geolocation on their mind.

The government IT sector is growing slowly but gradually. May offer some career opportunities for people.

Video Games:
A definite decline in the UK game market in first quarter. Things are tough all over, but let's see where this goes. My take is gaming, due to the dedication and comaprative cheapness, may be a trailing indicator of the economy – which also means that the games industry bouncing back may not syncronize with any other recovery/realignment.

Small indie online game maker Artix has 100 million users. I've followed them on and off and they seem worth keeping track of. Or, of course, a resume. There's also some useful discussion of their approach and business model in this short article.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:Who's going to blink first?  Apple or Adobe?

-Steven Savage

The Subscription Age

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You ever get a magazine subscription – and sometimes read it?  You still renew it you know . . . just in case.

Or maybe you get comics in a pull at a comic store.  You buy them, and might even read them.

Or a book club.

Or . . .

Well you get the idea.  We all have experience with subscriptions one way or another.  However in an age of eMedia, DLC games, and the iPad-ness, think about what kind of subscriptions you're going to see.

I think we're going to see a lot more subscriptions in the future.  Your business models, your publishing models, and your estimates on profitability are going to need to keep this in mind.  If you're writer, an ePublisher, a game developer, this will be a factor.

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Backlog and The End of Backlog

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So the iPad is here to deliver our media, tablets are on their way to challenge the iPad, smartphones are there when we don't have tablets . . .

There's going to be a lot of way to get our content in the future.

Of course, not all that content is going to be new content.   Past games will be recompiled or emulated.  Comics wlll be scanned, books digitized or re-digitized.  New content is going to compete with old content.

I've speculated before about this competition – simply delivering old content in many ways is faster and cheaper, and represents a huge backlog of easy-to-deploy content.  For those of us in the content/media business, a truly geeky area, that's important as it will affect what we do and what we produce.  We need to observe this competition.

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