News of The Day 9/20/2010

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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

Profandom And Healthy Competition?

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You go to cons and there is a cosplay competition.

Online there's art competitions.

Wargaming conventions have endless battles.

Fandom, for all its friendly nature, likes a good bit of competition.  it's fun, it's challenging, it's exciting, it gets people going.

So I've been speculating – could this friendly competition be used towards the cause of progeekery?  Could we channel friendly fannish compettion to help people in their careers?

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The Fandom/Work Barrier

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"You're so good at art – why aren't you doing the company newsletter?"

"You write all that fanfic – why aren't you writing anything for the magazine?"

"You're so good at organizing that convention – why is your code always late?"

Ever heard anything like this?  Those bizarre – but real – moments where people note that somehow when it comes to your hobbies and fandom you're better at something than you are at work?  Or perhaps you have these skills you just aren't applying to your career?

You probably have at least once.  I know people that have experienced this "you-can-but-why-don't-you" experience.  Sometimes its from fellow fans, sometimes co-workers, but always the same thing.

"You are good at this there, why not here?"

There's several reasons:

  • Sometimes we really don't think about it.  We get too used to dividing our lives up into hobbies and work we never think what can transfer.
  • Different situations.  Sure we may be able to churn out fanart at home, with the radio blasting, but we're not used to doing it in our cubicle.  It's a situational thing that we may miss.  Anyone that can only write under some circumstances knows what that's like.
  • Different language.  We may literally not be able to translate what we do in our hobbies to other areas because of our inability to communicate it.  Sure you'd like to use your art skills to do that new advertising, but can you explain "Bishounen" to the head of advertising without freaking her out?
  • * Different authorities.  It's easy to get your cosplay group to pull off a 12-person costume as you're in charge.  It's not so easy to get 12 people in your office do plan the company picnic when you're not the boss.

I'm all for applying our hobbies to our careers – that's kind of the point of everything here – but there are barriers to such endeavors.  Hopefully this lets you see them – so next time you get those inevitable questions, you can explain the situation to people.

– Steven Savage