Steven Savage

Plenty of interesting news on deals, from venture capital to the Nook, some economically depressing news, and more on the Adobe-Apple war! Its must-read news time for progeeks!

Economics/Geekonomics:
Japan may be more trouble than Greece to a world economy, but it has some advantages over many countries – including the U.S. Some interesting statistics and information on the Japanese mess – oddly one of the major strenghts is the debt is internal to the country.

Anime and Manga:
What's it like to be a rookie editor in manga? Find out here.

Comics:
Marvel switches to Hachette to deliver TPBs and hardcovers. Apparently non-comic-book comic publications are a huge business for them. Looks like our calls about Hachette being promising may be true . . . and what does this mean for Diamond? Diamond still distribution to comic stores of course, but I feel like this is a bit of a blow to them.

Movies:
Where to spend your money when making a low-budget sci-fi movie. Some interesting advice and insights you can use – or at least learn a bit about film making.

Publishing:
A younger viewpoint on why your next book should be an app.

Best Buy will sell the Nook. Sounds like a good deal for all involved.

Technology:
A helpful guide to the Adobe-Apple kerfluffle, with a look at it's history. This helps make a few things clear about the past of this battle – as well as the present and the future. I myself confess though I have problems with some of the things Apple has done, Adobe's attempts to own cross-platform spaces (with what I consider a bloated, buggy product) does worry me. A more profanity-laced but researched look at the battle is here – be warned, some salty language.

Palm is putting itself up for sale. I don't see much else for them to do quite frankly – so let's watch and see who buys them.

Korean company NHN buys the Japanese portal Livedoor. Livedoor had some pretty bad times, but I find this consolidation interesting. South Korean's continued growth as a tech powerhouse can't be ignored.

Digital sky, which has done many investments in big names like Facebook and Zynga, itself has been backed by Chinese firm Tencent. Now Digital sky is a Russian company. So you have a chinese company, Tencent investing in a Russian company that has a growing presence in American IT and social media. That's quite a bit of globalization going on, and to me, it hints at more complicated economic relationships to come – and ones you want to look for.

Video:
Netflix goes live on Wii. I've got my disk in the mail!

Video Games:
I don't know if this goes here or under Geek Law, but Infinity Ward's founders are launching a new studio. It's Respawn entertainment, and EA will publish their games. They are apparently recruiting.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: With Netflix on the Wii, PS3, XBox, iPad, and web streaming, is anything else left for them?

-Steven Savage