News of the Day 3/24/2010

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China has a financial bubble? Godaddy leaves China? Facebook and social disease demographics? It's a strange mix of must-know geek news today!

Career:
Make your great cover letter better with research

Economics/Geekonomics:
China has its own financial bubble? Some compelling arguments that China's asset prices, the speculation and investing, actions by the authorities, etc. mean that China, to put it mildly, is going to suffer a downturn that disappoints many investors. Those worries about Greece don't seem as prominent do they? Plus China has its role in the Geekonomy . . .

Media:
Hey movie/culture scholars, PopMatters is looking for papers on Alfred Hitchcock. You know what to do!

Publishing:
YA books are big at the Bologna Fair in the UK – eBooks not so hot. YA certainly isn't slowing down, but I'm getting the impression that "triolgies of YA" books are the big hot trend.

Social Media:
Don't know if this will have legs, but some health experts in the UK are claiming Facebook has led to increases of syphilis in some parts of the UK, apparently as it's used for hook-ups. I await seeing the actual studies, but am concerned that the sensationalism of this story could get it out in the larger world without much context.

Facebook's development platform may have trouble scaling to deal with all the usage. Not good for them and for developers if this isn't improved/fixed. I'm sure some people will blame syphilis.

And Woah. Heyzap lets people turn their Facebook games into embeddable web components – All while retaining most or all of the social media features. Imagine writing a Facebook game and knowing people can also put it on their site, a blog, etc. They're even partnered with Hi5. I want to see how this idea of a "game broker" works out, but it does seem pretty gutsy.

Technology:
Someone got some sweet funding: Akorri, an infrastructure management company raised A bit over $10 million – Infrastructure is big, they're in Massachucetts, you know what to do with a resume. Plus Flash-widget maker Wix got $10 million in funding as well – though with the Flash/HTML 5 wars I wonder how their business model will go.

GoDaddy will stop registering domains in China, following Google's leads.

Video:
Fox Mobile reveals Bitbop, a subscription video service for smartphones. Something else to watch to see if it sets trends one way or another. It feels like we're back to the video side of The Everything Wars as of late . . .

QUESTION OF THE DAY: How do you think people will respond to Heyzap?

-Steven Savage

So Why Not Start Over?

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I talk to people with career issues, from being out of work to unhappy with their job.  They are tired of the search or tired of the work.  They've done all they can or are just plain done.  Oh sure, they're trying to move forward with life but aren't sure it's working, or if they care.

Here's a suggestion:  why not just start over?

If whatever you're doing isn't working, why not just decide to go blank slate, give up your ideas and plans and techniques, and just start over:

  • Quit your job search for one day and then re-design it from step one.
  • If you're unemployed, just take any reasonable job mand throw yourself into it for a few weeks to just have a start of any kind.
  • Drop your career plans and ideas that seem dead in a water and re-evaluate them from square one.
  • Take that option to relocate from your company and get a fresh start (if your spouse, friends, pets, etc. are OK with it).
  • Try something new at work, a new project, etc.
  • If you're unemployed go on and try and start your own business on the side while you search.  Why not?
  • Take a friend up on that offer to move in with them until you get on your feet.

In short, if it all is lousy, why not a fresh start?  What do you have to loose?

If you think about starting over, then you'll know.

The flipside of of starting over is that when you consider it, you'll then ask yourself if it's really worth starting over.  Confronting the possibility of throwing out your current plans makes you confront your plans – and yourself.

Maybe it's time to start over.

Or maybe considering it will make you appreciate what you have.

– Steven Savage