News of the Day 9/10/2009

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Career:
We love our technology, but the new trend in video resumes might not be exactly for you. This is a must-read for those of us interestedin creative resumes.

Start networking in college now – great advice, and not just for college students.

Economics/Freakonomics/Geekonomics:
Household income is down, obviously, and it's not pretty – It's also widespread.

Those graphs at Econompicdata also point out the issues with employment here.

What is missing in the economy? Trust. A roundup of commentary and writing on this vital issue. This is vital for understanding a lot of economic issues, social issues, and business issues. I'd go as far to note that trust is also valid to your career and your small business – as it's kind of sparse right now. How many companies out there don't have trust – and how many do?

Anime and Manga:
Seven Seas is moving some titles to electronic media.

Comics:
The industry is reacting to the DC shakeup. A nice roundup from various people in the industry. I of course figure the reorg is incredibly obvious (and this may be a case of job opportunities of course). However I think one of DC's strengths is not being leveraged – characters that aren't top stringers. Metal Men has excellent animated potential (or game potential). The Blackhawk series has great game potential (gamers never get tired of WWII). You could MAKE an entire MMO of the Green Lantern Corps alone.

Mobile:
Info on Android's place at Motorola and it's own recovery plans.

Publishing:
Google is working ona payment system for content – I'm going to watch this one, it has a chance to be a market they're well-suited to leverage.

The whole Google-Amazon-book-rights debacle continues with Amazon being slammed by an author's group. At this rate I am ready to yell "enough" – it's clear good sound policy has been replaced by legal wrangling for some time.

Video Games:
And as you know Apple is going after the game market. Though there are plenty of games, what I've seen hasn't impressed me – I don't think the iPhone is going to replace the mid-to-hardcore gamers use of handhelds, but it does have a chance to snatch the casual market easy, and this is an additional selling point. The problem is Apple needs the right big titles to sell (and better App Store relations). Not something for Sony and Nintendo to panic over – but something they'll need to keep in mind.

The Everything Wars just got more complicated with this move. Apple now moves into gaming, which challenges Sony and Nintendo, and peripherally old enemy Microsoft. The iPhone now is a gaming platform, but there's Android (from Google) moving into it's space (and tons of Linux apps and tools to leverage). Don't forget we've also got the whole eBook mess in this as well.

Toys R Us' game tradeins are covering all sorts of games – Sounds like a bit of a publicity stunt, but an interesting one.

Wizardry 101 has had a successful year – Five million subscribers, good buzz, very nice. We remember when it first game out.

-Steven Savage

Perfection, geeks, fans

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The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good.  We hear this saying a lot, probably to the point that we miss the lesson – if you seek perfection you'll likely fail, and miss the chance to do things that are good.

We also are very familiar with people who lie to themselves and others about who they are.  They conceal interests, religious affiliations, sexual orientations, etc.  We know such people – or are such people – and know they're miserable.

You can't hide from yourself.  The perfect is the enemy of the good.  These two things go together in the hard fact that you can't be perfect – especially someone else's idea of perfect.

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Levels of Scheduling

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Lately I've been coaching several people on being more organized – as well as working on putting together some of my future plans after a busy year.  I wanted to share an interesting insight that may help the readers since I know a lot of us are scrambling to plan for a future in a tough time.

What I noticed was many people have a particular "level" they're most aware of in scheduling – they may think ahead a week, a month, a year, etc. and that's where they plan best.  Though they may plan well on that level, they're often surprised or unprepared for things happening in a different timeframe.  Some examples:

  • A person who plans best on a yearly level may have a hard time focusing on specific tasks on a weekly or daily level.
  • A person who plans well week by week may lack the sense of the big picture.

For a few people, they may even operate well on more than one level – but these levels are not necessarily connected – one can be good at planning five years ahead and a week ahead, but miss, say, planning well on the level of one month.  Thus they grind to a halt caught between timeframes, trying to reconcile plans.

If you're trying to be more organized (and who isn't?), you need to be aware of you have a particular "level" or "levels" you like to schedule on, and work to ensure you plan well on all levels of your schedule.

– Steven Savage