Netbooks, Laptops, Smartphones

I'm going to talk about Netbooks and laptops.  Please don't let this shock you, I know it's very unusual here.

On the 7/10 podcast Bonnie and I made one of our asides to discuss Netbooks and how it was relevant to Google's Chrome OS.  I noted Netbooks do have a niche as what a Laptop is is changing, so I wanted to go a bit further on this since it will have affects on the market.

I used to be a non-believer in Netbooks – they seemed to be stripped down laptops.  Then when Bonnie got one and found it useful, I began to see they served a vital niche, and now I have my own, I really get it.  The importance of netbooks is not overshadowed by Laptops – it compliments them.

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The Changing Role Model

I'm big on advising people to find role models to learn what to do (and what not to do).  However I've been darkly speculating that some role models as of late may not be as good as they once were because of changing economic and technological conditions.

Specifically, be careful of your role models in fiction writing, manga, and comics.  Those media who are experiencing rapid industry and distribution change.

I'm not saying you can't learn from your favorite artists and authors, but these are areas of the geekonomy that are underground rapid change.  Publishing is having issues, web distribution is up, serial fiction is poking around a potential comeback.  Written and graphic media is changing rapidly.

This means that even your best role model may have less to teach you as they became famous and respected in a different environment than you are.  Even someone who hit the big time as  a writer or artist or mangaka a few years ago was in a far different world than you are now.

So when you go looking for lessons from your favorite role models, keep in mind what is relevant today and what isn't.  You may even need to seek new role models to learn from.  Your comic idol from ten years ago may have less to teach you than you can learn from Penny Arcade or Girl Genius today.  There may be no new J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer ever – their success stories may be no longer relevant.

What made success even a few years ago is not the same as today in some media markets..  It's a hard lesson, and it makes learning from others harder, but it's something we have to face.

As for what is coming next?  We'll, I've been speculating and may try that in another column . . .

– Steven Savage

News of the Day 7/17/2009

There's a lot going around with the posting of internal twitter docs – I'll recommend the cloud from Techmeme here because it's hard to sort through a lot of this. To boot, there's now some kind of conflict going on over if Twitter approved any news outlets to discuss this, if some companies are suppressing information, etc. It's a mess.

Read it if you want, I am going to say that when this info leaked from Twitter is forgotten, how this was handled is going to live on.

I confess I have read up on it out of curiosity. Most of what got leaked frankly doesn't sound surprising or unexpected. I do get the impression Twitter isn't really sure what to do and may not know a good solution if it comes up – their goal seems to be becoming indispensable first. I'd say any endgame coming is going to surprise us AND them.

Economics/Geekonomics/Freakonomics:
A geography of American innovation – In short, it's become more concentrated. Besides being thought for relocations, the later quote on how the US focuses on new ideas as opposed to improving implementation is telling – as a shift like that may be needed in the future.

Music:
Rock Band Network is coming. In short, post your music for download (even at a price) to Rock band games. The model uses things we've seen before in a new way – let's watch this one,it promises to tell us a lot about synergies, and of course they will need employees if it's a hit . . .

Technology:
Some very odd ideas of Google profiting from the Chrome OS and apps. Apparently from Eric Schmidt himself. Some of this feels like ill-thought out or not-fully-thought out ideas. Chrome OS is worth watching – and learning – but it sounds like Google tipped their hands very early on this when it wasn't fully planned.

Amazon deletes books from people's Kindles due to publisher request. Yeah. I'm not going to be getting a Kindle now.

Video Games:
Videogame sales take a big drop in June – Which is not surprising to me as there seem to be a gap in titles. Industry-wise I'm not sure how significant this can be – it can be a glitch, part of other trends, etc. Considering the long-term nature of game design planning it's also a difficult call. Watch and wait . . .

Warner Brothers pays $49 million for Midway games, job cuts – So what's next? If WB is smart (and they usually are), they'll exploit the heck out of all the titles they acquired (just think of the backlog). Watch for this one to see what happens.

– Steven Savage