Video Companies: What Keeps You On Top – Or Off The Bottom?

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We've been discussing the video wars here (part of the Everything Wars) for quite some time–indeed it seems we started pretty much around the blogs founding. Now, years later, though Netflix still dominates all there are quite a few services – Hulu, Vudu, Amazon.com, possibly even Facebook, and so on.  It seems a lot of people want a piece of the video market, even if they're not quite sure why, how, or what they want.

Now, as noted, Netflix still dominates, and if I may say, rightly so – they've been at this for years and did a good job.  But nothing is forever and there's a lot of competition, lots of current and future legal battles, and always the chance for people to do stupid or smart things.

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Go Farther: Comic Conventions

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So with Convention Career Connection out, I can't seem to step away from speculating on what can be done in the con scene to help people's careers.  So of course, I'm writing about it.  I've decided to analyze what more can be done at specific kinds of cons (in my opinion) to help people's careers.

First up?  Comic conventions.

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News Of The Day 4/22/2011

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Parts of EC2 are down, PlayStation Network is down – at least the economy is up in places. Oh and look out for Al Franken in your geeky news!


Yes, there are still problems with Amazon’s EC2 cloud service. It’s getting better, but man . . . what a mess. And yes, the messaging is horrible.


Economics/Geekonomics:

Silicon Valley CEO’s added jobs in 2010, plan to continue in 2011. Good news for the area, for business, the unemployed, and Geekery in general – and this fits with what I’ve been seeing out here. There’s also some fascinating research to check out on political attitudes of CEOs which may give you an idea of longer-term changes in Silicon Valley’s future.


Things also look good at startups. May I recommend Startuply.com?


Media:

85 science fiction authors protest the BBC ignoring SF, fantasy, and horror on a day dedicated to fiction. Seems to be sparking some discussion.


Mobile:

Yeah, Android is snooping on you too. This isn’t going away any time soon, and as Al Franken is involved (no jokes, he’s quite a pitbull) this is going to keep getting government attention.


Technology:

Acer posts lowest profit in 6 years. It’s an odd time so this isn’t surprising in general, but is surprising as they’ve done pretty good. Let’s see what happens to them – they do solid product, so it could be “one of those things” due to changing markets.


Video Games:

PlayStation Network is still down – Anonymous denies involvement. Speculation is still continuing that it relates to the EC2 mess. I’m not sure myself, considering Sony and Amazon have lousy messaging. Hint for folks in tech – use that Twitter account, give regular updates. It looks like this thing could last days.


QUESTION OF THE DAY: How would you improve messaging if your vitally important network went down – now, if you have a good idea, wouldn’t you make an awesome consultant . . .


– Steven Savage