News of The Day 3/2/2011

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And now a news post that's Charlie Sheen Free . . . wait, damn it . . .

Paidcontent.org is hiring. You know what to do, so do it.

Economics/Geekonomics:
As frustration with people dodging responsibility for the Great Recession continues, Yves Smith notes it's easy to bring charges against some of those involved.

Demographics:
Uh-oh, Michigan may cut tax credits for film and video game startups. Let's see how this plays out – both for the specific results, and for Michican's attempts to re-invent itself with a Geekonomy-heavy presence.

Interesting: Cities have both increased wage inequality and increased opportunity. As big as I am on the future being megaregions, this gives me pause on the economic and cultural changes that may come.

Apple:
Yes, there's an iPad2, here's a live roundup. Here's a hands on. It's also getting popular media software iMovie and Garage Band.

At this rate? Yeah, this is Apple's "netbook".

Comics:
Wonder Woman Makeup, why?. It's an odd merchandising move as the review notes. I'm seriously thinking Warner/DC does not know what to do with the Amazonian Ass-kicker.

Media:
This is intriguing, Hillary Clinton notes American media is being pushed out by other media, specifically citing the success of Al-Jazeera. I think this is actually an important issue to consider – frankly a lot of news in America is falling behind and of little interest internationally. This also brings up the fact that in a global economy, several "culture engines" will be in competition . . . so where are you going to fit in and what are you going to do in a multipolar media world?

Technology:
A bunch of droid apps are pulled from the app store due to malware. Android really *IS* the Windows of mobile it seems. However the fast-moving activity is nice. Does give a good warning that Android's openness can also be used against it.

Amazon threatens to pull affiliates in California over proposed taxes on internet purchases. Expect more of this as cash-strapped states look for money – though this issue flares up every few years, this is a tough time.

Does virtualization change system administration? Never thought of this, but yes – when you can kill and rebuild an instance fast, why fix it? A bit of CorpTechPocalypse fuel to think on . . .

Google changed its algorythms, and is now working to deal with people inappropriately caught up. Mahalo has cut headcount in direct reaction.

Videogames:
OK I'm not sure what to think about an MMO based on Universal Studio's Monsters. I'm not sure what one can do here really, beyond a sort of Van Helsing-esque adventure. Then again it seems everyone is doing MMOs so this could be pure bandwagoning.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What other fallout will we see from the Google changes?

– Steven Savage

Geeks: Connection and Division

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The weird thing about us progeeks? We are busy redefining how the world works, and were not exactly representative of the population.

Think about us. We play video games, read e-books, use social media, surf the web, indulge in assorted fictional exercises, and so on. We're geek–hip, cutting–edge, wired, and on top of the techno-cultural curve.  We often live in megaregions and cities that are where it's all going down, from inventing new tools to Greentech to running the culture engines.

We are defining the world of the future. People love the stuff we work on, from mobile tech, to games, to movies, to websites. When you think about it, it fills you with geek pride.

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Bullestorm As Evolution

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As we've seen in the last few months, I have a strange obsession with issues of originality and media. That obsession exists because we progeeks work in media, we consume media, we experiment and play with media in the form of fan fiction fan art and mods, and we improve by manipulating media. As originality is part of media and questions about the value of media, thus I obsess over it.

Also, people complain about unoriginality all the time, so by addressing it I hope to explore issues about originality, media, and consumption. Also I'm just a curious guy that will analyze anything; come on you know that by now.

One last subjects are talked about was that originality seem to be most useful to creating media sales and interest was part of the gradual evolution of a game concept, literary concept, genre, and so on. I may have just found the perfect example of a successful implementation of originality–and-gradual-evolution in the form of the game "Bulletstorm."

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