News Of The Day 2/2/2011

Massive, massive Everything Wars, a new way to get Android apps, bad news for MySpace . . . what a day!

Career:
Students? You might be getting the job search wrong.

Y Combinator is making a directory of great designers. This intrigues me as it could be a new form of talent brokerage and startup access (or become a lame Who's Who).

Economics/Geekonomics:
Must Read: The modern trend of Microwork which in a way is a web-enabled mixture of freelancing, for-pay, and commission work. This is a big trend for how you can get work done and how you work – and if you're founding your own business, here's some opportunities.

Top News:
Egypt is back online. Let's hope the ongoing issues are settled without violence. I've also not seen as much discussion of this in the US as I'd expected.

Everything Wars:
Google went after Microsoft over search results, and now Microsoft is going after Google on Video Formats in what I have to say sounds like a childish tit-for-tat. there might be further conflict brewing here – the conflict may really be over things we haven't seen yet.

Anime/Manga:
Tokyopop starts its America's Greatest Otaku series, running on Hulu. I am not entirely enthused about the idea as I can see it becoming undignified, but it is raising an element of geek culture to further attention . . .

Media:
More look at Google's chase for eyeballs as it reorgs. Unfortunately this means they're stuck in the usual content-race-to-the-bottom-for-ad-dollars. Between this and some of the other decisions, despite their attempts to move and rebrand quickly, I'm going to take them off my list of companies I recommend working for – this is too fast, too unsure, and sounds like they're in danger of going straight up content farm. I retract my previous praise in the light of recent findings.

Publishing:
Apple/News Corp's 'Daily' hits the iPad. OK, now let's see what happens.

Social Media:
MySpace will likely get sold. No one surprised.

Technology:
Google introduces not only its newest version of Android, but a new Android-based store accessible via the browser. Google also has an SDK supporting in-App purchases which is a shot across the bow of Apple . . . and something else people making ez-apps have to keep in mind.

Google got rejected by Path. It appears to be Google Rejection Time for companies. Path also sounds like an interesting tool . . .

OK now I'm not sure here, but Time Warner bought a large hosting/management company. It sounds almost like they want in on the service side of tech – but I wonder if this is part of other publishing and distribution initiatives. Oh and this is in Massachucetts.

A Yelp For Software? Try OnCompare. Sounds interesting, let's see if it evolves – might be useful with strong social media integration.

. . . and the Samsung Galaxy has a high rate of returns. Sad, as I liked what I saw. Looks like others didn't.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:So just what do you think happened to the Galaxy?

Steven Savage

My Long and Twisted Journey, Part One

(Jason Sacks of Comics Bulletin recently offered to document how his fandom experiences helped him grow for his fellow fans in a series of blog posts.  Thanks for guest posting Jason!)

It's weird, sometimes, how you don't notice how much you miss something till you have it back. And how once you have something back, how that items becomes a huge part of your life.

Let me explain what I mean, but first let me give you a bit of digression to give you some context on what I mean.

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The Originality/Unoriginality Barrier: Gradual Evolution.

(Not done writing about originality yet.  Regular poster Serdar noted that my ideas addressing originality suggested that highly original people can and should address using their ideas via gradual evolution, and that gradual evolution of media was an ideal. I want to address that).

I've been writing a lot about originality in media lately.  This is entirely understandable because originality is a big topic in media – in an age of remakes and the shockingly innovative it's going to be something prominent in people's minds.  It's also an important subject because people feel very passionate about it – as I noted there are many psychological/cultural factors to a love of originality.

My conclusions actually were that originality is actually not a prime driver in media consumption – socializabitility is.  People's interests in media were often heavily influenced by what they can share with and enjoy with others.  Originality, in turn, was most important when it helped with that social factor.

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