Links of the Day 12/31/2008
- Neo Angelique Abyss added to Crunchyroll - The online move continues. Sounds like an odd little title too - similar to Aquarian Age.
- Office space prices decline rapidly - This is another side effect of the economic issues that doesn't get nearly as much coverage as it should.
To go on a bit about why the office space issue is important, it's twofold. First there's the impact of lower prices and less incomes on the companies owning the buildings, the loss of money on maintenance of unused space, and so on. Those are the impacts we're used to thinking of up front - people not making money.
The other impact is what comes as prices continue to fall. In Silicon Valley a lot of companies that went belly-up left behind cheap office space, good infrastructure, and other resources that were used by new, old, and surviving companies. Needless to say, they came kind of cheap and had a direct positive effect on the economic recovery of the area.
A fall in office space prices will eventually mean some kind of parity with companies looking for space - and they'll snatch it up fast (and of course lock the property owners into cheap contracts for some time). That may be good for some businesses who get cheap space - and trust me, space in big cities is obscenely expensive - but it will also change the relationships between renter and owner. It also gives the danger some may become comfortable with low space prices and think they'll go on forever. In your career/job/own business keep this in mind - you may find cheap space, but so will everyone else.
(Personally I just thing we need a largescale movement to telecommuting to save money, time, and the environment.)
Technology
- Google will release an API for its reader - I'm thrilled as it sounds like this is one of many improvements to what is a pretty good app. It also, of course, keeps Google in the spotlight, yet helps others, a major strategy they seem to be pursuing.
- Dell is reorganizing around customer segments - Dell's willing to change when they need to, and the plans largely follow their product lines. This is good news for us tech types as Dell wouldn't do this unless it would yield a positive income - my guess is they're already thinking 2010 and the next version of Windows.
- Are applications and tech tools getting usable enough they're vastly changing the learning curve? - An interesting look at a man, his young son, and the latest iPhone. Worth paying attention to because usability is still an issue for onboarding tech users, and I expect companies that produce usable products for everyone (Apple, Nintendo) will be better able to exploit the tech market - which sounds obvious, but is even more vitally important in touch times. Good interface design is an edge a company - maybe your company - needs. As a programmer-turned-manager I assure you that fact can't be ignored.
- Your best target for online services may be a UK Housewife - A fascinating demographic breakdown of net usage that's got quite a few shockers. There's a link to the full report (which is a PDF, so I didn't link directly). REQUIRED reading for us tech-types.
- Mass Zune Outage? - It's summed up here. In fact, it appears to have taken Microsoft quite a bit of time to post on the issue. news moves ever so fast these days.
- Techmeme's Objectively Top Ten Stories of 2008
- ebay's Bill Me Later payment system dropped by Amazon.com - That's 10-15% of the service's volume, and more bad news for eBay who is understandably sufferingin the slow economy. I don't think eBay is going away, but it's going to be a painful 2009 for them.
Finally Wikipedia needs donations. Send money, people.
-Steve
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