News of the Day, July 3, 2009

Job Market

Ten Things to Include in a Resume: How to keep yours from being one of the 75% for a single position that end up in the garbage. (And that statistic is another reason networking is very important). And, related: Ten Smart Tips for Getting the Interview.

How to Manage Your Manager: Tips to keep from being among the micro-managed by "managing upward" - a good skill to master if you're currently having to stick out a bad job situation until the recession ends.

Treat Your Job Search Like a Job Search: Why you shouldn't listen to people who tell you that you should plan your career like you were planning your wedding or running a marathon.

Ways to Find People on Twitter: Definitely useful for networking purposes.

Economics/Geekonomics

Personal Bankrupcy Filings Increase 40% in June: Definitely another sign that we're not out of the woods yet when it comes to the recession.

How the Crash Continues to Reshape America: Certain areas of the country seem to be getting harder-hit by the economy than others, with New York, DC and most college towns weathering the storm fairly well and the Sunbelt, not so much. Interesting reading, especially if you're planning to relocate for your career.

Technology

Must-Read Blogs for Freelance Developers: The selections for web tech types here cover php, jquery, ruby on rails, css and general web development. 

Google has added more features to its Blog Search, including the ability to subscribe to any topic via RSS or Atom, and Hot Queries, which allows you to see most-blogged-about topics. Good news to those of us who feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of tech- and career-related blogs out there.

The charter for the XHTML Working Group, set to expire at the end of this year, will reportedly not be renewed, meaning XHTML 2 XHTML2 will never be a W3C recommendation, so it has been effectively cancelled. If you're looking to learn Web design, HTML is now the only game in town.

Publishing

More details have emerged about the Gannett layoffs: they will cut 1,400 people across 80 newspapers, including 100 in Cincinnatti alone . Interestingly enough, the company's digital properties are being spared the cuts, which shows the company is definitely among those considering the electronic frontier their future (and possible salvation). 

Anime/Manga

Funimation seems to have tossed its hat in the social media arena: the anime company will host Shojodojo, a fusion of streaming video and Facebook-type networking - reminiscent of not only Crunchyroll's move toward social media but also the Hulu/Facebook linkups. Look for these two red-hot arenas of the cyber world to converge more and more in the future - if you know a bit about both, it could go a long way for you.

iTunes will be selling anime music in North America from the Bandai Namco library, including soundtracks from Lucky Star and Haruhi Suzimiya. Apple has been moving toward mainstream recognition of anime music and J-rock for some time - for instance, its Genius system recognizes that my own iTunes includes music by L'arc-en-Ciel and recommends songs by Gackt. If you know J-rock, your knowledge may be in demand by mainstream music marketers and publications soon.

Video Games

To no surprise, Midway has officially been sold to Warner Bros. for 33 million - but two of the game company's studios, in San Diego and the U.K., were shut out of the deal and will be shut down if no other buyer is found. This brings a very long, sad saga to an at least hopeful end for Midway's remaining employees. Midway's story is definitely worth studying as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong in gaming. 

Game download service Steam is offering a half-price discount  on Fallout 3 for the holiday weekend - a promotion designed to give people who are still getting their games the old-fashioned disc way a taste for downloading. We'll see what kind of effect it has - both on the future of downloading, and on their servers!

A nonprofit group called Pros vs. GI Joe has started a military-only gaming network, allowing troops from connected bases and branches to play each other. There's been a link between the military and gaming for some time (some games have been used in training), so they always should be considered a market  for new games and gaming technology.  

- Bonnie