News of the Day, November 4, 2009

Job Market

Three Mistakes Job Seekers Make on LinkedIn: Among them: Using the generic message when asking to add someone to their network. Personalizing the message is far more likely to get a positive response.

Planned Job Reductions Decline for Third Month Straight: Cause for cautious optimism, with the operative word being cautious. (Also, auto sales have stalibilized, another encouraging sign).

Video Games

Why DJ Hero Can't Save Music Games: An analysis of why this is a trend whose time has come . . . and gone. A reminder that the red-hot thing of the moment won't stay hot forever. (Sales of the game to date have been described as modest, despite a huge advertising push during the World Series.) 

PlaySpan has formed a partnership with Paypal designed to make paying for in-game virtual goods easier. PlaySpan is definitely a company on the way up (as you recall, they formed a partnership with Nickelodeon last week) so they're one to consider for the resume shortlist.

Nintendo is offering demos of some WiiWare games, hoping to stimulate sales of the downloadable content. Apparently, sales of these games for both Wii and DS haven't taken off the way Nintendo had hoped - kind of surprising, considering how many gloom-and-doom forecasts we've seen about downloadables replacing boxed games. 

Sony is taking the concept of Playstation-as-total-entertainment-device a step further with a planned TV interaction feature, which would let users throw tomatoes at actors and have an icon kick them in the behind. (Featured here because it's at least unique, and because I have to post any link that mentions both Sony and Mystery Science Theater 3000.)   

Technology

Google Music Search gets exclusive songs: And music becomes the latest battleground in the Everything Wars. These aren't small potatoes artists, either: Among the ones contributing exclusive live versions and remixes to the service are Bon Jovi, Linkin Park and Lady Gaga. Downloads have been popular as long as the iPod has been in existence, but music streaming is coming on fast, and it's something people involvd in Web-based businesses should be aware of.

T-Mobile Outage Fixed: But this is definitely something they didn't need, between Sidekickgate and the massive advertising campaign for their Android phone. Watch them cautiously, they may be the next phone company to sail into troubled waters.

Microsoft overhauls MSN home page: It's putting a big emphasis on pulling localized content from other Web sources to create a personalized page for the user, and also offers Facebook and Twitter integration. The emphasis on local content is an important one - services like this, along with hyperlocal news sites, could be the salvation of the local news industry.

Comcast profits up 22 percent despite ad decline: I wouldn't put them on the "send a resume to NOW list" yet, though, until we see what happens with the NBC deal. If it falls through or backfires, it could hurt the company badly.

Time Warner Revenues Down Six Percent while Time Inc. lays off 400-500, starting, not unsurprisingly, with the news group. Meahwhile, its former corporate partner AOL suffered a 23 percent drop in revenue, though it is keeping its venture investments  - I predict that some company looking for a messenger service (coughGooglecough) will end up buying them, keeping AIM for themselves and scuttling the rest, thus bringing another chapter in the early life of the Internet (Geocities, anyone? Prodigy?) to a close.

The Verizon vs. AT&T war is getting nastier: The House of iPhone is now suing its competitor over the "There's a map for that" series of ads, which it says are misleading. Meanwhile, reports are surfacing that Verizon is about to double its early termination fee: aimed at those planning to ditch the Droid for the iPhone, most likely. One more field where surviving fandom flame wars may be genuine on-the-job training.  

Anime/Manga

Digital Manga, a company best known for its yaoi releases, is broadening its scope by offering 20 Harlequin Romance graphic novels online. Harlequin is a pretty damn big name for Digital Manga to hitch its wagon to (and a company that was right there on the forefront of E-publishing before it got huge, we may add), so this may bring increased visibility to their "online rental" manner of doing business.

Susan Boyle song to be used as theme for anime movie: Just another sign of east and west pop culture becomng increasingly closer. (It's the original English version, Boyle isn't rerecording "I Dreamed a Dream" in Japanese).

Publishing

Toronto Star launches biggest restructuring ever: This is Canada's largest newspaper, so this is a very big deal. They're offering buyouts, may lay off people and are considering subcontracting editing jobs to freelancers. (Look for more and more papers to be doing the latter: Freelancing may be the way to go in the newspaper business).

Comics

Marvel titles will now be available via four separate iPhone apps, which raises an interesting question about the future of Big Comics: Will they be giving away the actual comic product online and making their money through movies and merchandising? Something to ponder if you're thinking about getting into any aspect of the field.

- Bonnie