Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Why You Shouldn’t Keep Your Projects A Secret

As someone who works with intellectual properties, and someone who knows a lot of people who also work with intellectual properties, I can safely say that a lot of us like to keep our ideas to ourselves.  There is a fear that if your idea is leaked, then there’s a team of coordinated and efficient coding enthusiasts that will take your idea and do it faster than you.  Probably better than you too.  And they all wear sunglasses and matching black leather uniforms with lightning bolts...

Where was I?  Oh, right, the fear of being copied.  This fear has a less-paranoid-but-still-paralyzing twin: the fear of someone coincidentally doing the same thing as you, making you look like the copycat nonetheless.

My advice to you is to fight that fear and show off (or at least talk about) your works in progress.  There are several reasons why this will help you rather than hurt you.

Sweden's Got Twitter

Did you hear Sweden has a Twitter account?  No, it's not the work of a very dedicated Hetalia fan.  The country itself has its own twitter account.  The Swedish government has launched a project called "Curators of Sweden," run by its ministry of tourism, in order to show what Sweden is really all about. 

So who is doing all the tweeting?  That's the best part: tweets will be tweeted by a Swedish citizen for one week.  When that person's week is up, they will hand it off to... another Swedish citizen.  The idea is that no one person can represent an entire nation, so they're taking turns to create a culminating voice.  This voice just happens to tweet.  I must say, it is quite refreshing to see a "national brand" project actually being handed over to the nation's people.

Hmm... a country being represented by its people?  That's an idea that could catch on.

-Tamara Hecht

Zynga Shares Drop 10%?

Yeah, they dropped first day of trading.

I didn't see that coming - I figured there'd be a run on them.  The market must be a heck of a lot more cautious than I thought (plus they didn't release a ton of shares).

- Steven Savage

News from the North - Dec 10

Social Media Brought Together
A new device called MagnetU will let you broadcast your social media (including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) profiles to everyone around you. The device will also alert you when it detects a profile in the area that is similar to yours. Great for extroverts; not so great for those who like some privacy.

Online Memorials
Working from an idea already in use in Seattle, a Regina, SK company, Remco Memorials, is offering a way to bring up memorials on smartphones while visiting a grave. The company will provide a QR code to be added to grave markers that, when read by a smartphone, will go to a webpage that can be added to by family and friends with the password.

Canadian R&D Spending to Rise
Canadian firms are intending to increase their research and development expenditures, the first such increase since 2007. However, Canadian R&D is still lagging in terms of GDP. Most of the R&D work (approximately 75%) is done in Ontario and Quebec.

Samples Missing
Geeks interested in sapce exploration may want to develop a tracking system for NASA, who has lost or misplaced 500 samples of material from space since 1970. The missing pieces, including moon rocks and meteorites, were part of the 26 000 samples loaned out by NASA. Some of the missing samples may have been returned but not checked in.

Kill Your Cable and Phone
Washington, DC, is funding a 100-gigabit network to be made available to universities, businesses, and anyone willing to resell the service. Such a service bypasses the backbone that was built by a telco or a cable company, and was created to serve areas of Washinbton not served by those companies. A step like this could be the first in turning high speed Internet service from luxury to public good.

Gree Has New Social Game Platform

OK gamers, Gree's got a new social game developer platform coming and there's a look at it now.

They're promising:

• Access to their current amount of players (A sweet 150 million)
• iOS and Android integration
• A ton of tools

So sounds interesting for gamers, you're going to want to watch this (and I'm wondering if their iOS integration will cover all Mac devices eventually). It might be something you have to know.

I'd also note that Gree is locked in an increasingly bitter rivalry with DeNA, and this may be one of may ways they take them on (or out).  Hmm, and where are some of the others in all of this . . .

- Steven Savage

Facebook: New York Branch Adds Engineering, and More Hires Coming

The article says it all.  To break it down:

• The NY Branch, which is mostly marketing, is getting an Engineering Branch.  This maks sense on many levels - it adds more location diversity, gives them a technical footprint, increases recruiting opportunities, and lets then interface with bigwigs.
• There will be hiring in Palo Alto and Seattle as well.

So frankly if you want to work for Facebook, send your resume, though I'd suspect if you're an NY Engineer you'll want to do research because I suspect this will be a team they have specific plans for.

Two questions come up here:

• Will Facebook move any jobs?  I'm not sure.  I wouldn't expect anything significant until after the NY Branch is "stocked up."
• Will this change the character of the company.  I can certainly see claims of it if the NY Branch gets bit.

- Steven Savage

Geek to Geek: Google Plus

Welcome again to Geek to Geek, where we answer geeky questions (and you can too).

This week's question: Is Google Plus going to affect how you use social media?

Tamara: Personally, no.  I’ve had a G+ account since the beta began, and after adding all my contacts into it, I’ve hardly given it a second glance.  Then again, I was never all that involved in Myspace or Facebook either.

Bonnie: I don't think it's going to have much effect in the long run. Facebook is firmly established and it's not going anywhere. I can see Google Plus being a strong number two, though, especially if they aim at a targeted, niche crowd - specifically, a geek audience who would feel more comfortable there than in the "here comes everybody" atmosphere of Facebook.

Steve: Not really, it's another item to use.

Your turn, commenters.  Unless you're busy with your Google Plus accounts.

A Perfectly Progeeky Society

I was pondering that eternal question, "what is the perfect progeek society?" ...and I realized, we're not too far off.  With things like Lulu and YouTube, there is very little standing in the way between a progeek and their audience.  However, I believe that today’s world places a disproportionate value on immediate financial value, which makes everything else undervalued.  For example, we don’t care about science or technology as much as we should, because as important as it is, it is behind the scenes and therefore doesn’t mean much to the world unless it is directly tied to a top-earning product or company.  And as for the arts - don’t get me started!

Facebook Fandom

Social media is often heralded as the ideal way for progeeks to promote their creative projects.  However, last week I discussed Twitter, and how it is so busy that a topic can only carry attention if said topic already has quite a bit of attention elsewhere in the world.  So, for self-promotion, it looks like Twitter is not our best bet.  Let’s have a look at Facebook.

Go Farther: The SocialBox

SocialBox

So Google's Hangouts may be a killer app: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/is-googles-hangouts-its-killer-app/.  The article - and indeed Hangouts itself - emphasize what people want in social tech: immediate, human connectivity.

This got me thinking, which is not unusual.  Hangouts, Skype, Facebook chat, all point me towards what I believe could be the future social "killer app;" indeed a service so needed I expect multiple companies to try and make it.  I'll call it The SocialBox.