“Once again, let me be perfectly clear,” Obama continued. “Seniors, rest easy knowing that I will never, under any circumstance, sign a bill that doesn’t give you the option of being murdered by my administration in a manner of your choosing. I promise you that.” (via Obama: Health Care Plan Would Give Seniors Right To Choose How They Are Killed | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
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1 month agoThe operating system itself features Adobe Flash support, an improved browser, and menus that are easier to navigate with a finger, as opposed to a stylus. Perhaps more interesting are two new services that come along with Windows.
The first, the Windows Marketplace, is Microsoft’s answer to the iPhone’s App Store. It’s somewhat interesting that Windows Mobile has long had more programs than the iPhone — none of which involved approval from Microsoft.
I left a job involving New Media in comics this past year. I wasn’t laid off, I chose to leave as the environment of the company got worse under the CEO the parent company had installed late the year before. Though the parent company seemed to have a policy in place of saying they supported New Media efforts and expanding their demographics beyond the 60 year-old plus newspaper reading set, they didn’t really at all. I had spent much of the last year and half there thinking about leaving, but was proud of things we were accomplishing with or without the support of the family that ran the business.
Things that kept me there for so long are summarized here on my resume:
I have been responsible for launching titles including Jeff Smith’s Bone and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the mobile content space.
In my position as Mobile Product Manager, I designed mobile interfaces and marketing web sites, worked with the developers on user experience issues and facilitated the working relationship between license holders and xxxxx.
Then in June of 2008, our company was afflicted by new “leadership.”
The thing that killed this publishing initiative more than anything else was the fact the then-CEO killed the successful mobile platforms that operated on the majority of US handsets at this time. He chose instead to focus solely on the iPhone as a publishing platform. This drove a publishing line that had hundreds of possible handsets as a platform at 2.99-3.99 a month as subscription revenue to one publishing platform where the price point was set at 99 cents for one download.
The then-CEO also laid-off all of the games staff - even though this was the true cash-cow of the entire business. The great and mighty OZ didn’t understand games and clearing away more headcount allow him to hire more senior staff from his last job. The real joke is as he brought in more of these type people the company’s product output has dropped to almost zero as he left no one on staff that could actually produce or release product.
The more I hear in the news about the country being in “turnaround” the less I see in the “lessons learned” column. Here is a guy that came to an existing business and devastated it. In fact this division no longer exists in his wake. Instead of being fired or somehow else held responsible for this - he was allowed to resign and his daughter that he hired directly out of college was allowed to keep her job.
Those of us in the field that are tasked with actually performing are held accountable for our actions and output. What has happened over time is that corporate America has developed into this kinda of Feudal system - where the top of this chain move of job to job with no real accomplishment and pillage as much as possible before being allowed to do it again by what I am coming to think of as the ruling “management class” in this society.
To add insult to injury - this jackass actually tried to add me to his email newsletter and on Facebook. This is the sort of crap we have to deal with in 2009, have a misguided egomaniac destroy your livelihood and then have to pretend to be friends via social networking. Well, I refused. I sent the this guy a Facebook response that some of you have seen and I keep getting requests from many who this “executive” has wronged or has in other ways hurt their careers. So I am now making this an open letter of sorts - an open letter to the naked and foolish “emperor”
“XXXXX,
I find it to be the culture of corporate America that failure and incompetence are not acknowledged. Often they are glossed over in false platitudes and then are later ignored out a sense of keeping a veneer of social pleasantry. Honestly, I would have been very happy never to encounter you again in any form, but as you have attempted to enlist my facebook “friendship” I thought I would take the opportunity to be pretty clear on the utter and complete contempt I have for you as both co-worker and a human being.
I have had the opportunity to work with many talented and driven firms in my career and have never seen arrogant failure on the scope you visited upon xxxxx. You are so utterly self-involved and obsessed that you refused to acknowledge that you knew nothing of the content and entertainment business. Rather than try and learn the business, to take a business a lot of people had worked very hard to bring to profitability, you loaded the deck with ineffectual, overpaid sycophants that knew even less than you about the tasks at hand and lacked any drive or work ethic. You had taken a 10 year-old business that overcame huge adversity and was finding it’s way and single-handedly killed it within a year. If this was your goal, then to be congratulated in the single-minded push which you pursued this goal. If not, I would invite you to revisit the last year and consider the outcome.
This would only earn you the status of being considered incompetent. The contempt I hold for you comes from having to suffer through working under you for six months until I elected to leave. You are a liar, you treat people poorly (this being an understatement) and you have become so enamored of a vision of yourself as a Steve Jobs-type character that I personally witnessed you discard good business decisions because that did not spring from you: The Great and Mighty OZ. You trashed relationships that it took many of us years to build and left xxxxx with a toxic reputation in your wake. You removed professionals that understood the business and had built everything you were just handed and in some cases removed them to replace with your own children, being allowed to do this earned the management at xxxxx similar ire. I also believe you to be guilty of purposeful age discrimination. This based on your pattern of lay-offs, the people hired to fill those roles (an aside: the point of downsizing is to reduce staff and overhead – I am not sure you understand that concept, but thought I would clue you into it as I am wasting enough of my time responding to you), and statements I witnessed you make in the course of having to work with you.
I am writing this to let you know: I don’t want to be your friend on Facebook. I don’t want to be on your self-aggrandizing email newsletter. I am sure given your massive ego you will feel compelled to respond, just know I have no intent of reading your response or any other attempts at contact. I want you to go away.
-Harold”
And for the first time, AT&T has scored worse than all four major U.S. wireless operators in terms of overall customer satisfaction for smartphones. According to the survey, AT&T scored 69 out of 100 among users, and 73 among non-iPhone owners. Verizon Wireless was the most satisfying carrier with a score or 79 out of 100 among smartphone users.
Even Sprint Nextel, which has struggled to retain customers due to its poor reputation, scored better than AT&T among smartphone users. It got a 74 out of 100 in terms of customer satisfaction.
The figures are among the first to quantify growing dissatisfaction with AT&T’s network.
Odierno: May not be possible to declare victory in Iraq - CNN.com
Had we just asked I am sure they would have declined the “opporunity.”
2 months agoAlthough Andrews McMeel’s interest in coming downtown first surfaced in January, the company did not submit its application for incentives until June. The timing coincided with the city review and left uncertainty as to how the project would be received by the new mayor and council.
City staff decided the project met enough of the guidelines established by the new policy, including retaining jobs, enhancing downtown, strengthening the economy and providing opportunities for youth. Andrews McMeel will provide internship opportunities to Kansas City School District students as part of the arrangement.
The plan also contains financial penalties should Andrews McMeel fail to achieve the employment goals in its plan.
Found this clearing out old bookmarks in my browser.
One thing that no one seems to be talking about the massive layoffs that have gone on at uclick and Andrews McMeel in 2009. Normally, Editor and Publisher reports on this beat, I guess. Somewhere between 30 to 40 have been laid-off company-wide since the beginning of the year. There has been no press what-so-ever on this (be it in EP, KC STAR or KC Biz Journal). Doesn’t sound like a lot in the current downturn, but describing AMU as a company of 200 people, I would think, is a real stretch at this point.
So, the last bit on financial penalties really caught my eye.
2 months agoTime Warner Inc will eventually sell the Time Inc magazine unit and could buy holdings in its core entertainment category, Gordon Crawford, managing director of its largest shareholder, said during a presentation this week.
“Time Warner just spun off their cable division, they are going to sell their print division, they are going to spin off AOL and they’re just going to be Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks,” said Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group.
Crawford says Time Warner will sell magazine unit | U.S. | Reuters
I think a lot about this in relation to the new “DC Entertainment” - there is really no reason for DC (or the newly purchased Marvel) to continue publishing actual comic books to the direct market. DC just had the “Batman: Arkham Asylum” video game sell two million copies (at most you can move 150,00 units of something in the direct market), they have the new “Superman/Batman” original DVD shipping on Tuesday and it looks like “Smallville” is still going strong.
If we generally accept that newspapers will be dead in five years, and newspapers with a much broader distribution system than the direct market, why do we then have any belief that the direct market and the publishing of actual hard copy comics will continue beyond that? Does anyone really have any belief that Warner Bros or Disney want to be in the comic “business,” no they are in the IP and licensing business.
People who keep asking the question: “How can Batman or Spider-Man exist without a monthly comic?” Stay tuned, you’ll see in pretty short order.
2 months ago
Nat Geo Games: Mystery of Cleopatra screenshot.
2 months ago
Nat Geo Games: Mystery of Cleopatra screenshot.
2 months ago
Nat Geo Games: Mystery of Cleopatra screenshot.
2 months agoAfter teaming up on Lost City of Z, Merscom and National Geographic Games are gearing up to release Nat Geo Games: Mystery of Cleopatra, a hidden object adventure starring the famous Egyptian queen.
The reign of Cleopatra is threatened by political intrigue from Rome as hostilities continue to grow between the Queen’s lover Marc Antony and Julius Caesar’s successor in Rome, Octavius. A mysterious murder and a break-in at the royal palace have prompted Cleopatra to dispatch her most trusted advisor to investigate threats to her rule.
Mystery of Cleopatra will be released in October and is being developed by Anino Games.
Nat Geo Games: Lost City of Cleopatra Preview | Gamezebo
One of the games I am producing. This one is almost done, with luck will be putting the finishing touches on this week.
As mentioned this was developed by the really outstanding and amazing team at Anino Games.
2 months agoThe poll suggested that even a majority of Democrats, 51 percent, believes that the White House is meddling in their state’s affairs. More than three quarters of Republicans questioned and nearly two thirds of Independents agreed.
The survey of New York voters was conducted Tuesday, a day after the White House refused to confirm or deny a report that President Barack Obama urged Paterson not to seek a full term in 2010.
Despite a personal phone call from President Obama urging him to do so, former Virginia governor Douglas Wilder said Thursday he will not endorse his fellow Democrat Creigh Deeds in this year’s gubernatorial race.
Pointing to Deeds’ support for gun rights and his willingness to raise taxes, Wilder wrote in an online column that he plans to keep his powder dry.
“The question before me is whether I support the Democratic candidate’s position in addressing these issues,” Wilder wrote on the Web site Virginia Tomorrow. “I have not thus far in the progress of the campaign, and as aforesaid refrain from so doing.”
Wilder said he doesn’t expect Obama — who called him several weeks ago asking him to publicly endorse Deeds — will be thrilled with his decision.
