careers

Call it what you like, but for various reasons I’ve been blogging-lite, and have 100 things floating around my head which I need to expel in the blogging equivalent of an exorcism. And I’m sure you know all about Facebook’s new interface/look, and Google adding comments in Google Reader, so I’ll at least try and unearth some other stuff.

A great post by friend and former colleague Angus, which adds to the interesting and equally great original post on newspaper business models.

That somehow led to me thinking about ‘micro-careers’, and how the collapse of ‘a job for life’ and fears about security can somewhat be alleviated by the internet, and the fact you can form several careers by playing around and experimenting with different skills. E.g. writing, photography, video would have been entirely silo’d careers, but look at Christian.  It allows you to experiment for little or no cost, and then focus on the things that give you the most enjoyment, best results etc – and you’re able to still do a day job to pay the bills if the fun stuff doesn’t support you.

The most idiotic attempt to cash in on a ridiculous patent award goes to worlds.com, for claiming a patent on all virtual worlds (From Venturebeat).

The most interesting thing for me about Robert Scoble leaving Fast Company, and Jason Calacanis/Mahalo employing a now convicted hacker, isn’t the idea that the loss of Scoble’s sponsor means social media has failed, or the fact that in a 3-5 interview process, the Mahalo team failed to perform a quick Google search.

The interesting aspect is that both Scoble and Calacanis published their stories as soon as news broke, and that we expect it and accept it. Compare that to the hundreds of more traditional companies which are issuing redundancies at the moment.

If you’re wondering why politicians seem to be increasingly ridiculed and ineffectual, here’s a good example of the reasons why. The Conservative Party have wasted time and money that could have been used to benefit voters/constituents for a service to send a fake letter from Gordon Brown.

Compare that to the amount of brilliant apps coming from quick, effective and cheap hack days, like the Guardian Hack Day, for example.

I feel better after that! Incidentally, when I’m not writing a new post, I’m normally twittering: @badgergravling, sharing stuff via Google Reader,  or starting to get a handle on using Friendfeed effectively.