SAN FRANCISCO—Upon coming across the same job posting Monday for a full-time position at a local startup company, an estimated 1,400 people reportedly described the opening as “a perfect fit” for their qualifications, saying it was exact...

Nemo (Capcom - arcade - 1990)

Ex libris

Earlier this summer, Damon Albarn told Rolling Stone that, yeah, Blur was going to record some new material. However, what he didn’t say was how much material. But now Albarn’s Gorillaz collaborator Jamie Hewlett has seemingly confirmed that, yes, Blur is hard at work on a whole new album.

Fans claim that Hewlett made the statement at the launch event for his opera, Monkey: Journey To The West, in New York. According to one poster on the Gorillaz-Unofficial site, Hewlett said outright that Blur is “working on a new album”—something that appears to have been confirmed by both Albarn and Blur’s Alex James, after the group spent a week recording in Hong Kong. Of course, Blur could get all the material down, then have the notoriously artsy and temperamental Albarn decide it’s garbage, so don’t start looking for pre-orders just yet.

While you're ...

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Tsarnaev Indicted on Federal Charges, Could Face Death Penalty Patch.com Credit: Sara Jacobi US Attorney Carmen Ortiz speaks about the potential of the death penalty for Tsarnaev. Loading... x. ×. Next Previous Slideshow Download. By Sara Jacobi Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the men who allegedly killed four people and injured ... Feds: Internet influenced Boston bombing suspectKCTV Kansas City Boston bombing suspect accused in four deaths, could face executionBayoubuzz Suspect in Boston Marathon bombings indicted; charges include using weapon ...Montreal Gazette all 685 news articles »

Canadian developers looking to crowdfund their gaming projects on Kickstarter will finally be able to do that soon, as the funding platform announced via Twitter that its service will be open to Canada this summer. Kickstarter is currently only available for US- and UK-based project creators, though those looking to back projects can live anywhere. Previously, some Canadian companies have skirted the exclusion by having a U.S. partner, but now they won't have to bother with that workaround.

Crowdfund hopefuls can sign up through a landing page on the site to be notified when the platform is ready to launch for developers in the north. Of course, we'll keep an eye out for when that happens as well.

Kickstarter coming to Canada this summer originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Queen Elizabeth is making a killing in the UK real estate market without ever having bought, sold, developed or leased a property, let alone lifted a finger.

That’s because the Crown Estate, a property portfolio business owned by the Crown and governed by an act of parliament, effectively pays her 15% of its yearly profits. But it’s also because Crown Estate’s returns, which led to a cool £252.6 million ($386.4 million) in profits last year, have made a habit of beating the UK real estate market’s benchmark.

The Crown Estate returned 11.3% on its £8.1 billion portfolio, well above the property industry benchmark of 9.9%, and the fifth consecutive year in which it has outperformed the greater UK market.

What’s the secret? According to the Crown Estate’s CEO (pdf) Alison Nimmo, it’s a combination of the estate’s “wide diversity of our business, coupled with our strength in prime retail markets and London’s West End.” In other words, it owns a lot of different kinds of fancy land.

That’s partly because back in 1760 King George III handed a massive swath of the country’s lands and coastal waters over to parliament, which led to the founding of the estate; but also because the estate has greatly expanded its holdings. The Crown Estate’s portfolio of investments is really now a collection of four separate portfolios:

Its “energy and infrastructure” portfolio, which capitalizes on the country’s growing commitment to alternative forms of energy by licensing and leasing the “almost entire seabed out to the 12 nautical mil territorial limit around the UK.” (The Crown Estate owns just over half the UK’s foreshore.) This portfolio returned 10.6% last year.

Its “rural and coastal” portfolio, which is “one of the largest and most diverse portfolios managed nationwide,” includes 140,000 hectares (345,000 acres) of rural estate in England, Scotland and Wales; it returned 13.3% last year.

Its “urban” portfolio, which includes properties in London’s West End and “prime retail schemes in major towns and cities around the country,” returned 10.6% last year.

And its “Windsor estate” portfolio, which covers 6,400 hectares (15,800 acres), includes several retail parks, residential properties and commercial properties; it was the only portfolio that didn’t do so well this past year.

Thanks to its diverse holdings, the estate’s portfolio can not only withstand a dip in any one of its four sectors, but outperform the market despite it, too.  That’s why it has returned more than £2 billion ($3 billion) over the past decade, made a habit of beating out the UK property market, and guaranteed the Queen $54 million in real estate earnings this year, and $58 million next year.

This series of posts is about enabling sustainable businesses on the App Store. In Part 1, I discuss why Paper and other productivity apps may not be doing as well as you might think. Part 2 explores why casual games, in contrast, are a sustainable business, but not a differentiator for platforms (I added a follow-up here). Part 3 analyzes why Apple in particular seems hesitant to enable sustainable businesses on the app store.

Before I get to Part 3, I wanted to clarify a few points in Part 2

In response to my contention that Casual gaming is a sustainable business, but not a platform differentiator, Matthew Raehl pointed me to this blog post by his relative:

This is our new Ipad 4. Right now, we’re just learning the basics of it, but one day I hope to be fluent in all of the Apple lingo that everyone else seems to know by heart (like what the heck the iCloud is, for example). Up until this point, we’ve been using Apple’s competitors almost exclusively (Android, Palm’s Web OS, etc), so we have a little bit of a learning curve here.

All we know right now is how to get it connected to the Wifi and how to launch Letterpress. Yes, Letterpress factored into our decision to purchase an Apple product.

It’s a fair rebuttal as far as anecdotes go, but I think Letterpress is the exception that proves the rule. Check out this graph from AppAnnie:

I’m sure LetterPress has inspired many more people than Matthew’s relative to buy iOS devices, but LetterPress – which has only one in-app purchase – is clearly not a sustainable business. There is no way to earn additional money from existing users.

In contrast, look at the grossing rankings for Candy Crush Saga, which was released at about the same time:

This is power of repeat purchases by existing customers.

Loren Brichter and Letterpress fit the popular idea of what casual game development is like: brilliant developer creates a new concept, releases it to the world, and gets rich. It’s certainly the image that Apple prefers to cultivate.

The truth is a little more complicated. Most casual game development is done by studios like King, and it’s all about playing the odds. Multiple games are developed, heavily analyzed and tested, with constant tweaking to the monetization forumulas. In this world of playing the odds, building for Android as well as iOS is an obvious choice – if a game breaks out, like Candy Crush Saga, you want the maximum audience possible, especially since casual games monetize on Android as well.

That is why, of the top 25 grossing apps on iOS,¹ 20 of them are also on Android (and two of them, Zoosk and MLB, aren’t casual games). The business model of casual gaming inevitably pushes publishers to be multi-platform, which is why they are not a platform differentiator.

Part 3 will focus on the types of apps that do differentiate platforms, what sort of business models might work for them, and why Apple may be reluctant to help.

This is a three-part series on enabling sustainable businesses on the app store.

• Part 1: Papering Over App Store Problems
• Part 2: Casual gaming is sustainable, but not a differentiator & Additional Notes on Casual Games
• Part 3: Why doesn’t Apple enable sustainable businesses on the app store?

1. As of June 26, 2013

The post Additional Notes on Casual Games appeared first on stratēchery by Ben Thompson.

	Courtney shared this story from Ming Doyle:
	I FEEL LIKE MING HAS REALLY LEVELED UP THE DREAMINESS SOMEHOW.

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#HeroesCon sketch: Captain Steve Rogers.

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

One of my friends reports that she is copyediting a hot dog machine manual. #theNewEconomy #livingTheDream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUKDspx0LZ0

Original Source

Welcome to Gameological Q&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. It’s extremely similar to The A.V. Club’s AVQ&A feature. You might even say it’s exactly the same. If you have a brilliant question that would make a fun Q&A, send it to brilliantquestions at gameological dot com.

Today’s question was inspired by an email submitted by comment-thread mainstay Aurora Boreanaz. Here it is:

Game makers learn from each other’s ideas all the time. Once Shenmue introduced “quick-time events,” zillions of other games followed along (and are still following along). But sometimes, great ideas show up once and are never heard from again. What’s an unusual design idea or feature that you wish other creators would copy?

Anthony John Agnello

[youtube id=euquOpUmUyk width=600]

Here’s a little piece of design that not ...

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Roland Emmerich’s White House Down is an entertaining throwback to the action blockbusters of the 1990s. Seemingly modeled on Die Hard With A Vengeance, it pitches a wisecracking duo—one a cop, the other a fidgety civilian—against an army of colorful bad guys. There’s a time limit, a convoluted heist, and some wanton destruction of public property. The cop is divorced, wears a wife-beater shirt, and is considered a screw-up by his colleagues; his name is John Cale, which suggests that screenwriter James Vanderbilt is either a big Velvet Underground fan or that he’s three letters and one drinking problem short of an intellectual-property lawsuit.

The twist is that the civilian half of the duo happens to be the president of the United States, an Obama stand-in played by Jamie Foxx; the cop, played by Channing Tatum, is a Capitol police officer who picks the wrong ...

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Established in 1928, Motorola was a telecommunications company that designed and produced a number of consumer and professional products, from two-way radios to cable TV set-top boxes to cellular and smartphones, including the once groundbreaking RAZR. After a rough patch towards the end of the first decade of the 2000s, Motorola was split into two independent companies: Motorola Solutions, which "provides mission-critical communications products and services to enterprises and governments" and Motorola Mobility, which "delivers personalized information to meet the needs of consumers both in the home and on the go." The latter keeping the smartphone side of the business. In 2012 Google acquired Motorola Mobility setting up a beneficial synergy between Google's Android OS and Motorola's hardware. This week, a new tiny logo for Motorola was spotted on the footer of Techweek100's site, a conference presented by Motorola. Later, not sure how, another version of the logo, confirmed by Motorola, appeared. No announcement, official reveal, or design credit.

Monogram in solid circle.

Monogram in a dashed-border circle.

The intention of the change is obvious: Google is marking its territory in a way just a touch more subtle than a cat peeing on its backyard. The change most people will notice is barely design related, it's in the nomenclature of it, "Motorola: A Google Company". I can't think of many (or any) consumer products or services being so heavily-handed "branded" (in the original sense of the word) as Google is doing here. Perhaps it's a maneuver that will last only a few years until people know that Motorola is Google's bitch because, sorry, but that's what this sounds like.

Graphically, the famous Motorola "M" remains the same and seems like it will still be used in a solid circle as usual. The biggest surprise is the multi-colored ring version that has popped all over the internet. It's an interesting extension that definitely signals something is different but not completely different. It works in providing a fresh take on the monogram and seeing it, literally, through a new frame. Although Google didn't have any problem putting its name on the logo, it held back in making the colored ring be Google's official colors because I guess that would be too much. The typography went from a bold, italic uppercase to a light, normal lowercase setting. It seems like it's been two or three years since we last saw this kind of friendly-fication of a logo. It does kind of work, especially in unison with the "a" and "company" being lowercase too. It does have a nice rhythm to it with all those "o"s and the customized "a" at the end is (although annoying) enough to give the wordmark some customization without going overboard. Overall, this is clearly a logo to signal change and to establish who's boss in this, so a definite success.

Thanks to Boudewijn Vermolen for first tip.

Driver of bus that crashed into Massachusetts house was on his 1st first day of ... Minneapolis Star Tribune AUBURN, Mass. — The man driving a regional transit bus that crashed into a house in central Massachusetts earlier this week was on his first day of service. The Telegram & Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/1227YGh) that the driver of the bus was 27-year-old ... and more »

attract mode - Side Arms (Capcom - arcade - 1986)

requested by tavirider

I finally got around to reading this lengthy interview (thanks), and it’s full of great commentary. From what it’s like being John Siracusa:

When you spend all day writing for a compiler, it’s sometimes frustrating to have to switch over to writing for humans, which have far more inscrutable rules and terrible error messages.

…to strong insights into technology and design:

Simplicity is great, as iOS has shown. But there’s a difference between conceptual simplicity and visual simplicity. Just hiding controls does make things appear simpler, but it doesn’t actually make them any simpler. The complexity is now just hidden. Similarly, removing features that few people use is a good idea, but like any good idea, it can be taken too far. At a certain point, you’re just making your application worse for everyone, even new users.

Worth the read.

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white chocolate & strawberry cake roll

Microsoft has allegedly dropped the update fee associated with Xbox 360 titles, reports Eurogamer. Citing multiple development sources, Microsoft is said to have changed the policy earlier this year of charging developers tens of thousands of dollars to patch their games. The company will continue to charge a certification fee for the initial submission of a game to XBLA, but future updates are now free.

The policy's critics have grown over the years, with the proliferation of the indie scene and the economic viability of just going to Steam, where updates are free. The most high-profile spat in recent times was between Microsoft and Fez developer Phil Fish, after a "nasty" bug was found that would wipe save files. Microsoft was going to charge its standard fee for Fish to update the game on Xbox Live, with Fish refusing to pay "tens of thousands of dollars." Fez 2 will not make its way to Xbox One.

With Sony's open courtship of the indie devs, not to mention the focus the company provided during their E3 press conference, Microsoft is on defense in terms of keeping the burgeoning scene happy in this era of digital distribution. The Xbox platform for indies (and their less substantial budgets) isn't what it once was back in the time of Limbo or Braid. But, you know, Microsoft is used to playing defense by now.

Microsoft reportedly drops XBLA developer patch fees originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 27 Jun 2013 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BrewDog Brewery has created #MashTag, a beer whose contents were voted on using Facebook, Twitter, and the BrewDog blog. Fans voted on the style, malt, alcohol percentage, hops, special flavor, label design, and even the name of the beer. The resulting beer is 7.5% American Brown Ale with New Zealand Hops aged with Hazelnuts and Oak chips. “We handed the keys to the brewery over to our fans,” BrewDog spokeswoman Sarah Warman told ABC News. “Every single element of that beer was decided by the public.”

Inspired by the passion, knowledge and enthusiasm of craft beer drinkers, we set out to create a truly democratic craft beer. We entrusted all the important decisions to our fans, customers and anyone who wanted to learn more about the craft brewing process and cast their vote. We gave up complete control of every single decision which shaped the final beer that the #MashTag project produced.

images via BrewDog

via ABC News

Nelson Mandela is still alive. But the relentless media vigil outside his hospital is annoying his family.

"I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” President Obama says at a news conference in Senegal, also promising to get even tougher on leaks, presumably beyond trying to charge reporters with espionage. (Oh, and he also said something boring about DOMA—awkward because Senegal criminalizes homosexuality.)

Obama's national security apparatus continued for two years a controversial Bush-era program that indiscriminately collected Americans' email and internet metadata, shutting it down only in 2011.

Two small reasons why DOMA's repeal matters in a very real way: Married same-sex couples can reap significant tax and social security benefits. And here's another reminder that Oregon's got a good chance of being next.

In California, which vigorously celebrated the demise of Proposition 8, same-sex couples might have to wait up to month before marriages finally resumes.

Bangladesh, where sweatshop factories collapse and burn down, is losing its trading privileges with the United States. That sounds tough, but the move won't actually affect its garment sector, meaning nothing will change for retailers like Walmart who rely on sweatshops for the cheap clothes they sell Americans.

Iran's ruling cleric claims the West doesn't actually want to solve the impasse over its nuclear ambitions because, otherwise, doing so would be totally "easy."

Texas' ruling cleric, Rick Perry, calls for a second legislative special session on abortion to thwart Tuesday's epic filibuster by Wendy Davis and dozens of beautifully loud protesters.

Alan Myers, Devo's best-known drummer, has died of cancer.

New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has vowed to veto late-night votes by the New York City Council to ban stop-and-frisk policing and layer in more independent oversight of the NYPD.

NO ONE LOVES YOU AS MUCH AS THESE PEOPLE LOVE "JIM." IT'S TRUE AND A FACT!

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Redditor passedoutoften, also known as Uniman166, practices juggling with the help of his cat in this video.

via reddit, Daily Picks and Flicks

OK, new neighbor, here's the deal: you and your drunk buddies celebrated your arrival to the neighborhood with some highly illegal fireworks. Freaked the fuck out of my dog. While walking him the next day, I introduced myself and asked about the celebratory pyrotechnics. I was hoping that the presence of my friendly brown-eyed hound would be enough to convince you to cut back a bit. Alas, no. Every. Fucking. Night. For. A. Week.

So, here's my warning: keep it up and I ain't curbing my dog from your front lawn. I walk my dog real early, while you're still sleeping it off, so we are guaranteed a clean getaway.

I suppose I should call the police, but this will be more satisfying. Welcome to the neighborhood!

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A report from the Mayo Clinic found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans take at least one prescription medication, and noted that antibiotics, antidepressants, and painkillers were the most frequently prescribed drugs in the U.S.

Michael M. Brown of Franklin, Tenn., faces a federal indictment for fraud and extortion after allegedly attempting to blackmail Mitt Romney during last year's presidential election campaign.  According to a Department of Justice press release, the indictment accuses Brown of falsely claiming to have hacked into the computer system of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and accessed tax returns for the Republican presidential nominee and his wife, Ann Romney, from before the year 2010.  Brown revealed his claim in a letter sent to PwC and the local Democratic and Republican party offices in Franklin; the letter "demanded that $1 million worth of the digital currency Bitcoin be deposited to a specific Bitcoin account to prevent the release of the purportedly stolen Romney tax returns.  The letter also invited interested parties who wanted the allegedly stolen Romney tax documents to be released to contribute $1 million to another Bitcoin account." 

National Public Radio has more on the indictment, plus an earlier report on the investigation leading to Brown's arrest.

For a mere $16, you can own this "CREDIBLE HULK ALWAYS CITES HIS SOURCES" tee. Goes well with the (as-yet-nonexistent) [CITATION NEEDED] shoelaces.

The Credible Hulk Always Cites His Sources : Reasonist Products (via Tor Teen Tumblr)

Happy reading folks, but stay safe out there.

There isn’t any point in denying that the outburst of sympathy and support that followed my confession to an attempt at self-slaughter last year (Richard Herring podcast) has touched me very deeply.

Some people, as some people always will, cannot understand that depression (or in my case cyclothymia, a form of bipolar disorder) is an illness and they are themselves perhaps the sufferers of a malady that one might call either an obsession with money, or a woeful lack of imagination.

“How can someone so well-off, well-known and successful have depression?” they ask. Alastair Campbell in a marvelous article, suggested changing the word “depression” to “cancer” or “diabetes” in order to reveal how, in its own way, sick a question, it is. Ill-natured, ill-informed, ill-willed or just plain ill, it’s hard to say.

But, most people, a surging, warm, caring majority, have been kind. Almost too kind. There’s something a little flustering and embarrassing when a taxi-driver shakes you by the hand, looks deep into your eyes and says “You look after yourself, mate, yes? Promise me?” And there’s something perhaps not too helpful to one’s mental health when it is the only subject people want to talk to you about, however kindly or for whatever reasons.

But I have nothing to complain about. I won’t go into the terrible details of the bottle of vodka, the mixture of pills and the closeness to permanent oblivion I came. You can imagine them and I don’t want to upset the poor TV producer and hotel staff who had to break down my door and find me in the unconscious state I was in, four broken ribs thanks to some sort of convulsive fit that must have overtaken me while I lay almost comatose, vomit dribbling from my mouth. You can picture the scene.

The episode, plus the relationship I now have with a magnificent psychiatrist, has made made my mental health better, I think, than it’s ever been. I used to think it utterly normal that I suffered from “suicidal ideation” on an almost daily basis. In other words, for as long as I can remember, the thought of ending my life came to me frequently and obsessively. But then it’s the thought behind the most famous speech in all history. To be, or not to be.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action…

Take time to read it slowly to yourself or out loud. I don’t have Hamlet’s wit (or Shakespeare’s of course) but every logical or doubtful step from line to line expresses better how hard I thought about the advantages and cursed (as I thought) disadvantages against suicide. The speech, for the most part, stayed my hand. As it did Hamlet’s.

But medicine, much as some don’t like to hear it, can help. I am on a regime of four a day. One is an SNRI, the other a mood-stabilizer. I haven’t considered suicide in anything other than a puzzled intellectual way since this pharmaceutical regime “kicked in”.

But I can still be sad. Perhaps you might go to my tumblr page and see what Bertrand Russell wrote about his abiding passions (it’s the last section of the page). I can be sad for the same reason he was, though I do so much less about it than that great man did. But I can be sad for personal reasons because I am often forlorn, unhappy and lonely. These are qualities all humans suffer from and do not qualify (except in their worst extremes) as mental illnesses.

Lonely? I get invitation cards through the post almost every day. I shall be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and I have serious and generous offers from friends asking me to join them in the South of France, Italy, Sicily, South Africa, British Columbia and America this summer. I have two months to start a book before I go off to Broadway for a run of Twelfth Night there.

I can read back that last sentence and see that, bipolar or not, if I’m under treatment and not actually depressed, what the fuck right do I have to be lonely, unhappy or forlorn? I don’t have the right. But there again I don’t have the right not to have those feelings. Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.

In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…

It’s not that I want a sexual partner, a long-term partner, someone to share a bed and a snuggle on the sofa with – although perhaps I do and in the past I have had and it has been joyful. But the fact is I value my privacy too. It’s a lose-lose matter. I don’t want to be alone, but I want to be left alone. Perhaps this is just a form of narcissism, vanity, overdemanding entitlement – give it whatever derogatory term you think it deserves. I don’t know the answer.

I suppose I just don’t like my own company very much. Which is odd, given how many times people very kindly tell me that they’d put me on their ideal dinner party guestlist. I do think I can usually be relied upon to be good company when I’m out and about and sitting round a table chatting, being silly, sharing jokes and stories and bringing shy people out of their shells.

But then I get home and I’m all alone again.

I don’t write this for sympathy. I don’t write it as part as my on going and undying commitment to the cause of mental health charities like Mind. I don’t quite know why I write it. I think I write it because it fascinates me.

And perhaps I am writing this for any of you out there who are lonely too. There’s not much we can do about it. I am luckier than many of you because I am lonely in a crowd of people who are mostly very nice to me and appear to be pleased to meet me. But I want you to know that you are not alone in your being alone.

Loneliness is not much written about (my spell-check wanted me to say that loveliness is not much written about – how wrong that is) but humankind is a social species and maybe it’s something we should think about more than we do. I cannot think of many plays or documentaries or novels about lonely people. Aah, look at them all, Paul McCartney enjoined us in Eleanor Rigby… where do they all come from?

The strange thing is, if you see me in the street and engage in conversation I will probably freeze into polite fear and smile inanely until I can get away to be on my lonely ownsome.

Make of that what you will.

Sx

 

The post Only The Lonely appeared first on Official site of Stephen Fry.