MK Vs DC

Midway just announced that the next Mortal Kombat game will be called Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. The DC Universe, you know, Brandon Routh, Christian Bale, err.... Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and all the rest.

What is this, the late 90s?

Way back when, the Marvel vs Capcom games were awesome. Mainly because Street Fighter is awesome and Marvel is awesome.

Mortal Kombat hasn't been a good game since MK Trilogy on PSX and has pretty much fallen off the pop culture radar. Plus, the only successful DC property right now is Batman (which is likely why he's in this game's logo). The game is probably going to be terrible, like pretty much all DC-based games. I'm going to buy it, though, its just too goofy to pass up. Check out the official website here.

Source: http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/04/18/mortal-kombat-vs-dc-universe/

Yahoo! OneConnect

When it comes to mobile applications, Yahoo! is king, at least on my Nokia 6126. I use Yahoo! Go everyday to search, map, check my e-mail, check the weather forecast, and read the news. Its attractive, easy to use, and has a lot of features in one place. If any company is going to make the ultimate mobile social networking service, its Yahoo!

Later this year, Yahoo! will be launching their next mobile app, Yahoo! OneConnect, and it has me really excited for the future of mobile social networking. It going to support IM (including AIM, who uses Yahoo! Messenger anyway?), social networking (including MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. According to this News.com article, the service will also let you know if any of your friends are nearby, using GPS and/or triangulation.

For all the great possibilities of this service, it could potentially take internet stalking to a whole new level, and turn it into real stalking. As with anything else, people will need to be extra careful with who they link up with on Yahoo! OneConnect.

Even with those reservations, I can't possibly express how cool this app will be. Just check out the website for even more info. Also check out this video for a demonstration of the service.

YouTube and the race for President

YouTube's YouChoose '08 channel is an interesting example how the internet can both help and hurt candidates. Today, on the channel's front page, there is a link to this video making fun of Hilary Clinton's chances in the upcoming election.

The link to this video is directly below the link to the Clinton campaign's official YouTube page. That is certainly not something that Mrs. Clinton would appreciate being there.

While the internet provides a medium for politicians to share their views, recruit supporters, and rally their base, it also allows them to be ridiculed in the same space. As much the campaigns try to present the perfect image of their candidates, there's no stopping something like this.

Recruiting Blogs?

I was reading Microsoft's JobsBlog, and I don't really understand the point of it. If this is a "recruiter blog," what does it have to do with recruiting? Is this blog supposed to recruit people to work at Microsoft? Or is it just supposed to be good PR for Microsoft? Most of the posts are related to job-search topics, and few are related to Microsoft. Can anyone help me out here?

The future of the news

Its no secret that the old fashioned news outlets are dying out. According to this article from Media Life Magazine, the old stalwarts of the TV news, the network evening news broadcasts, are losing of much of their younger viewers to cable news and the internet. And newspapers continue to decline in readership.

While I do not think the future predicted in the EPIC 2014 video will happen exactly as portrayed, we are on way to something similar. Already the signs are there. Technologies like Google Reader combined with subject specific blogs and news sites allow people to get there news on very specific topics from very specific viewpoints. While the regular newsmedia has its share of bias, its nothing compared to some of the blogs and websites out there. Instead of the internet making us less ignorant, it may end up making us more so.

Collaboration

I think online collaboration has great potential. Say an organization needs to have a document created by managers in 3 locations across the country. A number of relatively recent developments allow that document to be created in the virtual, without resorting to costly travel.

By now most everyone has heard of Skype, the free VOIP service. It allows anymore to call another computer with for free, and it also provides video call service too. Combine Skype with the collaborative features Google Docs, which lets you collaborate in real time with other people on documents, spreadsheets, and presentation, and its like your in the same room.

Skype itself has some sweet collaborative features, too. There are many plugins that allows for things like screen sharing, virtual whiteboards, etc.

Lynda Gratton, in her article for the Sloan Management Review, makes a few good point sabout online collaboration. Most notably, organizations need to make it easy for online collaborators to learn about each other, and that its best that some colloborators already know each other. Teams will be much more productive if they know where others responsibilities lie and what others are skilled at.

Networking for a job

Last summer, I got incredibly lucky. After the spring semester ended, I was planning on going home and going back to the Supermarket I worked at in high school. A few days later, my dad lets me know that the company he works for needs college students to test their new software. It was a great job with great pay for a summer job, and I learned a lot about IT.

Its March and I still haven't found a job for the summer. I doubt something like the testing job is going to happen again. I'm going to start taking the advice in this article from Boston.com. It'll be tough, but I think I can do it.

Before I embark on that journey, I just posted my resume on Monster.com. Hopefully that works out. By the way, I really hate that website, way to many obnoxious ads.

I looked into some websites for business networking, like LinkedIn.com, and I'm going to them a try. If enough of my friends sign up, I think it could end being extremely useful once I graduate.