Saturday, September 5, 2009
Weekend Update: 9.5.2009–One for the Kids
The week that took us from August to September was one for the books over at BoomTown, especially if you’re 12.
Kara spent Monday morning at Activision Blizzard, where they are pushing forward with the entire Guitar Hero line, even as the game industry faces a nearly 50 percent decline in U.S. sales this year. Kara got to play hero to several of the forthcoming releases, including previewing the much anticipated DJ Hero console.
Another first for former Brocade Communications Systems CEO Greg Reyes. He was the first Silicon Valley CEO to be indicted on federal charges in the options backdating scandal of a few years ago and the first to be found guilty. And on Tuesday, he became the first to have his conviction overturned.
Technically, the term refers to the frenzied flow of games and the intensity of the contenders for the NCAA Championship crown. But the NCAA doesn’t have a corner on “March Madness”–those descriptors work well in other instances, too. To wit:
In Silicon Valley, it’s hard to believe that not everyone follows each shiny new thing on the Web, tracks OS versions as intently as the storyline for “Battlestar Galactica” and remains jacked-in pretty much 24/7. But it’s been known to happen.
Another grim report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics today shows the job market slipping closer still to the grim levels it reached in 1982. The country lost 651,000 jobs in February, pushing the national unemployment rate to 8.1 percent, the Bureau said Friday. That’s its highest rate in 25 years.
What an uncomfortable moment for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the CIO Summit Wednesday. Fielding questions at the event, Ballmer was asked how best to handle workers who prefer consumer handsets like the iPhone to Windows Mobile devices, which are more apt to meet the security requirements of large organizations. His answer left something to be desired.
