Next time you hear an economist or denizen of Wall Street talk about how the "American economy" is doing these days, watch your wallet.
There are two American economies. One is on the mend. The other is still coming apart.
The one that's mending is America's Big Money economy. It's comprised of Wall Street traders, big investors, and top professionals and corporate executives.
The Big Money economy is doing well these days. That's partly thanks to Ben Bernanke, whose Fed is keeping interest rates near zero by printing money as fast as it dare. It's essentially free money to America's Big Money economy.
Free money can almost always be put to uses that create more of it. Big corporations are buying back their shares of stock, thereby boosting corporate earnings. They're merging and acquiring other companies.
And they're going abroad in search of customers.
Thanks to fast-growing China, India, and Brazil, giant American corporations are racking up sales. They're selling Asian and Latin American consumers everything from cars and cell phones to fancy Internet software and iPads. Forty percent of the S&P 500 biggest corporations are now doing more than 60 percent of their business abroad. And America's biggest investors are also going abroad to get a nice return on their money.
So don't worry about America's Big Money economy. According to a Wall Street Journal survey released Thursday, overall compensation in financial services will rise 5 percent this year, and employees in some businesses like asset management will get increases of 15 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is back to where it was before the Lehman bankruptcy filing triggered the financial collapse. And profits at America's largest corporations are heading upward.
But there's another American economy, and it's not on the mend. Call it the Average Worker economy.
Last Friday's jobs report showed 159,000 new private-sector jobs in October. That's better than previous months. But 125,000 net new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the American labor force. So another way of expressing what happened to jobs in October is to say 24,000 were added over what we need just to stay even.
Yet the American economy has lost 15 million jobs since the start of the Great Recession. And if you add in the growth of the labor force -- including everyone too discouraged to look for a job -- we're down about 22 million.
Or to put it another way, we're still getting nowhere on jobs.
One out of eight breadwinners is still out of work. Most families in the Average Worker economy rely on two breadwinners. So if one out of eight isn't working, chances are high that family incomes are down compared to what they were three years ago.
And that means the bills aren't getting paid.
According to a recent Washington Post poll, more than half of all Americans -- 53 percent -- are worried about making their mortgage payments. This is many more than were worried two years ago, when the Great Recession hit bottom. Then, 37 percent expressed worry.
Delinquency rates on home loans are rising. Distressed sales are up as a percent of total sales.
Most people in the Average Worker economy own few shares of stock, if any. Their equity is in their homes. But with all the delinquencies and distressed sales, the housing market has a glut of homes for sale. As a result, home prices are still dropping. So the net worth of most Americans is still dropping.
And even though interest rates are falling, most people in the Average Worker economy can't refinance their homes. They can't get home equity loans. Banks don't want to lend to the Average Worker economy because people in it are considered bad credit risks. They still owe lots of money, their family incomes are down, and their net worth has fallen.
And according to the Reuters/University of Michigan survey of American consumers, expectations about personal finances are at an all time low.
Inhabitants of the Big Money economy are celebrating Republican wins last week. They figure financial regulations will be rolled back, environmental regulations will be canned, the Bush tax cut will be extended to the top 1 percent, and it will be harder for workers to form unions.
Inhabitants of the Average Worker economy aren't so sure. The economy has been so bad they're angry at politicians. They showed their anger at the ballot box. They took it out on incumbents.
But if nothing changes in the Average Worker economy, there will be hell to pay.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
TV is coming to the Web and there is nothing that can stop it. Just ask Avner Ronen, the CEO of Web TV startup Boxee. Later tonight, he will announce the general availability of his Boxee Box, a small device you hook up to your TV and the Internet so you can watch video from the Web on your TV. The videos come not only from YouTube, but also from ABC.com, NBC.com, CBS.com, Comedy Central, and many other video sites on the Web. I visited Ronen today at his New York City offices where he gave me a demo of the Boxee Box (more on that in a later post), but we also got into a very interesting discussion about how the major TV networks and media companies are reacting to seeing their Web videos increasingly turning up on large-screen TVs.
As he describes in the video below, Ronen argues that the media companies should be more consistent: either charge for videos on the Web or make it free, or go for the freemium model and offer premium video watching experiences on devices like Boxee and the iPad or an additional fee. He reveals that Boxee is working on a payments platform to support such subscription business models on the Boxee service. Furthermore, Hulu Plus will become available on Boxee as a paid option. Yup, the same Hulu that previously blocked Boxee
It is not a foregone conclusion that the media companies who control the most popular TV shows and movies will play along. Just last month, when Google launched its competing Google TV, it was almost immediately blocked by the major TV networks even though it was simply grabbing video freely available on the Web. Hulu also blocked Google TV. Effectively, the media industry is now discriminating based on device and what kind of browser you are using.
Why wouldn’t they do exactly the same thing to the Boxee Box? “I think that is a reasonable assumption to make,” admits Ronen. But he believes that eventually they will come around. “Our view is that ultimately it does not make sense for content owners to discriminate based on browsers and screen size. It is an endless battle. ”
I pointed out that what seems to be happening instead is that the TV networks and movie studios are trying to replicate the business model of cable TV on the Web, by granting access only to services which pay them hefty fees like Netflix does (to the tune of an estimated $2 billion next year).
Ronen is actually fine with making people pay for content, and in fact says that he will make one-click payments part of the Boxee service itself. Next year,” he reveals, “we will launch a payments platform on Boxee. With one click you will be able to subscribe. We think that will be part of the solution.” You can watch videos behind Web paywalls today on Boxee, but you have to enter a different username and password for each site. Boxee’s payment service would be single sign-on and manage all the subscriptions in one place.
What he suggests is a classic freemium model. If you want new shows and videos as soon as they come out in HD, you pay a few bucks a month to NBC or HBO and you can watch those shows on Boxee, your iPad, your computer or anywhere you want. Then a week or so later, it comes out free on the Web in standard definition with ads. The we-support-subscriptions argument is also one the Google TV folks are making.
The media companies are fine with Netflix streaming their movies and shows because Netflix pays them a bunch of money. But where their model breaks down is that often they offer the same TV shows on their own Websites for free. “While they are comfortable with the Netflix model, they are not comfortable with their own services online. I think it is better if they have an online business model that they believe in.”
Watch the shaky-cam video below for more of his thoughts on the matter.
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
Next time you hear an economist or denizen of Wall Street talk about how the "American economy" is doing these days, watch your wallet.
There are two American economies. One is on the mend. The other is still coming apart.
The one that's mending is America's Big Money economy. It's comprised of Wall Street traders, big investors, and top professionals and corporate executives.
The Big Money economy is doing well these days. That's partly thanks to Ben Bernanke, whose Fed is keeping interest rates near zero by printing money as fast as it dare. It's essentially free money to America's Big Money economy.
Free money can almost always be put to uses that create more of it. Big corporations are buying back their shares of stock, thereby boosting corporate earnings. They're merging and acquiring other companies.
And they're going abroad in search of customers.
Thanks to fast-growing China, India, and Brazil, giant American corporations are racking up sales. They're selling Asian and Latin American consumers everything from cars and cell phones to fancy Internet software and iPads. Forty percent of the S&P 500 biggest corporations are now doing more than 60 percent of their business abroad. And America's biggest investors are also going abroad to get a nice return on their money.
So don't worry about America's Big Money economy. According to a Wall Street Journal survey released Thursday, overall compensation in financial services will rise 5 percent this year, and employees in some businesses like asset management will get increases of 15 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is back to where it was before the Lehman bankruptcy filing triggered the financial collapse. And profits at America's largest corporations are heading upward.
But there's another American economy, and it's not on the mend. Call it the Average Worker economy.
Last Friday's jobs report showed 159,000 new private-sector jobs in October. That's better than previous months. But 125,000 net new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the American labor force. So another way of expressing what happened to jobs in October is to say 24,000 were added over what we need just to stay even.
Yet the American economy has lost 15 million jobs since the start of the Great Recession. And if you add in the growth of the labor force -- including everyone too discouraged to look for a job -- we're down about 22 million.
Or to put it another way, we're still getting nowhere on jobs.
One out of eight breadwinners is still out of work. Most families in the Average Worker economy rely on two breadwinners. So if one out of eight isn't working, chances are high that family incomes are down compared to what they were three years ago.
And that means the bills aren't getting paid.
According to a recent Washington Post poll, more than half of all Americans -- 53 percent -- are worried about making their mortgage payments. This is many more than were worried two years ago, when the Great Recession hit bottom. Then, 37 percent expressed worry.
Delinquency rates on home loans are rising. Distressed sales are up as a percent of total sales.
Most people in the Average Worker economy own few shares of stock, if any. Their equity is in their homes. But with all the delinquencies and distressed sales, the housing market has a glut of homes for sale. As a result, home prices are still dropping. So the net worth of most Americans is still dropping.
And even though interest rates are falling, most people in the Average Worker economy can't refinance their homes. They can't get home equity loans. Banks don't want to lend to the Average Worker economy because people in it are considered bad credit risks. They still owe lots of money, their family incomes are down, and their net worth has fallen.
And according to the Reuters/University of Michigan survey of American consumers, expectations about personal finances are at an all time low.
Inhabitants of the Big Money economy are celebrating Republican wins last week. They figure financial regulations will be rolled back, environmental regulations will be canned, the Bush tax cut will be extended to the top 1 percent, and it will be harder for workers to form unions.
Inhabitants of the Average Worker economy aren't so sure. The economy has been so bad they're angry at politicians. They showed their anger at the ballot box. They took it out on incumbents.
But if nothing changes in the Average Worker economy, there will be hell to pay.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
TV is coming to the Web and there is nothing that can stop it. Just ask Avner Ronen, the CEO of Web TV startup Boxee. Later tonight, he will announce the general availability of his Boxee Box, a small device you hook up to your TV and the Internet so you can watch video from the Web on your TV. The videos come not only from YouTube, but also from ABC.com, NBC.com, CBS.com, Comedy Central, and many other video sites on the Web. I visited Ronen today at his New York City offices where he gave me a demo of the Boxee Box (more on that in a later post), but we also got into a very interesting discussion about how the major TV networks and media companies are reacting to seeing their Web videos increasingly turning up on large-screen TVs.
As he describes in the video below, Ronen argues that the media companies should be more consistent: either charge for videos on the Web or make it free, or go for the freemium model and offer premium video watching experiences on devices like Boxee and the iPad or an additional fee. He reveals that Boxee is working on a payments platform to support such subscription business models on the Boxee service. Furthermore, Hulu Plus will become available on Boxee as a paid option. Yup, the same Hulu that previously blocked Boxee
It is not a foregone conclusion that the media companies who control the most popular TV shows and movies will play along. Just last month, when Google launched its competing Google TV, it was almost immediately blocked by the major TV networks even though it was simply grabbing video freely available on the Web. Hulu also blocked Google TV. Effectively, the media industry is now discriminating based on device and what kind of browser you are using.
Why wouldn’t they do exactly the same thing to the Boxee Box? “I think that is a reasonable assumption to make,” admits Ronen. But he believes that eventually they will come around. “Our view is that ultimately it does not make sense for content owners to discriminate based on browsers and screen size. It is an endless battle. ”
I pointed out that what seems to be happening instead is that the TV networks and movie studios are trying to replicate the business model of cable TV on the Web, by granting access only to services which pay them hefty fees like Netflix does (to the tune of an estimated $2 billion next year).
Ronen is actually fine with making people pay for content, and in fact says that he will make one-click payments part of the Boxee service itself. Next year,” he reveals, “we will launch a payments platform on Boxee. With one click you will be able to subscribe. We think that will be part of the solution.” You can watch videos behind Web paywalls today on Boxee, but you have to enter a different username and password for each site. Boxee’s payment service would be single sign-on and manage all the subscriptions in one place.
What he suggests is a classic freemium model. If you want new shows and videos as soon as they come out in HD, you pay a few bucks a month to NBC or HBO and you can watch those shows on Boxee, your iPad, your computer or anywhere you want. Then a week or so later, it comes out free on the Web in standard definition with ads. The we-support-subscriptions argument is also one the Google TV folks are making.
The media companies are fine with Netflix streaming their movies and shows because Netflix pays them a bunch of money. But where their model breaks down is that often they offer the same TV shows on their own Websites for free. “While they are comfortable with the Netflix model, they are not comfortable with their own services online. I think it is better if they have an online business model that they believe in.”
Watch the shaky-cam video below for more of his thoughts on the matter.
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
Next time you hear an economist or denizen of Wall Street talk about how the "American economy" is doing these days, watch your wallet.
There are two American economies. One is on the mend. The other is still coming apart.
The one that's mending is America's Big Money economy. It's comprised of Wall Street traders, big investors, and top professionals and corporate executives.
The Big Money economy is doing well these days. That's partly thanks to Ben Bernanke, whose Fed is keeping interest rates near zero by printing money as fast as it dare. It's essentially free money to America's Big Money economy.
Free money can almost always be put to uses that create more of it. Big corporations are buying back their shares of stock, thereby boosting corporate earnings. They're merging and acquiring other companies.
And they're going abroad in search of customers.
Thanks to fast-growing China, India, and Brazil, giant American corporations are racking up sales. They're selling Asian and Latin American consumers everything from cars and cell phones to fancy Internet software and iPads. Forty percent of the S&P 500 biggest corporations are now doing more than 60 percent of their business abroad. And America's biggest investors are also going abroad to get a nice return on their money.
So don't worry about America's Big Money economy. According to a Wall Street Journal survey released Thursday, overall compensation in financial services will rise 5 percent this year, and employees in some businesses like asset management will get increases of 15 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is back to where it was before the Lehman bankruptcy filing triggered the financial collapse. And profits at America's largest corporations are heading upward.
But there's another American economy, and it's not on the mend. Call it the Average Worker economy.
Last Friday's jobs report showed 159,000 new private-sector jobs in October. That's better than previous months. But 125,000 net new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the American labor force. So another way of expressing what happened to jobs in October is to say 24,000 were added over what we need just to stay even.
Yet the American economy has lost 15 million jobs since the start of the Great Recession. And if you add in the growth of the labor force -- including everyone too discouraged to look for a job -- we're down about 22 million.
Or to put it another way, we're still getting nowhere on jobs.
One out of eight breadwinners is still out of work. Most families in the Average Worker economy rely on two breadwinners. So if one out of eight isn't working, chances are high that family incomes are down compared to what they were three years ago.
And that means the bills aren't getting paid.
According to a recent Washington Post poll, more than half of all Americans -- 53 percent -- are worried about making their mortgage payments. This is many more than were worried two years ago, when the Great Recession hit bottom. Then, 37 percent expressed worry.
Delinquency rates on home loans are rising. Distressed sales are up as a percent of total sales.
Most people in the Average Worker economy own few shares of stock, if any. Their equity is in their homes. But with all the delinquencies and distressed sales, the housing market has a glut of homes for sale. As a result, home prices are still dropping. So the net worth of most Americans is still dropping.
And even though interest rates are falling, most people in the Average Worker economy can't refinance their homes. They can't get home equity loans. Banks don't want to lend to the Average Worker economy because people in it are considered bad credit risks. They still owe lots of money, their family incomes are down, and their net worth has fallen.
And according to the Reuters/University of Michigan survey of American consumers, expectations about personal finances are at an all time low.
Inhabitants of the Big Money economy are celebrating Republican wins last week. They figure financial regulations will be rolled back, environmental regulations will be canned, the Bush tax cut will be extended to the top 1 percent, and it will be harder for workers to form unions.
Inhabitants of the Average Worker economy aren't so sure. The economy has been so bad they're angry at politicians. They showed their anger at the ballot box. They took it out on incumbents.
But if nothing changes in the Average Worker economy, there will be hell to pay.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
TV is coming to the Web and there is nothing that can stop it. Just ask Avner Ronen, the CEO of Web TV startup Boxee. Later tonight, he will announce the general availability of his Boxee Box, a small device you hook up to your TV and the Internet so you can watch video from the Web on your TV. The videos come not only from YouTube, but also from ABC.com, NBC.com, CBS.com, Comedy Central, and many other video sites on the Web. I visited Ronen today at his New York City offices where he gave me a demo of the Boxee Box (more on that in a later post), but we also got into a very interesting discussion about how the major TV networks and media companies are reacting to seeing their Web videos increasingly turning up on large-screen TVs.
As he describes in the video below, Ronen argues that the media companies should be more consistent: either charge for videos on the Web or make it free, or go for the freemium model and offer premium video watching experiences on devices like Boxee and the iPad or an additional fee. He reveals that Boxee is working on a payments platform to support such subscription business models on the Boxee service. Furthermore, Hulu Plus will become available on Boxee as a paid option. Yup, the same Hulu that previously blocked Boxee
It is not a foregone conclusion that the media companies who control the most popular TV shows and movies will play along. Just last month, when Google launched its competing Google TV, it was almost immediately blocked by the major TV networks even though it was simply grabbing video freely available on the Web. Hulu also blocked Google TV. Effectively, the media industry is now discriminating based on device and what kind of browser you are using.
Why wouldn’t they do exactly the same thing to the Boxee Box? “I think that is a reasonable assumption to make,” admits Ronen. But he believes that eventually they will come around. “Our view is that ultimately it does not make sense for content owners to discriminate based on browsers and screen size. It is an endless battle. ”
I pointed out that what seems to be happening instead is that the TV networks and movie studios are trying to replicate the business model of cable TV on the Web, by granting access only to services which pay them hefty fees like Netflix does (to the tune of an estimated $2 billion next year).
Ronen is actually fine with making people pay for content, and in fact says that he will make one-click payments part of the Boxee service itself. Next year,” he reveals, “we will launch a payments platform on Boxee. With one click you will be able to subscribe. We think that will be part of the solution.” You can watch videos behind Web paywalls today on Boxee, but you have to enter a different username and password for each site. Boxee’s payment service would be single sign-on and manage all the subscriptions in one place.
What he suggests is a classic freemium model. If you want new shows and videos as soon as they come out in HD, you pay a few bucks a month to NBC or HBO and you can watch those shows on Boxee, your iPad, your computer or anywhere you want. Then a week or so later, it comes out free on the Web in standard definition with ads. The we-support-subscriptions argument is also one the Google TV folks are making.
The media companies are fine with Netflix streaming their movies and shows because Netflix pays them a bunch of money. But where their model breaks down is that often they offer the same TV shows on their own Websites for free. “While they are comfortable with the Netflix model, they are not comfortable with their own services online. I think it is better if they have an online business model that they believe in.”
Watch the shaky-cam video below for more of his thoughts on the matter.
eric seiger
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
The video games industry has grown into billions of dollars a year. Game console and software creators like Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony create games and consoles for the average person like you and me hoping they will generate a revenue. These companies attempt to make sure that every game they release has the greatest profit margin possible. As such, before any piece of software gets released to the public they must first be tested and debugged. This is where you come in and make money by play testing games. Making money by playing games can be one of the best jobs imaginable. If you love to play video games, why not get paid doing so? It's akin to being a professional athlete, except you don't have to be physically fit and can work in the comfort of any office chair or couch!
Software companies need folks to test their games extensively before they are able to ship and release them. They are willing and able to compensate you for your time and effort so why not let them. Basically what you will be doing is playing the game and relaying how you feel about it to the designers. They're looking for feedback like, "the difficulty is too extreme, why did that character just say that? or bugs that may and quite often will happen". The main responsibility as a game tester is to test the game and document any bugs that may occur as you play.
Should a game be released without this kind of play testing, the software company could lose thousands of dollars from poor reviews of the game. As well, bugs and glitches can very seriously hinder the chances a game has of achieving success. This all sounds fantastic, but how does one get into the business of play testing games?
Before you can attain a job as a game tester, there are some basic requirements you should be aware of.
Usually almost anyone can get paid to play games, but there are a few basics that must be met. For example, most software companies will not hire play testers younger than 18 years old. If you are younger, then perhaps you should shelve this aspiration for the time being. Other than meeting the age requirement and having a professional demeanor and an eagerness for the gaming industry, there aren't many more requirements that must be met.
Earning a living as a play tester does have some obvious advantages compared to any other job. The most obvious of which is that you get to play games before anyone else! As well, oftentimes you will be allowed to keep the games you play test, for free! Play testing is also a great way to break into the software development industry, provides excellent material for your resume, and is simply one of the most entertaining ways to make a living available.
If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, and who wouldn't, I encourage you to follow your dreams and get into the game testing field. I think you'll find it immensely rewarding.
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
Taiwanese <b>News</b> Channel Animates Mel Gibson! | PerezHilton.com
It certainly took them long enough, but wow, was it worth the wait! This is their best yet!!!! Check out Taiwan´s animated take on the mess that is Mel Gibson´s life (above)! Your eyes...
Emanuel Launches Campaign With Tax Pledge / Chicago <b>News</b> Cooperative
City Clerk Miguel del Valle will enter the race formally on Monday, an aide told the Chicago News Cooperative. Yet another would-be mayor, former Daley aide Gery Chico, continued his petition drive for nominating signatures Saturday in ...
Joe Lieberman Could Face Bad <b>News</b> On Guaranteed Ballot Line
Add the Connecticut for Lieberman party as one of the losers in last week's election: the party's candidate for US, Senate, John Mertens, apparently failed to get at least 1 percent of the vote, which would mean the loss of its ...
eric seiger
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