Olympic Torch, Gerstmann Sage End, IRS, and Blogging

Olympic Torch History - A brief history of the Olympic torch relay, which began as a way for Hitler to prove the perfection of Germany. Fortunately it didn't end there.

Gerstmann Saga Claims Its Creator - The firing of Jeff Gerstman last year set off a storm on the internet for showing the incestuous relationship between game publications and the game media. Since the firing (possibly unrelated) CNET has not done well financially, Gamespot's reputation has taken a massive hit and lost its core reviewer members. For legal reasons the full story of what has happened has never been released but the rumored cause of the whole PR fiasco is Josh Larson whose background is sales yet was in charge of editorial. The result was the separation between the two was all but destroyed. This is denied of course but experience has shown me when managers don't know something, rather then learn from those that do, they fall back on what they think they know. In his case, money and sales. His failure finally led to the results most felt was necessary to repair CNET's reputation, sadly too little too late. Gerstmann has moved on though, starting a new venture called Giant Bomb which appears to be a mixture of Joystiq and Gamespot but it’s too new to say what the final result will be.

Avoid an IRS Audit - Taxes are do very soon, just a few hints to avoid getting red-flagged.

Stressful World of Blogging - Story about how stressful the professional blogging world can be in the quest to be first on the story (personally I never notice who is first). Since I am an amateur I don't have to worry about the stress but nor do I make any money so there you go. Helps that I use this shortened blogging method to do everything at once so it doesn't interfere with my paying job.