The Procrastinator’s Pitstop

Sony is expected to launch Home later today.  Home, which will be available for PS3 users, rivals the formerly popular SecondLife and allows players to create avatars that interact with other virtual characters in cyberspace.

Sony’s Home joins the PS3’s video download functionality which has 15 million subscribers worldwide.

Yesterday, Google finally completed its merger with DoubleClick after the EU approved the deal.

“We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman-CEO. “With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display-ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users.”

Within the last week I heard someone say “I wish I could get paid for every interview I’ve been on…”.  Who knew they were on the right track? NotchUp is a site where potential employers actually pay you to interview with them.  Fueled by the theory that employers will save money without having to pay recruiters a percentage of a hire’s salary, NotchUp has the potential to lure an otherwise happy employee away from a content working environment to help staff organizations with dire staffing needs.  Prices range per interview, and can be calculated online with NotchUp’s interview price calculator.

Enjoy

Forbes has released an updated list of the world’s richest people, and after 13 years we have a new leader.  Warren Buffet is now the world’s richest man, having increased his fortune by $10 billion to a estimated total of $62 billion. 

Bill Gates had been the world’s richest man for the previous 13 years.  Gates, who is worth $58 billion dollars, has dropped to #3 on this year’s list.

The top 20 include:

Last night I was exhausted, yet by the time I got home and finally shut my laptop down I found that I just couldn’t fall asleep! And to make matters worse, as I was counting lots of fuzzy white sheep I heard on the news that Americans are sleeping less and it’s all because of work!  Duh, this is old news, right?  But a new survey by the National Sleep Foundation shows that people are spending an average of 4.5 hours each week doing additional work from home, on top of a 9.5 hour average work day.  After daily tasks such as commuting to and from work and dinner, who has time to live an actual life anymore?

Even worse yet, recent estimates suggest that the overtired workforce costs the economy between $50 and $130 billion each year due to lost job productivity, accidents, injuries and medical conditions.

Gift cards are so easy to buy, but how easy are they to spend?  With the recent holiday season, it is probably safe to assume that you were one of many who either gave or received gift cards as presents - when you can’t, or don’t want to, think of what to buy… get a gift card for that special someone’s favorite store, right?  Oh, but listen to this!  The Sharper Image is “suspending the acceptance of Gift Cards, Reward Cards, Gift Certificates or Merchandise Certificates as a form of payment”.  (Nope, I’m not kidding!)  The company plans to continue on with business as usual even though The Sharper Image commenced a case under chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Court for the District of Delaware on February 19, 2008. 

If you, or a loved one, still have a wallet full of unused Sharper Image gift cards, continue to look for updates at www.sharperimage.com, call customer service at: 1:800-344-5555, and visit www.kccllc.net/sharperimage for all public filings related to the case.