Trends

To video game publishers, Mark Weiner is both a dream come true and a nightmare. The 23-year-old San Francisco Bay Area operations analyst likes to pounce on the latest blockbuster releases. He spends dozens of hours a week playing a wide range of titles. "I am passionate about games," he said. This should be good for game companies such as Activision Blizzard Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. and Ubisoft Entertainment, which publish many of the titles Weiner likes to play. But it's not welcome news.

HD Radio, introduced amid much hype in 2004 as a way to digitally improve the sound of FM and AM stations, has never much caught the ears of U.S. radio listeners. Special receivers -- most of which are relatively expensive, tabletop models -- have to be bought to pick up the HD Radio signals. And the sound improvement, while noticeable, is not all that startling on FM. "For most people, FM is quite sufficient," said Richard Robinson, an analyst at research firm iSuppli Corp.

The fishing boats and hiking trails offer a welcome respite for countless visitors at the Wagon Trail Resort along Lake Michigan. This summer, however, the getaway has also become a lifeline for casualties of the economy who are about to go under. A factory worker once employed by General Motors awakens before dawn to oversee an assembly line of pastries in the bakery. A husband and wife who lost their business and home now staff the buffet and reception desk. Throughout the region, employers and job-placement officials have reported a rush of applications from American workers who are interested in hard-to-fill seasonal jobs, many of which traditionally go to foreign students.

Cash remittances from Mexicans living abroad keep tumbling, with a second-quarter drop of 17.9% compared with the same period last year, officials said Tuesday. Mexico's central bank said remittances for April through June fell to $5.6 billion, continuing a downward trend that has lasted more than a year. The money transfers are off 12% during the first six months of 2009, compared with the first half of 2008. The latest report was no surprise, but it spelled more gloomy news for Mexico's limping economy, which has been hammered by declining oil earnings, a sharp drop in exports and a flu crisis during the spring that put a big dent in tourism.

In the United States, video of a wedding party boogieing down the aisle was about to become a summer sensation on YouTube, viewed more than 20 million times. At the same time in China, the latest Internet obsession began with an anonymous post on a computer gaming forum: "Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to come home and eat." Was it a vexed parent hunting down her Internet-addicted child in cyberspace? A cheeky gamer poking fun at one of his buddies? Or simply an idler with a sense of humor?

If the fall season on display six months ago was all about Michael Jackson -- extreme shoulder-padded 1980s -- then spring is about the deconstructed, ripped and slashed, ugly/pretty anti-fashion 1980s that was ushered in by Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and other Japanese designers. During the just concluded New York Fashion Week, Marc Jacobs referenced the mood most faithfully with his extravaganza of underwear as outerwear, gender-bending ruffle-trimmed pinstripe jackets, and clownish playsuits with harlequin cutouts.

After logging thousands of miles over the last month, going from one fashion capital to the next, one runway extravaganza to another, it's time for a reality check. Alexander McQueen's Atlantis fantasy and Chanel's high-class hoedown were something to look at -- and blog and Tweet about. But come spring, what will they mean to a woman's wardrobe? And will they mean enough that she will buck the retail trend and actually spend on clothes? That's the challenge for the store buyers who hit the designer showrooms after everyone else has gone home, for photographers who spin visual fantasies to sell clothes in advertising campaigns and glossy magazines spreads, and for editors and stylists who will ultimately try to teach women how to wear what's new when it hits the racks in four months' time.

Jazz musician Bill Cunliffe loves television -- but he doesn't watch it on a TV set. "I can watch anything I want, any time I want," he said, "on my bottom-of-the-line Mac PowerBook." Cunliffe, 53, is one of a growing number of TV viewers who get all their programs via the Internet. For reasons that include saving money, convenience, personal choice and a hatred of commercials, these viewers are cutting the cord from cable, satellite and telephone suppliers of TV service, and even throwing away the rabbit ears and other antennas that brought in over-the-air broadcasts.

The economic decline is continuing to ravage the nation's hospitals, with half of them operating in the red and many planning service and staffing cuts, two new reports show. Hospitals are ailing because of a number of problems hitting in close succession. First, hospitals' investment incomes plummeted -- like everybody's -- eliminating a cushion for operating budgets and curtailing capital spending. Then, the mix of patients began to shift: Paying admissions declined as people put off elective procedures and insurers tightened their grip on the length of hospital stays they covered.

Last week I asked readers of this column to send in questions about the Web and social media. The premise was that, because I do much of my writing for The Times' Technology blog, I often interact with online readers, for whom leaving a comment is a fast and frictionless process. But the print newspaper is not an interactive medium, which makes conversations with readers -- and between them -- a trickier proposition. So I thought I'd try an experiment and attempt to bring an online-style discussion into print.