Sunday, March 8, 2009
Weekend Update, 03.07.09
Will [insert company name here] find a viable revenue strategy any time soon? Everyone’s hustling, that’s for sure. It’s this week’s theme.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Shut Up, Kindle
Rather than argue with the Authors Guild over the text-to-speech feature of its new Kindle 2 e-book reader, Amazon is modifying the device’s software to make it optional. Authors and publishers will now be able to decide if they want the function enabled or not on titles for which they own the rights.
Authors Guild President: What, Then, of the Playing and Talking Machines?
The idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech “audiobooks” like those provided by Amazon’s Kindle 2 might seem ludicrous now, but will that be the case in a few years when the device’s grating text-to-speech voice has been inevitably humanized? A reasonable question, and one that Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, poses in an Op Ed in the New York Times today.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Authors Guild to Kindle: Shut Up When You’re Talking to Me
The Authors Guild, a trade group that once maligned Amazon for its ”notorious used-book service,” is at it again–this time taking issue with the text-to-speech feature of the retailer’s new Kindle 2 e-book reader. Seems it feels the device oversteps its bounds by creating rudimentary audiobooks for which it doesn’t own the rights. But as author Neil Gaiman notes, the idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech just seems silly.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Weekend Update, 02.07.09
What spreads faster than economic gloom and doom, and is more infectious than professional anxiety? That phenomenon known as “25 Things.” Just in time for Facebook’s fifth birthday, the record-breaking waste of time may have reached critical mass this week. Elsewhere this week…
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Amazon: Crash Proof?
Back in December, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos claimed that the 2008 holiday season would be the company’s best yet, but he offered nothing in the way of data to back it up. Well, here’s the proof. The online retailer reported a nice gain in earnings for the fourth quarter thanks to strong sales during the holiday shopping season. And its shares are trading up nearly 10 14 percent on the news.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
QOTD: Comparing Apples and Amazons
We continue to be big fans of this product. And we continue to believe that Amazon has a hit on its hands with this device. The problem is that Amazon (AMZN) sold out of these devices way too early this holiday period. And Amazon still doesn’t have International versions available. Hard to see a premier [...]
E-Read It and Weep, Amazon
Founded nearly a decade ago on patents for printing active-matrix electronic display panels on thin, flexible plastic substrates, Plastic Logic spent the ensuing years developing a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look–but not the feel–of a magazine or newspaper. And this morning, the company uncrated it.
Amazon Still Waiting for Kindle 2.0 Ugly Paint to Dry
Amazon’s next-generation Kindle e-book reader may be significantly thinner than its predecessor. It may boast an improved screen and a more intuitive interface. It might be a little less ugly. It could even be “the device Amazon wanted to release in the first place,” as some reports have claimed. But it will not arrive at market in October as rumored.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Citigroup Analyst Eligible for Remedial Kindlegarten?
How well is Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader really doing? Well, according to Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney, whose analytical prowess enables him to extrapolate sales figures from little more than Kindle’s sales ranking on Amazon’s Web site and from the number of customer reviews it has received, the Kindle is doing quite well. But according McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Tim Bueneman, who’s actually, you know, spoken with some Amazon officials, it might not be selling as well as Mahaney claims.
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About John
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Ethics Statement
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
alt.misc
- Godzilla’s Food, Exercise, and Dream Diary
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183. - Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
- The Golden Age of Video
Best video mashup ever.
- I’m not dead yet
A Facebook Memorial
- Pulp Fiction Audio Mix
Wow.
- A world without the Internet
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
- Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction
Excellent.
- Dead Fly Art
Flughumor!
- Happy Birthday Monty Python …
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
- ‘You are being shagged by a rare parrot’
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
