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 Friday, January 01, 2010

Link-O-Rama

By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM

  • Ari Armstrong reviews e-book readers, and then argues against exclusive digital rights management. He also reviews ebooks.com and gripes about non-transferrability. I have many disagreements with Ari; I'm pretty sympathetic to Kendall's various comments on those posts. Yet I also share many of his frustrations. (How's that for vague!) Kendall recently penned his own blog post on e-books too.) Personally, I'm betting on Amazon as the major e-book content provider, but I doubt its Kindle will remain dominant for long. I'm desperately hoping for Apple to blow away all the competition with some new device, perhaps using an iPhone-like OS, all nicely managed on your PC/Mac through iTunes.

  • A fascinating article from The Economist on the small industry created by Harry Potter: The Harry Potter Economy.

  • Father Tim Jones suggests that the poor shoplift when in need. Don't worry though, he only recommends doing so from big corporations. (I kid you not!) Gus Van Horn comments.

  • Manning and Saturday Have Kept Colts on Leading Edge. A fun look at football's "old married couple."

  • Seven Ways Dollhouse Could Have Been Great. Oh well.

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     Comments

    Friday, January 1, 2010 at 8:52:34 mst
    Comment ID: #1
    Name: William H Stoddard
    E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com

    I sympathize with most of their points about Dollhouse, but I find the show that was actually made extremely good; I expect to keep rewatching it. My only real complaint about it is that Dushku is not a good enough actress to make all those different personalities convincing. Against that, I'd put the point that this is an actual science fiction show: It shows us a radical new technology whose development would make everything different, and then shows us a world where it HAS made everything different. And it maintains a consistent focus on the moral choices of the various characters that makes it a drama rather than the simple action/adventure it initially looked like. It's rather like what happened with the filming of Serenity, but more so.

    I watched the first episodes of the first season with some dissatisfaction; they all seemed like action/adventure. But then I went back and rewatched them on DVD, and saw that only the first episode fit a straight action/adventure paradigm; the others progressively violated it more and more profoundly, in a way that was fascinating to watch. Teasing and slow buildup have an appeal of their own.

    Friday, January 1, 2010 at 10:51:48 mst
    Comment ID: #2
    Name: Trey Givens
    E-mail: junk(at)treygivens.com
    URL: http://treygivens.com

    RE: eBooks

    You might be in some sort of luck. This morning on one of my marketing blogs (Mashable!, I think.), they reported that a former president of Google China said that the Apple tablet computer is going to come out this month and it will be priced at less than $1K and it's going to be basically like a large iPhone. If true, a properly developed app could suit your needs.

    I decided to find that link for you: http://mashable.com/2010/01/01/apple-tablet-10-million/?utm_source= ...

    I should point out, though, that Apple hasn't corroborated any of these tablet rumors as yet -- at least I haven't heard that.

    Friday, January 1, 2010 at 13:49:41 mst
    Comment ID: #3
    Name: Brian

    Father Jones' view summarized in one lyric: "I don't mind stealin' bread, from the mouths of decadents."

    Friday, January 1, 2010 at 15:13:33 mst
    Comment ID: #4
    Name: Mel McGuire

    Yet another issue with Kindle that I have is the availability of Kindle editions of books.

    I did some tests on amazon.com using their search aid. I selected "English" and "paperback" as the printed book format.

    All Subjects, no keyword: paper 5,304,454-----Kindle 336,208

    All Subjects, keyword=philosophy: paper 422,180-----Kindle 14,482

    Non fiction, no keyword: paper 1,205,904------Kindle 66,627

    Lit. and fiction, no keyword: paper 819,676-----Kindle 101,062

    Next, I checked 10 items (all nonfiction except for 1) on my wish list that I'm likely to buy. Of the 10 items, only 1 had a Kindle edition. Even the new 3 vol "Annotated Sherlock Holmes" (counted as 1 item) didn't have a Kindle edition.

    I didn't repeat all the tests at B&N today, but when I did it several months ago, their ebook situation was worse than amazon's. Today I just did the test with "philosophy" as the keyword: paper 74,747-----ebook 1969. If they will release lots of ebooks soon, maybe nook has a chance; otherwise, the situation will remain poor.

    I've followed the ereader developments for years, but I just don't think I'm anywhere close to buying--especially if I can't even get the Annotated Sherlock Holmes volumes on an ereader.

    Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 14:40:34 mst
    Comment ID: #5
    Name: Kendall J
    E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
    URL: http://http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/

    I think Trey's option is the most interesting. It really is the direction that Netbooks are headed. If Apple can pull of a 10" touchscreen computer with the functionality of a netbook, and the iTouch app store, you might have a platform that would be quite usable. It would be backlit LCD tho and have some of those issues (battery, weight, eye strain), but if you can live with that, I suspect it might be a very nice option. I would consider something like that when my netbook dies.

    Whether or not Apple gets into the e-book market is another story. And they probably would not disallow software like the upcoming Amazon Kindle for Mac reader so you still have the issue of which platform will win out. Frankly, I still think Amazon has a pretty big lead.

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