Amazon

Reconsidering the Future of Ebooks

September 9, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

Like most gadget lovers I dream of the perfect digital reading device. In my dreams this device is pretty much identical to the interactive book in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. Unfortunately, the technology behind Stephenson’s nano-tech powered ereader is still decades away. In the meantime, we’re stuck with a motley assortment of devices that attack the challenge of reading digital content from a variety of different angles. From dedicated eInk readers like the Sony Reader and Amazon’s Kindle, to PDA’s, and multi-purpose mobile computing devices like the iPhone. None are anywhere close to perfect, but they’re all we have for the time being.

Knowing full well that I’m not about to find the “ultimate” ebook reader anytime soon, I spent a bit of time this summer evaluating the merits of two very different devices: the iPhone and the Kindle.

While comparing the reading experience on both of these devices was an interesting exercise, I found that the relative strengths and weaknesses of each product lead me to consider bigger questions about the future of ebooks and digital content.

Paul Westerberg’s Weird Experiment

July 21, 2008 by Jim Connelly

In a year where it has become almost de rigueur for artists to screw with the accepted music release model, Paul Westerberg has come up with yet another variation, for his download-only album 49:00, released today on Amazon..

Betcha didn’t even know that Paul Westerberg had anything new coming out, did you? Neither did I, until I happened to see an email from the Man Without Ties web site, alerting me that it was available for download.

It’s called 49:00, and it’s an entire album’s worth of new music for the low low price of 0.49 cents. But, as in all things Westerbergian, there’s a bit of a self-destructive twist.

That entire album’s worth of new music: it’s all contained in a single file. You download one single .mp3, which is 43:55 in length.

Holy crap, Paul Westerberg has gone art-rock!

Into Outer Space with Jeff Bezos

May 31, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

Yesterday at Book Expo America, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced plans to take over the publishing industry. After that, he plans to fly away to space.

The publishing industry’s reaction? Polite applause.

Bezos’ presentation was something of a coming out party for the Kindle. This is the first Book Expo since the Kindle’s release, and it was the first time that the industry as a whole has had a good look at the device.

Launched last December, the Kindle is just now becoming widely available without a long delay. Bezos was on hand to show off the Kindle, brag about early user reactions, and beat around the bush about what appears to be very promising ebook sales figures.

Naturally, book publishers love Bezos. He’s the man who figured out how to sell books on the Internet. He took the hard work out of ecommerce and provided publishers with an incredibly efficient sales channel at no cost to the industry. What’s not to love?

Has Spiral Frog Become An Essential Part of Your Life?

March 28, 2008 by Jim Connelly

Longtime readers of this site (that would be Will and John) know that there are consumer products to which we’ve never been very kind. These products include Microsoft’s Zune, anything from DuroSport Electronics and of course SpiralFrog, the major label-sponsored website that allows you to download DRM’d music for FREE! All you have to do is ignore some ads.

After first making fun of the concept, then making fun of the amazingly long time to market, and finally, making fun of the thing itself, I figured that I was done with ever writing about it ever again. Hell, I thought I was done with ever thinking about it again.

Until last night.

That’s What I Like: Basking in the Glowing Glowiness of my new TV’s Warm Glow

January 18, 2008 by Tyson

On Black Friday, the incongruously named day-after-Thanksgiving I rang up Amazon.com and joined the middle class. Yes, I plunked down $1999 for a Samsung LNT4671F. (I know, I’ve railed against idiotic naming conventions for consumer products in the past). It’s a 46″ LCD TV, 1080p, 120 Hz, HMDI 1.3 with built-in spicto-blango-color-correcting-carousel blah blah blah. Suffice it to say it was the top-of-the-line product from Samsung when it first came on the market in October (which of course makes it now hopelessly obsolete by the standards of the consumer electronics industry. It’s the second-highest rated TV in Consumer Reports after the Sony XBR4, but my wife Vicki didn’t approve of the floating glass bezel around that one so we settled for a (very close) second-best.

Too Much Music, Too Little Time

November 27, 2007 by Jim Connelly

I’ve just finished a big project: I recently bought a 1TB network-attached hard drive and put nearly every single song I own on it. I even finally finished ripping all of my CDs.

I set the hard drive up so that it automatically backs itself up, and so it’s the third thing I grab in case of a fire: Rox, my laptop, and that hard drive. Of course, maybe Rox can grab both laptops while I get the hard drive, but I’m guessing she might have other priorities.

In any event, the current count is approximately 68,000 songs on 4700 albums by 950 artists. This crazy-ass number reflects 30 years of being, well, a big dumb rock ‘n’ roll guy. It’s what I do, it’s who I am.

And between eMusic, iTunes, Amazon, Amoeba and the life-long friends whom I’ve been trading music for two decades, I have a pretty steady pipeline of new stuff that I’m looking forward to, older stuff that is reissued, new stuff that is suddenly huge super buzz, and older stuff that I missed in the past.

It. Just. Keeps. Coming. World without end, amen.

Stop yer complaining, you’re saying: this is not the worst problem for a music geek to have. As a matter of fact, it’s probably the best problem for a music geek to have. So shut up and stop whinging, already!

No doubt, my 15-year-old self who rode his bike to Tower Records to buy Who’s next, my 25-year-old self who was resigning himself to getting the CD version of Who’s next and my 35-year-old self who was downloading Who’s next outtakes from dodgy websites are all looking at me agog.

But it’s still a problem. And the problem is me.

Amazon’s Kindle: The Price of Free EVDO and Proprietary DRM

November 19, 2007 by Kirk Biglione

I’m a minimalist by nature, which is why it’s so unfortunate that I share office space with the Booksquare lady. I live in fear that a long overdue earthquake will hit Southern California, triggering a catastrophic bookshelf collapse. When that happens, I will almost certainly be crushed to death by Kassia’s “to be read” shelves.

Nothing would make me happier than replacing every book in my life with a single digital device capable of accessing every book ever published through a high speed wireless connection. If anyone wants to see ebooks succeed, it’s me. And yet, I am deeply skeptical about Amazon’s new ebook reader.

On a superficial level, the Kindle looks almost perfect. Amazon has obviously spent a fair amount of time engineering an electronic device that affords readers something approximating an analogue reading experience, while seamlessly connecting with Amazon for book purchases on-demand (a dangerous feature that really should be accompanied by the sound of a ringing cash register).

Unfortunately, there are more than a few problems with Amazon’s initial product offering. Those problems will almost certainly limit the appeal of Kindle, making it a niche product for early adopters and gadget freaks.

That’s What I Like: The Amazon Wish List

November 2, 2007 by Tyson

My birthday is in four days!

Normally that statement would be grounds for a demerit since it might be seen as a blatant plea for gifts. But really it’s just a friendly reminder to my 3.42 billion fans that I have a HUGE Wish List available for perusing on Earth’s Largest Store. OK, no it’s really just an opportunity to give mad props to my newest infatuation, which IMHO deserves a sniglet of its own, something that combines wistful longing with online shopping. (We have a “Comments” section folks so try your own hand!)

How Amazon’s MP3 Store Will Challenge iTunes, and Why Steve Jobs Doesn’t Care

September 27, 2007 by Kirk Biglione

This week the long anticipated Amazon digital music store finally launched. Unlike recent efforts from the likes of Wal-Mart, Amazon’s DRM-free store could pose a substantial long-term challenge to iTunes. While that may sound like bad news for iTunes, it could prove to be a good thing for Apple.

Here’s why I think Amazon will pose a serious challenge to the iTunes music store:

Apple Scruffs: New iPods & the Universal Dust-Up

September 6, 2007 by Jim Connelly

It’s pretty much Apple week here at Medialoper, and why not? So I figured that I’d add my perspective on the new iPods, as well as the Universal’s wholesale abandonment of iTunes for Amazon’s Unbox.

Everybody I know seemed to be keeping at one browser tab open on the press conference yesterday, and until the drastic price drop of the iPhone, it pretty much went the way that most people had predicted beforehand. Without going into any deep analysis of What It All Means, here are some of my thoughts.