How publishers are cutting their own throats with ebook DRM
“Sci-fi author Charlie Stross has written a post about how the Big Six book publishing companies have painted themselves into a corner in the rapidly growing ebook industry. Between user-unfriendly DRM and the Amazon juggernaut, they’re slowly pushing themselves out of business. Quoting: ‘Until 2008, ebooks were a tiny market segment, under 1% and easily overlooked; but in 2009 ebook sales began to rise exponentially, and ebooks now account for over 20% of all fiction sales. In some areas ebooks are up to 40% of the market and rising rapidly. (I am not making that last figure up: I’m speaking from my own sales figures.) And Amazon have got 80% of the ebook retail market. … the Big Six’s pig-headed insistence on DRM on ebooks is handing Amazon a stick with which to beat them harder. DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook customers into the Kindle platform.” Read more…
(source: Charlie’s Diary, via Slashdot)
Lots of buzz today regarding Amazon tablet
The rumor mill:
Gizmodo: “Behold the new Amazon Kindle! A full color 7-inch tablet that is basically a front to all their books, music, movies and products, just like we imagined.”
TechChrunch: “Amazon’s Kindle tablet is very real. I’ve seen it, played with it.”
The power of e-ink: While the Techcrunch report says the tablet Siegler handled was backlit-only, there are reports that the other of the possible two models will be dual-mode, operating as a backlit color tablet with the option to switch to the easy-on-the-eye e-Ink mode familiar to Kindle users. [Yes, please! —drego]
Crave: “Why Amazon’s will be the first successful Android tablet.”
Engadget: “Amazon tablet coming in November for $250?”
Android Central: “Amazon’s Kindle tablet said to be all Amazon atop Android, with nary a Google app in sight.”
CNET News: “Amazon’s Kindle Tablet: An Android fork with disruptive pricing.”
BYTE: “[T]wo ablets, 7.1 and 10.1 inches, are reportedly code-named Coyote and Hollywood. The smaller tablet will cost less than $250…. But it’s the higher-end tablet … that really is the attention-grabber.”
How an earthquake affects hard drive and website performance
“Amazon’s data centers are positively packed with hard drives — thousands of them — and every single one of them is incredibly sensitive to vibrations. Generally, though, the only time a rack of servers moves is during an earthquake — and when this happens, the read/write heads are instantly thrown out of position, and accelerometers then kick in to prevent data loss. As a result, it suddenly becomes very hard to access data on the disk, and with Amazon AWS this means that page load/response times ballooned.” Read more…
(source: Extreme Tech)
Amazon App Store: Rotten to the core
“When ShiftyJelly had one of its apps featured as Amazon’s Free App of the Day, they thought they may have hit the jackpot. Turns out to have been more like highway robbery.” Read more…
(source: gizmodo)
(Source: thesochillnetwork)
Are Amazon reviews corrupt?
“A study has shed some light on the objectivity Amazon’s customer review process. You should be aware of a few things.” —John C. Dvorak
(source: PCMag.com)
