Oh Brother! Yet Another eBook Reader

Read an eBook week seems to have caught on in the east with yet another pretender new ebook readers

First we have Brother, the company famous for sewing machines and printers have announced a “document reader”, the SV-100B, intended for displaying ebooks and technical documentation. The Brother SV-100B, has however broken out of the eink camp and has an LCD display, measuring 9.7-inches and running at 1,200 x 825 150dpi resolution. It still claims 83 hours of battery life and although there is no internal storage by use of its 2 GB micro SD card you can store10,000 A4 pages. The file transfer appears cumbersome despite using its own SV-Manager software and the position on DRM is unclear. It is planned to land in Japan in the summer.

However the bucket of ice may come in the form of its $1,450price ticket.

Does Apple Share Our Dream?

Reuters deliver an interesting report that claims that Apple will take third-quarter delivery from Taiwan touchscreen specialist Wintek of a newly developed 10-inch touchscreen. Wintek already supplies small screens for Apple iPhones, and Reuters now report from a confidential source that Wintek now has received orders for the larger ones. However although Wintek have officially confirmed Apple is a major client they declined to comment on any new product development.

Taiwan media is rife with speculation claiming that Apple is currently developing a touchscreen PC and there are also claims that Taiwan's Quanta Computer, the world's top contract laptop PC maker, would manufacture the actual devices for Apple.
So as everyone speculates those potentially in the know remain tight lipped which obviously adds fuel to the fire. We have already speculated about a larger iTouch which with a 10” screen could certainly start to redefine the market bringing the weight of the Appps Store and its 250k applications, the power of Apples PC platform, iTunes, video and of course books all together under what would be a very compelling offer and in full colour for Christmas.

Such a move would seriously dent the eink looky-likies create a natural home for a media and start to separate the PC and the phone strengthening as opposed to weakening their offers. Alas it may be a dream – but it’s a good one!

Welcome to the Screen Racers

HP has just set up a company, in collaboration with 3M spin-off, called Phicot to make plastic eink screens which if successful could cost a tenth of the cost of today’s glass displays. The plastic sheet is just 40 microns thick, cheaper than glass and uses less space. In comparison the glass for an LCD is 0.7mm. thick , heavier and requires complex clean room manufacturing.

There's a long way to go before Phicot can create big screens with every pixel perfect; cracks, pinholes, bubbles and particles can all cause defects that reduce the yield. Today the displays use grayscale E-Ink with the promise colour screens ever coming.

So will large OLED beat the with cost effect panels? Again the answer is maybe and in the future but the difference is more down to a slowdown in the global economy than technology.

As we have written before OLED offers much; flexible displays, transparent displays that allow a window by day to function as a light by night, and plastic OLED lights that can be cut and molded into interesting shapes. However OLED is coming with Samsung planning a 14.1" OLED laptop and TV this year and costly manufacturing conversion is an issue.

So plasma and greayscale eink look to be the screen technologies for the time being at least.

Talking Tracks - The New Shuffle

While the world was debating a new iTouch versus a Apple touch screen netbook, Apple brought out a talking iPod shuffle. The new stainless steel shuffle is half the size of the previous shuffle.

The fact that they can now squeeze up to1,000 songs, or play 10 hours of music on a single battery charge, on a device smaller than an AA battery, clearly demonstrates the shrinking technology. Forget buttons there is no room on the device itself and instead it is controlled by a button on the earphone cord, which enables users to play and pause songs, adjust the volume and flick through playlists.

The shuffle will also give you track information in up to 14 different languages, including Mandarin as well as English, and can automatically switch between providing battery or track information in English and pronouncing a foreign song title in the appropriate language. The question of whether the track information will be an interruption or a benefit is to be seen but the facility is novel and yet obvious. The other question is raises is why you wouldn’t know what track was playing as they are your tracks in the first place.

The 4GB shuffle will come in black or silver, and cost £59 and Apple will continue to sell the 1GB entry-level iPod shuffle, which can only store 240 songs, for £31.

The key is to obviously get the iPod shuffle controls built into a wide variety of headphones, from different suppliers and also provide adapter cables, so users can use your existing headphones with the new shuffle. After all you don’t want to throw away those white distinctive earpieces, do you?

Google Twittering ?

Just when you thought the world of acquisitions was slowing down we read today an interesting column in eCommerce Times titled ‘Will Twitter Be Google's Next YouTube?’
So when we have a company such as Google sitting on a war chest of some $15 billion the immediate question is not is not will they, but who? Apparently the speculation became rife earlier this week that Google is about to acquire Twitter. This was met by denial from CEO Eric Schmidt. Some point to a similar position they took proir to their acquisition of YouTube some two years ago.

So what is fueling the speculation? When questioned by Cnet Schmidt's replied he "shouldn't" discuss specific deals and that Google was "unlikely" to buy anything in the "short term."

So what would Twitter offer Google? Twitter is about now search in real time to what people are thinking about on any given topic. This would be complimentary mixing depth of Google’s indexed search with what’s on people’s thoughts now and then add in YouTube and there is one significant entity. We should remember that Facebook is now also updating its newsfeeds in real time so presenting a different threat from what is fast becoming a social Gorrilla.

Wolfram Alpha to Take on Google?

As rumours surface about Microsoft still being interested in Yahoo and reopening the ‘will they won’t they ‘or on off search engine wedding of last year, we read about another new search engine under development and being hyped as a strong challenger to Google's dominance.

Currently, search engines can carry out searches for terms and phrases in the text, but British computer scientist Stephen Wolfram, has created ‘Mathematica’ which is within ‘Wolfram/Alpha’ a "computational knowledge engine" that is able to compute the answer to any factual question.

Wolfram wrote in an Ablog posting, "With Mathematica, I had a symbolic language to represent anything, as well as the algorithmic power to do any kind of computation. And with NKS, I had a paradigm for understanding how all sorts of complexity could arise from simple rules. Armed with Mathematica and NKS I realised there's another way: explicitly implement methods and models as algorithms, and explicitly curate all data so that it is immediately computable."

Well that was a simple explanation wasn’t it?

The new search engine launches in May and should be capable of understanding what it is you are asking and be able to calculate a precise answer to your query.

Will it succeed or fail? Will mircoyahoo ever learn that two heads are better than one? Will other search pretenders such as the ex Google engineers Cuil live up to their hype? The only thing that is certain is that someone will develop a winner but whether it can make it is down to the market not the technology.

Wrist Phones - Room For a Kill?

So James Bond has got competition! First there was the LG wrist phone and now another Korean company has enter the market with Hyundai Mobile UK, which was only started in January, announcing its own wrist phone. The Hyundai phone looks a bit clunkier, and even with the leather strap and mock watch-face still looks less sophisticated and certainly not as well designed as that concept wrist phone from LG910 we drooled over and which is planned for an exclusive with Orange.

The Hyundai ironically named MB 910, has a touch display, but is not a 3G phone, but is tri-band and work in 900/1800/1900 MHz, so can be supported by different networks around the world. It offers internet browsing, 70 hours of standby time and for the wrist, weighs 58 grams. The MB-910 phone watch naturally includes a Bluetooth headset but also has email, video playback, a music player and is already on sale in mainland Europe. It is scheduled for June release in the UK but has not secured a carrier to date.

The LG phone is £500 while the Hyundai may have hit a soft spot at £200. So will the new craze take off and will it be adopted by the cheap, younger end or the fashion driver label older end?

Why the obsession with '910' we would call it the 'i007'!

Music Goes Down The Tube

YouTube is to withdraw all premium music videos to UK users after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the Performing Right Society (PRS).

Consumers in the UK are to be hit hard with thousands of videos on YouTube being withdrawn today. Is it a bargaining ploy by Google’s subsidiary YouTube or a genuine long term back down over payments?

In the UK, the PRS acts as a collecting society on behalf of member publishers for licensing fees relating to use of music. Steve Porter, head of the PRS, told the BBC that he was "outraged... shocked and disappointed" by YouTube's decision and that the move "punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent".

YouTube told the BBC that the PRS was seeking a rise in fees "many, many factors" higher than the previous agreement and had no option but to disclose the move as it would become very visible to users. They also claim that the PRS would not specify exactly which artists would be covered by any new deal.

There are a number of issues to note as a result of today’s action not least is the power that Google and its subsidiaries can exhort and the speed at which it can change the negotiation. Whether the rates requested are fair or unfair the issue is that the service can be taken down more or less at will. We hope those that are involved in the Google Book Settlement are watching and noting. It may not happen year one but could easily happen in the future to books.

We believe that irrespective of the situation and negotiation position that all parties should consider the consumer and an almost unilateral withdraw of services could be seen by some as a return to the negotiation by muscle that happened in the general marketplace of the 1970s.

Hachette Embraces Bookshare

Producing books for the visually impaired has always been difficult as they needed special large print, Braille or an audio edition and these were often not available. It is estimated that fewer than five percent of the books needed by people in the US with print disabilities are currently available in accessible formats.

However, today’s digital world should help change that in a number of ways, making a good read available to all. Bookshare, the largest online library for this community with more than 43,000 books and 150 periodicals, have pursued this belief and ensured that people with disabilities get the same ease of access to books and periodicals that people without disabilities enjoy. Today the Bookshare library provides legal access for it 47,000 members to Braille, large print or synthetic speech titles.

Bookshare members download books, textbooks and newspapers in files protected by its DRM and members can read the texts using adaptive technology, such as text-to-speech software or enlarged font, or hardware devices that allow the book to be read on refreshable Braille displays or print the digital books as embossed Braille.

Now Bookshare and the Hachette Book Group (HBG) have entered into a partnership to provide digital books for the Bookshare library with Hachette having agreed to donate 1,700 currently digitized frontlist and backlist titles and also refer all customer service requests for accessible books to Bookshare for fulfillment.

We commend Hachette in this move and suggest that it becomes a route taken by all as they digitise their works and in doing so helps remove the stigma of disabilities and allows everyone to enjoy books.

The iPhone Overtakes Windows Mobile in Nine Months

Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS has had the most applications available for many of its 9 years. However, App Store tracker 148Apps.com now report that over 25,000 applications are now available on the iPhone App Store and these have increased by a staggering 5,000 in less than a month. This staggering growth has happened not in nine years but nine months. It clearly shows that smartphones are the new hot spot and also that Apple have clearly taken the initiative through their App Store. Even Amazon joined them last week with their ebook reader.

Some are predicting the Android phone will dominate, others Palm’s Pre, others Nokia and some still believe Windows has legs. Whatever the horse you would back the facts are that Apple has made and continues to make the news, generate the applications and potentially dictate the direction. If you could drop your current smartphone and merely swap it tomorrow for any other on the same terms and even the same network why wouldn’t you select an iPhone? Its becoming an interesting battle with higher syphisication on one side such as the new Sony and LG camera specifications, versus the textbound corporate Blackberry versus applications and design.

We have said repeatedly that the application wars will be decisive and could decide winners and losers and one only needs to use an iPhone to appreciate how they have got the customer interface right. Given the growth of applications it is now down to whether there is enough attention to feed the application developers on one platform or whether they will have to spread their bets and develop on one of the other platforms. The question is which would you choose?

Becareful What You Wish For - NelsonFree

The film business has a staggered release strategy, which over time becomes shorter and often a little confusing as the stagger varies often with success, or lack of it. The principle is to release in the cinema, followed by the DVD followed by TV. Although it works it also means that the pirates have a window of opportunity. In the music industry they still try to first release the album then peel of the singles, but as we are aware, it’s now is the track that rules not the album.

In the booktrade we had the hardback which then morphed into a paperback. We now even have many sizes of paperbacks and as long as it finishes .99 or .95 we every price imaginable. What the booktrade has in the main missed with digital, is why the other media sectors discovered, often painfully. The public want choice, value and when you want to drive migration, clear value add. The only difference between the hardback, paperbacks, large print and now ebook, is the ISBN, packaging and of course price.

Some would state that if the DVD hadn’t offered those extra edits and price we still would be watching VHS. Yet we expect customers to flood to ebooks to read the same content, for often the same price and shell out for whatever technology is required!
We had to take a step back to consider last week’s news that Thomas Nelson announced to launch NelsonFree, a program enabling readers to receive content in all multiple formats physical book, audiobook and e-book at one price and without making multiple purchases. It would have been easy to raise a glass in its support or lambast it as naïve but we felt that we had to give it some extra thought.

The NelsonFree price is based on the hardback, so it’s a sort of bundled price; buy the hardback and ‘get as much as you can read’ and that includes both the audio download and the e-book in multiple formats. At first glace this looks a great consumer offer, three formats for the price of one. It obviously will alert readers to the alternative formats and also may prompt the to try them out. It obviously also gets publicity and gives attention to titles that may not have received it. So is it a winner all round?

Unlike music the majority of readers only buy one copy of the book, so why would you they actually need three? They may play the audio in the car and read the book at lesure but does this flip floppin actually engage or does it distract and break the experience? Flipping between the physical and ebook may make more sense as the experience is basically the same but would NelsonFree get the publicity for a bundle that has been done before in many ways?

The audio and the ebook are likely to have DRM encryption applied so you can’t share them with friends or give them away as presents. Conversely the hardback could be given away as a present and the ebook and digital copy retained. Perhaps it should be buy the ebook and get the hardback free?

The author royalties are whatever has been agreed but if the Guild of Authors objected to text to speech on the Kindle we wonder what they think to speech and ebook for free under NelsonFree?

Finally in some countries there will be tax implications as the audio and ebook would be taxable renditions and the physical book exempt. The result here would be that there would be a taxable element applied and tax due on the sale. Some would suggest that bundling may raise again the question of tax on digital renditions and that this may not always give result expected.

Its often hard to say whether an experiment is good or bad. It is just an experiment and sometimes the outcome will surprise us all. However we need to be wary that if will position this and similar offers such as the recent Faber, as the ebook or digital free or based on the physical being bought the we may start to undervalue the digital copy before it has even got of the ground. Also if we continue to flip flop between formats with no added value other than the weight convenience and DRM inconvenience we may fail to ignite the market and accept low digital take up as a given.

Should Music Contracts Reflect Today's World or Yesterday's? Part 2

No sooner had we posted our copy yesterday than the jury has ruled in favor of Universal Music Group in the label's court battle against Eminem's former publishing company FBT. This means that the royalty rates will stay as they are.

A verdict for the producers could have brought millions of dollars for artists whose contracts with record labels pre-date digital download sites and mobile phone ringtones. It also has probably strengthened the resolution of artists, such as The Beatles, who have todate refused to sell their recordings on iTunes, because they receive so little of the proceeds.

Should Music Contracts Reflect Today's World or Yesterday's

The one-week trial between Universal Music Group (UMG) and F.B.T. Productions (Eminem) closed this week with FBT asserting that ‘When a music fan buys a song off of iTunes, the record label hasn’t done very much to get it on their playlist, and thus doesn’t deserve the lion’s share of the profits.’ About $1.6 million is a stake, with Eminem seeking three times the current royalty in the trail and the implications of any outcome on others is obvious.

F.B.T. claimed the download arrangements are similar to the one UMG has with traditional record clubs, and under this licensing agreement, Eminem gets 50% of the profit. When an album is downloaded on iTunes, it falls under the “records sold” provision of the agreement, giving Eminem an 18.23% royalty rate. F.B.T. are claiming that Universal simply grants a license for iTunes to distribute the recordings and by doing so, minimises its manufacturing costs.

Lawyers for UMG countered that they put millions of dollars into building the technology to send music files to digital retailers, and so deserve the royalty they currently receive. UMG, state that because record clubs fall under a separate part of the recording agreement they have with the artist, the situation is not comparable. They point out that the royalty rates are the same (18.23%) for cassettes, vinyl and CDs, even though the manufacturing costs vary considerably. So if a digital download costs less for the record company to manufacture, why should that rate change?

Some artists would say that they lost out when they moved from vinyl to CD's. They are cheaper to manufacture, but the packaging deduction went up from 10% to 25%. They lost when they moved to downloads, since labels would still charge for packaging under existing contracts. How can an artist be held under a contract to not-yet-developed technology in record contract negotiations that took place years ago?

If FBT wins this case, it will have a bigger impact on smaller bands and also bands that are held to contracts signed in the 60s and 70s. Contracts that were signed before digital downloads became prevalent often have a different royalty rate for albums than singles which could seriously be impacted as digital downloads consider all tracks as singles and are paid at the lower rate under these contracts.

Should artists have the right to renegotiate their contracts when new technology emerges to deliver their music? Universal is not only fighting Eminem's F.B.T. in court, but their entire roster, and this again shows the level of the mess that digitisation is heaping on the music producers and why they are haemorraghing artists and some would say trust.

There is a lesson here for all media companies who believe that they can roll old contracts forward with little regard to the spirit in which they were entered into or the fact that things have changed.

National Digital Library Tickets?

The Bookseller today covers the UK shadow culture secretary Ed Vaizey thoughts on their , "Renaissance for Libraries". Much of what he says makes a great deal of sense but one line drew our breath. He is reported as saying that they would also bring in a national library card, allowing library users to borrow books from any library in the UK.

This would obviously throw up some interesting issues on physical books being borrowed and not returned and the whole issue of the cost and implications re recovery but that apart it also throws the libraries into potentially direct conflict with retail in the digital world. Here the stock is virtual, the registration central and the reality is that a user would be able to access anything without leaving their armchair or paying a penny for it.

We have asked before about this clear clash of business models that has always been there but is now becoming greater under the digital umbrella. Can libraries sell books on rental under their royal charter and if so what is the difference between a bookstore and what could become the UK’s largest chain? If they can’t sell and lend them as current, what is the incentive for any consumer to buy a download when they get it for free?

Importantly how are authors to be rewarded if the library digital lendings increase? Do they share a pot of money such as PLR which is capped, or do they get paid a real royalty per transaction?

There is nothing wrong with sorting out the library system which is not broken but in need of some attention and TLC but we must recognise the conflicts and other changes that need to be considered and in doing so ensure we develop the service and reward the creators. This is a glass half full with masses of new opportunities for all, but we don’t know what we don’t know and every move has an implication.

The Newspaper Project

We have read much about the death of newsprint and the difficulties it faces on many fronts. A group of newsprint executives who wanted to ‘support a productive exchange of information and ideas about the future of newspapers’ have got together to form the newspaper project . On 2nd February they launched the newspaperproject.org website along with a series of print and online ads that have been running in more than 400 newspapers across the US.

The site has many interesting insights and thoughts over the future and many articles are well worth a read as they cover issues that relate to many media sectors. As journalists they craft their words well and make some powerful arguments what is refreshing is their glass half full approach and their quest to embrace and make change happen.

Well worth a visit.

Groundhog Day - The Pixelar eReader

Can you name this ebook reader? Well it looks familiar, and not unlike so many so we were intrigued to see if was any different.



The review from slashgear of Pixelar E-Reader was the usual long list of features, files supported and eink technology and the usual price tag £229.99 / $324. So it isn’t going to shift the volumes and market and remains like the others sitting on the shelf

'Rock Band' Book The Beatles

The Beatles music may still not be available for sale on iTunes but soon many will be able to experience them in their own room and live the dream of being part of the fab four.

The game "Rock Band" has announced a special gig. They are to produce a special edition of the game staring the perhaps greatest rock group of all time: The Beatles. The game will be made for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and will debut on 9th September, along with accompanying instruments for sale that have been modeled after the ones used by the band.

MTV Games said ‘As we moved through the creative process, it just seemed to make sense to clearly highlight the association between The Beatles game and the critically acclaimed "Rock Band" franchise’. The association continues with Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, developing the game.

Facebook to Revisit Classified Ads

Facebook is to upgrade its online classified adverts by teaming up with Oodle to launch a new classified section that combines selling and the social world of Facebook.

Some 18 months ago Facebook launched a classifieds service, Facebook Marketplace. It now has decided to start again with Oodle whose platform supports AOL and MySpace communities. Facebook is rolling out its new classifieds page over a 60-day period.
Unlike the Craiglist, Gumtree models the service will attempt to place the advert within a social conversation. ‘I am moving house next week and need to get rid of some stuff – and here is the sofa iam selling.’ ‘Won the lottery last night so looking to sell the old car and buy a Ferrii – and up pops an ad of the old banger that is being reluctantly sold.’

Personally we believe a classified ad is a classified ad and trying to plant it inside something else could undermine the social conversation itself. Is it wise.com?

For Those who have Everything

Have you every wondered who dreams up some of the solutions that sound good at a glance but just lack real substance when examined more closely. We remember the phone that could receive email and text, those earliy word processors with tiny one line screens and many more devices usually found in an Inovations syle mail order catalogue. Now O2 has launched a new internet device which it claims will become ‘the centrepiece of family life’.

The Joggler, is an internet and messaging centre, which stores appointments, can , take notes and deliver the latest news and traffic reports via its 800 x 480 touch screen interface. The Joggler can also connect to the home network but lacks a built-in SIM card.The Joggler can receive text messages from any UK mobile network and customers can send 50 free SMS messages from the device every month.

The question we would ask is why we need this when we have mobiles that are synchronised to our ‘office’ and all the features and much more on most smartphones, every PC. This is a classic toy for those who have everything and money to spend.

Barnes and Noble Acquire Fictionwise

The ebook reseller Fictionwise has acquired by Barnes and Noble for $15.7 million.
The news and an exclusive interview with Fictionwise’s Scott Pendergrast was covered by TeleRead. Fictionwise will continue as current, be managed by its current team and operate as an independent entity under Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble state in the general press release that it plans to use Fictionwise as part of its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year.

Apparently the business was shopped around to a number of buyers with the understanding that the ‘current philosophy toward e-books would survive’. So DRM free, the ereader format and many other features remain. Some will jump up and down and believe that this will offer a competitive position to Amazon, others may ask the question if this is what prompted the recent Overdrive spat and its impact on its exclusive DRM agreements with Ingram.

Whatever ,the important outcome is that B&N now are firmly in the ebooks business, albeit at arms length for now.

iPhone Makes Music

Take four girls, one cool cover and a bunch of iPhone and iPod touch apps and you can clearly create something uniquely different.

For Sale - Friends Reunited

Broadcaster ITV is to let 600 jobs go and are looking to sell its Friends Reunited and Scoot websites. Chairman Michael Grade is widely reported saying that “Current conditions in the advertising market are the most challenging I have experienced in over 30 years in UK broadcasting’

ITV bought Friends Reunited in 2005 for £120m and it was one of the original social network sites linking old school friends and soon extending this to workmates etc. The site may have been at the forefront but was quickly superseded by the likes of MySpace and Facebook and only generated £10million in revenue last year down a cool £1million over the previous year.

Some suggested that the Facebook acquisition was a brave move at the time and at a high cost. Irrespective of the advertising downturn many would argue that Friends Reunited had lost its way and appeal. It clearly went commercial and lost its social appeal for many. Although it makes claims to millions of members it would be interesting to see its churn and active membership. It would be interesting to see who would buy it, at what cost and with what plans.

Now ITV has cleared its decks, we await the next announcements from another UK broadcaster later this week.

Thew Great Book Bank Robbery - Its All About Orphans

As the clock ticks slowly towards the Google settlement closure, voices are starting to be heard and debate is starting to take place. It may be too little too late, but people are starting to question and unravel the complex settlement.

In an interesting article ‘It’s all about the orphans’ Brewster Kahle writing on OpenContentAlliance.com questions whether Google, the AAP, and the Authors Guild have now negotiated their own private solution to the problem of orphan works and created an ‘elaborate scheme for the exploitation of orphan works.’

We have written many times about orphan works and the moves to legalize their adoption both in the US and Europe and the fact that the settlement basically just takes them. We have questioned the publishing houses that had tried to previously kill off rights reversals and about this vast treasure trove of content that sits, often lost, between public domain and in print.

Kahle agrues;
The upshot, if the Settlement is approved, would be legal protection for Google, and only for Google, to scan and provide digital access to the orphan works. Presto! Like magic, Google proceeds without any need for legislation: their own private orphan works legislation.

Now, however, no one but Google will have access to the orphan class created by the Settlement, without enduring a similar class action lawsuit from the authors and publishers.

We may agree with Kahle we may not but what is important is that the Google Book Search Debate continues and what amazes us is the sheer lack of debate in many circles. This is either out of fear of being wrong, a case of the ‘blind leading the blind’ or just apathy to asking questions. Its similar to one of the conferences where the speakers speak down to their audience, there is no debate, no questions but at the break time everyone is taking about the questions they wanted to ask.

Below is a link to a synopsis of a discussion the implications of the Google Book Search Settlement at Georgetown last month. The debate involved James Grimmelman (New York Law) and Siva Vaidhyanathan (Univ. of Virginia).

‘Notes from Georgetown Symposium on Google Book Search Settlement’

Amazon ebooks Now on iPhones

Owners of a iPhone or iPod Touch can now access and read the same content Amazon content as the Kindle.

Amazon have taken the logic step that they seemed to be avoiding and have opened up their content on the mobile and dedicated reader platforms. The application is downloadable from Apple's online application store and lets users read the same electronic books, magazines and newspapers that Kindle owners can enjoy. The application does not connect to the Kindle store and so users must buy the content through the Safari browser. However, Amazon's program will synchronise the Kindle and iPhone accounts so you can keep your place in the same book on both devices, but importantly you don’t have to have a Kindle to access Amazon’s content and the iPhone is of course in full colour.

So Amazon has been allowed to bypass the Apple store for buying content and Apple have clearly also approved them having the application. The obvious impact is that Apple should see a huge lift in iPhone and iTouch sales and today have a clear one up over their smartphone rivals. Amazon have clearly put a shot across the bows of Stanza with an offer of far greater content and a tie back to a reader so offering choice of reading device to users.

Forgetting the minor inconsistencies that may be there today between Amazon’s offers, forgetting the differences between Stanza and Amazon’s offer, this clearly is a big step change. Amazon is clearly building a device and platform neutral offer which can all be synchronised and this may questions whether the Kindle will be around as we know it in a few years. We see Amazon positioning itself based on its content offer and as a trusted retailer and would envisage them extending the offer to include newsprint, books, audio, video whatever, over whatever, using whatever, and whenever. It is still unclear how long it will be before Amazon breaks out of the US but the iPhone application may provide an interesting option.

The one thing that this has done is further strengthened fortress Amazon.

Can I UseYour Screen Please?

Just when you thought that the keyboard was going to die and that touch screens were the new thing Asus have caused a stir at CeBIT with a keyboard!

Reality is that it isn’t a keyboard so much as a PC inside a keyboard. The thin case host in side of an ASUS netbook, sorry Psion we forgot, n**book. It has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of memory and a 16GB/32GB solid-state drive, weighs under 1kg, it's suitably light, has a built-in ultra-wideband transmitter for wireless streaming to external displays. It claims to work within a range of 15ft. However if you can’t find a screen it has a 5” touchscreen with 800x480 resolution.

It's still at the prototype stage, but expected to be fully launched later this year. So has Asus come up with the perfect answer – separate the screen from the n**book and enable users to choose how they display. Connect it to a TV, monitor, eink device a stop trying to develop an all in one solution. However one could apply the same logic to a mobile.

Dream PC?

Back in October 2008 ASUS and Intel launched WEPC.com. The sites slogan was you dream it, Asus Builds it, Intel Inside and it was all about getting people to share their ideas on a community designed PC. Now they want people to give them more thoughts on a Multiple Screen and Touch Interface. You can vote, comment and dream in much more detail about the Dream PC.

Last week they had a little poll from; Extend, Projection, Dual, Dual Touch, Modular Displays and tablets. So it’s no surprise the displays won the day. An extendable screen that is tiny when compact but grows when required.


This is how Asus describe the concept:
The dual panel offers a flexible working space in which users can adapt to suit their prevailing usage scenarios, for example adjusting the size of the virtual touchpad and keyboard. Through hand gestures, handwriting recognition, and multitouch, users are presented with a control surface that is both flexible and intuitive. Users can use the dual-panel concept in a myriad of usage scenarios, for example as a conventional notebook with multitouch screens, a virtual keyboard and touchpad; a multimedia hub, in which both dual panels could combine to form a larger display for widescreen entertainment; or an E-book mode in which users can hold the dual panel concept notebook just like they would a conventional book while flipping pages through intuitive gestures or by touch. These concepts aim to bring convenience to the user through technological innovations and user-centric design.

The dual screen looks just like a book!

Mobile and iPhone Growth

Its interesting that on the same day we read that O2, who own the exclusive contract on iphones in the UK, is reporting that it has sold a million iPhones in the UK. O2's iPhone sales helped it get 390,000 new users in the last quarter of 2008 and now gives it 19.5 million total users on its network. Despite the current economic climate, O2 expects the growth in the smartphone market to continue throughout 2009. Given the number of new smartphones, the new applications and the positive consumer perceptions its easy to agree.

According to The International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency, who survey activity in 154 countries around 60% of the world's population now use mobile phones. That is some 4.1 billion mobile-phone annual subscriptions and an fourfold increase from 2002. They also report internet usage is now at approximately 23% of the world's population, up from 11% in 2002.

What's in the Name - Netbook?

We can’t use the term netbook and will find another word for it. Perhaps; spacebook, notebook, mini-laptop, handtop, handbook, whatever.

Apparently Psion trademarked the term in 1996 for their Palm 5 palmtop replacement the Palm 7. Obviously the name nettop just didn’t work. Psion launched the netBook in 2000 and a further netBook Pro was added later. Now the term is in wide use and some 38 vendors use it to describe their devices.

Psion has convinced Google to ban the term from adsense ads, and it filed a large number of ceast and desist orders against a great many companies threatening more aggressive action if competing firms didn't stop using the term. Dell has now filed a suit against Psion to be joined by Intel with a strongly worded broadside filed in the US District Court in the Northern District of California. Intel who own the domain netbook.com, which is linked to their Atom marketing site, demands an immediate judgment to cancel the trademark.

Lets just create a new name and ensure its public and avoid those lawyers fees and costly settlements. We think ‘smartbook’ may work as it halfway between a smart phone and a ***book but that looks to be taken too!

New eBook Readers for 2009

Another show, another launch, more announcements and even more speculation on the ebook front. Following hot on the heels of the mobile piches in Barcelona comes CeBIT 2009 in Germany this week. What’s new and what are the rumours?

Boox ebook reader
It sounds a funny name and is from Onyx International in China. The reader is not available today but Onyx are looking for OEM customers for their touchscreen for their 6, 8 or 9.7 inch touch screen sizes. Other features of the Boox eBook reader can includes Wi-Fi, plus the usual technology specification; CDMA 1XRTT, GPRS, 3G, 400Mhz CPU, 128MB RAM, 512MB Flash or more, a SD card slot, 2.5mm headphone jack and USB 2.0 with OTG. The device supports PDF, TXT, HTML, MOBIPOCKET, EPUB, CHM, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, MP3, and WAV.

BeBook
Dutch company Endless Ideas launched their BeBook reader in 2008, and plan to launch its next-gen BeBook reader at the CeBIT show.

There are no pictures but it is claimed that the new BeBook model will include wireless connectivity, new touch screen navigation and RSS and also be capable of rendering to the new ePub DRM standard in the coming months.

Kindle 3
Having just started to ship the new Kindle 2 last month there are already runours of a Kindle 3 with Digitimes mentioning it in a story about PVI who delivers the display for the Kindle. Apparently later this year we should see a touchscreen Kindle that also with a larger display.

So we appear to be in a device war before we have the depth and range of content and while issues such as DRM, pricing have been resolved. An abundance of readers can only be good for maintaining the noise level but if each is competing for the same spend they could keep the price up or trigger a device price war. Today they are like the early days of CDs too closely packed on price and we need someone to grab the initiative and go for volume based on price. If this doesn’t happen then the alternatives based on netbooks and smartphones will look increasingly more attractive. Also the longer they remain greyscale, the more attractive colour alternatives will look

Hearst to Move Onto eInk?

It is unclear as to whether individual media companies will follow the Amazon route and build their own devices and try and control their own channels or whether they will adopt a more open and inclusive approach to the market.

Hearst Corporation, the giant media conglomerate, announced it will launch an e-reader of its own by the end of the year. Hearst’s magazine and news papers include SmartMoney, Esquire, Oprah Winfrey's O Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Popular Mechanics, Seventeen 16 daily and 49 weekly newspapers including San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer both of which Hearst has put up for sale.

The first unkown is the device which is almost certain to be based on eink with Hearst Interactive Media being among a group of strategic investors that have together poured more than $150 million into E Ink’s technology. Will they use Plastic Logic device or opt for their own? What is becoming clear is that the Hearst e-reader will almost certainly be larger and wireless to accommodate the format of newspapers and magazines. This will help reproduce the more-complex layouts of print periodicals as well as letting advertisers buy spots in the sizes and format they're already used to. However for now they will have to accept greyscale which to some degree will dilute the appeal of their glossy magazines to consumers and to their advertisers. There is some speculation that Hearst is exploring making the device foldable or rollable to enhance portability.

The second unknown is the business model with many predicting that the will attempt to move from the free online to a subscription model a tricky move with only a few such as Wall Street Journal sticking ridgidly to it. However we note that Newsday has declared their intent to move to a paid model for their online edition.

The Hearst e-reader may work if readers see added value but we are now seeing the collapse of newspapers as we have known them for over 100 years. Advertising revenue, the shift of classified advertising to the likes of Craigslist, online free news, services such as Google news and the news on your mobile are all compounding to cannibalising the model.

Google News Adds Ads

Google have started to run small text ads on the pages of its Google News service. This again raises the advertising debate between Google and the newspaper sector. Since it began, some six years ago, Google has not placed ads on Google News. This has helped calm newspapers who believed that Google would build a competing news site based on their own material.

Google News automatically collects headlines and news from over 4,500 news sites and links users to the original articles on those sites. This drives significant traffic to many news sites. Google has maintained that its use of headlines and snippets was permissible under “fair use” provisions of copyright law.

In 2006, the World Association of Newspapers demanded that Google News stop indexing its member sites on the grounds that Google was profiting from the use of their copyright material. Agence France-Presse sued Google for the same thing in 2005. At the time, Google News carried no advertisements and hence, no obvious revenue stream.

The addition of AdWords to Google News was inevitable as the economy continues to weaken and Google looks to expand its revenue streams. But what will be the reaction from the newspaper sector now that they also feel the advertising downturn?

Kindle Text to Speech Part 2 - The View From The Other Side

Technology is supposed to enhance the experience, convenience and introduce new features that aren’t available through the existing environment. However in our haste to secure, batten down content we have created a situation where some would say we have fewer rights than we do today and are restricted at every turn by those who want us to embrace the New World that they are shaping by their acts. Today we don't have the right to share the book, to resell it; to openly transfer it between devices and in the principle to give a ‘private performance’ of the book for non commercial is being limited by the Author Guild.

Much debate has taken place since Amazon introduced its Kindle 2 text to speech feature, the Authors Guild objected and the subsequent reposition by Amazon. Its interesting that authors appear to be far more engaged in this debate that that of the Authors Guild on the Google Book Search, but its also interesting to hear how rights are interrupted in an attempt to justify what some would argue is unjustifiable.

Jane Little in her blog makes the case ‘Why Amazon Was Wrong to Back Down from Authors Guild’. Courtneymilan in her blog makes an equally strong case in ‘read-aloud-now-with-bad-pictures’.

We recommend that they should be read by the Authors Guild, but somehow we doubt that they will.

‘Ugh …You Again’ an Interactive eBook for Kids by a 10 Year Old

A comical insight into a student's struggle when her ‘worst friend ever’ returns and she faces being forced to be friends with the goody-goody Vanessa.

The author is Alexis Marcionette and is 10 years old and her story will be released by K-8 online learning company BigIQkids.com in eBook format complete with interactive graphics, turning pages, "click to hear" word functionality, engaging interactive illustrations, built in reading comprehension, vocabulary quizzes and the wit and humour that appeals to today's kids.

Preview the first 2 chapters of 'UGH…You Again!' It may not be as sophisticated as many ebooks, but shows how text to speech can work and presents a different interactive book and after all it was written by a 10 year old!

Missing That Common Touch

When watching Jeff Bezos on the Daily Show one of the most embarrassing moments was when he used those three letters DRM. You could see an instant recognition in his face and an equally instant reaction of the shutters going down all around him. No matter what you say afterwards the hole only gets bigger. We are all guilty of using marketing and business speak and technical terminology that switches people off. We often wish we had an auto sensor that would give us a tiny shock just before we open our mouths, but then life wouldn’t be so much fun.

Why is DRM such a turn off? Is the way we describe digitisation, formats and security, are we in fact turning off the very audience we seek to engage?

People can deal with technology when it becomes commodity but have difficulty when its at the leading edge. We buy electrical devices, laptops, TVs, MP3 players, mobile phones and even cars that we can no longer service without a computer but shy away from devices that use a fraction of the technology and are pretty basic in their functionality. Devices such as the Sony reader and the Kindle don’t rendered the book completely differently and the experience is basically the same as reading a physical book so why aren’t they in everyone’s hands? Consumers have moved on mass from vinyl, to cassette, to CD to MP3. The experience was the same just the delivery and devices changed.

Look at the cool iconic image and marketing that Apple gave the iPod and the iPhone and compare the marketing clean messages to those use by the ebook readers. One is about branding, the experience, clear price points, the club and the other is often dry and trying to sell the wrong things with the wrong messages.

The challenge is to make a sales pitch for ebooks and an ebook reader in 30 seconds and make it compelling. It isn’t easy try it on a stranger, a partner, a work colleague, the boss.

Spotify Convergence?

When we want to listen to music our first choice today is to click to Spotify set up our playlist and relax. The UK and Swedish free ad paid online streaming service is like having your own individual radio staion.

Today the service is limited to broadband connection via a PC but that is about to change. Spotify, are reported to be develop the service offer to smartphone devices such as the iPhone. Spotify declared their intent by a search for a ‘Director of portable solutions’ and also a ‘Symbian 60 developer’.

Imagine music on demand anywhere, anytime on any device and ask why you would buy music? or i by Spotify, as the move that clearly depicts company’s intention to launch mobile version of its music streaming services.

Kindle Text to Speech - Make Your Own Mind Up

We came across two interesting articles which are worth reading about the Amazon text to Speech conflict with the Authors Guild. We believe the case is far from proven and the only winners will be the lawyers, the losers will be the consumers, the authors and those trying to move the industry into the 21st century in a sensible fashion and not follow the chaos of other media sectors.

First is an interview between the Guild’s Paul Aiken and Engadget, ‘The Engadget Interview: Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild’.

Second an essay posted in the NYT and written by the President of the Guild Roy Blount Jnr. ‘The Kindle Swindle?’

How we can differentiate between the Kindle as a dedicated book device and other electronic devices such as PCs that have text to speech as a feature, or the future smartphone, is highly questionable. When you change the typeset font, size, pagination, are you breaking rights? Does every file format need to be specified and rights against it agreed in advance? When I read a book on a PC and use text to speech is that ok? If I read a book out loud but through a microphone and amp is an infringement? Remember all the rights that the physical copy gives you today that the digital copy doesn’t.

What is fair use and is this about rights or money? If the later how will you determine the usage on a downloaded file? If you merely slap on a supplemental charge for a feature you may never use, can’t monitor and is accepted by all all poor file quality, is that what we call fair?

Some would suggest that this debate, like others, is based on emotion and not logic.

We will soon have kids wishing to grow up as rich lawyers when they grow up!

Amazon Back Off or Redrawing the Lines?

Last night we were once again on the Litopia After Dark panel and one of the interesting debates was on the subject of Amazon’s Kindle 2 text to speech feature. The authors Guild of America had taken a stand stating that this was a violation of copyright and Amazon disputed it.

This morning we woke to read Amazon had a agreed to make the Text to Speech feature optional on a per book basis. The company statement states: r

Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights-holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.

Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title.

So we enter yet again into the murky waters of opt out and unproven case. Mind you having gone through the exercise with it on the Google settlement the Authors Guild must be getting used to treading these boards and once again the only winners are the lawyers

Nokia To Make Laptops?

When first heard the rumour we had to draw breath but given all the PC manufacturers are moving into the Smartphone market why not the smart phone makers produce laptops?

In an interview with Finnish broadcaster YLE, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said his company was "looking very actively" at the laptop market.

The laptop and notebook marketplace is getting mighty crowded as is the smartphone one. So are Nokia to do it alone or team up with someone and cover both bases? Do they push Symbian or adopt a more recognised operating system?

Will we son see a world where we have docking bays for the smartphone which give it a big screen, mega hard drive storage and access to faster memory and cache, a hub that enables many other plug and play components to be attached, but when you undock you have you notebook to go. It can’t be far away and if we look back over just the last few years its easy to see much of the future even today. The benefit over today is to achieve the full interoperability with maybe three devices covering all our needs all using interchangeable software applications and automatically synchronising everything, with everyone at all times. Let’s even forget the docking station and keep it all wireless.

The point is to achieve that sort of vision the technology has to converge today and players such as Nokia now have to be ‘Connecting People’.

Penn University to Scan on Demand

The Google library scanning program has been very successful in its appeal to many libraries in scanning the public domain works and now many can potentially all benefit through access the Book Search.

The University of Pennsylvania libraries have gone a different route and announced a collaboration with Kirtas Technologies, who are a major automated scanning and digitization company, to trial scan on demand. Users will be able to order custom print-on-demand (PoD) editions from the 200,000 plus public domain works in the Penn library. However nothing will get scanned until an order is placed. Kirtas gains digital content for sale on its retail site, the Penn library’s digital collection grows by user demand and best of all the program is potentially self funding.

Other libraries are pursuing similar or different digital agendas. In 2007, Emory University initiated a similar program with Kirkus. Cornell has said it intends to increase its PoD offerings through its Amazon partnership, to over 80,000 titles and the library is currently engaged with Google in a program to create some 500,000 digitized books over the next six years. The University of Michigan Library is the first academic library to install an Espresso Book Machine PoD machine on campus.

This program to unlock the huge sleeping giant that is public domain can only be applauded and our concern has and will always be with respect to the ‘grey area’ of out of print but in copyright works and the many orphans that are current vulnerable to illegal adoption.

After the Bond Watchphone now a Bond eReader

We have the James Bond watch from LG, which coming soon to an Orange store near you in the UK. Now we have a special 007 ebook reader edition from Sony. The limited edition Ian Fleming Reader Digital Book bundle includes an eBook download code for two Bond titles, ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘For Your Eyes Only’ plus a "007" embossed cover.

Well we had the ‘red’ Sony ebook reader, which was exclusive to John Lewis until it became a valentine’s draw to Harlequin. Now the people at Sony are applying their creative talent to the cover. Can we expect slogan covers bundled to a couple of books, ‘Star Wars – may the book force be with you’, graphic art covers based on classic titles with the book bundled in for free, branded covers such as the iconic Penguin modern classics again with a couple thrown in for good measure, this list goes on.

However, the jacket is the jacket and ‘giving away’ a couple of titles is hardly a bargain when the reader itself costs hard cash. It would make more sense to sell the jackets as designer or branded jackets with maybe a couple of relivant books thrown in. This would be similar to Apple selling designer covers for the iPod.

But buy a reader and get the jacket, we don’t think so.

Safari 4 Has Landed

Apple has released a new beta version of its Safari 4 Web browser for both PCs and Macs claiming it the world's faster browser executing code up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. It brings innovations from Mac OS X and even the iPhone to the browser such as Cover Flow interface for Web history and bookmarks and makes web pages appear similar to the interface first introduced with the iPhone.

A Top Sites feature, is similar to Chrome, previewing frequently visited pages, displaying them on a wall full of monitors. A Full History Search, searches through titles, Web addresses, and the complete text of recently viewed pages and Safari’s tabbed browsing looks more similar to Chrome. Finally Full Page Zoom makes it easier to zoom into a Web site without degrading the quality of the site's layout and text.

To Download a beta version Safari 4

Google Mobile on Windows Mobile

If you have Widows Mobile you can now have an improved Google search application

This Book Is Only Available At....

We read about exclusive deals with retailers, exculsive deals with digital devices, exclusive releases that are only initially available via one source, whatever. So what’s is an exclusive publication and an exclusive right?

There is nothing wrong with an exclusive deals, after all publishing is based on exclusive rights deals. An author sells their rights to a publisher, often via an exclusive agent relationship. The publisher creates an exclusive manifestation of the work which he then sells through multiple channels or in some cases through exclusive channels. So why shouldn’t a retailer secure an exclusive deal?

In music we have seen some examples and in film distribution deals are often exclusive.

There are two things that are starting to happen as it becomes easier to publish and critically easier to promote and sell works. One is that like music the creator can effectively cut out the middle man. It will not work for many but if you were a A or B list author, you could cut a deal direct on an exclusive basis. This is already happening in music today. Secondly if a publisher cuts an time-lined exclusive deal, then it is fair to assume that all parties will probably work hard at making it work and as a result, when the exclusivity expires, the better the chance of increasing sales in the wider market. Some would suggest scarcity of supply actually adds value.

We would expect large players such as Amazon and the large chains to push for more exclusive deals. It is easy to envisage ebook deals to be exclusive, maybe to a format, maybe a device, maybe a network, or as Amazon is effectively proving, both.

Publishing is a rights and content business and it makes sense to exploit rights fully, even if that means exclusivity. The key is to engage the creator in the process and ensure that their royalties are improved as a result of wise marketing.

Bezos On The Daily Show

Make your own mind up but its funny and shows how not to sell ebook readers

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jeff Bezos

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

GMail's Lights Just Failed

It’s alarming how things just fail. When it’s the car or something in the home or office, we invariably utter some choice words and move one, but when its our conduit to the word we not only notice it, but count the minutes back to reality.

Tuesday was a black day for Google. No their shares didn’t drop into freefall, their search engine didn’t link to all the sites it wasn’t meant to, but the impact was as huge. The world of Google mail went offline for around four hours! A few years ago we would not have thought much of a four hour reprieve from the constant flow of email, but today is different and we are all programmed to read and react to its persistent prods and questions.

According to ComScore more than 113 million people use Google mail worldwide, making it the third most popular mail service behind Hotmail and Yahoo. Over a million business around the world use Google's professional office suite of applications, which includes e-mail. So the lights went out for many but did they notice and what was the true impact?

The Google Mail support page said "A number of users have had difficulty accessing GMail today.The majority are now able to access their e-mail accounts again and we're hoping to have service restored for the remainder very soon.

Supply Chain Thoughts 3 Digital Reality

Digital logistics presents opportunities that enable the book trade to remove the physical logistics constraints that caused so much waste. In principle a digital title should only be stored once, full stop, and rendered many times. Obviously there is often more than one format of the titles but again, store once applies to each format and render to many still applies.

Does this mean there is only one winner, one store and we simply adopt the flawed iTunes model – No. It means that we create an inclusive not exclusive framework that supports and distributed files on demand. Why should a publisher not retain their assets within their own repository and only let files out on an on demand basis? This is not a theory and is being adopted by the likes of Taylor and Francis and Elsevier today. The alternative is to hand assets over to an increasing number of digital aggregators, who end up effectively controlling the channel to market and restricting it to their reach and relationships. Ask any publisher today who has to deal with many aggregators; how they control or even know what is being sold, how they ensure that their total catalogue is available through all aggregators and how they reconcile sales with different reports, schedules and terms? Often they have little control on what are their assets. With physical goods the next person down the chain buys them at a discount off RRP and sells them again at an increased margin. With digital, the money doesn’t move until the sale happens, its effectively distributed consignment stock.

Drop ship logistics can provide the mechanism which if adapted for digital distribution can go one further removing the need to build huge repositories and the current bragging rites about ‘mine being bigger than yours’. All that matters is the ability to fulfil the demand for online or download, rental or purchase. For many this may be a central aggregation service, but for those who want control of their assets it can remain effectively in their own warehouse and and leave when its sold or rented. The model may be complex to grasp on first hearing, but it is what is being rolled out by Gardners Books in the UK, Danish library service eBog and adopted by publishers such as Taylor and Francis and Elsevier.

Ironically you will find this model described in concept on page 75 of the 2006 Brave New World report.

The digital offer should be fully integrated with the physical one enabling the consumer to have a ‘one stop shop’ transaction experience and not be handed over to a separate aggregator in order to buy digital books . Separating out the transaction and the customer relationship from the instructions and communication flows from the actual pick pack and dispatch of physical and digital or whatever makes consumer sense, publisher sense and supply chain sense.

The Great Book Bank Robbery - As Long as Google Exists

Ars Technica reports today on the chairman of the Association of American Publishers, Richard Sarnoff’s speech at Princeton on the Google Book Search settlement. Sarnoff speculated that the agreement could effectively give Google and Amazon a "duopoly" in the online book market.

He is reported saying that some aspects of the settlement would be "difficult to replicate" for Google's competitors and that although the publishers he represents didn't set out to create a monopoly in the markets for book search engines or online book sales, the settlement could have that effect. Legal hurdles may make it infeasible for any other firms to build a search engine comparable to Google Book Search.

Sarnoff is also reported saying that the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly. This is a strange statement to make. Does this mean the settlement was driven and created to protect publishers and their self interest over authors? Some would speculate that they recognised that it was easier to do a deal and have a job than not do a deal and have no job.

The books will apparently be stored on the Google "cloud," and users will access the books they have purchased a few pages at a time using a Web-based viewer. This means that the files are not downloaded but only available online. Sarnoff said that the system Google has agreed to implement won't "involve the transfer of files." So as long as you are connected and online you can read if your not you can’t. We would not argue with the online logic and it is one we have long advocated.

We would not expect Google to walk away from Google Book Search or their cloud service. As we would not expect them to walk away from many other dead ventures such as their video store, their social network Lively, Google audio ads, Google Print Ads, the Dodgeball mobile service, Catalogue Search, Notebook and Jaiku, their answer to Twitter. . However if they did, then the books bought are likely to disappear, as access to them would be impossible. We presume the settlement includes some form of Escrow agreement and termination transfer. Sarnoff put it that users' ownership of a book will continue only "as long as Google exists."

A Splash of Colour Makes A Difference?

When you buy a car do you buy the grey model or the vibrant red?

The Dell Mini 10 certainly will put some sizzling looks into the notebook races. With its choice of colour cover from Obsidian Black, Alpine White, Cherry Red, Pretty Pink, Ice Blue to Jade Green, it begs the question, what’s your choice? It will certainly get noticed in the crowded trains and coffee bars where notebooks appear today. We like the Ice Blue but there again Cherry Red or Jade Green.

The screen resolution is 1024 x 576 has been marginally changed in the vertical in order to give it a movie friendly 16:9 aspect ratio and has a 92% full sized keyboard and a battery that Dell claim is good for 6.5 hours. The Mini 10 will be Windows XP with Linux pre-installed Ubuntu 8.04 later this year. The basic, £299 model has 1GB of memory, a 120GB SATA hard drive and a 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z520 processor. Options include wireless networking, Bluetooth, a 1.6GHz Z530 CPU and a 160GB hard drive and in the future will include on-board GPS, an built-in TV tuner, an HSDPA 3G module, a 250GB hard drive and 2GB of Ram.

So which colour would you choose?

How Do You Want Your News Tomorrow?

The financial burden from an advertising downturn, rising costs for newsprint, the migration of readers to the Internet, the huge debt some have to service and the general lack of a visible business model that will support the sector in the digital world, has caused many US newsprint operations to question if they can survive and what survival means.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for bankruptcy, the Chicago Tribune has its debt problems, the New York Times has suspended its dividend, and the story goes on to cover what looks like many of the major cities in the US.

Now the Journal Register, publisher of 20 local daily and weekly newspapers, primarily in the Philadelphia, Cleveland and Michigan has filed has for bankruptcy. Also Philadelphia Newspapers, which owns The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, has also filed for bankruptcy protection in a bid to restructure its $390 million debt.

We have written about the plight of the strip cartoon and how cartoonists have seen the writing on the wall and redefining their relationships.

However there doesn’t appear to be a quick fix to any of the mounting problems of this sector. Some would say that although they fed us the news and offered advice to us all, they just were unprepared for the bad news and change themselves. Is local and specialist news now becoming democratised and are we seeing a fundamental change in how news is created, communicated and digested? Can we honestly see ourselves still buying paper newsprint in the near future and would we be prepared to pay a digital subscription for what is in many cases syndicated news? Why would we pay for news when its free on TV and better tailored to suit our individual needs view the Internet?

Happy Birthday Litopia After Dark!!

We are pleased to celebrate the first birthday of Litopia After Dark.

It seem an age since we were first asked to contribute to this extraordinary fusion of literary debate and author insights. We didn’t exactly know what to expect, or how it was going to develop, but are proud to have play a minute part in its growth. Today Litopia boasts just over 21,000 listeners and its popularity grows as other book orientated shows struggle. Peter Cox has with his team shown great entrepreneurial flair, pushed the boundaries and bought a common touch and accessibility to a wide range of subjects that many struggle to communicate today. Most importantly he has created what many talk about - a social community on creativity and reading.

We are now a regular monthly contributor to the Friday night show and are scheduled to be back on the panel this Friday. We have no idea what the astute Peter will choose as the subjects to be discussed, but know we will enjoy every minute of the friendly banter.

If can’t make the live show you can download it and others.

Supply Chain Thoughts Part 2

How many books are given away as review, gratis, or inspection copies? In the academic world, inspection copies can often account for a double digit percentage volume of the initial print run. Someone said to us recently that the practice of passing around review copies like confetti had long stopped. We merely asked them to swivel round in their chair and describe what was on their shelves – free books. Of course you can’t sell anything if you don’t promote it and show a sample of it, but all too often, the giving is still easier than the monitoring.

Then we have the catalogues, flyers and advance information sheets. Digital marketing has certainly cut down the realms of glossy paper circulated in hope. However, given today’s technology and tightening credit squeeze, which comes first the physical flyer and catalogue or the digital one?

Digital marketing ensures that the control of the asset remains at the source, that the latest material and its consistency is guaranteed and interestingly you know what was read, when, in the case of direct marketing by whom and importantly what wasn’t read or even opened.

The ability to drive both bibliographic and marketing from digital content today is very real. There is no reason why the digital widget should be restricted to today’s ‘look inside’ only functionality. Widgets should be containers that are capable of distributing the richest information on demand; related tiles, web links, podcasts, videos, authors notes, reviews , advanced metadata, whatever. The question of then embedding widgets within widgets and creating digital catalogues is just a natural step.

We suggest that this perspective of digital marketing and metadata distribution changes not only what is distributed and working practices, but how it is created and aligned to digital content.