Apple’s Textbook & Education Plans – Part 1
Posted on February 3, 2012
A couple of months hence shall mark the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. In response, I’ve been reading several books including Charles Lightoller’s memoirs, purchased from the Kindle store for ninety-nine cents. Lightoller was the ship’s senior surviving officer. His story is so incredible that fiction editors would likely reject the plot as too improbable. As playwright Oscar Wilde put it, “(audiences) will believe the impossible, but never the improbable”. More to the point, the experience of reading the e-book on an iPad via Kindle’s App hints at the potential for Apple’s iTextbooks and iTunes- U initiatives.
Download six minute audio narration here.
At age thirteen Lightoller apprenticed aboard a four-masted “three-skysail yarder.” Being an unfamiliar term, I put my finger on “skysail” to summon iPad’s dictionary which described it as “a light sail above the royal”. The definition was not useful since I was also unfamiliar with the meaning of “royal” sails. Fortunately, iPad’s dictionary also provided links to Google and Wikipedia. The Wikipedia link connected to a full explanation including photographs and diagrams identifying all the sails of a clipper ship. Read more…
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Fixing a Home Wi-Fi Problem
Posted on June 9, 2011
This past weekend I decided to rent a movie from Amazon-Video-on-Demand. The service is available via my TiVo, which makes it easy to watch the movies on my TV-set instead of a computer. I’ve done it about a dozen times before. Except when it was a new service, the experience has been generally satisfactory.
But, not this last time.
Download audio narration to iPhone, iPad, or iPod — three minutes.
Unfortunately my TiVo simply gave me an error message. So, like most of us, I shrugged my shoulders and repeated the selection process. TiVo threw-up on me a second time.
Frowning, I proceeded to TiVo’s troubleshooting instructions which suggested I check “Network and Settings”. After a few button-clicks, I learned that TiVo was receiving a “marginal” (35%) Wi-Fi signal from the router in my home office in the adjacent room. My current TiVo uses Wi-Fi to access the Internet to keep its program guide up-to-date and fetch movies from Amazon-Video-on-Demand. Older models typically used dial-up telephone lines which makes the Amazon service problematic. Read more…
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Legal Status of Amazon’s Cloud Drive
Posted on April 5, 2011
Last week Amazon.com launched its cloud drive emphasizing music storage. Users can upload 5GB of CD or mp3 music collections to Amazon for free storage, streaming and downloading. Each additional GB of storage costs only a dollar per year.
The concept should prove to be attractive to consumers who increasingly want to play music on a variety of devices. Consider the convenience of having our tune libraries available in (1) our cars, (2) on mp3 players while exercising, (3) on smartphones wherever we go, (4) at out computers while writing casual emails or Facebook updates and (5) in our living room entertainment system during a romantic experience. Given increasing wireless Internet ubiquity, music playback devices and settings will likely become even more diversified in the future.
Download audio interview to iPod, iPhone and iPad here — twenty minutes.
Cloud drive benefits are so obvious that it’s no surprise the concept was actually introduced about ten years ago by mp3.com and MyPlay. Unfortunately, mp3.com adopted a legally flawed approach and sustained damages that reduced it to irrelevance. MyPlay failed to enter the mainstream because of slower Internet speeds and conscientious compliance with then unrealistically restrictive rules imposed by record labels and music publishers. Read more…
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First Billion Dollar eBook
Posted on October 25, 2010
Today’s interview is with Randy Ingermanson who is a “deranged physicist and award winning author”. He also maintains a blog and monthly e-zine about advanced fiction writing. His Ph.D. is from Berkeley where Robert Oppenheimer led development of the atomic bomb and taught a generation or so before Randy arrived. As a high school graduate Randy was named a Presidential Scholar along with others who were among the top 500 in either the SAT or ACT tests.
His stories are at the “intersection of Science Avenue and Faith Boulevard”. Representative novels include Double Vision, Transgression, Premonition, Retribution, and The Fifth Man. Two books won Christy Awards for Futuristic Fiction.
Download audio interview here (25 minutes).
Recently, Randy pondered “what it would take” for an author to make a billion dollars from a book. He concluded if such a goal were possible, it would likely be an e-book for two reasons. First, author royalties on e-books are about ten times greater than for traditional books. Second, authors can better market e-book titles than conventional ones. Read more…
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How to Publish Your eBook at Amazon.com
Posted on October 19, 2010
Today’s video podcast demonstrates how to publish eBooks at Amazon.com. That means millions of Kindle owners can read them along with consumers owning devices like the iPhone and iPad that have Kindle applications. The video speaks for itself, but several points merit emphasis.
Download Video to iPhone, iPod, or iPad by clicking here. (eight minutes)
First, given its relative newness, eBook publishing at Amazon.com is surprisingly un-complex. Anyone with an existing customer account is eligible. Those without one merely need to open a conventional account. There are two basic steps. One is to upload cover art and a publication-ready manuscript in a qualified format. Fortunately the commonly used Microsoft Word is an accepted format. The second step is choosing a price which also determines the royalty. Read more…
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Ideal e-Book Reading Device
Posted on July 27, 2010
It’s increasingly evident that book publishing is undergoing a fundamental transformation. First, for two-and-a-half years Amazon.com pioneered the e-book market toward critical mass, largely keeping industry statistics to themselves. Second, the March iPad launch accelerated matters by initiating an irrevocable chain reaction that has only just begun. Cascading new developments seem to materialize monthly, if not faster.
For example, by unit volume June e-book sales at Amazon.com were eighty-percent greater than hard covers. Earlier this month notable authors such as Pat Conroy and Philip Roth contracted with powerful agents to publish their pre-Internet-era novels as e-books. The arrangement circumvents traditional publishers and increases author royalties. Simultaneously e-book reading devices are proliferating and prices are dropping. Visiting a typical Barnes & Noble store symbolically underscores the magnitude of change. As the leading terrestrial book chain few companies could be more dependent upon physical book sales. Nonetheless, each store now normally exhibits the Nook electronic reader prominently at the entrance. Read more…
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How Cord-Cutting Will Happen
Posted on July 15, 2010
Most anyone having more than six months experience with a computer-to-TV connection to get unlimited Internet access at the television realizes that cord-cutting is inevitable. It is not a question of “if”, but merely of “when”. But for businesses that must adapt the more important question is how it will happen. Once that process is understood, inevitability is hard to deny and constructive planning can begin.
Download audio of narrative for iPod, iPad, and iPhone here.
For the uninitiated, “cord-cutting” refers to a consumer’s decision to discontinue a television subscription service and replace it with various Internet activities on the TV screen. Generally Cable operators, media companies, and conventional industry researchers dismiss the possibility. For example, earlier this year one prominent industry analyst labeled it an “urban myth” because TV subscriber numbers continued to climb. Read more…
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Selling e-Books as Agent
Posted on February 17, 2010
Phil Leigh
Amazon’s grudging agreement to act as agent when selling Macmillan e-books next month has important implications.
An agent is a business partner. However, Macmillan’s partnership notion is not fifty-fifty. The publisher concludes that they contribute more than twice the value of Amazon by taking 70% of the sales price for themselves and leaving only 30% for the online merchant.
There could hardly be a better example of irony considering that the 167-year-old publisher never found enough time to develop an e-book business on its own. Instead, 14-year-old Amazon.com invented the Kindle. To date Amazon has done more than any single business to launch the entire e-book industry, yet it gets the short end of the stick. Read more…
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