Dial 911: Time Warner Exec Is Delusional

Upload DVDs To Flixster? That’s Time Warner’s ‘Very Big Idea,’ Exec Says

CFO John Martin told an investor conference sponsored by Barclays Capital:

Consumers will be able to “upload your existing physical DVDs, have the ability access them across multiple devices anywhere you want, have the ability to manage your collections with social aspects as well, go in, have friends see what movie collections they have, (and) see who has been watching those films,” he says.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Oh! My! God!

What freakin world does he live in where multi-gigabyte uploads can be accomplished so easily and so quickly? Hasn’t he ever used his own damn Roadrunner service?!

It’d be quicker to ask people to come and drop off their damn DVDs when paying their bleed-them-dry cable bills!

Writer Orson Scott Card Posts An Amazon Review Of His Own Book!

The Author Says a Few Words About Style

The style I choose to use has been called “The American Plain Style,” in which the author tries to become as invisible as possible, bringing the reader to see things as if experiencing them along with the character, instead of having a writer constantly commenting and interrupting the flow of the story. Moreover, ever since my days as a playwright I have preferred the bare stage to a realistic set: I found that the less I put on the stage, the more the audience would imagine a much more compelling set than I could ever build. Likewise, in my fiction I describe only as much as is asbsolutely necessary in order to understand what is going on; the rest, the readers create in their own imagination, if they’re willing to use it. I try never to describe anything that the point-of-view character would not notice, because such extraneous descriptions take you out of the story.

The Ninety-Nine Cents Of Doom

Dirt-Cheap E-Readers: How Low Can They Go?

“We’ll see $99 e-readers from the major players by the holidays, if not sooner,” Mainelli said.

Weiner concurs on the $99 price-point: “Definitely by the holiday shopping season,” he says. In a recent blog post on the e-reader market, the Gartner analyst predicted that prices will fall even lower.

“Two things make sense: one is that the price drops to around the $50 mark and is marketed to those whose only aim is to read trade fiction and the like (perhaps an older demographic). Second, is (e-readers) are given away by book publishers to customers who sign up for book clubs that carry a monthly purchase commitment,” Weiner writes.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Just go read this: Would A US$50 eBook Reader Be A Disaster?

Kindle Marketing FAIL

Why Kindle has already won the ebook war

One of the primary reasons that Bernie took so well to the Kindle was because it is not intimidating. He doesn’t feel comfortable with lots of gadgets, but the Kindle is easy and just does what he needs. He admitted he even finds buying books on the device to be simple and a very pleasant experience.

And yet…

I Have Google Music Beta

Ironic, right after this post, I checked my Gmail and there was the invite.

Click = big

Google eBookstore: A Flop

@BEA: Is Google eBooks Planning A Rental Service?

Why has Google walked away from the Google eBookstore?

Why should anyone be surprised?

Quote Of The Day: Print Publishing Doom

E-books rewrite an industry [Financial Times; paywall]

Dealing with geeks is a problem for many people in publishing – it’s not something they have to do.

Music Videos: Books, Libraries, Reading!

I’ve been too stabby here lately.

It’s time to be reminded that we all love books, libraries, and reading!

American Idol? Rebecca Black!

Lady GaGa/Amazon

What’s the biggest hit of the year? Come on, it’s EASY!

Rebecca Black’s “Friday”. Despite no radio airplay, she got over a hundred million YouTube views and EVERYBODY know who she is. More people know who Rebecca Black is than Rihanna.

That’s 149,246,721 views as of post writing time, with 408,663 likes, 2,923,644 dislikes.

The dislikes are overruled.

And what is a “Rihanna”?

No Surprise: Japan Nuke Disaster Even Worse!

TEPCO: reactor damage includes holes

The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says data analyses suggest damage to its reactors may have caused cracks and openings in the reactor containment vessels equivalent to a 10-centimeter hole.

Reactors 1 through 3 at the plant suffered nuclear fuel meltdowns after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. This is likely to have created holes and cracks at the bottom of the pressure vessels protecting the reactor cores and damaged the containment vessels.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Not one. Not two. Three meltdowns.