Trademark Filing: Nook Community Edition

This is a very strange filing!

For Barnes & Noble under its beard, Fission LLC.

What the hell is a “community edition” Nook?!

Why Does Google Own Hello.Com?

I was thinking about automagic seamless data sharing in 2015 and got it into my head to see who owned hello.com. Yes, my mind makes leaps like that.

Google does, if I read the record correctly.

Relevant screensnap portion after the break.

RSS Update: Killing The Hamster Wheel!

Apparently my latest setting for checking feeds with the Firefox LiveClick add-on — thirty-five minutes — is still too short. Video viewing, or JPEG editing, or post creation, or just plain reading gets interrupted by the damn notifications too soon.

And so far I’ve seen nothing in the thousands of posts that I’ve needed to know now now now.

So I’m dialing it back to its default: Check every hour.

I’m sick of being interrupted and feeling as if I’m being spun on a wheel.

If I wanted that, I’d go back on Twitter.

Update: Another problem is the number of Notifications I’ve been getting. So I’ve now dialed those back to just one, for a site that I know publishes a lot. That will let me know to look at all Live Bookmarks without it being so damn intrusive.

Previously here:

That Whole RSS Thing
Blog Change: RSS Widget
So How Is That RSS Thing Going?
Into The RSS Stream Again

Only An Idiot Would Buy Advertising On Twitter

Click = big

iWork In 2011 Is Just So 2007 To Me

2011: Apple brings iWork to iPhone and iPod touch

Click = big

Missing The Point Of Blake’s 7

Nigel Kneale

“I think the low point for me would be the very few bits I’ve seen of a thing called Blake’s 7 which I found paralytically awful. The dialogue/characterisation seemed to consist of a kind of childish squabbling”

That was its point! All those people put together under pressure, who wouldn’t have otherwise met, who otherwise wouldn’t want to be around one another, having to band together to fight for freedom (in most cases, just their own continued survival) — of course you’re going to get yelling and threats and backbiting and ugly emotions.

That’s what made — and still makes — that series a leap for televised SF (or space opera, if you insist). No one in it was a stalwart hero (Blake tried to be, which made him dull as hell, so that character got jettisoned from his own series!). They were just people.

Joss Whedon’s Firefly was nearly an American spin-off of it.

After the break, that right bastard, Avon! No Captain Kirk was he!

Overthinking A Book Cover: Disaster!

If you’re a writer, you’re not expected to be a designer.

Hell, you shouldn’t even try to be a designer.

Pay the money for a real cover!

Would you go out into the world if your face was horribly disfigured? A bad book cover is like that. It prevents people from seeing the beauty inside.

It doesn’t take much to do a compelling, interesting cover, as you’ll see after the break.

So, if you’re too damn cheap to respect your readers with a good cover and still want to do your own, heed the following!

A Five Year Bet

Written off?

[Bradley] Graham and his wife recently purchased Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s premier independent bookstores. What was he thinking? “We’re not a dying breed,’’ Graham insists. “There are still enough of us who believe in books to invest small fortunes and the rest of their lives in this wonderful business.’’

Does he plan to drop dead in five years? Because I think his bookstore will be dead by then.

Now all I have to do is live five more years to see it.

The Final Nail In The Coffin Of PBS

Gary Null, years ago, correctly identified what PBS had become: “Non-commercial commercial television.”

Now it will become full-blown commercial television!

PBS Plans Promotional Breaks Within Programs

PBS officials told member stations at its recent annual meeting in Orlando that beginning this fall, the Wednesday science series “Nature” and “Nova” would contain corporate and foundation sponsor spots, promotional messages and branding within four breaks inside the shows, instead of at the very beginning and end.

The longest period of uninterrupted programming, according to a plan shown to the programmers, would be just under 15 minutes, compared with the current 50 minutes or more. Based on what PBS learns in the fall, the new format would continue to be introduced night by night through the year, officials said.

Listen, you have no idea how bad this is.

Pixel Qi Bombshell: Three Million Screens Shipped!

Charbax is a charmer. And he has a great relationship with Mary Lou Jepson of Pixel Qi. In the video after the break, he really gets her to talk — and we get an incredible look at the back of their booth, where their partner devices are displayed. The public usually doesn’t see this area.

Twin bombshells:

1) Pixel Qi has shipped three million units (why don’t we see them?!!?).

2) Jepson believes Pixel Qi will be “the dominant display technology in five years.”

What’s also interesting is right at the beginning. Outside, they compare an iPad to a Pixel Qi IR touch-enabled tablet. It’s no contest at all. And this is on a cloudy day!