InfoSec Taylor Swift Brings It

Special beatings should be set aside for the teams that code Google’s Chrome browser and the free Windows program called Paint.Net. Both have turned into slow, cloggy shit.

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Ah, Oprah Again!

An open letter to Oprah, whose ‘The Life You Want’ tour asked me to work for free [link fixed]

I want a life in which people are not asked to work for free—by people who can totally afford to pay.

I am not surprised.

Oprah really doesn’t like “sharing her abundance” in any way, shape, or form. Unless she can get paid for it!

Cue Harlan Ellison:

Thanks, @moriahjovan

Previously, in 2008:

The Raging Hypocrisy Of Oprah

Amazon Only Does What’s Best For Amazon

Amazon in Talks to Launch Digital-Book Library

Amazon has told publishers it is considering creating a digital-book library featuring older titles, people familiar with the talks said. The content would be available to customers of Amazon Prime, who currently pay the retailer $79 a year for unlimited two-day shipping and for access to a digital library of movies and TV shows.

The timing of this is no accident.

September 15th is the date Judge Chin has decreed there must be a Google Book Search settlement.

So Amazon probably went to publishers and said, “You already agreed to letting Google steal your backlist, why not at least let us give you a few pennies for it?”

I wonder how many publisher Buy buttons will disappear until they cave in and agree?

It will soon get to the point where writers will have a better chance of making a living selling illegal drugs instead of writing.

Free Is The Last Resort Of Bad Marketing

E-Book Giveaway Aims to Lift Sales

Digital publisher RosettaBooks LLC is giving away digital editions of five titles that have been turned into movies in a bid to jump start interest in them at a time when record numbers of e-books are available.

The quintet, which includes “The Graduate” and “Midnight Cowboy,” has been largely ignored by digital consumers, generating only marginal sales over the past decade. In April, cumulative sales of the books numbered an estimated 250 copies across all e-retailer websites.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Of course the sales were miserable!

Do you know when I first heard about these as eBooks?

When this giveaway began!

Where the hell was the marketing for them?

Did Rosetta even try to get any site to write about them?

“Books That Became Movies Now Available As eBooks” would have been a good pitch. (Someone else can now go do that post.)

Why the hell do I have to do all the work around here?

Opera: A Basket Case

1) There is no sensible way to import my Speed Dial from another install. The suggestions in the Support forum were all FAIL.

2) Without any sense to it and despite plug-ins being disabled just for it, YahooMail has begun crashing after hitting Send again.

3) To prevent the crashes, I installed an Ad Blocker.

4) Now Opera crashes about four times an hour.

I am fast getting sick of this shit.

Another Yahoo Failure: MyBlogLog

Via email: Yahoo! MyBlogLog to be discontinued

Dear MyBlogLog Customer,

You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.

It’s a good thing I never was attached to that service.

What Are Kindle Sample Conversion Rates?

The Free App Economy: How Sustainble is it?

This is the line that got me thinking:

Ivan says, “Our [free lite app to full paid app conversion] rate is pretty low and is somewhere around 5 to 10%, depending on the price and special deals”

Which really made me laugh a bit at his naivete.

Amazon’s Android App Store: No Thanks!

Apps from Amazon routinely phone home and other interesting details

I left my Viewsonic gTablet sitting at home while I was at a conference last week. The battery died while I was gone, and when I charged again I noticed 2 interesting details. The first is that all the apps wanted to check with Amazon before I could open them. What’s truly curious is that I only have free apps. Some, like the Kindle app, have always been free and always will be free. But even the free Kindle app insisted on contacting Amazon before I could do anything with it.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

This is just wrong wrong wrong.

He mentions free apps here. Amazon can argue this is the “price of free” (though good luck getting people with brains to accept that Orwellianism).

But what happens if you’re in a disaster zone, there’s no working wireless, and you need to access a free app that gives first aid or other survival advice? Or what if it’s a legitimately-purchased eBook that requires the free Kindle reading program?

This is an equation for one hell of a lawsuit.

Until I learn otherwise, I will be skipping the Amazon Android App Store.

She’d Thank The Little People If She Acknowledged They Even Existed

Flush w/ $300m in cash, FluffPo's first step will be bonuses for its unpaid, non-celebrity contributors who made sale possible, right? #not

— Guy L. Gonzalez (@glecharles) February 7, 2011

Sony Popularizes Google Vandalizing Books

What is wrong with all of these companies that have hooked into Google Books? Are all of the people at them non-readers? Lazy? Mere suckhogs who never do a proper job and who show up only because they feel entitled to a check of some kind?

I’m stabbing Sony in this post because it was at its Reader Store that I did this. Also, Sony was the first to hook up with Google, then all of the other eBookstores followed it.

But all of them should be similarly ashamed!

See the wretched gore after the break.