Amazon

It's About The Google Experience - Posted November 25, 2011
In a piece titled "How Amazon Is Making A Sucker Out Of Google" writer Mike Elgan suggests that Amazon is taking advantage of Google's open policy towards Android and in the process could be destroying the Android ecosystem. Google prov... [SocialTimes.com]

K-9 Mail Is A Better Mail App For The Kindle Fire - Posted November 25, 2011
While Amazon wisely included a mail app on the Kindle Fire, I have been less than satisfied with it. The main problem I have with the Fire's mail app is that it doesn't work well with Gmail. Fortunately, I have found a free alternate in the Amazon Appstore called ... [SocialTimes.com]

Sharing Books is as Old as Print. But, Publishers have a Problem with eBook Sharing - Posted November 23, 2011
Sharing a conventional paper book has been one of the most basic sharing activities for a long time. Sharing comes in the form of informal person-to-person lending or institutionalized library loans. This simplest and most basic of sharing activities has been, however, something that has not been easily adopted for di... [SocialTimes.com]

Does Amazon Still Have Growth Potential? - Posted November 22, 2011
Last week, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney published a report identifying that Chinese suppliers of Kindle hardware are also in preparations to build an Amazon Kindle Phone. This comes soon after Amazon's launch of their $200 Kindle Fire device and signals that Amazon is serious about extending their reach to customers... [SocialTimes.com]

Get The Full Version Of Documents To Go For Free Today On Amazon - Posted November 21, 2011
Much has been written about how the Kindle Fire is essentially a portable door to the Amazon store. I think today's free app on ... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon's Growth: 9 Things to Know [Infographic] - Posted November 17, 2011
Amazon is a household word these days. It's recent release of the Amazon Kindle may signal it's transition into a new stage, and it could become as essential a word as "Apple". What's not as well known, is the story of its growth in the last 17 years. The online bookseller... [SocialTimes.com]

First Impressions Of The Amazon Kindle Fire - Posted November 16, 2011
When we first learned about the iPad, it was promoted as a content consumption device. Given the iPad's on-screen keyboard that can be challenging for typing a lot of words, I can understand the emphasis on content consumption. However, when you turn on an iPad what you see is a grid... [SocialTimes.com]

Refer 5 Friends to StumbleUpon, Get $10 in Amazon Gift Cards - Posted November 16, 2011
The social network sharing site StumbleUpon is dealing out thousands of Amazon gift cards to increase its membership. Between now and December 4, 2011, Stumbleupon will reward you with a free $10 Amazon gift card for every 5 friends y... [SocialTimes.com]

EA Mobile Launches Bejeweled, Dead Space and Monopoly for Kindle Fire - Posted November 15, 2011
Just in time for Amazon's Kindle Fire, EA Mobile rolled out six of its most popular titles for the Amazon Appstore for Android. Each game has been optimized for Kindle Fire to offer incredible gameplay and mind-blowing graphics. "EA is proud to be part of Kindle Fire," said Bernard Kim of ... [SocialTimes.com]

Kindle Fire Will Be Open To Competing Content Providers - Posted November 9, 2011
It is fairly obvious that the main reason why Amazon is selling the Kindle Fire tablet is to sell more video, music, and books from their store, so it would be understandable if they opted to not make competing content provider apps available for the Fire. Today ... [SocialTimes.com]

This Week on the mediabistro.com Job Board: Amazon, Emerson College, Fodors.com - Posted October 3, 2011
This week, Amazon is hiring a designer/producer for Kindle marketing, while Emerson College is looking for a ... [GalleyCat]

Surprise! Amazon Also Has A New Browser For Their Tablet - Posted September 28, 2011
As expected, today Amazon announced their new tablet called the Kindle Fire. As we reported earlier today, the Kindle Fire will cost $199, and will be available in Nove... [SocialTimes.com]

Kindle Fire a 'Service,' Not a Tablet - Posted September 28, 2011
[caption id="attachment_27930" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Photo: Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg"][/caption] When Jeff Bezos announced Amazon's new Kindle products today he presented them ... [AgencySpy]

The Kindle Fire: Amazon's Answer to the iPad - Posted September 28, 2011
Looks like the tablet family just got a whole lot bigger. Today, Amazon announced three new e-reading products with impressively low price points... [10,000 Words]

Amazon Introduces 3 New B/W Kindles, $200 Kindle Fire Tablet with Free Cloud Storage & New Cloud-powered Browser - Posted September 28, 2011
Despite the widely accepted public knowledge before the big reveal today (including pre-announcement photos on TechCrunch), Amazon managed to pull of a Steve Jobs type "one more thing" this morning by announcing not just one but four new Kindle models and a new web browser that uses its own considerable cloud... [SocialTimes.com]

Fox Makes Deal to Video Stream on Amazon - Posted September 27, 2011
Amazon's stock climbed 2.3% this morning after the company made the announcement it has signed a deal to stream Fox movies and TV shows like "24" and "Arrested Development" as a service for Amazon Prime members. The deal with Twentieth Century Fox includes instant 11,000 videos it will offer its Prime customer... [SocialTimes.com]

5 Things You Need to Know This Week: Amazon's iPad, Putin's Pecs, and Romney's E. Coli Problem - Posted September 27, 2011
In this week's episode of "5 Things You Need to Know This Week," we unveil our new tablet device (which many of my roommates are calling an "iPad killer") and discuss the future presidents of Russia ... [GalleyCat]

5 Things You Need to Know This Week: Glenn Beck, Bilbo Baggins, and Amazon's Tablet - Posted September 13, 2011
In this week's episode of "5 Things You Need to Know This Week," we talk about fantasy football, Fashion Week, Tim ... [GalleyCat]

Amazon.com Builds Social Media and Gaming Teams - Posted September 8, 2011
Amazon.com has had its fun with the Internet retail business, and now it's ready to take on social media and gaming. Reuters reports that the largest e-tailer has hired John Yurcisin to become Director of Social Media. Previously, Y... [SocialTimes.com]

Infolinks Introduces Self-Service Semantic Advertising - Posted August 22, 2011
Online advertising that leverages semantic technology is expanding to the do-it-yourself model. Infolinks today is launching its self-service in-text advertising marketplace. The company says the service is designed to speed advertisers' ability to create in-text ad campaigns, which work in the Infolin... [AllTwitter]

Upping the eBook Cool Factor - Posted August 17, 2011
[caption id="attachment_22382" align="alignleft" width="264" caption="Photo Courtesy: Flickr/ceslava.com"][/caption] eBooks are cool, but they could get even cooler with EPUB3, the next version of the widely adopted distribution and interchange format for digital books (well, except for A... [semanticweb.com]

Tabco Revealed as Grid 10 From Fusion Garage -- But What Exactly Is The Semantic Inspiration? - Posted August 15, 2011
  What does it mean for a tablet to have a Semantic Web inspired user interface (UI)? Following the launch of the Grid 10 from Fusion Garage - erstwhile known as Tabco i... [semanticweb.com]

Quietly Amazon Releases Kindle Social Network Service - Posted August 9, 2011
Kindle owners are smiling ear to ear because it seems that Amazon humbly rolled out a new social networking service for their dedicated Kindle owners. Probably the silent release with no fanfare is based upon Amazon's plan to let the omnipresent social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon Free App Of The Day Not Such A Good Deal For Developers - Posted August 2, 2011
You might be aware that Amazon has an Android AppStore and that its most compelling feature is that every day Amazon provides an app for free that you otherwise would need to buy. I've assumed that Amazon brokers deals with the companies selling those apps where they got some compensation for... [SocialTimes.com]

Study Suggests Amazon Tablet Could Be A Hit - Posted July 26, 2011
Electronics shopping site Retrevo recently surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers to find out their interests in a tablet. I think ... [SocialTimes.com]

Alternate Android Keyboard Is Today's Free Amazon App - Posted July 21, 2011
One of the differences between Android and iOS that stands out is keyboards. Obviously, some Android phones have physical keyboards while no iOS device does, but another difference is Android's ability for users to change the on-screen keyboard. iPhone users who want to change the keyboard need to jailbreak their phone.... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon Kindle Textbook Rentals: Possible Cost Savings This School Year? - Posted July 18, 2011
Anyone who has bought school textbooks knows about the relatively large price it adds to education. In 2006, the U.S. Department of Education issued a report titled An Economic Analy[s]is of Textbook Pricing and Textbook Markets (and yes, there is a spelling error in its title) which said: Between 1986 and 2004,... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon Cloud Player Works Fine on iPad, But Not on iPhone - Posted July 7, 2011
iPad users can now stream music stored in Amazon's CloudDrive. And, they don't even need to download and install an app to do it. When Engadget noted that "Amazon Cloud Player hits iPad", it means that and iPad user has to do is point the Safari mobile browser at: amazon.com... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon Cloud Drive Now Allows Unlimited Music File Uploads for Paid Accounts - Posted July 7, 2011
If you've been streaming music from Amazon's Cloud Drive to your Android phone or tablet, you may have been watching your bytes because the plan you are on (most likely 5GB for a free account or 20GB for $20 per year or if you bought an Amazon MP3 album). MP3 music... [SocialTimes.com]

Semantic Web Jobs: Amazon & Prosum - Posted June 13, 2011
Amazon is looking for Software Development Engineers, Semantic Web & Information Retrieval in Seattle, WA. According to the post, "Amazon.com's External Content Team is looking for exceptio... [semanticweb.com]

Roger Ebert's Great Movies App Hits iOS Devices - Posted June 13, 2011
Have you ever tried to discuss a movie where you can't remember the title or actor of the movie picture? Have you ever needed help deciding which movie to download or pick from one of the movie rental stores? Roger Ebert series of Great Movies is now available on your iPhone.... [SocialTimes.com]

My Coffee Card Pro: Pay for Starbucks Coffee With Your Android Smartphone (app free today only) - Posted June 13, 2011
The Starbucks Card Mobile for the iPhone is a great app for people who use Starbucks pre-paid cards. It lets you pay for a product by scanning a barcode on the iPhone's screen. The balance of the card is updated almost instantly. I've long wondered why Starbucks does not provide an... [SocialTimes.com]

$50 Kindle eReader by Christmas? Free by Next Summer? - Posted June 8, 2011
All Things D's Peter Kafka quotes Citigroup's Mark Mahaney as predicting: Mahaney thinks they'll be below $100 by Christmas, and that seems like a very conservative guess. Kindles Gettin... [SocialTimes.com]

Netflix Can't Afford Unlimited Content and All-inclusive Packages - Posted June 2, 2011
Netflix grows more and more popular every month, but has no plans to make its library of online entertainment content like movies and TV shows as all-inclusive or unlimited even though competitive companies plan to offer such packages. "At $7.99 a month, we can't provide unlimited content," N... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon's Book Publishing Plans Brings Hope to Independent Writers - Posted June 2, 2011
[caption id="attachment_64831" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="SPR"][/caption] The "Slush Pile" just got an exciting makeover courtesy of the bookselling pioneer Amazon. The Seattle-based giant, which sells more books than any other bookstore in America, is planning a big move to compete with book publishers like Random House, Simo... [SocialTimes.com]

Pac-Man and Plants vs. Zombies For Free, Oh My! - Posted June 1, 2011
Amazon's strategy for it's Android AppStore is obvious, they want Android users to check out the store every day, and they do so by providing a free app each day. The apps Amazon provides premium paid Android apps, and even premier launches, like yesterday's free app, Plants vs. Zombies. Today's free... [SocialTimes.com]

Apple Has Not Taken Over E-Books - Posted May 27, 2011
When Apple first announced the iPad, there were some people who stated that the iPad spelled the death of the Amazon Kindle and other dedicated eBook devices. It is more than a year later and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo are still selling dedicated eBook devices. Amazon is selling a... [SocialTimes.com]

Lady Gaga Shares the PR Love - Posted May 27, 2011
... [PRNewser]

Apple Patent Suggests their Cloud Will be the Fluffiest of All - Posted May 25, 2011
In a recent article on the status of the could music battle between Amazon, Google and Apple, I tendered my opinion that victory wouldn't be based on chronological order, but on a litany of factors. I also touched on the fact that Apple has a storied history of entering the market... [SocialTimes.com]

Media Personality Glenn Beck Creates Groupon Site - Posted May 25, 2011
[caption id="attachment_63742" align="alignnone" width="564" caption="Photo credit: Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times"][/caption] Earlier this week Glenn Beck and his company Mercury Radio Arts unexpectedly announced that they were moving into the social shopping network with an ecommerce discount s... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon App Of The Day Reminders - Posted May 23, 2011
Last week I wrote about Tweetcaster, which was the free app of the day from Amazon. The quality of free apps make it worthwhile to check Amazon's app store every day to see if you are interested in that day's free app. O... [SocialTimes.com]

Amazon EC2 Used in Sony Playstation Hack - Posted May 16, 2011
Bloomberg reported Friday that Amazon servers may have been used to perform the massive Playstation hack that compromised the personal data of more than 100 million Playstation Network users. Today, ... [SocialTimes.com]

Play Amazon Cloud Music On An iPhone Or iPad - Posted May 9, 2011
In March Amazon launched their cloud-based music service, which is a combination of cloud storage called Amazon Cloud Drive, and an MP3 music player called Cloud Player. You can play streaming music on your... [SocialTimes.com]

Apple Charges Ahead of Google on Brand Ranking Chart - Posted May 9, 2011
Apple leads the sixth annual BrandZ report put out by WPP research firm Millward Brown. The brand, valued at $153.3 billion, overtakes Google, which is valued at $111.5 milli... [PRNewser]

Is A $25 Discount Worth Seeing Ads On A Kindle? - Posted April 11, 2011
It seems as though ever since Amazon first started selling the Kindle there has been speculation about how the company might come up with ways to make the device affordable if not free. One idea that I heard is that Amazon would create a monthly book club were you commit to... [SocialTimes.com]

How Geographically Desirable Are You? (In the Semantic Jobs Market, That Is) - Posted March 4, 2011
In the market for a job where your semantic web skills will shine? For a fun Friday exercise, let's see how geographically desirable you are, based on information from tech job search engine Dice.com. As of yesterday, the site listed only a couple dozen "semantic web" jobs, but a ... [semanticweb.com]

Survey Finds 75% of College Students Stick to Print Textbooks - Posted January 7, 2011
According to the Book Industry Study Group (BISG)'s "Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education" survey, 75 percent of college students prefer print textbooks over digital versions. eBookNewser noted that 12 percent of t... [GalleyCat]

Use Twitter Telepathy to Find Out What Your Friends Want for Christmas - Posted December 17, 2010
Pulled a secret Santa that you just don't know that well? tweeSP can help. It uses a super-secret method of telepathy (or, rather, an algorithm) to determine the top gifts for any Twitter user. I tested it out on myself below, for a mixed bag of results. ... [10,000 Words]

DoubleClick Founder's FindTheBest Comparison App Gets Investment From Social App Fund -- And Sees Open Graph In Its Future - Posted December 6, 2010
Comparison engine FindtheBest, the startup launched by DoubleClick co-founder Kevin O'Connor (see our story here), has found itself the recipient of some VC funding. The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers sFund is parting with an undisclosed sum out of its ... [semanticweb.com]

Love in the Time of Amazon - Posted December 6, 2010
... [GalleyCat]

Amazon Kindle Jumps 216 Spots on NBCU Index - Posted November 29, 2010
... [PRNewser]

Amazon Introduces Kindle Book Giving - Posted November 19, 2010
Just in time for the holidays, Amazon has launched the ability to digitally give Kindle Books as gifts to anyone with an e-mail address. Kobo announced a similar service yesterday, which begins in early December. To give a Kindle Book as a gift, customer... [eBookNewser]

Everyone's Talking About Amazon's Book Controversy Except Amazon - Posted November 12, 2010
Amazon has removed The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure from its site, but not before experiencing a massive backlash, including ... [PRNewser]

Facebook, Amazon Back $250M Social Startup Fund - Posted October 25, 2010
In a bid to boost social media technology, Facebook and Amazon.com, along with other notable social media companies, have lined up behind notable Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Pe... [WebNewser - SocialTimes.com]

10 Reasons Kindle Will Fail: An Instructive List from 2007 - Posted October 19, 2010
Back in November of 2007, Center Networks published a long list of reasons that the new Amazon Kindle would fail. To be completely honest, th... [GalleyCat]

Amazon Extends 70% Royalty Rate To UK - Posted October 6, 2010
Amazon is extending its 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to the UK. The 70 percent royalty rate has been available for a few months for sales to US customers, but now author... [eBookNewser]

Info About Google TV Available - Posted October 6, 2010
More detail about Google TV's offerings is now available, with standard services like content from Netflix and Amazon, ... [PRNewser]

Week In Review: Kobo, Amazon, The Book Futurists - Posted October 1, 2010
Happy weekend! Here is a roundup of this week's eBook news: BlackBerry-maker RIM announced its new PlayBook tablet. A social reading Kobo app ... [eBookNewser]

Is Amazon Working On An iPad Competitor? - Posted September 28, 2010
TechCrunch is reporting on a rumor that Amazon may be working on a new tablet device that would take on the iPad. Here is more from the blog: "Okay, we know now that Amazon is on the verge of releasing an An... [eBookNewser]

Amazon Patent Could Charge For Browsing A Book Online - Posted September 27, 2010
Amazon has a patent in the works that could charge customers for viewing content online. The new patent could change Amazon's "Search inside this book" tool, which lets customers browse specific pages of a book online before purchasing it, as you w... [eBookNewser]

Amazon challenges cloudy startups - Register - Posted August 18, 2010
... [semanticweb.com]

Amazon Earnings: The Big Loss You Won't See There - BNET - Posted April 23, 2010
  ... [semanticweb.com]

Put Your Desktop in the Cloud to Support the Open Government Directive and Data.gov/semantic - Posted April 19, 2010
Disclaimer:  This article does not reflect the views of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and does not constitute endorsement by the EPA of the standards or products mentioned. A Semantic Cloud Computing Desktop/Mobile Apps with Linked Open Data consists of the following: A database of "things" referenced by URL's (e.g. ... [semanticweb.com]

Orchestration on the Edge - Posted March 27, 2010
When people think about orchestration efforts, they tend to think about centralized, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)-based efforts. The service elements are published into reusable components that can be stitched together into workflows. This vision of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) allows central metrics of use and stability, but it precludes a common use... [semanticweb.com]

Seth Godin: Book Publishing 10 Years in the Future - Posted December 30, 2009
A lot has happened in the last 10 years that has changed the book publishing industry dramatically. It was not that long ago when people said, "Google, who?" Now, Google has become a verb as in "just Google it". Google, once only a search engine, is poised to partner with book... [GalleyCat]

On The Menu: Introducing eBookNewser - Posted December 7, 2009
... [FishbowlNY]

Bloomsbury Press Publisher Talks Book Price Wars and Social Media On The Menu - Posted November 4, 2009
Yesterday was all about advertising, but today's mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast was all about publishing. Hosts Jason Boog of GalleyCat and AgencySpy's... [FishbowlNY]

Scary News On The Pre-Halloween Menu: WSJ Closes Boston Bureau - Posted October 30, 2009
... [FishbowlNY]

Announcing Glue API - Posted June 16, 2009
Glue is a browser-based social network that connects friends around things they visit online. Glue appears on popular sites like Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yahoo! Finance, Wine.com, Citysearch and many more, revealing friends and other Glue users interested in the same thing around the web. Today, we are announcing the public availability of... [semanticweb.com]

Jeff Bezos Talks About The Kindle's Surprising Success - Posted June 15, 2009
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos spoke today at Wired magazine's Disruptive By Design business conference, revealing how successful the Kindle -- in all its forms -- has been during its 18 months on the market. According to Bezos, 35 percent of the sales of the 300,000 books available... [WebNewser - SocialTimes.com]

FishbowlNY Poll: Will You Buy A Kindle DX? - Posted May 7, 2009
Amazon.com revealed a new, bigger Kindle yesterday. But we were wondering, will it sell? The reviews are mixed -- some have called it overpriced -- but Amazon is pitching it as the ... [FishbowlNY]

Amazon Exposes 1 Terrabyte of Public Data - ReadWriteWeb - Posted February 25, 2009
... [semanticweb.com]

Blockbuster Says 'Bring It On' To Netflix And Apple - Posted November 26, 2008
Blockbuster, which always seems poised to dive into bankruptcy, is taking arms against a sea of video troubles with Netflix, Amazon... [FishbowlLA]

Amazon Partners With Newsweek to Publish Digital Candidate Insta Bios - Posted October 16, 2008
As the print magazine market continues to plummet it looks like Newsweek is trying to keep its bases covered. ... [FishbowlNY]

O'Reilly on Amazon/Shelfari: Web 2.0 Consolidation Begins - Posted August 27, 2008
Tim O'Reilly has some interesting observations concerning Amazon.com's acquisition of Shelfari earlier this week—starting with the fact that the current playing field for book-themed social networking... [GalleyCat]

Enterprise 3.0: Semweb Commercialization Options - Posted January 16, 2008
Back when I was an industry analyst (VP, E-Business Strategies at the META Group, since acquired by Gartner), I often had to critique emerging markets.  Unlike venture capitalists, industry analysts are privy to product roadmaps from publicly-traded companies, including the industry giants (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM).  And unlike i-bankers, they are... [semanticweb.com]

Building Effective Relationships in Software - Posted January 15, 2008
One of the many factors that led to the success of the Web was in how it defined links in a very simple manner, which encouraged cross-referencing. In the last two installments of this column, I've discussed the importance of the identifiers of the Web: URIs. The Web's native... [semanticweb.com]

LAT In 90 Seconds - Posted November 28, 2007
No Clue: Friends are puzzled by the death of Quiet Riot frontman Kevin DuBrow. Maybe we're going to hell for saying this, but the fact that a bunch of aging heavy metal heads are c... [FishbowlLA]

Regina Schrambling's Lukewarm Mess: Food Blogging Made Boring - Posted October 31, 2007
Regina Schrambling, the LA Times Food section's favorite freelancer, turns in another not-about-LA piece. Today's treat is how to be a food blogger, with no coding or cooking e... [FishbowlLA]

The Semantic Web as a Large, Searchable Catalogue: A Librarian s Perspective - Posted October 1, 2007
— DEAN GIUSTINI, ALLAN CHOSome information observers have suggested that Web 2.0's rise has been due to software applications, while it is becoming increasingly obvious to futurists that the Semantic Web will be defined by services. How those services will be developed and leveraged to bring order to the Web is central... [semanticweb.com]

10 Months In, A Tepid Response to the Sony Reader - Posted September 5, 2007
The Sony Reader may have arrived with serious splash ten months ago, but as Business Week reports, reviews of the tiny handheld book-reading device have been tepid at best, and Sony has consistently declined to release sales figures, which just might tell you somethi... [GalleyCat]

God Losing to Skeptics in Battle for Book Sales - Posted August 13, 2007
Since Richard Dawkins' THE GOD DELUSION and Christopher Hitchens' GOD IS NOT GREAT have been big sellers the past year (not to mention Sam Harris's books) it's no wonder the Guardian's David Smith has picked up on Amazon's report that sales of books that explore religion or spirituality have grown by... [GalleyCat]

New Website Instantly Tracks Meaningless Amazon Rankings - Posted August 6, 2007
Are you an author who checks your book's Amazon ranking obsessively? Do you not care that such rankings account for maybe 5 percent, tops, of total book sales? Then Aaron Shepherd's Sales Rank Express, a website that lets authors check their Amazon rankings instantly, is for you. "People want to know... [GalleyCat]

Big Gains for Amazon in Q2 - Posted July 25, 2007
Today Amazon announced its results for the 2nd quarter ending June 30, 2007. Net sales increased 35% to $2.89 billion in the second quarter, compared with $2.14 billion in second quarter 2006. Excluding the $46 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales grew... [GalleyCat]

LAT in 90 Seconds - Posted June 29, 2007
The Stars -- A Line: Cher, Madonna, even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will have to stand in line today (or hire someone to do it for them) to buy an iPhone. ... [FishbowlLA]

Are Book Clubs Ruining the Reading Experience? - Posted June 25, 2007
It's a controversial (albeit familiar) stance that any type of book club from Oprah to Richard & Judy encourages homogeneity, which is why the Sunday Herald's doom and gloom article about whether book clubs are, in fact, "ruining" reading and publishing leaves me fe... [GalleyCat]

July Relaunch for Borders Site - Posted June 6, 2007
Direct Marketing's News Blog reports on Borders' plans to relaunch its website and take direct responsibility for its e-commerce activities instead of outsourcing it to Amazon. In doing so, the struggling book retailer will come a lot closer to building a multichannel platform from scratch than most merchants with well-established brands... [GalleyCat]

Amazon Buys Brilliance Audio - Posted May 23, 2007
First reported as a "credibly sourced rumor" by Shelf Awareness earlier this morning, Amazon announced that it has acquired Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audiobook publisher in the US, from owners Michael Snodgrass, Eileen Hutton and a private equity group, for undisclosed terms. ... [GalleyCat]

Harry Potter and the Continuing Price Wars - Posted May 4, 2007
The news is surprising, even a slap in the face to hear, but wholly unexpected. The Times reports that HMV boss Simon Fox has warned investors that the seeming cash cow known as HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS is really far, far from that. Ev... [GalleyCat]

Amazon Reverses Downward Spiral - Posted April 25, 2007
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Amazon has turned around a two-year slump, saying that first-quarter profits more than doubled from a year ago to $111 million, or 26 cents per share, thanks to healthy electronics and apparel sales. Analysts had forecast a profit of 15 cents per share. The Seattle-based company... [GalleyCat]

Amazon Kills Plogs, Embraces Blogs - Posted April 20, 2007
So you know how if you want to look up when a book's coming out on Amazon, several of those pages are now accompanied by the authors providing their own personal blog entries (which are often copied from their own sites or Myspace pages)? Well, as of this week, that feature... [GalleyCat]

Proper Care and Marketing of Meg Gardiner - Posted February 23, 2007
Thanks to Stephen King's lavish praise, both on his website and on the back page of the February 16 issue of Entertainment Weekly, it's pretty damn difficult to find a copy of any of Meg Gardiner's books - wh... [GalleyCat]

Oprah's Next Book Club Pick Slated for January 26 - Posted January 22, 2007
And already, Amazon has the unnamed book on order in a variety of formats - paperback, hardcover, audio and large print. No word on what the book is, although HarperCollins must be over the moon to have that instant sales burst as well as any opportunity... [GalleyCat]

Further AMS Bankruptcy Updates - Posted January 5, 2007
The New York Times finally picks up the Advanced Marketing Services bankruptcy story (what took so long?) and provides an overview of why this is big news in the publishing industry. "This is a huge disruption in this business," said a publishing executive to Julie Bosman, who declined to be further... [GalleyCat]