The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘book’

Spring Design this morning announced that its dual screen Alex eReader will be available online today ( the rumors were true! ) for $399. Customers can thus start pre-ordering the Android-based multimedia e-reader, which supports eBooks in EPUB, PDF, HTML and TXT formats.

Original post: 
Alex eReader now on sale in the U.S. for $399 a pop, starts shipping mid-April

Over the last month or so, Apple has clearly been on a mission to trim down the App Store to applications that are useful and family friendly. First, it removed thousands of sex-themed applications, and it’s also been making moves to crack down on overly simplistic ‘cookie cutter‘ apps. But there may be yet another segment of the App Store on the chopping block: Books. According to a recent report, books represent 27,000 of the App Store’s 150,000 applications, making them the most abundant type of application on the App Store. And they’re becoming increasingly redundant.

Before developers get alarmed, I should make it clear that I haven’t heard anything about Apple removing the myriad book apps from the App Store. But given the impending release of Apple’s own iBooks app alongside the iPad, and the recent App Store cleanup spree, I won’t be at all surprised if they do something to change the way books are treated on the platform.

There are a few reasons why Apple might want to do this. First and foremost, there’s the user experience for new iPad users. One of the iPad’s highly touted features is its ability to read books using the new iBooks application, which serves as both a book store and a very nice looking eBook reader. But according to Apple’s website, iBooks won’t come pre-installed on the iPad. You can be sure that Apple will give its own application top billing on the App Store, but there will still be plenty of room for confusion.

Imagine what will happen when a new iPad user boots up the device for the first time and decides to buy Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but instead of doing it through the iBooks app, they simply run a search on the App Store. There are at least 25 different standalone applications featuring the book, selling for between 99 cents and five dollars. Each of these applications has its own book reading interface, many of which aren’t nearly as polished as the iBooks app Apple has shown off. And every time the user downloads a different book from the App Store, they’ll be using yet another new interface. That doesn’t seem like the sort of user experience Apple typically strives for.

And then there’s the issue of App Store clutter. As I mentioned before, Apple seems to be focused on eliminating many of the frivolous applications from the App Store. There are plenty of high quality book applications available, but there are also quite a few — perhaps even the majority — that amount to little more than a Project Gutenberg text wrapped in an overly basic reader. Which is exactly the sort of thing Apple is tired of. Books already make up the most popular category of application on the App Store; if they keep growing at this pace, they’ll eventually represent the majority of applications available.

To be clear, I don’t think Apple is going to ban book markets like Amazon’s Kindle reader or Stanza. These generally have much more functionality than a basic book app, and eliminating them would be blatantly anti-competitive. That may not have any legal repercussions, but Apple badly needs high quality applications on the iPad to make it a success — it would be unwise to scare off major developers wary of having their app blocked because Apple has a competing product (this is one reason, I think, that iBooks is not included with the iPad).

All of that said, there are some reasons why Apple may not do anything on this front. For one, Apple is probably making a decent chunk of revenue from paid book applications, so it may not particularly care whether it gets its revenue cut from the app vendor or the publisher itself through iBooks. And then there’s the PR cost. Apple got away with unceremoniously removing thousands of ’sexy’ applications because nobody is going to stand up and defend their right to view titillating bikini photos. But if Apple pulled thousands of books from the store, the headlines could be more damaging, with imagery of book bonfires abound (despite the fact that the same content would likely be available through iBooks).

Or Apple may find some middle ground. It could hide book apps from iPad search results and keep them iPhone-only  (though the iPhone will probably get a version of iBooks, too). It might just start blocking new book submissions but leave the existing apps be. Or perhaps it will include some kind of banner on relevant searches like “Did you know this title is also available on iBooks?”. In any case, while I am by no means advocating such a change, I suspect that if you want to download one of these standalone book applications in the not-so-distant future, you’re going to have to go out of your way to do it.

Update: As commenter Peter Cooper points out, iBooks is only going to be available in the US at launch, and some developers are working towards books that can do far more than ‘normal’ book readers (including iBooks). So there are clearly reasons to keep the Book section intact, but I still suspect changes are coming to the way Apple handles book applications (at least the basic ones).

Apple’s iBooks

Top image by Austinevan

The iPad is getting more than its fair share of press, I think — or to be precise, it’s getting its fair share, but a lot of it could have gone to any other quality tablet device, of which at the moment there are admittedly few (the Adam comes to mind). So these days, when I read an interesting article like this one, or write that someone is making an iPad tablet version of their magazine , I deliberately conflate the terms “iPad” and “tablet.”To their credit, Apple is making a very robust reader app that’s ripe for exploiting, as Craigmod says , as a canvas for rich media. I’d never pretend that the iPad is the be-all and end-all of tablet devices.

More here: 
Interesting read: the potential of the iPad, from the perspective of a book designer

I’ve been thinking a lot about the world that my kids will soon live in.

See the original post: 
Penguin is betting on the iPad for the future of books

Pretty huge news in our book: Skype has published a free mobile application for Symbian in the Ovi Store, basically enabling over 200 million Nokia handset users to easily download the program and start making free Skype-to-Skype calls from their phones.

If I were a carrier, I’d probably be feeling rather nervous right now - and / or infuriated.

Skype for Symbian, which you can also download the app straight from the Skype website, will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform.

Alright, lets pat the pockets and run through the mental checklist one last time before security: Passport? Check, front pocket. Headphones? Definitely in your backpack. Boarding pass? Uh oh. Where’d that boarding pass go?

Oh, that’s right! It’s on your phone – because you, like a rapidly increasing number of other people, opted to have it sent straight to your handset. Security scans the QR code right off of your handset’s display, and you’re on your way with one less thing to lose.

Trinity Mobile, one of the leading companies behind the mobile ticketing push, is today announcing a 1200% year-over-year increase with their mobile boarding pass offerings.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Every entrepreneur is familiar with the moment. The moment when you stumble across an annoying problem – a problem that you’d pay money to solve – and suddenly a synapse fires in your brain.

“Holy crap, if I’d pay money to solve this, so would other people. There’s a business here!”.

It’s the moment that has kick started a million businesses and generated billions of dollars over the decades. And on Sunday evening, not for the first time in what I laughingly call my career, I experienced it.

I’d filed my TechCrunch column earlier in the day and with little else planned, I decided to relax by watching some old episodes of Jonathan Creek: the BBC comedy drama about a magician’s assistant who solves seemingly impossible crimes. The show ran for four series in the UK between 1997 – 2004 and, I think, was also shown on BBC America. I’ve looked for the DVDs over here but I can’t find them, nor can I find a legal way to view them online. Like the petty criminal that I am, then, I headed to YouTube. Sure enough all four series were there, as was a recent one-off reunion special.

As I worked my way through the entire back catalogue, I remembered just how great a show Jonathan Creek is. David Renwick’s scripts are brilliant – apparently each one took him several months to write, thanks to the intricacies of the puzzles each episode contains. The show is so good in fact, that I started to feel guilty: I know that Renwick isn’t going to receive a single penny of residual payment from my YouTube viewing. If only there was some way to contact him, tell him how much I enjoy the show, and offer to send him some money for the lost DVD sale. (Note: it’s not the BBC I care about losing money – they can afford it – but Renwick himself.)

And then I realised that I’m not alone in having this desire, or alone in wanting to pay money to solve it. In fact several times recently I’ve found myself on the other side of the equation. Back in December, I decided to give away the US ebook edition of my last book for free, online. My reason for doing so are outlined here – basically it wasn’t widely available in the US and I wanted people here to read it so they might buy my next one.

Since then I’ve had several dozen emails, tweets and other digital notes from people who have read the book for free, asking if there’s any way they can retroactively pay me some money to say thank you. No, really. Most asked for my Paypal details, or a way to send a check for the ebook cover price of $9.99. Others offered to buy me $9.99  worth of beer at events they knew I’d be attending; an offer which would have been much more enticing had I not given up drinking last October.

And that’s when I had the moment. I want to pay David Renwick for work of his that I’ve already enjoyed, but I can’t. People want to pay me for work of mine, but – expect through some tortuous email exchange, which resulted in me turning down the dozens of offers of money because it seemed somehow weird – they can’t.

I thought of putting a note on my site suggesting that people donate to charity instead, but I couldn’t figure out the best way to implement that, or to thank/reward the people who did. Equally, there’s no way of me finding out what Renwick would like me to do to reward him – send him a check? Donate to charity? Buy something from his Amazon wishlist? Does he even have one?

Of course, I’m not the first person to realise that there’s a need for content creators to be rewarded for stuff that is consumed for free online. Peter Sunde, the founder of Pirate Bay, recently announced the launch of Flattr, his micropayment service that allows creators to be paid tiny amounts of money for their work.

Subscribers pay $5 a month, which is then divided up equally between all of the Flattr-enabled sites that the user wants to reward during that period. Setting aside the irony that the guy behind Pirate Bay is now claiming that creating content should be rewarded ( “People love things and they want to pay” he told the BBC, with a straight face), the fact remains that Flattr is a terrible idea.

Dividing your monthly subscription equally amongst all of the sites you enjoy means that the more you use the service, the less each site gets. And given that all of these services have a minimum pay-out (usually between $50-$100), it will be a long time before most creators will see any real reward. Also, the service puts all of the effort in the wrong place. I’m simply not going to sign up for $5 a month in the hope that the creators I enjoy will all use Flattr. There are a whole load of competitors: Sprinklepenny, Kachingle et al…I’d have to sign up to them all to cover all my bases.

For me, as someone who straddles both sides of the creator/audience fence, the idea of micropayments as a way to reward creators is a non-starter, mainly because it fundamentally misunderstands the psychology of why we want to reward creators.

Sure, part of the reason I want to pay David Renwick is guilt – a desire to do the right thing. But even that guilt has selfish motivations: if Renwick isn’t properly rewarded for creating something that gives me so much pleasure, I’m worried that he might be discouraged from continuing. I want to encourage him to carry on writing, so I can carry on enjoying.

Much more powerful is the fanboy motivation. Within all fans, there’s a subconscious desire for the artists they admire to be aware of that admiration. That’s why people send fan letters – not because they’re expecting a reply, although that’s a nice bonus – but rather for the fantasy that the artist will read it. We want a connection with our heroes. Allied to that desire to be noticed, is the desire for our peers to appreciate our generosity. There’s a reason why charity donation sites usually display the names of donors, and the amounts they’ve donated.  It’s an ego thing – if I see that my peers have donated an average of $10, I want to donate $20 to prove I’m more generous – and it drives the average donation upwards.

Giving 1c, or even $1, as part of a regular monthly split through services like Flattr does nothing to satisfy any of those desires. Splitting a regular monthly payment between dozens of creators doesn’t allow me to form a connection with any one of them. Such tiny amounts won’t encourage them to keep creating, nor will they allow me to show off my generosity to my peers. And of course, the chances of my favourite creator being registered with Flattr or any other single payment service is close to nil.

For all of those reasons, micropayment services are a non starter. An embarrassment, even.

Instead what someone needs to build is a macropayment service. A way to make a one-off payment to a specific creator to thank them for their entire body of work. If you insist on using a ‘micro’ word, then the correct one is ‘micropatronage’: an affordable version of the age-old practice of wealthy patrons supporting artists in substantive, public ways – ways that stroke the patron’s ego and/or guarantee their place in heaven.

Specifically, I’d love to see a service that allows me to reward David Renwick – or any other writer, journalist, artist, singer, filmmaker, or content creator – for his entire body of work. The value of the reward might be $5, or $10 or, if I’m wealthy, $100 or even $1000. The important thing is that I get to send the reward directly to the creator, and I get to show off that I’ve done so.

Here in specific terms are the four things the service should allow me to do…

• Make a ‘payment’ in whatever form suits the creator: through a Paypal transaction, by buying something from their Amazon wishlist, by donating to their favourite charity – even by paying off their bar tab at their local pub. It’s up to them. The more creative the better, actually. I’d love the idea of rewarding a starving artist through Pizza Hut gift certificates, if that’s what they want.

• Display the payment publicly. I want to Tweet that I’ve made the payment, or add it to Blippy – or whatever. But more importantly, I want my payment to appear on the artist’s website, along with my name. That way, I feel like my fan-dom is being acknowledged both by the artist and by other fans. What would be super cool would be if the artist figured out some other way to reach out to fans who support them: maybe people who donate over a certain amount get a DVD/signed book/print/whatever. But, again, that’s up to them.

• Allow me to reward the artist directly. No bullshit 10% commissions like Flattr charges. I’m a fan of David Renwick, so it’s him who should get the money, not the dude who created Pirate Bay – he’s made more than enough hay from other people’s creativity.

• Reward artists who aren’t signed up to the service. This is the big one. For a system to work, users have to be able to use it to reward anyone. That’s one of the things that made Paypal so successful. All you need to do to pay someone using Paypal is to enter their email address. If they don’t have a Paypal account, they receive an email inviting them to sign up to receive the money – which of course, due to the financial incentive – they do. This service should be the same. If the artist I want to reward isn’t registered on the service, I should be able to enter their email address and have the service contact them, asking them to choose how they’d like to be rewarded. When they’ve done that, I get an automated email with a payment link and am able to send the reward via whatever method they’ve chosen. Obviously once they’re signed up, future payments can be processed straight away. And if I don’t know the email address for a particular creator? No problem – I can enter their publisher, record label, newspaper or whoever else distributes their work and the site will figure out the correct contact email. Publishers forward mail to their authors all the time.

…and that’s it. As a ‘consumer’ (urk) of content, I want that service to exist so that I can start rewarding people using it. As a writer, I want that service to exist so that I can add myself to it and display a little logo on my site that links to my listing. That way, next time someone feels the urge to reward me, they can do so without having to ask first.

So what to do with this idea? If I were an entrepreneur, the answer to that would be simple. I’d figure out the specifics of how such a service might work, and then I’d build it. Or at least hire someone to build it. I’d set up a company either raise some seed money or boot-strap the thing myself. I’d do market research and figure out business models and all that stuff. I’d probably give it a name like Guiltvault or Micropatron (both gone). Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t. That’s the fun of being an entrepreneur.

But I’m not an entrepreneur. Moreover, I’ve been one – several times – and I’ve sworn never to go back to that world. Also, there’s a part of me that thinks this idea could work best as a non-profit. Or even perhaps as a kind of open standard thing. Certainly with all the rewards going directly to the creators, no one else is going to get rich out of it – which might actually be the secret to getting publishers, agents and trade bodies on board with it.

So instead of drawing up an NDA and building a business, I’ve decided to do the opposite: to release the idea into the wild in the in the hope that someone – or some group of people – might want to run with it. For once, I’m actually encouraging the wisdom of TechCrunch commenters: I’m curious to know how you see the idea working, or why you see it failing. And if anyone with a history of making things actually happen feels like having a crack at building this, then you have my blessing. I’d be delighted to track your progress here on TechCrunch.

For my part, I’ve vowed to stay out of business – and it’s a vow I plan on sticking to. But if I can be of any help connecting people or throwing ideas into the ring, then give me a shout. Either way, I’ll be the first author to sign up to use it.

And, hell, if you make a billion dollars from the idea, at least you’ll know how to reward me for my contribution.

Social sharing is becoming a big contributor to traffic for many sites. While Facebook and Twitter drive more sharing than any other services, Google is trying to compete with Buzz, which is now part of Gmail but shares links to article and blog posts through Google Reader. Over the past month, according to AddThis, sharing through Google Reader is up 35 percent, with a big jump on February 9, the day Buzz launched.  This number only measures sharing through the AddThis button, which is on more than 600,000 Websites and gives you the option to share content through more than 200 services. So it is only a proxy for total sharing on Google Reader, but a decent one.

Google Reader still barely registers when compared to Twitter and Facebook, which account for 31 percent and 8 percent of all sharing via AddThis, respectively.  But Buzz is definitely giving it a boost.

You can now chart how different services do against each other on the sharing front via a new services directory on AddThis. For instance, Google Bookmarks does much better than Google Reader, with 5 percent of all AddThis activity.  It even beats Digg (which has 3 percent).  Google Bookmarks is probably used more for personal bookmarking than for social consumption, but it is smack in the middle of Twitter and Digg when it comes to activity via AddThis.

Another comparison is Tumblr versus Posterous, which suggests that Tumblr  is much more popular as a reposting tool, and is about neck-and-neck with WordPress.

Explain something to me: what is the value in having multi-touch on an electronic book reader? How often do you adjust the “zoom level” when you’re reading a regular book or magazine? Not often, no; you tend to keep the book or magazine right in the sweet spot, where you can comfortably focus.

View post:
Bookeen Orizon: It’s an electronic book reader with multi-touch

There’s a certain irony that TechCrunch’s in-house satirist Paul Carr is currently slaving over the sequel to his book about his failure to launch a startup. Fridaycities was to be a site which allowed anyone to swap information in real time about London, and eventually other cities. The site failed, Paul wrote his book (and a few other things, let’s admit) and the rest is history, including our little run in, thankfully.

If only he’d done it in the era of Facebook rise into the mainstream. Because today, two weeks after launching, the Secret London Facebook group has 182,010 members and counting and is poised to propel it’s 21 year old creator into her first startup.

Bristol university graduate Tiffany Philippou originally set up the group in response to a competition from ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi to win a mere summer internship. However, it seems unlikely that Tiffany will be too bothered. There’s now a holding page and Twitter account (@secret_london) as Secret London morphs into a full-blown startup.