I changed cell phones the other day after buying the new iPhone 3G, and when I checked my old phone I noticed I had a missed call from the Chapel Hill screen-printing place where I'm printing Logic Problem t-shirts. After getting sent to their answering machine twice I finally made it through to them, when I found out that the two people handling my order have gone on vacation for the entire week, so I guess no Logic Problem shirts this week. I mentioned in my last post that I like to deal locally, but this company is really doing their best to fuck that up. When I placed the order 2 weeks ago I asked if I could get the shirts in time for our show with Sex/Vid even though it was 7 days away and their quoted turnaround time is 10 days, but when I asked the guy on the phone he just kept repeating the mantra "turnaround time is 10 to 14 days." Now I found out that they're on vacation this entire week, which they clearly avoided telling me on purpose. I thought I'd use the place where (so it seems) Chapel Hill indie bands get their stuff printed, but those people are just royal assholes.

Spent part of the morning packing up orders, mostly from Amazon.com, where I'm selling my CD collection, partly to finance my new iPhone but I guess once that's paid off I'll funnel that money into the label. About 5 minutes after I finished packing orders and put all my shipping supplies away another order came in... you'd be surprised how often this happens. I was excited to see that it was from the ebay store, but it was just for a Double Negative 7". I have a feeling I could trade those 7"s for human limbs and people would gladly rip off their fingers and hand them over to me.

I also spent part of the morning (probably too much) laboring over the description of the Logic Problem 7". Judging by some of the descriptions out there, it seems like other labels don't put much time into this aspect of the release, but I always find it very stressful. You'd be surprised how often that description will get replicated in other distros and stores, and even how many reviewers will refer to it when they write about the record. I'm always balancing like 10 things in these descriptions... trying to seem excited without being pushily self-promoting, trying to say what the record sounds like without lumping it in with soon-to-die trends or implying that it's generic, and trying to give an indication of who will like it without being too verbose or obscure in my references. It's a fine art for sure and one I have hardly mastered.

Sometime this afternoon I chucked doing any work on my actual job out the window and decided it would be way more fun to put together all 500 Logic Problem 7"s, which I did in a few hours while listening to records and chatting with Kelly. I've always liked the mind-wandering time provided by these simple repetitive tasks, but I wish I had a better table on which to assemble records because my back is extremely sore after putting together records all day.

After assembling all of the Logic Problem stuff I decided to pack up some of the orders I had been holding while I waited for more Koro 7" covers to arrive. However, about 2 orders in I noticed that I was down to less than 10 copies of the Double Negative 7", which is going to cause at least one of those orders to be held for even longer. I knew that I was low and had already ordered a restock of the Double Negative, but I didn't think I was that close to running out completely. I emailed the pressing plant and they said they'd shipped 450 copies yesterday so hopefully they'll be here early next week, but I find the whole situation very frustrating. With my limited cashflow, keeping popular records in print is always a juggling act... you can't order more records until you've sold the ones you got, and one unpopular or heavily delayed record can disrupt that process very easily. Money wasn't an issue with ordering the Double Negative repress, but it might mean the Devour 12" will be pushed back a week or two while I build up money from the webstore and try to squeeze checks out of the distributors who owe me money.

To-do list for this weekend: somehow squeeze all of the newly-assembled records into my storage space, make some progress on the Devour artwork and CD master, and update my lists for promo copies (which is pretty out of date) and distributors and other labels with whom I trade (which is absurdly and perhaps hopelessly out of date).

Hours spent on the label today: about 9

The Internet gives us the sensational happenstance up observe politicians and rep apropos of every cochon de lait scratching act. Better self diddle rely upon we require in breathe acute relating to Anglophobe and dogmatic statements albeit we've got into brook quantitative compass seeing as how burlesque and jokes, in a line politic that could come judged infelicity.

Seize the meaning Dave Weinberger's use this at Huffington.

Me'm getting politico-theological in that case. Indispensable remain thingumadoodle upwards.

via Dave Winer.

Although I loved the cream/gold color scheme on the Huffy, this bike has a rear storage rack, which decided me. (It's also $30 less; although if the bikes were the same I would have bought the Huffy, because I loved the color.) This will be more convenient for shopping. Bulky items like laundry detergent or rice take up almost the entire front basket by themselves, meaning I could never buy them when I was buying all my other groceries or drug store items and always had to make a seperate trip to get them. Now I can just put them in the rear basket. Although I can't buy a basket until I get the bike and assemble it, because I can't tell from the picture if it's a rack that will take a box-type basket; or a single bar that will accomodate a saddlebag-type basket. I couldn't find a photo of it from another angle.

I'm excited! Although it's probably going to take at least a week to arrive. I guess I'll Freecycle the old one, but not until I have the new one assembled, obviously. I hope she goes to a good home.

So what can we do to help stem even more fees coming our way in the future? One simple idea: support those airlines whose "First Bag Free" baggage policies are more customer-friendly than their blockhead competitors and their caveman approach to passing on fees. (Hey airlines, check out Amazon Prime as a way to get people to prepay their future shipping costs.)

As it relates to bag fees, you should know that US airlines are really now divided into two camps: the "Good Guys" and the "Bad Guys" based upon their checked baggage fee policies. The Good Guys don't charge you to check your first bag while the Bad Guys soak you to the tune of up to $80 round-trip for the pleasure of carrying your luggage.

Good Guys: AirTran, Alaska, Continental, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Midwest, and Virgin America

Bad Guys: American, Northwest, Spirit, United, and US Airways

Having been an airline bean counter myself, I promise you that the Good Guys are waiting to see if they can gain market share by not charging passengers as much as the Bad Guys.

Therefore, support the Good Guys now because if you don't, they'll just jump on the Bad Guy bandwagon later and we'll all be paying more to send our socks to St. Louis.

Download STEALING WISHES to your Kindle here!

Buy the paperback at Amazon here for $12.60!  Or look for me on Amazon here as MISTERYARBS.  You can get a signed first edition copy shipped directly from me for just $12.00.  That's $3.00 off the cover price!

Don't have a Kindle E-reader?  Don't worry!  Download STEALING WISHES as an Ebook to your computer right here for just $5.00!

Barnes and Noble has it too!

College students certainly spend a lot of books. Textbooks for a single semester often cost more than a Kindle. Hence I think that Mike Arrington and others are right on the money when they identify college students as natural Kindle users.

The trouble is, college students don't have much choice when it comes to textbooks. The professor usually chooses the textbook for the course from what the publishing firms offer. The incentives to the prof and the firms don't always align with the best interests of the students.

When this story was first pitched to my editors, they responded with "fiber." However, until we can blanket the country in fiber-optic bliss, what needs to happen?

It's helpful to first think about the process the video must go through. The source (like Amazon or Netflix) has to take the huge, raw video file and compress it, and send it out to your home. Once it gets to you, the data needs to be transcoded, then moved from the set-top box (or whatever device) and transported to your TV. There are a lot of steps in that process and just as many standards/format issues at pretty much every link in that chain.

It's important to consider, as my colleague Stacey noted, that data pipes get smaller the closer they get to your house. By most industry estimates, you need at least 6 megabits per second of bandwidth to stream HD from the source to your home. With the current ISP infrastructure deployed, this is a speed millions of Americans don't reach yet.

Techniques like P2P or caching (or a hybrid of the two) can be used to speed up delivery by storing data in the cloud or the last mile. But the debate continues over the best method for delivery and, well, we've seen how P2P traffic gets treated by ISPs.

Even if we do get all the stars aligned and we figure out a way to speed up delivery and get the video to your TV, there are still the cable and telcos to deal with. They have their own VOD systems, thank you very much, so there's an incentive for them to throttle your bandwidth and charge you per use. Go over your monthly cap and that $2.99 movie suddenly costs you $30.

I contacted both Amazon and Netflix about how they plan on streaming this content. Amazon said it's streaming doesn't offer HD, and it wouldn't disclose how many simultaneous streams they can serve, or to which carrier backbones it is connected, or whether or not it has an economic relationship with last-mile providers (i.e. if they get a cut of overage fees from tiered broadband users). Netflix didn't respond in time for this post, though the Roku has an HDMI connector, which gives me hope.

Stacey Higginbotham and Allan Leinwand contributed to this story.

An article on CNN Money summarizes the history behind the suit:

Qualcomm's licenses are core to a wireless standard called code division multiple access, or CDMA, and the company argues they are similarly central to the third-generation version called WCDMA. Qualcomm licenses out its patents to cellular handset makers and typically charges less than 5% of the price of the phone. It's an important business for the company, which counted on licensing and royalty fees for more than a third of its revenue in its last quarter. Nokia, however, argues that it has paid up for Qualcomm's older CDMA patents and that its newer WCDMA ones aren't vital enough to justify paying the same royalty rate. In addition, Nokia believes Qualcomm is breaking principals of fair business practices agreed upon by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute - which set the standards for WCDMA - by suing for better terms. Nokia already set an expectation for what it believes it owes Qualcomm. When the contract expired, Nokia offered to pay $20 million to cover that quarter, but Qualcomm declined. Since then, Nokia has set aside $20 million each quarter in an account. But based on Qualcomm's estimated impact from the loss of Nokia royalties this year, the money Nokia is setting aside represents 15% of what Qualcomm believes is actually owed. Qualcomm acknowledges that the older patents have been paid off. But it contends that its newer intellectual property portfolio is just as valuable, warranting the same licensing fees. As proof, 90 companies pay for the use of Qualcomm's WCDMA patents, and all of them pay the same rate as before. Qualcomm, meanwhile, believes Nokia's continued use of its intellectual property signals an automatic extension of their licensing agreement. Nokia, however, contends that the option had to be exercised with a written acknowledgment of the extension.

Stumble it!

Voici un exemple ce que la promotion vous permet d'obtenir.

1. Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player Black (2nd Generation) by Microsoft (CD-ROM) (No Operating System) Buy new: CDN$ 259.99 CDN$ 239.99 You save: CDN$ 20.00 (8%)

2. Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player Red (2nd Generation) by Microsoft (CD-ROM) (No Operating System) Buy new: CDN$ 259.99 CDN$ 207.99 You save: CDN$ 52.00 (20%)

3. Zune Car Pack v2 by Microsoft (Electronics) (No Operating System) Buy new: CDN$ 79.99 CDN$ 55.99 2 Used & new from CDN$ 55.99 You save: CDN$ 24.00 (30%)

Pour pouvoir en profiter (et du même coup, m'aider à financer ce site), allez sur le Magasin d’affilié de 0xCAFE!

Ce n'est pas tous les jours que le Zune 80Gb rouge est en spécial à 207.99$ !  Même le Zune A/V Pack est en spécial à 69.99$ au lieu de 99.99$.

Et en plus, si vous utilisé le coupon suivant MAPNEWNCSAVE, vous pouvez sauvé un 10$ de plus !

Bon magasinage!

Magasin d’affilié de 0xCAFE // Microsoft Zune sur Amazon.ca

Liane Spicer, a friend to this blog, will have her first novel, Cafe Au Liat, released by the international publishing house,  Dorchester in late August or early September. You can read Liane's profile here and you can order the book on Amazon by clicking the next word, Amazon. I pre-ordered the books months ago and will not be lending my copy for at least a few months because there are too many people out there who believe in borrowing and not buying. I will not be encouraging this slackness. You can check out her perpetually interesting, author-friendly, blog at Wordtryst and tell her aka sent you.

amazon-kindle-2

Originally uploaded by kindle.amazon

Amazon To Target $5.5 Billion Textbook Market With New Kindle? (July 17, 2008 TechCrunch)

According to the article, the new Kindle models seems to be a large screen.

Why are new Kindle models made a large screen though various portable terminals have become small?

The reason why Amazon made Kindle a large screen is thought that it is because of making it to the size of the best screen for seeing the textbook with Kindle according to the article.

If it comes to be able to read the textbook with large Kindle, most students need not carry heavy books.

Amazon will be sure to advance to the education market with Kindle.

And, Kindle and iPhone might confront it in the education market.

By the way, have the textbook companies in Japan also been offering electronic versions of their textbooks?

I have not heard such a story so much.

[Pic: Amazon]

[Movie Info]

Loosen the tie...

Unbutton a button on the blouse...

Walk around the office in your socked (or stockinged) feet...

To help set the mood, take in this video from cbshaw...

Its a master mix of a bunch of tracks and videos that I like:

• Usher, Lil John and Ludacris - "Yeah"
• Snap! - "I've Got The Power"
• Montell Jordan - "This Is How We Do It"
  
• Rob Base and DJ Easy E-Z Rock - "Joy N Pain (Joy and Pain)"
  
• Gwen Stefani - "Hollaback Girl"
  
• The Bee Gees - Saturday Night Fever - "Staying Alive"
  
• Fine Young Cannibals - "She Drives Me Crazy"
  
• House of Pain - "Jump Around"
  
• Chemical Brothers - "Block Rocking Beats"
  

Have a great weekend.

Be safe... and if you can't be safe, be careful! :lol:

Peace and Much Love

jw

I don't know why articles so seldom recite the issued claims to the patent at hand. No one ever looks at them. The comments section for the Techcrunch article on this is swamped with opinions based on statements like "Channel Intelligence sues just about everyone with wishlists."

Without making an opinion myself on the matter, I'll throwout the first claim of the issued patent:

A method for configuring a database system to store a plurality of lists containing information regarding a plurality of items comprising:

establishing a list database on a server computer system, said list database including a plurality of lists, each associated with a corresponding list identifier, said plurality of lists including a first list associated with a first list identifier;

establishing a management tool on a client computer system, remote from said server computer system, said management tool including said list identifier;

establishing a communications link between said client computer system and said server computer system;

retrieving said first list from said list database to said management tool responsive to said first list identifier;

revising said retrieved first list on said client computer system using said management tool; and

updating said first list in said list database to reflect the revision to said retrieved first list.

I went to the first defendant, Lemonade, to get a feeler. Here are the two most relevant steps of how Lemonade works:

Add products to your stand by selecting a category and then search by keyword. All of the products that match your search will appear and you can simply drag and drop them into your stand. You can also delete items and reorder them whenever you want.

Select an offer from your favorite retailer and add it to the bottom right hand corner of your stand. These offers may include free shipping, percentage off products, seasonal specials and offers to sign up for services.

Now you can start making opinions.

Stumble it!

TUAW - Back in 2006 we covered the launch of the Amazon Unbox video service which was then being pitched as the best alternative to the iTunes Store. There was one big problem: it didn't support Macs. Now, finally, Amazon is starting to rectify the situation with their new Amazon Video on Demand Service. PC Magazine has a First Look at the Service and, sure enough, it now supports Macs.

It appears that the new service will be similar to Netflix's streaming (which does not support the Mac, though they have promised it a long time ago) in that you'll be able to watch 40,000 movies and television shows in your browser. Unlike Netflix, however, the content will be priced individually with no subscription options. The video will be streamed with Flash 9.

Unfortunately, the program is still in beta and Amazon apparently has enough testers at the moment. However, you can sign up for their beta mailing list if you want to get in the next time they issue invitations.

(Via (TUAW))

Did you mix a drink to celebrate?

Jim Downey

This A-Z Guarantee is great... for buyers, but it royally shaft's those of us who sell. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Many sellers on Amazon write about this on amazon.com's messageboards, and the feeling is all the same. We get kicked in the ass because of dumb consumers who dont read product descriptions.

I'm throwing up a huge middle finger in the air to these dumb consumers. Why can't you people read the item descriptions before clicking on "buy???" Too often, I get idiots who buy my items, but do not read the description, and a week or two later, I get an email from amazon from the customer. Most of the time I can work it out by offering a partial refund, but sometimes I get the jerks who want to draw it out for weeks through the A-Z Guarantee. I really don't want the item back, and both buyer and seller lose money this way.

Amazon needs a seller-protection-plan. If idiot consumers aren't smart enough to read the description, dont make the seller foot the bill! How are we as sellers going to know if the buyer will send the item back? I know I'm waiting for some items still, and these buyers have their refunded money, and my item!

Why can't selling items online be what it once was? Not only amazon, but ebay and countless others have made it so complex and money hungry. Maybe it's time to get out of the biz, or create my own store, no amazon or ebay strings attached.

Well in this post, I quickly looked for malagasy (or malagasy-connected) websites that deals with Madagascar-travel in other languages than french. Why does it matter? In fact, It is well-known that the majority of tourists coming to Madagascar are French. However, Madagascar is now targeting some new markets, though the recent marketing campaigns towards South Africans (2010 world cup must be behind this, Madagascar is only 3 hours away from Johannesburg) and spanish people.

Okay, let's see what we have on the plate.

First, Italians: a direct flight from Italy to Nosy-Be already exists now, and we can see some specialized tour operators targeting the italian market. Some of the most visible on the internet are nosy be based company, another nosy-be based tour operator

On the spanish side, we have one website that is worth a visit.

In german, or dutch language, I found this one (I'll leave to you to appreciate it)

Even if we know that some tour operators are targeting the japanese market, we didn't find any japanese materials related to Madagascar (the fact that I don't understand any word in Japanese greatly contributed to this result too :-)

Unfortunately, most of those websites are initiated by tour operators, which means that they only highlight their offer (which, by definition, only represents a small part of what Madagascar has to offer )

Now, since we are talking about publications, we can't ignore printed materials. Some resources you should consider:

- Amazon's database of publications on Madagascar

- Lonelyplanet country guide

- for french-speaking: "le guide du routard" or "michelin", or "petit fûté"

- for english speaking people, digging into Wikipedia's list of travel guide is a good starting point

If you ever want to add to this far from being exhaustive list, feel free to add your comments.

Delivery: Similar to the Roku, Amazon will stream video directly into your home. The New York Times, which broke the story, does not mention anything about HD capabilities for the service. Given the cruddy state of bandwidth in this country, streaming could pose a problem in homes with multiple people online, but after tasting the sweet simplicity of streaming through the Roku, I'm convinced this is the way to go.

Storage: In an innovative twist (and one that would make GigaOM and Mark Cuban swoon), Amazon stores this video cloud on its end. Pull the content down only when you want, and if you purchase a movie, Amazon holds it for you -- and you can access it on any connected device you own. While it's supposed to help prevent piracy, I think a bigger advantage is that now your purchase should never get outdated by being in an old format.

Netflix Roku: Amazon's streaming approach is similar to the Netflix's Roku, but there are some key differences on both ends. On the content side, Amazon has Roku beat to a pulp, offering 40,000 titles compared with Netflix's 10,000. However, Amazon is a la carte, while Netflix is all you can eat. Amazon has said that it will make its service available on other boxes, and Roku has said it is getting content from other "big name" content providers, so maybe the Roku will bring the best of both worlds?

Other Set-Top Boxes: Amazon has a deal to put the VOD store on Sony Bravia TVs, but look for Panasonic to hop on board as well. Who needs a set-top box when you can order up what you want directly from the TV? Sure, Apple has Disney movies and Amazon doesn't (for now), but is that enough to make you buy an Apple TV? And renting movies through the HP MediaSmart Connect means downloading the content to your computer first. Who needs the hassle?

Cable and Telephone Companies: Amazon's vast video library could make it easier to dump your TV provider, but cable and telcos could retaliate and choke Amazon at the source through tiered broadband.

Features TK: If Amazon can get firmly entrenched in your living room, it won't be hard for it to expand its offering. Photo sharing, video sharing, web video, Internet radio, heck even buying regular stuff all becomes possible with the click of the remote.

The New York Times is reporting that Amazon will be launching a new streaming video store today called Amazon Video on Demand.

The store will over roughly 40,000 movies and TV shows that can be downloaded and played from your computer.

Amazon vice president for digital media Bill Carr says "for the first time, this is drop dead simple...our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can't help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button."

If you own a Sony Bravia HD television you'll be able to stream the video content directly to your television via a $299.99 add-on called the Sony Bravia Internet Video Link, while future Bravia sets may have this ability built right in. With no plans to limit this ability to just Sony televisions, Carr says that Amazon is in talks with makers of other TV's and Internet devices., saying their "goal is to continue to establish partnerships with all companies who have a connected device."

This is different from Amazon's Unbox video service which was download-only (no streaming) and required customers to download special software to watch the videos.

UPDATE: Looks like Mac users won't have a problem playing the new content--it's streamed via the Flash 9, so even Linux users will be able to access it. (Thanks for the info TUAW!)

UPDATE 2: Looks like the service is open, but only for a limited number of users at this point--it's in beta. They have a lot of testers already but to see if you can get an invite down the road, join their beta mailing list here.

[Via NYT]

Akhirnya hari ini buku itu sampai.