As of today, I’m a Kindle. But if you don’t know yet, how do you choose? How do you pick between two great, different devices?
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Here’s how to choose: Picture a quiet Sunday evening. Would you rather spend an hour reading a book, or watching TV?
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If you answered "TV", then you’re an iPad. If you chose the book, then you’re a Kindle.
How flat the world is. Just got an international shipment from Lenovo, mapped courtesy of UPS, Google and Boxoh:
Let’s count the ways we have to wait for a better tomorrow on ebooks:
1. First the iPad, of course. But the wait is almost over, they tell us.
2. Then there’s Blio Reader (software), which went into radio silence after CES. They’ve been “coming soon” since then… we’re still waiting.
3. Barnes & Noble, not to be outdone, let us and their investors know that they wouldn’t miss the iPad train and would launch their app. Soon.
4. Finally, Amazon pre-announced their Kindle for Tablet, any tablet as long as you can touch it. Very soon.
B&N, Blio and Amazon have found themselves forced to react to the iPad ebook business model, and demonstrate how their own business model would survive the iPad onslaught. But for the moment, all these announcements feel a lot like vaporware – or is it ebookware?
Microsoft has released a technical preview of streetside photos, a Bing service which will overlay Flickr photos into Bing Streetview – including historical photos.
For all lovers of history, this means that you’ll soon be able to enter 3D renditions of historical landscapes, and walk through them – like a Star Trek holodeck without the characters (yet).
Try it: visit Seattle’s Pioneer Square
Think of the possibilities: Stroll through the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris; visit Dresden before the bombing; follow Allied troops landing on Omaha Beach. This will be yet another way to make history relevant.
Amazon’s troubles with publishers have focused mostly on how the publishers want Amazon to charge more for ebooks. But what about when the $9.99 price is too high?
Take a recent bestseller for instance: The Da Vinci Code
I foresee Amazon increasingly tweaking prices in this way – in the meantime it’s you can find other $9.99 Kindle versions competing with a cheap used copy, and look for more used book price arbitrage opportunities.
Here’s a review of how cell phones are used in different countries – interesting background for those of us in the wireless industry.
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15172850
My Gmail predictions for 2009 failed miserably. I may have been guilty of wishful thinking.
So, continuing on the theme of wishful thinking, here are my 2010 predictions:
Happy New Year!
2010 will be remembered as the year of the “great pizza war” for downtown Bellevue. Already well supplied in pizza delivery/restaurants, newcomers are vying to feed the round red objects to the new condo and office dwellers.
Zeek’s is peparing to displace Nature’s Pantry on 10th, and I just saw another pepperoni palace going up on Bellevue Way.
I anticipate some fine discounts in 2010… hopefully they will all join the gluten-free bandwagon.
Picasa’s latest face recognition feature is so good at finding mouse/nose/eyes combinations it even picked out my girls’ American Girl lovely doll faces, and a few Lego Minifigs:
