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?

Take a recent bestseller for instance: The Da Vinci Code. Based on the seeming endless availability of used and new copies, the Kindle price is already adjusted to balance the reader’s wish to get an immediate copy with the abundance of supply.

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.

The Treo peaked in 2005, and is currently experiencing a small revival.

You can also demonstrate cycles, such as this search for “christmas Cookies recipe”: http://google.com/insights/search/#cat=&q=Christmas%20cookies%20recipe&geo=US&date=&clp=&cmpt=q

I just found a huge analyst cookie jar…

• Image search – returning results just like Web Images search (although with the added challenge of limited context for search)
• Image gallery – show all image in your gmail account as a gallery
• Image slide show – show image attachments as a Picasa-style slide show

Sweet, sweet UI from the UI gnomes at Amazon

The new RealPlayer has sparked all kinds of deep copyright discussions, but the irony I note in this launch is the similarity of this new capability with that of the StreamBox Ripper. StreamBox Ripper was a product that allowed for the saving of – among others – RealAudio streams. Real threatened Streambox and Streambox backed down, in an early application of DMCA.

That said, RealPlayer was due for an overhaul.

Apple’s iTunes launch of DRM-free purchases has bee rightly heralded as a happy jingle. However, Apple still misses the mark and a golden opportunity with international purchases.

As the holder of a US-based iTunes account, I can visit, but not purchase from, the iTunes store in France. I understand that, with different prices and agreements across the ocean, Apple wants to prevent cross-country arbitrage, but it’s beyond me why I can’t buy a tune from iTunes France when it’s not offered at all in the US.

Apple, give us an “Export” option! Make money in the process.

I must credit my wife for first mentioning this to me: the new Target Stores, and their focus on customer experience, take direct inspiration from the Swiss chain Migros, particularly in the area of store design and product merchandising.

 The telling clue was the recent announcement that Target is carrying Migros’ house- brand chocolate, Frey (in stores only). Once I picked up a large shipment of Frey chocolate, I felt right at home in the newly remodeled Redmond Target store, and starting humming Migros’ jingle. That’s when the revelation hit: Target is collaborating with Migros, and not just in the chocolate aisle.

The most obvious parallel is the color scheme, and it’s relentless application throughout the store: for Target it’s red/white, and for Migros orange/white. But there’s also a very Swiss sense of order and organization, and a consistency in visual merchandising that US stores rarely adopt on that scale (just visit your local department store). The brand selection is another giveaway: Target is carefully mixing mid-scale brand names with upscale house brands.

Next time I’m in Switzerland, I’ll check whether Migros is learning anything from Target. In the meantime, Migros could use some of Target’s advice on Web design…

As Smorgasbord-design noted, “with NN/g you have to pay for the privilege of dealing with the (experts)”. After almost a day with John Boyd of Yahoo!, there’s no doubt he is an expert, but he seems constrained by how he interpreted his topic. Boyd followed his outline faithfully, even contributed a last-minute “application” addendum to the handout, but nevertheless failed to practically tie social pyschology experiments with Web experiments. There was a glimpse of hope from 11.45 to noon when he really had the audience engaged, but the momentum was lost after lunch and never regained. The handout itself was a dissapointment, never reflecting the richness of the talk. It lacked sentences and verbs and made few lasting points beyond the referenced outline.

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