First, let me inventory the raw materials that got me thinking this way. Recently JC Hutchins posted that he had been dropped as an author by St. Martins Press and that they would not be publishing the 7th Son sequels. The post lives between a gut-check and a crisis of faith from one of the pioneering new media creator/ novelist hybrid guys. He also posted about monetary realities of writers pubishing via ebooks. Not that long before this, I had listened to JC's Hey Everybody interview with Pablo Defendini and Ami Greko from The New Sleekness blog. It's a really interesting discussion about the future of book publishing by industry professionals young enough in their careers to be less invested in the status quo and more willing to help a new future emerge. (Side note 1: I met Pablo and Ami at last year's Dragon*Con in the classic SF con fashion I wanted to meet them, saw them in a hotel bar, asked if I could sit with them, introduced myself and hung out for an hour. Try it, it works! ) Much in my thinking was informed over the last month by the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing wars of far too large a trail to link to anything. In that debate I did first run across Joe Konrath, his fiction and some of his posts with amazingly open and detailed statistics of what he sells and what he makes from digital publishing. (Side note 2: I bought, read and enjoyed his book Whiskey Sour as fallout from the debate).

There are many other bits of thought in the mix, such as my feelings about beginning my own novel during NaNoWriMo and thinking about hiring my friends at Sterling Editing to work on it and what I might choose to do with such a book when)it is finished. That's enough of a prelude, though. Time to hit it.

JC Hutchins struck a nerve when he basically waved the white flag on his current way of working.

Creating podcast fiction does does not generate direct revenue for me. Based on anecdotal and statistical data, very few people are willing to pay for general podcast content, much less podcast fiction. Since my goal is to make a living wage with my words, the current monetization models including in-show advertisements will not deliver this. Dedicating time and effort to my non-fiction podcast projects will deliver equally underwhelming monetary results.

It is also apparent to me that using the Free model to promote a tangible product, such as I did with 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art, does not deliver sustainable sales results. I have friends some of whom are my best friends, the most talented people I've had the privilege to know and work with who have absolute faith in this model. I treasure their trailblazing efforts and enthusiasm. My faith, however, has been fundamentally rattled.

Put simply: The new media model viably supports only the most blessed and talented of authors. The time, effort and money I invest in entertaining you for free pulls my attention and talent away from projects that can generate revenue. While podcasting, podcast fiction, and most importantly your support and evangelism has positively impacted my life and career in ways I'll never be able to fully express, I cannot continue to release free audiofiction if I wish to make a living wage with my words.

This is pretty big stuff in the world of podcast fiction. Hutch was one of the pioneers of the form and his getting picked up by St. Martins was considered a watershed and a validation for the medium. So if he can't make it in this world, what does that say about all the other podcast novelists who are less engaged, have less of a fan base, less sheer horsepower? Does it mean this medium is screwed?

I am positing that Hutch had a terrible misfortune of timing, that he arose as a viable author at exactly the wrong moment in publishing history. As he started down his path it seemed like the end game was to get a book deal with a major publisher. For writers of the last 100 years, this was the reasonable career success path for authors, and practically the only one. In the last few years though a sea change has happened so rapidly and thoroughly to flip that Hutch got his boat capsized in the process and he will be far from the only one. As crazy as it may sound, for a certain kind of author at this point I think a major publishing contract may seem like winning the game but is in fact losing it.

The red flags I got from the JC Hutchins post started here:

Examining the lead up to, and release of, the novel, I cannot see how I could have promoted it any better than I did. I literally went broke promoting this book and Personal Effects: Dark Art (another novel that will not have a sequel; it also underperformed). I conceived numerous brand-new online marketing campaigns that dazzled you and others. I asked you to purchase the novel, and many of you did.

If JC is literally going broke promoting 7th Son and Personal Effects book, I think a reasonable question to ask is What is St. Martins Press' role in this? If JC is willing and able to put so much of his own time and money into the promotion of the books, what value is he getting from the big publisher that is worth giving away 90% of the sale of the book to them? 50 years ago, and 20 years ago and 2 years ago, this made sense. It was pretty much impossible to get a book published and into the hands of the world in any significant way especially in a way that a writer could make a full-time living without a major publisher contract, especially one paying advances at a level to be a livable wage. Nowadays, especially due to the markeplace enabled by the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader et al, that's a different equation.

Joe Konrath's post about the money he makes from the Kindle store shows a really clear pattern that he summarizes with:

My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.

My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.

If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I'd be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.

So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I'm losing $15,762 per year.

For a writer with an engaged audience, like JA Konrath has and like JC Hutchins has, there may well be more money in their books self-published primarily through the Kindle and other ebook stores. An interesting bit from the Konrath numbers above, that's from making 35% of the sales price for his direct books. When it changes to 70%, he'll be making twice as much per book as he posted above for the self-published ones.

Let me say it again: for a writer who is engaged with their audience and reasonably prolific (because you need new books to keep this engine turning), we may be at the turning point where a better living is available through self-publishing than a big New York publisher book deal.

There are certainly authors that this model will not work for. During my preparation for last year's Podcasting for Working Writers panel at Dragon*Con I talked to both James Patrick Kelly and Kelley Eskridge on this topic and they both raised the point that for a number of old school writers, the idea of engaging at the level of podcasting and doing large parts of their own publicity is anathema. A reasonable chunk of authors don't want to get out in the limelight and picked this career specifically so they don't have to engage. They write their books, maybe do a few conventions a year, do some bookstore events and that's it. Back to the keyboard where the serious work happens. That's fair enough and those writers will always need a publisher to do the parts of this business that would make them unhappy to pursue.

I think of the classic big publisher and big record label model as basically serving the function of the bank or maybe as VC. The manufacturing and distribution of the creative work was too capital intensive for an individual so this company would lend that money to the process, make the books or records show up in the store, do some publicity and keep most of the money. They insulate the creator from the process and from the retailers and fans. What publicity efforts exist, the big media company acts as a semi-permeable membrane to let a little of the public through, but not a lot. Ultimately in this model, the relationship with the fans of the buying public is owned mostly by the retailer and the publisher or label, very little by the writer or musician. For the author that doesn't want to feed and water that relationship, that's perfect.

For the other kind of author, a JC Hutchins or Mur Lafferty or Scott Sigler, going with a major publisher outsources to a third party a relationship with their fans that these writers are really really good at maintaining. When Hutch is paying his own money to publicize his books and his his own direct line into his own fanbase, what can the big publishers do for him? They could give him large enough advances to keep his bills paid while future books are written, but obviously they aren't willing to do that because sales aren't high enough. JC's books earn money, but not enough money to keep him in that system. For me, the real question is Did St. Martins Press do 9 times the work than JC did to get the work promoted? If not, what did they do to deserve a 90/10 split?

Last November for NaNoWriMo I began a novel that I have literally been thinking about since 1991 when I was 23. While I came nowhere near finishing it that month and am nowhere near finished now, I have a goal to finish this novel in 2010. I've already been thinking about what happens when I finish the book. Do I try to find an agent and then try to have them place it with a major publisher? Since I don't have any plans beyond that one book and thus don't necessarily have a writing career in mind, how does that affect my decision making? At the moment I'm leaning towards not bothering to place the book with any publisher at all. I'll pay Nicola and Kelley at Sterling Editing to work with me to get it publishable and hire a book designer and/or artist to hone the final product and then publish it to the Kindle store, Smashwords, the Nook store and whatever else seems reasonable at the time. I'll probably release it via Podiobooks.com at the the same time, do my publicity via that and the other usual online suspects and let it ride. The key point to me is that the energy I could spend in placing my book at a big publisher could be spent selling the book to readers and I'll probably make more money that way in the long run. This isn't the way things worked for the 19th and 20th century and it may not be the way it works in the future, but March 2010 it is the way it looks to me now. The validation of having a major publisher decide I'm their sort of writer doesn't do anything for me. I don't need the book contract to pay my living, I'd end up doing mostly my own publicity anyway so what the hell does the publisher have to offer me anymore? Rather than have them put out a $15 Kindle book that I see a buck or two from and no one buys with a print version that is on and off the shelves in head-swimming time on a death march to the warehouse remainder store, I'd rather put out a $5.99 ebook version that I see $4 from each one and more people buy. I have a whole rant on how the true function of ebook platforms is to enable impulse buys, but this current post is already too long. That must come later.

When I interviewed Cory Doctorow in 2006, one of the things he said is that the generation coming of age now is the first one to arise without a stigma attached to self-publication. Since I've been paying attention to the world of science fiction and writers in general, a giant shift has happened. When I joined GEnie in 1992, the notion of self-publishing your work meant that it was unreadable tripe and the very thought of it was risible to any serious author. Nowadays, it might well be the most rational economic choice available. If you aren't already in the system and earning livable wages from advances on your books, and you are the sort of writer and person with that drive a JC Hutchins, a Scott Sigler, a Tee Morris, a Mur Lafferty, an Alec Longstreth, someone willing to do more than thrown the manuscript over the wall and wait for finished copies to return it might be time to take the reins yourself and just do this. The costs are low which means the cost of failing is low. The traditional publishers aren't paying that much anyway so the opportunity costs are low. Just do it. Lynne Abbey, CJ Cherryh and Jane Fancher did. The writers at Book View Cafe did. I will. Don't pin your hopes on a big publisher with economic drivers that are different than yours. Just do it yourself, work the people yourself and keep as much of the money as you can.

Tags: akismet, amazon, ebooks, jakonrath, jchutchins, kindle, macmillan, publishing, sterlingediting, stmartinspress

Apple Stacks The Deck Against Amazon's Kindle App

Jay Yarow | Feb. 26, 2010, 11:00 AM | 5,634 | 34

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Tags: Gadgets, Amazon, Kindle, Apple, iPad, eBooks, Big Tech, Media

AAPL Feb 26 2010, 05:20 PM EST

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When Apple's iPad goes on sale in a few weeks, its iBookstore will have a distinct user-experience advantage over e-book competitors like Amazon's Kindle App.

That is, the iBookstore will let you seamlessly buy books from within the iBooks reader app, with the iTunes account it's already aware of.

Meanwhile, rivals like the Kindle app and Barnes & Noble e-reader will require you to boot up their apps, then click a button to boot up the iPad's Web browser, shop for e-books in a Web store, sign in and pay with a non-iTunes account, relaunch the e-reader app, and sync up your new e-book. Not as elegant.

It's not a huge difference, but it's the kind of small simplicity advantage that has helped Apple's iTunes music store maintain a lead over its rivals, including Amazon.

People who use the Kindle app on their iPhones today will know that this isn't a new thing: Since the Kindle iPhone app launched last March, users have had to leave the app to buy e-books.

Amazon didn't built the app this way from the beginning. We have learned that when Amazon first submitted its Kindle application for the iPhone to Apple, Amazon included its own payment system within the app, so customers could just pay for e-books and download them right in the app.

When Apple spotted the payment system, it told Amazon to get rid of it, according to a source familiar with Amazon's operations.

Why? It's a rule Apple smartly instituted at the App Store's beginning, forbidding third-party e-commerce of digital goods within apps.

That is, it's okay to use an iPhone app to buy physical goods -- as you can in Amazon's main iPhone app, or the Fandango app, etc. And developers are welcome to use Apple's in-app purchasing system -- and give a 30% cut of revenue to Apple -- to sell digital goods within apps.

But Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other vendors are prohibited from using their own e-commerce systems within apps for virtual goods. Thus the trip to the Safari browser to buy books.

It's obviously a rule Apple itself is allowed to break -- it's Apple's iPhone, and it can do whatever it wants, as we've seen recently with Apple's recent raids on thousands of sexy apps. But it does put competitors like Amazon on uneven footing.

Obviously, Amazon is never going to want to give Apple a 30% cut of e-book sales, so it's not going to implement Apple's in-app purchasing system. So it's indefinitely stuck sending its customers into the browser to make purchases. (Meanwhile, on the new BlackBerry Kindle app, you can buy e-books directly within the app.)

Assuming the iBooks app and the iBookstore have similar selection, pricing, and e-reader features, this one simple step could give Apple a substantial advantage over Amazon.

See Also: 10 Burning Questions About Apple's iPad

Did you really think book publishing would go the way of the music industry and publish eBooks without DRM? Amazon already wraps their eBooks in DRM for the Kindle and now, Apple will do the same for publishers in its iBookstore.

According to the Los Angeles Times, sources in the book publishing industry have indicated that Apple's FairPlay DRM the same DRM used for its apps and its audio and video content will be made available to any book publisher who'd like to use it.

While there hasn't been an official announcement on its use, it's unlikely that many publishers will decline to use it except for maybe O'Reilly who is outspokenly against DRM.

Has DRM stopped you from buying eBooks?

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

[Los Angeles Times]

Related articles by Zemanta

• Amazon Allows Some Publishers and Authors to Opt Out of E-Book DRM (readwriteweb.com)
• O'Reilly drops ebook DRM, sees 104% increase in sales (boingboing.net)
• Amazon Forgot to Mention That Publishers Can Skip DRM on Kindle Books [Amazon] (gizmodo.com)
• Amazon At War With Publisher(s) (mydigitallife.co.za)
• The Ebook Maze Today (rudyrucker.com)

Apple iBooks To Be Wrapped in FairPlay DRM is a post from: The Magical Tablet

Kindle dev kit now rolling out in limited beta originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If the acquisition of Touchco wasn't enough of an indication that Amazon is preparing for a skirmish with the Apple iPad, this should make it perfectly clear. Mike Nash, a man who has quite a history of accomplishments at Microsoft for the past two decades, is leaving the company to work on the Kindle business for Amazon.

Before leaving Microsoft, Mike was the Corporate Vice President of Windows Platform Strategy and was responsible for pieces of Windows business strategy, ecosystem engagement, consumer security, Internet Explorer, and emerging markets, according to his bio on Microsoft's Web site.

In addition to his most recent role, Nash has had a string of historic positions at Big M including a role as the first product manager on the original Windows NT marketing team; the Corporate Vice President of the Security Technology Unit; and a driver of a number of Microsoft acquisitions in the security space.

There's been no official announcement yet from Amazon so we're unsure of Nash's focus within the Amazon team.

[Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet] [Amazon Kindle]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclszr.us/5

Related articles by Zemanta

• Amazon acquires Touchco and a Microsoft exec (macworld.com)
• Another Windows exec Mike Nash is leaving Microsoft (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Amazon Hires Mike Nash from Microsoft to Work on Kindle is a post from: Magical Tablet

We're not going to see the iPad hit stores for another two months, but it is already changing the e-book game and forcing publishers and consumers to pick sides.

Last night, several blogs including Venturebeat and NYT's Bits Blog noticed something was amiss on the website of the world's largest retailer: Amazon suddenly stopped selling books from Macmillan, one of the world's largest book publishers.

Not every Macmillan book is gone, but popular ones such as The Gathering Storm are no longer sold by Amazon, either in physical or Kindle form. You can still find the Amazon pages for Macmillan's books you just can't order the actual books.

According to The New York Times, the reason the books were pulled was the iPad. Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon's apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves.

The Dynamics of the New E-book War

Ever since we got word of the iPad's existence, we've known that Amazon and Apple were on a collision course. Apple saw an opportunity to not only create a new category of device, but to get its hands into the publishing market. In the same way Apple has transformed music, the computing giant would reshape books and become the primary distributor of e-books worldwide.

Back in September, we wrote a lengthy piece explaining why we believed Apple's tablet would eat the Kindle's lunch, displacing Amazon's lordship over e-books. We argued that its multipurpose functionality, color screen, and sexier interface and look would put it over the top. Now that we know the iPad's starting price ($499), our opinion hasn't changed. While the Kindle will survive, its sales will likely never be the same.

Publishers like Macmillan apparently agree with us as well, otherwise it wouldn't so boldly demand price changes from Amazon. Before the iPad was revealed, Amazon was the only player in the game. You played by its rules or you could take a hike. Now with a viable alternative only months away, publishers can run to Apple, where they will have more freedom over its e-book prices.

Amazon's clearly worried, which is why it's launching an app store and used its earnings report to remind us that the Kindle is far from dead. But if publishers decide to abandon the Kindle, then Apple will have won the war by default.

That's why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don't play by its rules, then you can't be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world's largest online retailer.

The Kindle and the iPad offer different experiences. The Kindle's battery life and e-ink are strong selling points for the device as a reader, but the iPad offers so much more. Apple's banking on those extra features and its undeniable reach to turn the Kindle into an endangered species.

Publishers now have to either choose a side or walk the tightrope between the two companies. The end result will be a long, drawn-out war that will both help and hurt consumers. How it will end is anybody's guess.

Tags: amazon, apple, Apple iPad, Apple Tablet, ebooks, iBooks, ipad, Kindle, Macmillan, Tablet, trending

We're not going to see the iPad hit stores for another two months, but it is already changing the ebook game and forcing publishers and consumers to pick sides.

Last night, several blogs including Venturebeat and NYT's Bits Blog noticed something was amiss on the website of the world's largest retailer: Amazon suddenly stopped selling books from Macmillan, one of the world's largest book publishers.

Not every Macmillan book is gone, but popular ones such as The Gathering Storm are no longer sold by Amazon, either in physical or Kindle form. You can still find the Amazon pages for Macmillan's books you just can't order the actual books.

According to the New York Times, the reason the books were pulled was the iPad. Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon's apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves.

The Dynamics of the New Ebook War

Ever since we got word of the iPad's existence, we've known that Amazon and Apple were on a collision course. Apple saw an opportunity to not only create a new category of device, but to get its hands into the publishing market. In the same way Apple has transformed music, the computing giant would reshape books and become the primary distributor of ebooks worldwide.

Back in September, we wrote a lengthy piece explaining why we believed Apple's tablet would eat the Kindle's lunch, displacing Amazon's lordship over ebooks. We argued that its multipurpose functionality, color screen, and sexier interface and look would put it over the top. Now that we know the iPad's starting price, ($499), our opinion hasn't changed. While the Kindle will survive, its sales will likely never be the same.

Publishers like Macmillan apparently agree with us as well, otherwise they wouldn't so boldly demand price changes from Amazon. Before the iPad was revealed, Amazon was the only player in the game. You played by its rules or you could take a hike. Now with a viable alternative only months away, publishers can run to Apple, where it will have more freedom over its ebook prices.

Amazon's clearly worried, which is why it's launching an app store and used its earnings report to remind us that the Kindle is far from dead. But if publishers decide to abandon the Kindle, then Apple will have won the war by default.

That's why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don't play by its rules, then you can't be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world's largest online retailer.

The Kindle and the iPad offer different experiences. The Kindle's battery life and e-ink are strong selling points for the device as a reader, but the iPad offers so much more. Apple's banking on those extra features and its undeniable reach to turn the Kindle into an endangered species.

Publishers now have to either choose a side or walk the tightrope between the two companies. The end result will be a long, drawn out war that will both help and hurt consumers. How it will end is anybody's guess.

Tags: amazon, apple, Apple iPad, Apple Tablet, ebooks, iBooks, ipad, Kindle, Macmillan, Tablet, trending

The iPad And The World Of Tomorrow

For those who spent yesterday glued to the State of the Union address instead of tech news feeds, Gizmodo has a terrific summary of Apple's new device. To break it down: The iPad looks basically like an iPhone, but with a 9.7 inch screen. It runs the same software as the iPhone, can connect to the internet, and seems to work nicely for reading books, newspapers and magazines, watching video, checking Google maps, reading your email, surfing the web, and casual gaming. Like the iPhone, it has no keyboard - you can touch-type on the screen.

Why is this outsize version of the iPhone so important that the internet basically exploded over it yesterday? Mostly because Apple's last two new mobile devices - the iPod and the iPhone - changed the way people think about computers. They really did change the future, by making it glaringly obvious that computing devices are not all desktop PCs - they can be specialized music players, or telephone/internet toys that put the web in your pocket. They are the beautiful, cool poster gadgets for the mobile computer generation; they are what we imagine when we think of tomorrow's machines.

The Mythical Convergence Device

The iPad promises to be just as revolutionary as its predecessors, for one reason. It embodies, as much as possible, the mythical convergence device that technophiles have been craving for almost two decades. The convergence device, which people began to discuss seriously in the 1990s, would be a unified gadget where you could consume many kinds of media, especially TV and the web, with the same gadget.

This is exactly what the iPad does, helped along by the fact that so much television is available online already. And you can add books to this convergence, too (the iPad even has a Kindle app). The iPad is also the perfect shape for a convergence box. Its screen is about the size of a quality paperback or small television set. There's none of that scrunching your forehead as you peer into the teeny screen of the iPhone to read a book or watch YouTube.

What I'm saying is that the iPad appeals to a very deep and longlived fantasy in the consumer electronics world: A device that does it all. At least, if all you want to do is consume media.

And there's the problem.

Reinventing The Television

Apple is marketing the iPad as a computer, when really it's nothing more than a media-consumption device - a convergence television, if you will. Think of it this way: One of the fundamental attributes of computers is that they are interactive and reconfigurable. You can change the way a computer behaves at a very deep level. Interactivity on the iPad consists of touching icons on the screen to change which application you're using. Hardly more interactive than changing channels on a TV. Sure, you can compose a short email or text message; you can use the Brushes app to draw a sketch. But those activities are not the same thing as programming the device to do something new. Unlike a computer, the iPad is simply not reconfigurable.

The iPad emulates television in another way, too: You can channel surf through the Apps Store, but you can't change what's playing. Every single app that's available for the iPad has to be approved by Apple first, just like apps for iPhones. That means censorship of "offensive" apps, no apps that compete with Apple (i.e., no Google Voice), and no random app you wrote to do whatever obscure shit you want to do. So you've got thousands of channels and nothing on. And because you can't reconfigure the iPad, you can't change that. You can only keep flipping through the channels, hoping in vain to see something other than reruns of Cheaters and Alf.

As futurist Jamais Cascio told io9:

This is Apple's big push of its top-down control over applications into the general-purpose computing world. The only applications that will work with the iPad are those approved by Apple, under very opaque conditions. On a phone, that's borderline acceptable, but it's not for something that is positioned to overlap with regular computers.

The iPad has all the problems of television, with none of the benefits of computers.

Back To The Shopping Mall

So if it's not a computer, what exactly is the iPad? It could be just a really tarted-up ebook reader, which would make sense if you consider that the iPad is competing with Amazon's Kindle. So it's a reinvention of the book, a fairly old technology, but in a gleaming new package. Except that package isn't even very new, as futurist and science fiction author Karl Schroeder pointed out. He told io9 that the iPad isn't about brilliant hardware innovation, and that in fact the device doesn't even use state-of-the-art ebook tech like e-ink.

Speaking to us via email, Schroeder said:

What Apple has done (again) is seize the moment with a combination of a device and a business model . . . even if e-ink provides a better reading experience for books (reading on an iPad will continue to literally mean staring into a lamp, just like reading on a computer screen), it doesn't matter because it's the total package of iTunes, iBookstore, 3G, games, apps etc. that will pull ebook readers along with it. Consider that the iPad is a closed platform that doesn't even multitask; if the technology mattered, those would be major considerations for the buyer. But they won't be, because when you buy an iPad, you buy access to the whole Apple business ecology.

Looked at from this angle, the iPad isn't so much new technology as it is a shiny, pretty doorway to a mall where you can buy everything from books to movies.

The iPad hasn't brought us forward into the future. It's taken us backward to a world of strip malls and televisions.

Another Vision Of The Future

So the iPad takes us back to the 1980s, or maybe even the 1950s. It's likely to be a device that changes our future, but what that means is we're facing a tomorrow where true innovation is sidelined by a device that represents a convergence of old media and shopping.

But as John Connor would say, we can change the future. That might be as simple as pushing Apple to change its App Store policies to make iPads less like TVs and more like computers. As Lifehacker's Adam Pash put it, "The App Store isn't exactly the problem-it's the way Apple runs and limits the App Store." He suggests that Apple could create a special "Restricted section" for its App Store. He continues:

Rather than reject applications that it feels may confuse the user (like they claimed Google Voice or Google Latitude might), or applications that allow users to access naughty pictures, or even applications that it hasn't had time to vet for the App Store proper, [Apple] put those applications in the Restricted section. Before a user is able to install applications from the Restricted section, that user has to agree that the application may confuse their feeble minds, offend their delicate sensibilities, or even slow down their device. Is this such a problem? . . . Even better, [the iPad] could work like the package manager it actually is and allow users to add their own trusted repositories as sources for other applications . . . The point is, users should at least be allowed to flip some switch, somewhere on the machine, that says, "Hey computer, I'm an adult, and I take responsibility over how I use this machine."

A convergence device that can also be reprogrammed the way computers can? Now we're in the twenty-first century.

Another possibility would be for developers and investors to focus on hardware that truly is innovative and futuristic. Schroeder says:

There's really nothing in the iPad that's new; if you want truly new, disruptive tech that would be at a similar price point if commercialized, look at Pranav Mistry's SixthSense and related projects.

SixthSense is a gesture-controlled mobile device with a projector - you can see its telephone app at work above. You project the phone onto your hand and press the buttons. You can also use gestures to take pictures. This is truly the next step in mobile computing, and will likely revolutionize computer networks in ways we can't yet imagine.

What Is To Be Done?

I know a lot of otherwise-savvy consumers and hackers who are already drooling over the iPad and putting in their orders. They hate the idea of a restricted device, but they love the shiny-shiny. I'm not saying that they should deprive themselves of this pretty new toy. What I am saying is that this toy represents a crappy, pathetic future. It is no more revolutionary than those expensive, hot boots I bought at Fluevog, and only slightly more useful.

The only way iPads can truly become futuristic devices is if we hack them so that we can pour whatever operating system we want inside. We need to jailbreak these media boxes so we can install the apps we want, not the ones provided by the Apple shopping mall.

Do not be content with a television when you can have a computer.

Do not be content with yesterday's machines, because the future is before you. Ready to be hacked.

The iPad is not the transformational device so many Apple enthusiasts were hoping for. It won't turn all the content industries upside down, it won't be your primary computing device, and it's not even a bigger, better iPhone.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPad as a device to fill the gap between smartphones like the iPhone and high-end laptops like the MacBook and MacBook Pro. He said there needs to be a middle device, but it needs to be better than the alternatives at what it does. Netbooks currently fill the void, but according to Jobs, netbooks aren't better at anything. He and his colleagues at Apple believe that the iPad is.

Apple's website and promotional video call the iPad magical. We're told the iPad is the best way to experience the web, email, photos, and videos. Hands down. But it's not it's not even close. It's mighty cool, it's super convenient, and it's very sexy, but it's not even better than a netbook at some of those things.

This isn't the middle device folks have been waiting for because and I'm using Steve Jobs's own criteria here it's not better at anything than any other device on the market. It's a step in that direction, but the day hasn't come yet. Here are just a few of the ways the iPad isn't as magical as Apple claims.

It's Not the Best Way to Browse the Web

Steve Jobs said it needs to be a better web device than the alternatives. The Apple website says it's the best way to experience the web. Some variation of that phrase is repeated several times in the promotional video Apple has released. But it's just not true.

It might be one of the best ways to browse the web on a mobile device, but laptop and desktop computers even netbooks are still better. Most current websites were designed to be experienced on those devices with a mouse and a keyboard. Maybe the mouse isn't necessary, but you don't have to pop up a software keyboard to type in URLs on a netbook or laptop. Even if you lug around the keyboard dock, it will be a tad awkward moving between the keys and the screen to interact. You're sacrificing some usability for simplicity on the iPad.

Most importantly, the iPad's browser does not support Adobe Flash, the foundation of rich media on the web today. Adobe is planning to make it possible for Flash developers to develop apps, but it won't work on the web.

I'll admit that the decision not to support Flash is a logical one if you start at the right premises; Flash is responsible for countless reported crashes on Macs, and Apple can't control it to ensure quality of experience. Apple is banking on a transition to HTML5 and CSS 3 for rich web content. While that transition has already begun, it hasn't fully happened yet. Until it does, it's ridiculous to call this device the best way to experience the web when one of the most ubiquitous and essential web technologies is not supported.

It's an Unprecedented Win for Closed Computing

Many of the software restrictions that drive people mad when they're using the iPhone are going to be just as frustrating on the iPad. All the device's content apps, songs, TV shows, movies, books, you name it can only be processed through Apple's iTunes Store.

You won't be able to drag and drop or share files with other computers like you can with your laptop on your home network. You won't be able to download a program or music file from the web and play it on the spot. You won't be able to use any application that doesn't meet Apple's strict approval guidelines. It's closed computing at its most extreme.

Unfortunately we've come to expect that from our smartphones. For a larger device that's supposed to replace your netbook as a complete portable computing solution, though, this is almost unprecedented at least from a device that's likely to have a great deal of influence on the market and on the design of future devices. That's bad news no matter how you spin it.

It's Not Really a Competitive eReader

The Kindle owns the eReader landscape right now, and the greatest expectation for the iPad was that it would bury the Kindle. While the iPad's reader interface is indisputably sweet-looking and the list of participating publishers is promising, there are several ways it just won't beat the Kindle.

The most important issue is the price. The Kindle costs $260; so do Barnes & Noble's Nook and the comparable Sony Reader. The Kindle even comes bundled with free 3G network access, though it admittedly can't do anywhere near as much with it as the iPad can.

But if you are considering the iPad primarily as a reader, that price difference is a big problem. Also a big problem: The lack of an e-ink display. E-ink doesn't wash your face in eye-strain-inducing light like the displays on the iPhone, the iPad, and laptop computers do. It's meant to be a soft experience, just like reading a book. Without e-ink, you might not be able to tolerate spending four straight hours reading Stephen King's latest on a regular display, cool IPS tech aside.

Finally, as impressive as 10 hours of battery life is for a multi-purpose device like the iPad, the Kindle can run in reading mode for a week without recharging longer if Wi-Fi is disabled. Because it's trying to do everything, the iPad isn't the best at anything.

It's Not Worth It If You Have a Smartphone and Laptop

If the iPad isn't a good option as a middle device, it ought to at least be attractive to power users and enthusiasts who already have other devices. Unfortunately, it's not.

It's not significantly better at anything than either your iPhone or your MacBook. It can't be used as your daily workhorse computer on the go, because just like the iPhone's OS 3.1.2 the iPad's OS 3.2 doesn't multitask. And if you already have an iPhone, you can do basic information gathering, mapping, and so on while you're on the go without spending an additional $29.99 per month for 3G service.

Further, your laptop or netbook very likely has a web cam for video conferencing, and your cell phone probably has a camera (or even video camera) for capturing images. The iPad has neither.

Since the interface is graceful and satisfying, you might want to buy it as an extra device just for the experience, but at between $499 $829, that's not practical for most consumers.

The Anti-Hype

The iPad isn't going to be a phenomenon with either netbook users or power users. It's not better than existing devices at anything, and it's too expensive for most people to use it as a secondary device. I might have said something different if the rumors that the iPad would be all about a new push in the content marketplace were true, but that didn't happen. Instead, we got a cool toy.

Tags: apple, Apple Tablet, ereader, ipad, Kindle, Opinion

With that in mind, I decided to filter the barrage of iPad coverage through a publishing lens. What follows are intriguing ideas culled from all sorts of sources. Most revolve around content applications the iPad may provide.

There's no way I'll catch all the good stuff -- there's just too much out there -- so please use the comments area to post links and commentary that grab your attention, publishing-related and otherwise.

Ebook pricing could get interesting

The iPad's release portends a price-point battle between Apple and Amazon. That's ebook pricing, not hardware.

The Wall Street Journal says Apple is pushing book publishers to set two ebook price points, $12.99 and $14.99, with Apple taking its customary 30 percent cut from any sales. They key word in all this is "set." The big kahuna of ebooks, Amazon, controls its pricing. Most bestsellers are parked at $9.99, which is below what Amazon pays a publisher for a title. Amazon is subsidizing its low price point.

But that's the present. The future is a different matter. The thought is that Amazon is taking a short-term loss on ebooks so it can solidify its position as the dominant channel. Once it owns the ebook market, Amazon can ditch the subsidy and force publishers to renegotiate pricing.

That's the fear, and Apple appears to be playing to it by giving publishers an option: get a measure of pricing control through Apple, or make more with Amazon but pray they don't rewrite the rules later. (Apple could always rewrite rules, too ...)

What's really interesting about this -- and kind of bizarre -- is that the binary Apple-or-Amazon thinking obscures an important point: mobile devices already offer publishers plenty of pricing options.

What about e-reader applications?

Steve Jobs famously quipped a couple of years ago that "people don't read anymore." Well, I guess Apple changed its stance on that one. The new iBooks app -- and accompanying store -- is a big ol' cannonball in the ebook pool.

Early discussion on a back-channel publishing list I follow has focused on how Apple will treat its new ebook competitors. Will established applications, like Stanza and the Kindle app, be removed? Kirk Biglione, co-founder of Medialoper, thinks competitors will remain in Apple's universe. Just don't count on sharing titles across apps:

Look for books to be added as a new media type in the device media library. The other reading apps may be able to co-exist as long as they don't access books stored in that library. So, for example, you probably won't be able to use Stanza to read iBooks. [Note: Kirk gave me permission to post his comments.]

One thing to consider here: Past inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission may soften Apple's competitive instincts. At least for a while.

Of course, FCC heat doesn't preclude Apple from a little friendly rivalry. Digital Trends picked up on the backhanded compliment Jobs gave Amazon during the iPad presentation:

... [Jobs] basically told the online retailer that we'll take it from here.

The reading/viewing experience

Apple has already shown what it's capable of on the music and video front, so I'm curious to see how it handles the book experience. Early word is positive from folks who've had a chance to demo the iPad. Here's Gizmodo's take:

It's an optical illusion, but just seeing the depth of pages makes the iBook app feel more like a book than a Kindle ever did for me. The text is sharp, and while the screen is bright, it doesn't seem to strains the eyesbut time will tell on that.

The iPad is backwards compatible with existing iPhone applications. That seems useful on first blush, but Joshua Topolsky of Engadget called out a big issue with "old" apps:

It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen.

More to come

I'll be adding to this post in the coming days as more analysis bubbles up. Again, please use the comments to point out interesting or informative links you come across as well.

Editor's note: This a guest post written by Joff Redfern. Redfern is the co-founder of FlattenMe.com, a site for creating personalized storybooks. He was formerly a vice president of product at Yahoo, where he managed Yahoo Buzz and Toolbar.

Amazon Kindle: The Road Ahead

I'm a recent Kindle fan boy. I like the instant access to earth-friendly books, the paper-like display and the way it fits in my hand like a paperback. I've also deeply admired the crispness of the Kindle visionany book, any language, in minutes. But with Apple's iPad announcement the playing field on which the Kindle competes shifts and the disruptive technology itself gets disrupted.

If I were running the Kindle I would answer this question today: Are we innovating the publishing or the entertainment industry? Is the Kindle just for my reading entertainment or is it for watching, listening, gaming, browsing, sharing photos, and communicating with friends & family too? Ultimately the answer is shaped by consumer preference, competitors and time measured in years.

As a product guy this is a really intriguing question to try to unravelwhich path should Amazon choose? Over time this is what may push the Kindle into being more than just a reader . . .

For the same price, more is better

Will consumers prefer a multi-purpose entertainment tablet over a single-purpose reading device as their prices converge? This is a religious question; sides will be drawn. I look to the evolution of my own personal technology habits for the answer.

When I wanted to manage my contacts I started with a paper-based Address Book, upgraded to a Digital Rolodex, upgraded to a Palm V, upgraded to a Blackberry, then upgraded to an iPhone. Fundamentally I was trying to solve how I manage and communicate with my contacts. With each upgrade I got more functionality yet the price point for each device was not radically different.

If consumers can eventually get an entertainment tablet that also has the core features of a great reader (screen, content catalog, ease of purchasing) at under $200 they'll want more.

Prices drop. Over time, price won't be a factor in the purchase decision.

Today, Kindle enjoys a price advantage over the iPad. It is nearly half the price, starting at $260 versus $500 for the iPad, although the cheapest Kindle DX with an equivalent 9.7 inch screen is $489. That is pretty close already. What happens when the price of iPad-like devices trend down to a point of consumer indifference?

Moore's Law and business model innovation will drive the iPad-like devices to sub-$200 pricing. Unrealistic? The retail price of the iPhone 8GB dropped ~83% in 3 years from $599 to $99.

Also keep in mind that entertainment tablets are using different math from the Kindle. The device pricing will be subsidized by multiple revenue streamsdownloads of books, music, movies, games, apps, advertising, and more. Today I can get a cell phone device for free, will my iPad be free some day?

Competitors are playing a platform war. Is Kindle?

Apple, Google and Microsoft have massive investments in their respective mobile platforms. In particular, Apple is king of the mobile mountain. As Jobs declared today, Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world.

This Apple sizzle has drawn 100,000+ developers and publishers to its iPhone (and now iPad) ecosystem. These apps are already available to entertain us in all sorts of ways on the iPad beyond what Apple exec Scott Forstall showed today.

Amazon knows this. Last week they announced a developer API is coming. So the question remains how robust is the API and will the developer community bite, or is it game over?

What would you do if you ran the Kindle?

If you don't like the prices in Apple's iBook Store, just use Amazon's Kindle app on the iPad.

No 3G? No contracts? (Might be saving this for last/later.)

I'm looking on the photos of this thing and there doesn't seem to be a camera, video or otherwise.

The iPad appears to be a device that you use sitting down. Can you type on it while holding it standing up?

Ok, there's 3G. $15/mo for 250 MB of data. $30/mo for "unlimited".

iPad is unlocked. International SIM cards "will just work".

Price: $500. Boom. That's for the low-end model with no 3G.

Ooh, keyboard dock. If they could outfit that with a hinge and some sort of latching device, I wonder what that kind of thing would look like? (Will the keyboard work with the iPhone -- er, iPad nano -- as well?)

Will there be an iBook Reader/Store app for the iPhone?

Oh, from earlier: Jobs repositioned Apple as a "mobile devices company".

Right at the end, Jobs showed a street sign marking the intersection of "Technology" and "Liberal Arts". I guess that means that kottke.org is now in direct competition with Apple, Inc. YOU'RE GOING DOWN, STEVE!

Kurt Anderson:

Watching AAPL's share price live: the moment Jobs announced the iPad's base price ($499), Apple's market cap increased by $5 billion.

The iPad page is up on Apple's web site. Nothing on the store yet.

9to5Mac claims that they've spoken with a few print publishers about the upcoming Apple Tablet iPad reinforcing what most of us already know but with a few extra details. These conversations yielded specs like a 10-inch glass screen slightly smaller than a Kindle DX but similar in weight.

They also indicated that Apple is describing the device to publishers by comparing the shift from Kindle to the Tablet as going from black and white TV to color TV.

Finally, they've said that there won't be much content until mid-2010 at the very earliest.

Not so fast, cowboy. What else to do know about this device? Well, how about the fact that it runs a version of the iPhone OS and that most iPhone apps will run on it without many, if any, changes.

If that's true, then the iPad will have tons of ebooksthanks to the Kindle app for iPhone. With the application loaded on your Apple gadget, you'll have access to any and all content sold sold through the Kindle store and any unprotected (.mobi) files, as well. That means indie ebooks and other content.

Repeat after me, one more time: Amazon doesn't care if it's in the hardware business. It wants to sell electronic books, whether they produce the device or not.

[9to5Mac]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Wait Until Mid-Year for eBooks on The Apple Tablet? Think Different. is a post from: TechStartups.com

• Aldiko: outstanding e-book reader (better than Kindle on the iPhone in terms of feature set; obviously the book store is not quite as good, but the integration with free eBook download sites is a plus). Currently reading Makers by Cory Doctorow.
• Amazon: search the full Amazon catalog (can use barcodes or photos in addition to typing or speaking your query), track orders in my account.
• APNDroid: useful if you want to disable your phone's cellular data connection (useful if you're often on WiFi and want to turn off your EDGE or 3G data connection)
• AppReferer: builds a QR code (a 2D barcode) that makes recommending an app to another Android user in person a one-click affair.
• Battery Graph: shows a nice chart (exportable, even) of battery usage, which is helpful if you're trying to isolate when the battery started to drain.
• Coin Flip: silly app that lets me flip a coin. Use it mostly to settle disputes between the kids. :)
• Congress: built by Sunlight Labs, a phenomenal "pocket Congressional directory" that includes contact info, committee memberships, news, and YouTube vids of every Senator and Representative.
• DroidLive Lite: Streaming radio (via Shoutcast) from 1300 radio stations around the world.
• Facebook: news feed, photos and profile info for friends
• Fandango: Order movie tickets from movie theaters so I can bypass lines at the ticket counter.
• Finance: Google Finance app
• Flashlight: turns screen bright white to use in dark rooms
• Foursquare: app for playing Foursquare, also has a nice widget for my home screen
• Gmote: turns my Nexus One into a touchpad remote (when paired with a computer running the Gmote server software). Handy for giving presentations, or just doing something nerdy and cool.
• Google Goggles: search Google by taking pictures.
• Google Sky Map: the one app that consistently blows people away. Load it up, turn your camera toward the night sky and you'll get a real-time view of which stars, constellations and planets are above you. An awesome accompaniment to a telescope.
• Jewels: Bejeweled-like game.
• Layar: Augmented reality app that displays info on screen in realtime through your phone's camera.
• Locale: very sophisticated app for scripting events to happen based on certain triggers. (When I'm at home, disable the data connection and connect to my home wifi access point. At 11pm, turn off the sound and put the phone to sleep; at 6am turn the sound back up; when I'm at work, put the phone in vibrate mode; etc.)
• Metal detector: actually works.
• Movies (aka Flixster): Lots of info/trailers/reviews about new and upcoming movies, also integrates with Netflix for DVDs
• My Tracks: built by some Googlers, great app for keeping track of runs/bikes/ski runs you've done; captures altitude, distance, etc., then uploads to Google Maps My Maps.
• OpenTable: make restaurant reservations from the phone.
• Owner: adds my contact info to the unlock screen ("If found, please contact Rick Klau...")
• Pandora: streaming music channels.
• PapiJump: great little game using the phone's accelerometer.
• Pintail: monitors your phone's SMS messages for a message that says "locate" (plus a PIN); once received, activates the GPS and replies with the phone's location. Helpful if you've got a lost phone.
• Robo Defense: addicitve game.
• Scoreboard: Tracks scores of your favorite teams, with realtime updates and notifications as score changes.
• Seesmic: Great Twitter app.
• Shop Savvy: grab a barcode, find out who sells it and for how much.
• TiVo Remote: works with any TiVo HD unit over WiFi.
• TripIt: phenomenal itinerary manager for all travel info.
• Voice Recorder: does exactly what it says it does.
• Yelp: Local reviews.

In my search for information about the world, what matters to me and what is good, I go no farther than an application that I wrote called Filome. I've talk about it quite a bit here at Tech Startups.

It's an app that is about 85% of the way there and is relegated being updated when I have spare time. Which in the last 8 months hasn't been very often. One of the things it is brilliant at though is helping me find what is relevant to me and what I want to write about.

About 30 minutes ago it was tablet computers. But instead of writing about them and adding to the noise, I thought that I would share my filter a tablet computer group from Filome.

First there is the feed for those that want to get right to it - http://www.filome.com/group/ksmith/1/tablet%20computers.rss

Below are the latest 25 posts regarding tablet computing. All linking to the original posts. Find one and follow it down the rabbit hole. Enjoy! (Remember: If you want to stay updated subscribe to the feed link above)

1. You Can Take It With You: Future Trends in Media
2. Who needs tablet computers anyway?
3. Can Android Tablets Find a Market?
4. Why I Hate Ereaders, And Doubt They'll Ever Hit the Mainstream [Ebooks]
5. Why Google Should Make a Tablet [Opinion]
6. Apple to Launch iTunes on the Web
7. Analyst noise: Apple tablet in March for $1k, publishers on-board, Verizon iPhone coming too
8. Apple Tablet Release Date Gets Narrowed Down, Prices Get Estimated
9. Which Companies Will Win The Battle For The E-Book Consumer?
10. A New, Now Netbook You Can Actually Buy: PsiXpda
11. Analysts Predict 1 Billion+ Mobile Web Users by 2010
12. Time Inc. shows off magazine tablet demo, plans future anger about 70/30 profit split
13. Apple tablet rumored to be 'shockingly' inexpensive
14. Apple Registers TabletMac Trademark After Dueling Axiotron MacBook Modders [AppleTablet]
15. Using the Apple LP and Extras format for learning?
16. NVIDIA Tegra tablet prototype hands-on
17. What If Steve Jobs Hadn't Returned To Apple In 1997?
18. Hearst, Time, Conde iTunes For Magazines Only A Few Weeks Away
19. DigiTimes Claims Apple Tablet Delayed for OLED Upgrade [Rumor]
20. Apple tablet(s) in 2H 2010 with OLED screen and tailored content in tow?
21. Cond Nast Gets Wired Ready For Apple Tablet (In Case There Is One)
22. Adobe Air hits 2.0 this is powerful stuff
23. The death of the URL
24. Apple tablet speculation: high-end graphics, several models
25. Bookmark Away: Instapaper Comes Up With A New Way To Work With The Kindle

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Tablets, tablets, tablets The Next Devices is a post from: TechStartups.com

I say mistake because that browser incited geeks and technophiles everywhere to start complaining about the page rendering, the speed and the fact that the iPhone browser was so much better. Many bloggers and even digital media industry insiders decried that the connectivity was poor and really meant it was only good for reading your ebooks.

My response to this was twofold. First, it's an eBook Reader, people! That's what it was designed to do not make phone calls, browse the web or make julienne fries. Second, who wants to read eBooks or other long form content on an iPhone? The screen just isn't optimized for that type of experience. (Nerd Disclosure: I've since read some significant portions of some books on my iPhone so that my wife could use my Kindle. It wasn't terrible, but I still prefer my eReader.)

And the chatter continues: The Apple iTablet (if it's ever released) will kill the Kindle and all other eBook readers! Netbooks will kill the Kindle! The [insert gadget with a screen here] will do everything!

Today, I saw this post on Gizmodo about the possibility of eBook Readers having gaming capabilities.

Why? Is there a significant subset of the gaming community that loves books or avid readers who love games?

Just because a device can do something, doesn't necessarily mean it should.

I'm happpy with a certain amount of convergence when convergence make sense, but to integrate features and functions just because you can doesn't always make market sense.

Damn you, iPhone.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

How the iPhone Changed the Expectations of Gadget Consumers is a post from: TechStartups.com

The gadgets are flowing and they've got both publishers and subscribers in a tizzy over their options. Are they 3g? Can I put my content on it? Just wifi? What services do they deliver? Do I need to build an app? Am I locked in?

All great questions but not the one that is at the front of my mind. That question being where is the personal media hub for all of this content? Each type of media that we consume has a disparative quality of some sort that requires another gadget or format transcoder to allow usage which means, users need a hub.

I just want to know where that hub will be. I'm not sure if it belongs in the cloud or can even exist there due to limitations placed on that content by rights holders. Which is a legitimate reason not to use the cloud since publishers need to eat.

A couple reasons to use the cloud would be transfer speeds, remote accessibility and backups. With increased gadget connectivity it would make sense to do this. An example of a gadget that needs to be fed from an outside source like the cloud is the PSPgo. It relies on connectivity to fetch games, video and browse the web.

The games on PSPgo arrive from a Sony controlled hub behind a firewall. If the cloud is too limiting due to rights management the other other solution would be to offer a private hub. Another gadget, but one that resides in the dwelling of an individual. Using the Sony model for control and privacy a device like this could be the next evolution of an inclusive hub. It seems to me to be the missing link.

Media management across multiples platforms and for varying devices would require some version of a standard protocol. The protocol probably already exists and could be as simple as HTTP with SSL. The device itself a web server that connects to cars, phones, tablets, computers, televisions, etc.

A device like this could also create new opportunities for rights holders to create new models for selling content. I'm thinking in the range of micropayments for ongoing usage or payments for amount of time used. An example would be a movie that instead of a 24 hour limit would allow the consumer to view it 2 times on any device before being crippled or offered for purchase for an additional few dollars.

My personal interest would be to have a media hub that I had control over and could add content to from any device like the PSPgo, Kindle, iPhone or computer. The ability for these devices to speak a common language for file storage and retrieval would increase consumption and sales as all of a users purchases become portable, even if lockedin to a device.

There are plenty of media hubs that exist today for personal use that can be net connected, but this device would find its niche in storing and delivering content without limitation.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Where is the personal media hub for ebooks, music and videos? is a post from: TechStartups.com

Filed under: Handhelds

Amazon clarifies Kindle book-deletion policy, can still delete books originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We've been following the persistent rumors of an Apple Tablet for some time now and have written on why we think it's most certainly coming at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Today there's a small nugget of fuel to add to the Tablet fire, with Apple rehiring former Newton developer Michael Tchao as VP of Product Marketing according to The New York Times.

For those unfamiliar, the Apple Newton was the progenitor of the personal digital assistant (PDA) class of devices that outlived the Newton project itself, which was eventually canceled. Still, it was a groundbreaking platform for its time and presaged the age of handheld mobile devices. A truly amazing tablet device from Apple would in some ways finally do the original Newton vision justice.

Now, one of the original ideators behind the Newton platform is back after a 15-year absence. He'll be reporting to SVP Phil Schiller and carrying out unspecified duties, but it seems highly logical that Tchao might be involved in the marketing strategy for the still-mythical tablet that everybody is convinced is in the works. What do you think: is the new-but-old hire related to the Apple Tablet?

Header image courtesy of Pickupjojo on DeviantArt.

Tags: apple, Apple Tablet, hires, Newton, pda

Courtesy of MAKE, we have this interesting "hack" that provides step-by-step instructions for getting 1984 back on your Kindletimid publishers frightened of New Media be damned.

It's not too complicated a process, other than that expensive plane ticket of course, but there are a few instructions and tools you'll need, so head over to MAKE when you're ready.

If you're already in Australia and care to embark on this completely free-of-charge literary journey, send us some interesting shots of you giving Big Brother the picture while reading 1984, won't you? [MAKE]

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is "rare," but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we've been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we've learned that they're not really like books, in that once we're finished reading them, we can't resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

This stinks like old cheese. I wish they'd just call these Kindle book transactions what they are, but I guess "Rent now with 1-Click until we decide to take it back from you or maybe not" doesn't fit neatly on a button.

I put this out on Twitter earlier, and there seemed to be a lot of interest, so I figured I'd publish it here as well. If you have a Kindle, head on over to Amazon to pick up Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for free. While the regular print edition will set you back $26.99, for whatever reason, the entire book is available for free right now in Kindle form.

Naturally, you have to have a Kindle to get it (it's delivered over the Amazon Whispernet network to your device), but you can also grab it and read it on your iPhone or iPod touch if you have the Kindle app. Sure, there may have been a few plagiarism issues with the book recently (maybe that's why we're seeing it for free in digital form, with corrections), but it's hard to argue with the price.

Again, find it here.

Update: And the free experiment has apparently paid off as the book will enter the NYT Bestseller list this week at #12, Anderson tweeted out earlier.

Update 2: Scribd has also had it available for free since last week. I'll go ahead and embed the whole thing below for those of you without Kindles.

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Yes, Stewart is publishing his entire 480,000 character book at 130 characters at a time (to leave room for hashtags and links) on Twitter. To be clear, the book, called The French Revolution (being released today, appropriately on Bastille Day), is already written. But Stewart and his agent couldn't get any publishers to bite, so they decided to go the non-traditional route, to say the least.

Here's how this works: Every so often, Stewart is tweeting out sentences (or incomplete sentences) from the book. No, he's not doing this by hand, he got a programmer to help him automate the process. The result is slowing spilling out the entire narrative of the book to his Twitter feed.

If you think this would be impossible to follow in a regular stream of tweets, you're right. That's why Stewart has a website chronicling the whole story thus far (or, of course, you can simply click on his Twitter page to read it though backwards). Stewart expects that will will take about 3,700 tweets to get the full story out there.

Others have taken this approach to put pieces of writing on Twitter, and plenty have even crowd-sourced the writing of works on the service. But Stewart believes his is the first full-length literary novel to be released first on Twitter. To commemorate the launch, you can also find his book for free on Scribd, or find it on Amazon's Kindle for $1.99.

The obvious question is: Is the book any good? It's too hard to tell at this point. We're only about 80 updates into the 3,700. Regardless, this seems like a good idea for a guy who couldn't get a book deal. Who knows, maybe he'll even land a book deal now to write about his experience in publishing a book on Twitter.

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Just pick the line, your stop, and whether you're going uptown or downtown. (Yes, it works offline, since there's no AT&T in the subway, or anywhere in NYC it seems at times.) It shows which subway car is closest to which exit. Like say if you're going to Union Square and want to get off at the 16th St. end, not 14th by the carcass of the Virgin Megastore. Used every time you're on the subway for a year, the hour of time you save not wandering from one end of the subway station to another to get out where you need to easily adds up to $2.

Maybe best of all, it's available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and even Kindle. [Exit Strategy NYC via superfem!]

On a good morning there's no alarm clock. I wake up with the sun and do my best to resist the instinctive urge to look at the computer or check email for at least an hour.

My vice of choice isn't coffee, but the Kindle. Its electronic shelves are filled mostly with the business books I read in order to grow up to be a real businessman (before someone figures out I'm not). At any point in time I have about 120 books downloaded. Interspersed between Drucker, Godin, and Buffett are classics like Seneca, which I wish I could read more often but only get to a few times a year.

Automattic, the holding company behind WordPress.com, finally got an office late last year at Pier 38, a beautiful open-floorplan space right on the Embarcadero. It's about a five-minute walk from my apartment, but my preference is to work from home. We're very much a virtual company where everyone primarily works from home (or their coffee shop of choice). The half dozen of us in the Bay Area will go in on Thursdays to have a little company, but six days out of the week the space is usually empty. But we throw some great parties there.

The team communicates mostly via P2, something a little like Twitter but password-protected, with real-time updates and threaded inline conversations. P2 is almost like a chat channel, but structured like a blog, and we've evolved to have almost a dozen across the 40 people at Automattic serving a variety of purposes. We fill any gaps in communication by IRC, Skype, and, in a pinch, email.

In my home office there are two 30-inch monitors a Mac and a PC. They share the same mouse and keyboard using Synergy so I can copy and paste between them. The Mac is mostly used for email and chat, while web stuff and coding happen on the PC. The keyboard is, of course, Dvorak, a more efficient keyboard layout that I switched to 10 years ago. I also have a Sony Z90 laptop with me all the time, whether I'm going overseas or just to the doctor's office. I'm pretty rough on laptops, sometimes going through two a year. At home I like to geek out with home servers and networking, and sometimes find myself doing IT support for family, friends, and colleagues.

One of my favorite programs that we didn't make is RescueTime. Hackers all know that you have to profile before you can optimize, and RescueTime runs in the trap of my computers and tracks how much time I spend on different things, sometimes with surprising results. My biggest time-suck is email, and to help out I wrote a WordPress plugin that filters people into folders based on their email address and priority settings which helps keep my inbox relatively clean. Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, advocates checking email only twice a week but that's too severe for me. I'm currently trying Leo Babauta's approach from The Power of Less, which suggests small steps like checking email five set times a day instead of constantly. It's like dieting: People who binge diet gain it all back. That happens to me with email.

Music is my muse and I listen to it all day. There's a lot of jazz Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins but I'm also a big fan of Jay-Z, Beyonc, and Method Man. I have an analog Shindo stereo that was hand built in Japan and the aural experience is mind-blowing. When you're coding you really have to be in the zone so I'll listen to a single song over and over on repeat, hundreds of times. It helps me focus. The other best way to focus is to turn off email and instant messenger. The moment that little toaster pops up and says you've got mail you're taken out of the flow. You're juggling variables and functions and layouts and the moment you look away it all falls to the ground it takes you 10 minutes getting it back in the air again.

A big part of my job is to manage the support, usability, and product development people who are scattered all over the globe, from Alabama to Ireland to Bulgaria. My management strategy is centered on hiring: find extremely self-motivated and curious people and then give them the autonomy to succeed. There's no manager looking over anybody's shoulder, so everyone needs to be self-directed. For every person we hire there are hundreds of applications. We always start people on a contract basis first; that way we mutually understand what it's like to work with each other. One of the most important things I look for in rsums is a history of contributing to Open Source projects, because I know these people will understand our ethos.

For four years I was the only developer on Akismet, our anti-spam service. It started because my mom had wanted to start a blog but I was scared she'd be bombarded by spam for Viagra and worse, think that's what I looked at all day. We finally added a second engineer to the project at the end of 2008, which was weird for me but was necessary for growth, especially as I'm pulled in more and more directions.

I go out for lunch whenever I can, which fits well with my preference for no meetings before 11 AM. There's something very personal about sharing food with someone; it's a deeper connection than shaking hands in a boardroom. Often when I'm in town I'll have lunch with Toni Schneider, my CEO. He and I get along super well which is one of the reasons I think the business has worked. He brings gravitas because he's a digital native but also has great startup experience including being the CEO of Oddpost, a webmail company Yahoo acquired in 2004. Sometimes we'll go to lunch at 12:30 and stay until 5.

In general, I'm pretty darn disorganized, late as often as not, and really bad at keeping a schedule. My PA is now focusing on office and event tasks so I'm in the market for someone new. Last year I was on the road 212 days and clocked 175,000 miles, which is seven times around the globe (according to Dopplr, a great travel journal I use). The bulk of my travel is to WordCamps, which are educational and networking events that celebrate blogging. Automattic held our first annual WordCamp in San Francisco in 2006, thrown together just a few weeks before the event happened. Now they've exploded all over the world and I've been to over 30 community-organized events from South Africa to the Philippines. I say they're a great bargain: a full day of quality speakers, BBQ lunch, a cool t-shirt, and a party for $25. We just wrapped the largest WordCamp ever here in San Francisco with over 700 people. Though I'd love to, if I went to every WordCamp I wouldn't have any time to actually build WordPress, so I'm cutting back and trying to go to every other one. They are great fun, though; it's a chance to be a rockstar for a day. In the Philippines after the conference was done I stayed almost two hours afterward taking pictures and autographing badges and laptops. I've even been asked to sign body parts. Really.

To document my experiences when I travel I use my Nikon D3 camera. My photos are autobiographical my memory is so bad (and the travel pretty grueling) that I'll forget everything about a trip, and the photos help trigger my memories. On the plane ride home I'll process and edit the photos as a narrative of each day, a visual diary. On my trip to Vietnam last February I took 2-3 thousand photos. I've heard that the difference between an amateur photographer and a pro is that the amateur shows you everything they shoot. I'm somewhere in between I'll post maybe a quarter of what I take.

I used to think constantly about building an audience for my blog but now my attitude is that if I'm not blogging for myself it's not worth it. I don't force myself to post once a day, I just do it when it feels natural. Sometimes people complain Write more about WordPress; we don't want to see photos of kids in Vietnam but I don't really care. For my 25th birthday in January I published a list of 2009 goals on my blog. It included learning Spanish, learning how to cook, and posting 10,000 photos. Cooking has been a total fail so far; I go out for every meal. If you open my refrigerator you'll find Girl Scout cookies and barbecue sauce. Photos are blazing along, half-way through the year and I've taken 20,000 photos and posted about 4,000 of them.

My blog is fortunate enough to get lot of comments and I read and manually approve each one. I think the broken windows theory a broken window or graffiti in a neighborhood begets more of the same applies online. I'll happily approve a comment from someone who completely disagrees with everything I believe in, but if I get a positive comment with a curse word in it I'll edit it out. My blog is like my living room: If someone was acting out in my house, I'd ask that person to leave.
I look at our numbers every day, usually after 5 PM PST when GMT goes into a new day. We have an internal dashboard where we track 500 to 600 statistics about everything from how often people are logging in to WordPress.com to how many words they're pressing per day. Almost all of the numbers are real-time.

I do my best work mid-morning and super late at night, from one to five in the morning. Some people don't need sleep, but I actually need a ton. I just sleep all the time, catching naps in the afternoon or a 20-minute snooze in the office. Our business is 24 hours folks in Australia start their day around 4 PM my time and our guys and girls in Europe get going around midnight. Sometimes I'll go out at night, come home from the bar at 2 or 3 AM, and then go back to work.

For WordPress we're trying to set up a community that will be around 10 to 30 years from now, one that's independent from the whims of the market. My role is somewhat like Linus for Linux or Shuttleworth for Ubuntu, affectionately referred to as BDFL, and it's my responsibility to meet as many users as possible and direct the software in a way that reflects their interest. Last year I probably met 5,000 or 6,000 WordPress users, about half of them who make their living from it. We want to be like Google, eBay, Amazon they all enable other people to make far more money than the company captures. That's ultimately what we're trying to do, we're trying to create a movement.

My Mom started a blog a couple of months ago. Six years into this, and we finally made it easy enough for my Mom to use. (She hates it when I say that.)

If you ask questions in the comments, I'll do my best to answer them.

Tonight, my dream came true.

I noticed (on Twitter, or FriendFeed, I don't remember) someone wondering how page turning should work on the iPhone Kindle app. Is that out? I asked myself. A quick Twitter search for iPhone and Kindle revealed that yes, in fact, it was available in the App Store. After one super excited tweet, I was off to download it.

I've taken screenshots of most of the interface, and tested logging in and downloading at least one of my books. Here are the screenshots, with descriptions. I'm sure I'll post more thoughts after I've used it for a while, but so far, it works perfectly, just like I hoped and thought it would. Major kudos and thanks to everyone at Amazon and Apple who made this happen! You've made me one happy bibliovoracious geek!
Kindle in the App Store:

Kindle App Splash Screen:

Archived Items, things in your Kindle account but not downloaded to your iPhone:

Downloaded books show on the home screen:

Reading a book - the main interface. Haven't used this much yet, but I was super impressed that it knew exactly what page I left off reading this book on my Kindle, and too me right there:

How to Get Books. Basically, you have to browse and buy on a Mac or PC (or a Kindle, of course), though that link will take you to

The desktop version of the Kindle Store web page in Mobile Safari. This works, but is obviously not optimized for the iPhone. Last time I tried, you couldn't browse or buy Kindle books in the iPhone version of Amazon.com, or using the Amazon iPhone app. Maybe that will change.

The Options Screen. Pretty basic, only real option is to deauthorize your iPhone from your Kindle account (important to remember, since you have a 5 device limit).

In conclusion? This is awesome, long awaited news, and I can't wait to play with it some more. Am I going to read less on my Kindle and more on my iPhone? Maybe, maybe not. I'll likely end up reading more in general, now that I can access my Kindle books (and my saved place!) on my iPhone, and I can't wait.

One interesting thing this opens up: now, people can download this free iPhone app, and spend money buying Kindle books from Amazon, without ever buying an actual Kindle.

What you do think about this news? Do you have a Kindle and an iPhone? Or no Kindle at all, but willing to try Kindle books on your iPhone? Post a comment and let me know!

As far as I can tell from Google's plain-English explanation (which, overall, is exceptionally clear), the default for out-of-print books that are still under copyright will be that they are available through Google Book Search. You'll be able to not only see snippets (as now) but will be able to purchase them, with the money being distributed through a new, independent, book rights registry. In addition, libraries and universities will be able to purchase site licenses for all the books Google's scanned.

For books currently in print and under copyright, it sounds like not much has changed. Google says publishers can turn on the purchase and preview options. Couldn't they before?

Once this settlement is agreed on, we will have what sounds like a reasonable program for working within the bounds of copyright. Much will depend, of course, on what the pricing is.

Now we have to work on fixing copyright so that it serves its original purpose providing an incentive sufficient to bring authors to write rather than being used to create an artificial scarcity to serve the economic interests of an industry entrenched in a ditch carved into paper.

[Tags: books google copyright copyleft kindle ]

A report from TechCrunch, which pegged Kindle sales so far this year at 240,000. "We acknowledge being 'out-sourced' by TechCrunch," Mahaney writes it his note, "But we believe the 240K number was well-sourced and believe reports of 40,000 shipments a month may also be reasonable."

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Kelly Jane Torrance, a reporter for the Washington Times. She was working a piece about the Amazon Kindle ebook reader, and had seen my Kindle unboxing and initial review video. We conducted an email interview, part of which went into her final article in the Washington Times (The Carry-On Library - beware popups).

Of course, all of my lengthy replies didn't make it into the article, so I'm posting them here. Consider this my two month review of the Kindle - that's about how long I've been using it. Read on for the rest of the interview/review.

How long have you had your Kindle?

I've had my Kindle for about a month and a half, since they became reliably available in mid-April. But I've wanted one ever since they were released in November 2007 (and subsequently sold out in 6 hours).

Why did you decide to purchase it?

I've been a long time fan of ebooks. I've read hundreds of them on various PDA and phone devices over the last few years. Needing to touch a physical book as part of the reading experience stopped being an issue for me a long time ago. The convenience of being able to take a library of hundreds of ebooks with you on a small device is very appealing. Already a fan of ebooks in general, I wanted a dedicated reader device with an electronic ink screen (super high contrast and DPI, low power usage). Among the dedicated eInk reader devices out there (Sony Reader, etc.), I chose the Kindle for a couple of reasons.

First is the Kindle Store - the almost-150,000 books that Amazon has made available to purchase and read on the Kindle. You could have the greatest ebook reader device in the world, and without a great library/store, it would fail. I figure if anybody can do the electronic bookstore right, it's Amazon.

Second, the Kindle has a built-in unlimited cellular wireless data connection. That means it can access the internet and the Kindle Store almost anywhere there's cell phone coverage, with no monthly fee. Besides being able to look things up on Wikipedia, or browse the web, this means I can go from I want to buy a new book to having the book purchased and downloaded to my Kindle in a matter of minutes, from anywhere.

You mentioned you have an iPhone, so are you the sort of person who tends to buy the latest gadgets?

I'm definitely the kind of person who always wants to have the latest gadgets. I'm a geek all the way down to the core. Interestingly, it was when I bought my iPhone that I stopped reading ebooks, because there was no ebook software for the iPhone, and it replaced the other mobile gadgets that I used to carry. So when the iPhone came along, I went back to buying dead tree version of books. I lost the advantages of ebooks, and the paper books I was buying started piling up all around my house.

Have you always been a big reader?

Yes, I've been a voracious reader all my life. It drives me crazy to have a few minutes go by without something for me to read (either on my Kindle, or reading the web on my phone).

How many books do you read in a month/year?

I read probably 6-8 books a month, around 100 per year (first time I've counted that up - yikes!).

What sort of things do you find yourself reading on the Kindle?

I find myself reading mostly books from my favorite genres on my Kindle - science fiction, history, computer books. Besides the books that are available for purchase from Amazon, I read a ton of free books that are available from places like Project Gutenberg, Creative Commons, and the Internet Archive. Many of my favorite authors, like Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, have embraced Creative Commons (Some Rights Reserved) as a way to distribute their work for free in order to gain new fans. Cory Doctorow has written extensively on why he follows this model (the basic argument is that for most authors, your enemy isn't piracy, it's obscurity), and in my case, at least, it works. I buy hard copies of Cory's books to give to friends, as well and recommending they get the free versions of his books. He and others like him have gotten way more money out of me this way that they would have if they followed the traditional publishing model.

Are you happy with your purchase?

I am very happy with my Kindle purchase. I use it every day, and I love it more and more. I read to my daughter from it every day (she calls it my magic book, the best way I could think of to describe how it works to a 5 year old). I highly recommend it to anyone who loves reading.

What have been the best things about the device?

As a concept, the best thing about the Kindle and ebooks in general is being able to hold hundreds (or thousands) of books in one physical device. As a device, I love the electronic ink screen on the Kindle, and the built-in wireless connection (and the fact that Amazon doesn't artificially block you from using the web with it). The battery life is stellar (with the wireless radio turned off, battery life is measured in thousands of page turns, which translates to days and days of active use). The design and layout, while controversial, becomes immediately comfortable when you start using it - you can tell why it's designed the way it is as soon as you hold it in your hand. For me, it has changed reading the same way MP3 and iPods changed music. It's a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Anything you've been dissatisfied with?

My only real complaint with the Kindle is that I wish the page would refresh faster when you turn it. The refresh time is about 750 milliseconds - three quarters of a second. I understand why this is - the electromechanical eInk screen just can't flip all those pixels very fast. This will improve as the technology matures. But it's still irritating sometimes, when the Kindle can't keep up with me and my page turns. I also feel a little guilty when visiting my favorite local independent bookstores. I still go there, browse, and buy books that aren't available or wouldn't work well on the Kindle (photography books, etc.), but I'm spending a lot less time and money there than I used to.

Have you shown your Kindle to others through the forum on Amazon?

Yes, I posted a See a Kindle in Portland, OR in the forum that Amazon set up for this purpose. A couple people came, including another Kindle owner (at the time, the only other Kindle I had seen in the wild besides my own). Since then, I've been keeping loose track of how many people in Portland have a Kindle - we're up to 8 or so that I know of (and a whole lot more that I don't know about, I'm sure).

Do you find people coming up to you to ask about the Kindle? And do you enjoy showing it off?

People often come up to me and ask about the Kindle, and I love to show it off, and tell them all about it. I know several people who have decided to buy a Kindle after hearing me sing the praises of mine. Sometimes I feel like I'm working for Amazon and Jeff Bezos, and they should pay me a commission. (Actually, I am an Amazon affiliate, and I get a small percentage of Amazon credit when someone buys a Kindle through the links on my website.)

Have you traveled with your Kindle?

I have traveled with my Kindle, and it's one of the most brilliant uses for the device. A few weeks before I got my Kindle, I took a two week trip to Shanghai, China. I brought a dead tree book with me to read during the trip. I finished the first book before I even left my home airport, and bought another one there. I finished that one by the time I got to San Francisco, and bought another one there. I finished that one before we landed in Shanghai. While I was there, I bought a couple more books, which were sufficient for the rest of the trip. By the time I got home, I had been carrying these five or six books in my luggage all over the world. It was that experience that gave me concrete evidence of how a Kindle could simplify my reading.

Could you see yourself taking it to the beach and places like that?

I take my Kindle with me everywhere I go - it has a semi-permanent place in my cargo pants pocket. I take it to work, to appointments, to meals, everywhere. I love being able to read for a few minutes when I have the chance.

Did this factor into your decision to buy To me, this seems like one of the biggest benefits, being able to get what you want wirelessly, without having to carry books or worry you'll run out of reading material.

This is exactly why I love my Kindle - being able to read what I want, when and where I want, and get new stuff to read easily and quickly, and I can carry it all around in my pocket.

/end of interview

Do you have a Kindle? If so, what do you think about it? If you don't have one, what would it take for you to get one? Have any questions about mine? Post a comment, and let me know!

A couple weeks back, my friend Mike Marusin from Naperville updated Twitter that Cory Doctorow would be appearing at Andersen's Bookstore in my old hometown, Naperville, IL, for a book signing. He'd just published Little Brother, and I was jealous that Mike got to meet Cory. I've long been an admirer of Cory's, and a few days later I stopped by Cory's site to check it out.

Imagine my shock to find that I could download all of Cory's books and short stories for free, pre-formatted for ebook readers. That meant I was able to grab a copy and throw it on my Kindle which I did, but was in the middle of reading White House Ghosts (yes, I'm a junkie) so I forgot about it. I had some time on Sunday afternoon, so I pulled out the Kindle and started Little Brother. I finished it last night, and it was spectacular.

I've seen other reviews peg it as a young adult novel, which I think is a load of crap. It's a good story, pure and simple. That its protagonist happens to be a 17 year-old is immaterial, I think, to the target audience. Anyone who wants to know more about the technology shaping our society should read the book and Cory does a great job of explaining complex issues (cryptography, hacking, open source software, tunneling, to name a few) in ways that non-techies will be able to appreciate. (I've seen a couple reviews knock him for these explications, suggesting it drags the narrative down I disagree. If you've ever hung out with an obsessive, talented geek who is spectacularly good at this stuff, you'll know they can spend hours explaining what they're working on. The only difference with Cory is that his explanations often make sense to the uninitiated.)

The book is a fast read, and it's a great ride. Cory nails the technology, the politics are spot on, and the implications about our growing surveillance society are laid out in an uncomfortable progression that you'll want to give thought to. I told Robin last night that if I'd read this book as a teenager, it would have changed my life: Marcus (the main character) is a remarkable kid, and I have no doubt that I would have aspired to his blend of political commitment and technical mastery.

If you spend any time thinking about politics and technology (and if you don't, what in God's name are you doing hanging out at this blog?!), you'll want to get yourself a copy of Little Brother.

A postscript: as I noted, Cory gives his books away for free. He's also a full-time author, leading some to wonder why the hell he encourages people to download his books for free. From his intro:

For me for pretty much every writer the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks to Tim O'Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science fiction sell half a million copies in a world where 175,000 attend the San Diego Comic Con alone, you've got to figure that most of the people who like science fiction (and related geeky stuff like comics, games, Linux, and so on) just don't really buy books. I'm more interested in getting more of that wider audience into the tent than making sure that everyone who's in the tent bought a ticket to be there.

Ebooks are verbs, not nouns. You copy them, it's