Hand models have it pretty good, don’t they? Show up, hold something for a few hours, collect checks, repeat. It’s such a sweet gig, there’s gotta be something wrong with them, right? Wait… they’re all attractive, too? Well nuts. More »
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Realizing that tech nerds like space, the environment (well, in small doses—and only on a 1080p monitor) and everything else that Mother Nature supplies us with, National Geographic has teamed up with Gelaskins for some natty nature covers.
Not just available for the various iPods and iPhones, they’ve also got some Kindle 2, Kindle DX and Nook covers plus skins for 13-inch MacBooks and 13.3 – 14.1-inch laptops. My favorite is the slightly naff Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A space ones, but the wild green sea turtle is also pretty special too. Especially if you’re a 14 year old girl—though don’t let my gender stereotyping put any 46-year old bikers off getting a sea lion case for their Nook. [Gelaskins via Unplggd]
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Mention “Microsoft” and “open-source” in the same breath and you’re guaranteed to create a suspicion interrupt within the Linux community. Toss in “patent agreement” and out come the irate spokesmen. So imagine the response to the announcement that Microsoft and Amazon have reached a cross-patent agreement that gives Amazon the right to use open-source software in its Kindle in exchange for an undisclosed tithe to Redmond. Microsoft also gains rights to Amazon’s patent portfolio.
The move prompted Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, to claim that Microsoft appears to be trying to, “create uncertainty around Linux.” Mind you, this isn’t just tin-foil worry from the wire colander collective, Microsoft claims that free and open-source software violates some 235 Microsoft patents. A big enough stick to coax a number of companies — like Novell, Linspire, Xandros, Apple, and HP — into striking agreements with Microsoft or risk litigation as was the case with TomTom. Agreements that Canonical’s Mark Shuttelworth called, “Trinkets in exchange for air kisses,” or “patent terrorism” if you prefer Sun Microsystems’ take.
Microsoft and Amazon announce open-source patent agreement, trinkets in exchange for air kisses originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It was threatened, and thus now available. Hit up the BlackBerry App World to download the free Kindle app now—but only if you live in the US. And are happy paying up to a tenner to read a book on a 2.44″ screen. [THINQ]
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Amazon is today adding BlackBerrys to its stable of Kindle-compatible devices and also taking the opportunity to remind us that it’s working hard on Mac and iPad versions of its software. The app is a freebie download for Americans (sadly it’s not international just yet) and should offer the same functionality as its PC and iPhone brethren — namely automatic syncing via Whispersync and what Amazon hopes will be a seamless reading experience from one device to the next. There’s also an in-app book store, as well as the ability to create bookmarks and view annotations from other portable Kindle readers. Go download it at the Amazon link if you care, or move right along if you don’t.
Kindle for BlackBerry e-reader app now available originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, has a pair of sources saying that HP will be meeting with its US and Taiwanese partners to “tweak prices and features” on its upcoming Slate. The move is meant to capitalize on a recent uptick in tablet interest with hopes of undercutting the $629 price of the similarly spec’d 3G-enabled iPad. Although it was introduced before the iPad, HP deliberatly held back on announcing a ship date or pricing so that it could tweak the Slate accordingly.
Also noteworthy is renewed attention given to Microsoft’s Courier. The WSJ says that Microsoft continues work on its two-screen Courier tablet at its Alchemy Ventures incubation laboratory in Seattle. However, it’s still unclear whether Microsoft will launch the device.
HP to undercut iPad price, iPad to undercut Amazon e-books prices, Courier to rule them all? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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More details coming out about Apple’s deals with book publishers, and it looks like Apple might have more leverage over prices than expected. The NYT says that “Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers.”
Three people “with knowledge of the discussions” told the Times that Apple’s provisions allow it to discount books that hit the bestseller list—maybe down to $9.99, after all—with $12.99-$14.99 as simply a ceiling, that way Apple can compete with bookstores and Amazon’s Kindle that push bestsellers at a cut rate. And if publishers sell a hardcover at a discount, Apple wants to be able to cut the price on their ebook counterpart as well, even if it doesn’t go all bestseller.
Given that the reason publishers were giddy over dealing with Apple was the opportunity to set their own prices, if this report’s true, it sounds like they’re interested enough in creating a viable threat to Kindle that they’ll sell themselves a little shorter than they’d wanted to, just to give Apple a strong foothold in the market. Yep, this is going to be a dirty, dirty fight. [NYT]
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As expected, the tricky question of “How we gonna get paid?” has reportedly become a sticking point in Apple’s negotiations with newspaper and magazine publishers. Put simply, subscriber information is deeply valuable, and Apple doesn’t want to to share it.
Demographics are everything to magazine (and blog) publishers. It’s how you sell ads. Under the iTunes model, content producers receive sales numbers, and the money that goes with them. No credit card numbers, no addresses, no hint whatsoever of who’s buying what. This does not sit well with publishers.
Also, while the 70 percent split makes book publishers giddy that they’re controlling their own destiny since they can set prices (good luck with that, guys) newspaper dudes are understandably less thrilled about giving away a third of the subscription, since it’s an ongoing payment. “Thirty per cent forever changes the economics,” one exec told the Financial Times. Apple won’t move on this point at all, apparently. Magazines are basically like apps to Apple. I’m sure the homogenization of content, conceptually speaking, sits very well with publishers and their precious, glossy pamphlets.
Since both the NYT and Conde Nast’s Wired are both officially on board with launching iPad content, I’m curious if they’ve agreed to the terms that other publications are supposedly balking at, or if they have a different kind of deal—or if their deals are in fact still up in the air. (Update: The New York Times’ is working through the same crisis, Gawker’s discovered. Are they selling an app, for $10 a month, or a newspaper, for $30 a month? These are not merely financial questions, but existential ones, less than easily resolved.)
In the end, it’ll get worked out. The glistening trickle of slobber sliding out of their lips gives the publishers away. They can’t not be on Apple’s glossy slab of the future. And then they’ll privately grumble about how unhappy they are with the crappy deal they were forced into. But whatever, because they’re just one app out of 140,000. [FT]
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In today’s Remainders: the unfun. Wait! Don’t go. The items themselves are fun! They just involve unfun. We have a no fun WiFi school bus; a no fun eBook from the White House, an unspectacular Samsung smartphone reveal, and more.
Boring Bus
I recently took my first trip on a WiFi-enabled airplane. At first I thought, “How cool! I’ll never be bored on a flight again!” But I quickly realized that in-flight WiFi, in some perverse way, made me MORE bored. That special in-the-air-with-nothing-to-do time had been invaded by the regular old routine of checking e-mail and reading through my RSS feeds. So it is with a heavy heart that I read this story about a school district in Arizona that plopped a mobile WiFi router on top of a school bus, effectively turning it into a mobile study hall. And the worst part is the kids are just going along with it. Apparently all of the regular back of the bus mischief has subsided and now the kids just sit and do homework. That’s no fun! I remember one time when I was on a school bus a weird kid put SIX FRUIT ROLL UPS in his mouth at one time and nearly suffocated himself in the process. If we’re entering an age in which WiFi is the replacement for adolescent fruit roll up shenanigans, count me out. [CrunchGear]
Boring eBook
For the first time, this year’s Economic Report of the President will be made available as a free eBook. They have versions prepared for Nooks and Kindles and will offer an ePub version for the Sony Reader and other devices that get down with ePub. I applaud the effort, but I imagine that I’d have such a hard time concentrating on this to begin with that it would take approximately one E-Ink page refresh for me to give up completely. [Engadget]
Boring Reveal
Oh Samsung. You tried to keep your new Bada smartphone under wraps until MWC. You were so close. But then you went ahead and put up this gigantic billboard mere days before the event. Sure, the ad doesn’t reveal much about the Wave’s specs—just that it has a camera and a full touchscreen—but talk about fudging your big unveiling. [Unwired View]
Boring Sergey
TED curator Chris Anderson brought Google’s Sergey Brin on stage for an unplanned Q&A about his company’s recent cyber-beef with China. Wired made note of Brin’s statement that he was remained “optimistic” that Google and China could work something out, and quoted him as saying he thought Google could “really work within the Chinese system.” On the whole, it seemed like Sergey might’ve been backing down from the no-censorship ultimatum his company announced earlier this year. But a quick read through a transcript of the question and answer session reveals that he addressed the ultimatum explicitly—it’s still there, just sugarcoated a little bit:
Yes, we’ve made a statement of intent. That we intend to stop censoring, and you know, if we can do that, within the confines of Chinese policy, we’d love to continue Google.cn and our operations there. And if we cannot, then we’ll do as much as we can but we don’t want to run a service that’s politically censored. I’m not talking about things like porn and gambling and things like that. Political censorship.
So, no, Google’s not backing down. Just being diplomatic. [Wired]
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