Jan 23 2009
Friday Late Nite Links of Apple
- Everyone but everyone is laying off people: Google, Sony, Microsoft, Intel, Motorola, and on and on. Almost 200,000 tech jobs lost since August 2008. Everyone is laying off, that is except for Apple who posted a record profit of $1.6 billion for the last quarter having sold 4.3M iPhones as well as a bunch of other Apple tech paraphenalia. If your book isn’t easily available on the iPhone, maybe you are missing a key marketing opportunity? Dunno.
- For years, people have been uploading poor quality bootleg Monty Python to YouTube and MP has finally caved, started its own channel, offering up some of its most popular content in high quality and for free. Bad business move right? Of course not, else why would I be posting about it. Since Monty Python launched its own channel in November, “their DVDs also quickly climbed to No. 2 on Amazon’s Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent.” I’m sure no one here wants to see a 23,000 percent increase in sales. Keep on with the DRM, publishing folks. It’s making you so much more money, I’m sure.
- John Scalzi says that this NYT Article identifying some obscure town names in Britian
In the scale of embarrassing place names, Crapstone ranks pretty high. But Britain is full of them. Some are mostly amusing, like Ugley, Essex; East Breast, in western Scotland; North Piddle, in Worcestershire; and Spanker Lane, in Derbyshire.
- But this Sunday’s NYTimes is to feature an article about female orgasms. Apparently women respond to any sexual stimuli. Maybe we get turned on by penguins doing it but it doesn’t look like that was tested:
“No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, women in the study, unlike men, showed strong and swift arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men.”
- In support of the WaPo book review section which might be getting the ax, The New Republic tries again to raise awareness for print book review sections, reprinting an old article in which a columnist argued that newspapers failing to give book coverage are saying books are unimportant.
When you deprive the coverage of books of adequate space and talent, you are declaring that books are not important, even if you and your wife belong to a book club and your Amazon account is a mile long.
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Jan 23, 2009 @ 22:27:33
Re Monty Python: in other inexplicable, give-away-DRM-less-content-and-make-lots-of-money news, Amazon’s best-selling MP3 album in 2008 was Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails, which people could legally download for free.
Weird, eh?
Jan 24, 2009 @ 08:18:14
Yeah, but according to the Times Online,
No wonder Harlequin/M&B have all those billionaire tycoons.
Jan 25, 2009 @ 00:45:31
I loved the NY Times article on British place names. Like Scalzi, I giggle like a fifth-grader over such things. We’ve actually been to Penistone (pronounced “pennis-tun”), and I did take a photo of the town sign (in the days before digital, alas).
Considering how much trouble print newspapers are in, I’d think they would be working hard to promote the entire concept of print media, books included. The people who still get a “daily paper” are often those who still read dead-tree books.
And yay for Monty Python!!!!
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Jan 25, 2009 @ 04:01:07
[...] to a 23,000% increase in sales and the Nine Inch Nails album that was given away for free was the most sold album mp3 album in 2008 at Amazon.com. [...]