The Kindle Swindle? It’s the book publishers who are conning themselves

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Luddites of the world unite – you have a new leader. Step forward Roy Blount Jnr, a man who has one too many Os in his surname, in my opinion.

Blount is the president of the US Authors Guild, and last week wrote an opinion column for the New York Times entitled The Kindle Swindle? Blount argued that the new Read-To-Me feature of Amazon’s latest eBook reader was akin to the end of mankind as we know it; a computerised text-synthesiser that was going to leave the audio book industry as burnt out as a carelessly parked Porsche on a South London council estate. 

“You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading Harry Potter or of authors, ahem, reading themselves,” Blount argued.  ”But the voices of Kindle 2 are quite listenable.” 

(more…)

If you’re going to do something stupid, do it well

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

So Dell has launched its own download store, describing it as “an online music and software superstore where consumers can easily download a wide variety of songs, and the most popular gaming and software titles”. And I suppose that’s fair enough.

Even though I give Dell a bit of a hard time about the fact it’s even attempting to rival the likes of Amazon and iTunes in this week’s podcast, my biggest problem isn’t with the fact it’s offering a download service; it’s that it’s doing it so badly. (more…)

Amazon charges £5 to wash Lily Allen’s mouth out

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

They say manners cost nothing. On Amazon.co.uk they cost precisely £4.99. The wonderfully cheap Amazon download store is currently flogging the explicit version of Lily Allen’s new It’s Not Me, It’s You album for the astonishingly cheap price of £3.

Want the same album without the effing and blinding? That will cost you £7.99.

Who’d have thought a bleep machine and a couple of asterisks could be so expensive? 

The 10 weirdest items sold on Amazon

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Think Amazon’s just a cheap way of getting hold of bestsellers and DVDs? Think Again. We’ve uncovered 10 absolutely incredible items for sale on the online emporium.

1. Wolf Urine Lure-32 oz

The blurb says: “Use our 100% urine lures to create the illusion predators are present in the area you wish.”

Reviewer Glenn Berkemeier says: ”Today is Valentine’s Day and I hoped that a little splash of this would drive my lady wild. But alas… I sleep alone again. Also I keep hearing all this howling outside my bedroom.”

2. Bombproof Your Horse

The blurb says: “A clearly illustrated manual that shows equestrians how to prepare their horses for the unexpected, turning them into safer, more pleasurable mounts.” 

Reviewer Adam ‘The Zebra’ Popovich says: “I spent several hours reading this book, and there is absolutely no information about bombproofing horses, which the title implies. Because of this, I lost my fourth Arabian this month due to horse bandits.”

(more…)

Ten brilliant things the internet has done

Monday, January 19th, 2009

The news this morning that Belkin has been paying people to write positive reviews on Amazon will inevitably undermine “user reviews” on websites, but for me they’re still a valuable resource – especially for areas where there aren’t any “professional” reviews to fall back on.

The thing is, you need to look out for the pattern of a real review as opposed to the one someone’s churned out for the sake of a few pence (or cents, in Belkin’s case) or – in the case of book reviews on Amazon – where the author, publisher or friend of either has posted the review themselves.

Anyway, to fight back against the inevitable backlash I thought I’d quickly write about ten brilliant things the internet has done. (more…)

How to steal music without even trying

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Amazon’s new MP3 store has finally been launched without DRM, with decent 256kbps tracks and some initial prices that certainly catch the eye (although not Tim’s). All good stuff, if a bit late to the party – but one mischievously timed little add-on could have a much greater impact on the industry.

It’s a Firefox plug-in that’s freely available if you know where to look (I won’t be telling you), that essentially turns the official Amazon.com retail site into a candy shop for freeloaders. (more…)

What price an MP3?

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Now for the rest of this blog I’m going to come across like a curmudgeonly old grump who only likes listening to Radio 4 and restricts his TV viewing to Newsnight. But I’m not, honest. I listen to Radio 6 Music each morning on my way into work, and have on very special occasions been known to throw a few shapes on the dancefloor. People soon ask me to stop, but we’ll gloss over that.

The fact is, I haven’t bought a CD or downloaded a track on iTunes for over a year. My MP3 player is, right now, gathering dust in a draw, and it’s full of tracks I transcoded from my rapidly ageing CD collection. And while I used to get a thrill out of firing up the various components of my hi-fi and losing myself in the expensive Sennheiser headphones I bought a decade ago, I’m now far more likely to be inserting the latest In The Night Garden CD at the behest of my young children. (more…)

Amazon takes shopping next-gen

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

If anyone’s going to change the way we shop online it’s Amazon. It sells pretty much everything you could ever wish to buy on a high street, usually at lower prices, with fast, often free delivery and (in my experience) excellent customer service.

But the one problem online retailers have is capturing the browsing shopper. With only a home page to compete with the highly visible displays in most shop windows, it’s not easy to simply wander around an online store and spot something you may not have been looking for.

Step forward Amazon WindowShop. (more…)

Kindle Killer stalks eBook market

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Jon blogged about the Sony eBook Reader yesterday, which arrived in the office on a bed of rose petals and angel feathers, carried aloft by chanting Seraphim bedecked all in white. Or by grubby postal courier, one or the other, I wasn’t here to check.

 Well I’ve finally managed to wrench it from his cold dead hands after some surprisingly challenging gladitorial comabt and will be writing up a review in the next couple of days. But almost to the second I laid the killing blow on Jon, my wandering eye caught sight of a potential rival, the Plastic Logic reading device, and I’ll be honest I’m already worried for my lovely little Sony.

(more…)

Ebooks: A bad idea getting worse

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Don’t get me wrong, I quite like technology. I’m the kind of person who’d be admiring the massive metal foot of the Terminator even as it stomped my skull into the dirt. But when it comes to eBooks, not only am I not sold, I’m sat on the shelf hiding my price tag behind my back and shooing people on towards the muffins opposite.

And it’s not just that the entire eBook market is beset with ridiculous proprietary formats, clunky readers and expensive texts being pushed by companies whose only knowledge of books is a hazy memory of drawing moustaches on sperms in science class. Even Amazon, which built an empire on the blighters, seems to have forgotten why we love them – digital texts cost more than paperbacks, you can’t share them and its reader looks as if it were built in 1893 and runs on steam. Amazon, quite contrary to its claims, doesn’t have an eBook strategy so much as a series of really bad ideas all lined up in a row.

(more…)