So You Thought You’ve Pirated Everything Huh?

Just because vinyl records are analog, it doesn't mean you can't pirate them. All you need:

• A Wood Box
• Glass
• Window Cement
• Silicone Mixture
• Liquid Plastic
• A Drill Press

Yeah I know, that doesn't sound easy. Well not all piracy is fun and games.

 

But if you have some free time to kill. He is a quick run down:

Step 1: Make a box out of wooden strips around a glass plate. Make sure everything is air tight by sealing off the edges using window cement.

Step 2: With the side of the record facing upward, place the record inside the box. Put some window cement where the whole in record is located.

Step 3: Mix the silicone (use smooth on OOMOO 30 or OOMOO 25) for a good 3 minutes before placing into your mold.

Step 4: Pour! Try to start from one corner and let it fill-up the mold. Half a centimeter should be good, but make sure it's even. Now let it dry for 6 hours.

Step 5: Carefully peel the silicone from the cast. Use a cutter to remove the excess.

Step 6: Pour the liquid plastic on top of the silicon cast.

Step 7: You can brush off air bubble you may see, but make sure nothing spills over the round form.

Step 8: Very carefully loosen the plate from the silicone form. Now here is the fun part; using a drill press, bore a hole through the center of the plate. You can also use the silicone form as template make more copies.

 

You have your very own pirated record.

 

See the full gallery on posterous

 

Want to know how records are made? Check out MikeSense.com.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

British Develop the Most Powerful Wind Turbine

British architects Grimshaw and engineers Arup have unveiled this design for an offshore wind turbine and possibly the the most powerful.

 

Could our future oceans have thousands of these 885-foot-wide structures? It’s an interesting thought, but the engineering needed to commercialize these wind turbines seems immense.

 

The video above is the new Aerogenerator X Vertical Axis Wind Turbine. This new design in wind turbines it to be completed by 2014 and instead of using a traditional vertical structure, it will rotate horizontally.

 

The design for British company Wind Power would produce twice as much power and have half the weight of the company’s current design. It’s about 10 megawatts per hour. It would take about 50 these to replace a typical coal plant. Hey but it’s a start right?

Top and above images are by Grimshaw

 

Wind Power Limited had this to say:

“The Aerogenerator X is considered one of the only real alternative solutions available to help deliver the UK’s offshore wind strategy in a reliable and cost effective manner. It does not have the same weight constraints as a normal wind turbine and the blades do not suffer weight-induced fatigue. This new design is half the height of an equivalent horizontal-axis turbine and its weight is concentrated at the base of the structure.”

 

Above diagram is by Arup. Click for larger image.

 

What do you think? Will we see these bizarre looking wind turbines in our future oceans?

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

No Jacket Required: Motorola Coming for Apple

Motorola has fired another salvo at Apple by taking out a second full page newspaper ad for the new Droid X. It's pretty much a flame war here folks. I'm guessing Motorola had to respond to Apple's "Droid Death Grip" video.

 

 

He is the wonderful quote burn from Motorola:

At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn’t have to dress up their phone for it to work properly.  That’s why the Droid X comes with a dual antenna design.  The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like to make crystal clear calls without a bulky phone jacket.  For us it’s just one of those things that comes as a given when you’ve been making mobile phones for over 30 years.

 

In my previous post Apple is not "Too Big to Fail", I mentioned that Apple's rivals would have a field day with the “Antennagate”. It seems like everyone is jumping on the "Let's Bash Apple" bandwagon.

 

What do you think of Motorola's ad? Let me know in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Our Galaxy Rich in Earth-Like Planets

Looks like there are more earth-like planets in our own galaxy than scientists first thought. Earlier this month a co-investigator on the Kepler satellite mission in the hunt for other Earth-like planets prematurely announced his findings to a conference in Oxford, England.

 

This leak announcement came from astronomer Dimitar Sasselov of Harvard University.

Sasselov had this to say:

Planets like our own Earth are out there. Our Milky Way galaxy is rich in this kind of planet.

 

Read more at Science Insider.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

New Payment Options for the Android Market

Android developers will have more ways to satisfy customers in the near future according to Google's Tim Bray. He mentions that the Android team is working on "introducing new payment options" for the Android Market.

 

From the Android Developers Blog:

In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to highlight the changes:

• In Section 13.1, “authorized carriers” have been added as an indemnified party.

• Section 13.2 is new in its entirety, covering indemnity for payment processors for claims related to tax accrual.

These new terms apply immediately to anyone joining Android Market as a new publisher. Existing publishers have been notified of this change via email; they have up to 30 days to sign into the Android Market developer console to accept the new terms.

 

Right now, T-Mobile is the only carrier that lets its customers put charges for mobile apps on their monthly phone bill. This is great news for anyone who doesn't like or know how to use Google checkout. I know I would like a PayPal option and it would be welcomed by other many people as well.

 

Read the Android Developers Blog Post.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Was Nexus One a Loss Leader for Google?

Chris Brogan’s post on Blogs as Loss Leaders inspired me to write this post. Ironically he got his idea from Chris Voss. Basically Voss was explaining that his blog was a loss leader, because it didn’t exactly earn revenue. But the flip side is that it leads to other things that can earn money and possibly at a higher rate.
Photo by Steve Snodgrass

To better understand what a loss leader is; imagine a supermarket selling sugar or milk at less than cost to draw customers into the store. Now scale this formula up about 1000 times and you have Wal-Mart. That’s just one example, but you should know that loss leaders are as old as retail and some companies just use them better than others. So why do I think Google’s Nexus One was a loss leader?

Nexus One as a Loss Leader
Before the Nexus One was delivered to the world, what were your options if you wanted an Android phone?  Well, let’s take a walk down memory lane:

• G1 (T-Mobile) – Released October 22, 2008
• myTouch 3G (T-Mobile) – Released August 5, 2009
• HTC Hero (Sprint) – Released October 11, 2009
• Motorola CLIQ (T-Mobile) – Released November 2, 2009
• Samsung Moment – Released November 1, 2009
• Motorola Droid (Verizon) – Released November 6, 2009
• Droid Eris – Released November 6, 2009
• Samsung Behold 2 – Released November 18, 2009

Out of all of these phones only 3 stand out: the G1, myTouch 3G and Motorola Droid (the fastest selling android phone). And of those 3, only the Motorola Droid was pushing the upper limits for smartphones when it was released.
So what is my point? Back in 2009, rumors were going around that Google wasn’t happy with current lineup of Android devices. This may have prompted them to build a “What-If” phone. So January 5, 2010 the Nexus One was born – with a little help from HTC.
Jumping back to the present and with Google essentially ending Nexus One’s life, some have said that Nexus One was a failure due to low sales. Mainly due to the much criticized direct sell method by Google. Sure sales weren’t at the level a major release smartphone should have been, but Google didn’t make a great effort either. I am sure that T-Mobile offered to carry the Nexus One in their retail stores. The Nexus One could’ve had 3 times the sales if T-Mobile sold it in their stores.



I don’t believe selling millions of phones was Google’s primary goal. Their goal may have been more of a large scale market research / development project. Their audience wasn’t exactly customers only but technology geeks, developers and manufacturers. It’s not like Google couldn’t afford to go ahead with a possible project like this. They seem to buy a new company every month.
In my humble opinion the Nexus One was more of an effort to push phone manufacturers (HTC, Motorola, Samsung and LG) and carriers (T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint. AT&T doesn’t count: see iPhone) forward with Android.  Once the Nexus One was released, the passion mobile developers had for Android was definitely known; possibly causing the Android OS to be more attractive to the manufacturers stated above.
Another good reason why Google released the Nexus One may have been to alert these same manufacturers that Google could enter the market with an excellent phone. Mainly a warning shot. There is no greater motivator than the bottom line.

Loss for Gain
So did Google achieve the goal of loss for gain? If you look at the recent stats, I would say yes.

Back on June 23, 2010 Google posted the following to their Official Blog:

Every day 160,000 Android-powered devices are activated — that’s nearly two devices every second, used for the first time by people from New York to New Zealand.
Android started with one simple idea: Provide a powerful, open mobile platform to drive faster innovation for the benefit of consumers. This idea has come to life around the world. Today, there are 60 compatible Android devices, delivered via a global partnership network of 21 OEMs and 59 carriers in 49 countries. The volume and variety of Android devices continues to exceed even our most optimistic expectations. In some instances, Android devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured.

“Selling faster than they can be manufactured” – Any company in the world would love to say they couldn’t make enough of their product to keep up with demand. Also the Android OS is no longer limited to just smartphones. You will soon see a version of the Android OS on tablets, netbooks, laptops, and tons of other mobile devices in the coming months.
You may be thinking right now that Google didn’t lose much since they charged $529 per phone. That would be true if retail price and cost to design, develop, manufacture, and bring to market were equal. The fact is most companies take an initial loss on a new product for future gains; when cost goes down due to economies of scale. Essentially the more you produce the cheaper it becomes to make a product. Also new methods for faster manufacturing and cheaper come into place over time.
So considering the Nexus One was only on the market for about 6 months, means that Google may have taken a large financial loss. But that was worth the loss if the gain was increased market share and large brand recognition, which Android has currently.

 

Droid Incredible by HTC

After the release of the Nexus One, take a look at the 2010 Android Phones:

• Motorola Backflip
• HTC Aria
• Dell Aero
• HTC Evo
• HTC Droid Incredible
• HTC myTouch 3G Slide
• Samsung Behold II
• Motorola Droid X
• Motorola Droid 2

I believe that Android still would have been a great platform without the release of the Nexus One, but we may not have seen the phones we have available today. But that’s only speculation as most of this post is…just speculation.

What do you think? Was the Nexus One an overall winner for Google?

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Painted With Light

Gizmodo issued another Shooting Challenge a couple weeks ago. This time it was Light painting...a body. It may sounded silly but Giz almost promised they would achieve the most memorable Shooting Challenge results yet. Here were the details from Gizmodo:

 

The Challenge

Photograph a person who is somehow augmented by light painting. What they meant by that: glowing exoskeletons, cartoony heads and psychedelic auras. They wanted someone to reimagine the portrait with light. The light painting shouldn't been a stereotypical someone spelling a word or neat glowing orb in the background. The light had to be part of a subject.

They were not looking for the use of light painting that's more subtle in which someone could use a flashlight to control general exposure in a scene. They were looking to see trails of light.

 

Photo by minamac88

 

The Method

Light painting is an specific version of long exposure photography. You'll want to set your camera on a tripod and expose shots for 10-30 seconds or more while (probably another subject) draws with a light source, like a flashlight, LED, candle, sparkler or glowstick.

 

The Rules

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings, technique and story behind shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com, not me.
5. Include 800px wide image (200KB or less) AND a 2560x1600 sized in email. (The 800px image is the one judged, so feel free to crop/alter the larger image for wallpaper-sized dimensions.) DO THIS!! IT MAKES OUR JOB MUCH EASIER!
6. One submission per person.

 

The deadline was July 18, 2010 by 11 pm. Gizmodo received 46 People Painted With Light.

 

Mark Wilson, Gizmodo writer commented

In one of the most difficult Shooting Challenges yet, you were asked to not only paint with light, but paint forms and figures that were actually interacting with or modifying a human subject. The results were so, so, so cool.

 

Lead Shot - Star Child

Out of all the shots I tried, this one was my son's idea and came out pretty good. Using one of their LED swards that changes colors. Using a Canon 7D with the 18-135 lens. ISO 400, f16 with 15 second shutter. No Photoshop processing other than sizing.
[Giz note: It's as if he's coming through a portal.]
-Brandon Flowers

 

Touched by an Angel

We're located in Hilo, Hawaii, so we try to have a wide variety of backgrounds, from tropical forests to urban/industrial buildings. We use a Canon 40d camera, with a Sigma 50 mm 1:1.4 lens, and use long exposures and a crew of friends to try different shots. The photo was taken with a 32 second exposure, at 1.6 and iso 100. We aim to depict colors and lights towards movie, comic, and video game references. This shot was inspired by the ideas of urban angels as well as the comic book "Constantine." We took the shot in a flood canal off a forest road a few nights ago, and were trying to outline the graffiti or find the best ones for a good background while torching our models with flashes and making them stand still in with cars headlights ruining shots and causing a lot of respawns.
-Kelsey Ito

 

Smoker

Canon EOS 1000D, 27s f13 @ ISO 100
A self portrait. What's the most practical thing you can do with a trail of fire surrounding you?
Light it up...
My thanks to my dear mum for her help with this shot.
-Bart Tieman

 

Forcefield

I have photographic proof (taken with a Canon PowerShot s90, f/2.0, 8 second exposure at ISO 160) that my new Dynomorphic Tachoid Bubble Shield is impervious to Dalek fire! However, I did have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
-Brian Hall

 

Some Light Gaming

My friend Greg had the idea to make a video game out of light and have him playing it. The first idea was to do Super Mario Bros... we ended up doing pong. All the credit goes to Lauren, Greg, and Sean (in the photo) for doing the actual painting. I just took the picture.
Bulb (roughly a minute exposure), f16, iso200, d300s with a 16-35 f4 at 16mm. On camera SB-800 fired front curtain.
-David Ullman

 

Skeletor

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i
Lens: Canon EFS 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Settings:
Shutter: 93 seconds (bulb mode w/remote)
Aperture: f/16.0
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 100
I set up the camera on a tripod, took my position and pressed the remote. This was actually my first attempt, all the others didn't seem quite as good. I stood in the corner of the room and traced over myself with a small LED in the hopes that it would look like a skeleton, starting with the feet and working up, 'drawing' the hands last.
[Giz note: So simple, so effective.]
-Will Norton

 

WINNER - Tron

Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-70mm F2.8 L @ 24mm, 30 second shutter, ISO 100, f16, two small lights from Walmart for the floor and the tires and rider and a large shop light for the trailing light

Out with the girlfriend for some beers and wings and we started brainstorming for ideas for this weeks photo challenge, end result was the Tron bike idea. We put down tape so we could keep the the lines on the floor straight and used garbage can lids as guides for the tires. It was just the two of us so it took two photos to create the grid on the floor, 1st photo for the lines left to right and the 2nd photo for the lines back to front and a 3rd photo to get her on the bike with the tires and the lines on her and the trailing light. The images were then layered together in photoshop. Took us 75 images to get the 3 that we liked and it was in the garage in the middle of the day so we had to black out the windows and keep the doors closed.. Let just say it was really hot in the garage.
[Giz note: Holy @&#;%]
-Satnam Sidhu

 

The note on the winner is so true. Is this all that is needed to get people to be more creative? Just issue a challenge? What do you think of these incredible images?

 

Read the full post and see all of the 46 amazing photos at Gizmodo.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Tab Candy: Firefox Sweetness

Aza Raskin, Mozilla’s head of user experience for its Labs unit, on Friday unveiled a new project called “Tab Candy” that promises to dramatically change the way users manage open browser tabs.


Tab Candy is a new tab management feature for Firefox that organizes tabs into groups to help you keep your tabs grouped by task. Not only does it offer incredibly handy features, but it looks beautiful.
Tab Candy is not an extension, but a new feature that Raskin and team plan to build into a future version of the Firefox browser.

This is what Raskin had to say about Tab Candy:

The power of the browser has grown substantially in the last ten years. We now use the Web to multi-task the activities we juggle every day, like vacation plans, purchases, sharing pictures, listening to music, reading email, and writing a blog post.
It’s hard to keep everything straight with dozens of tabs all crammed into a little strip along the top of your browser. Your tab with a search to find a pizza parlor gets mixed up with your tabs on your favorite band. Often, it’s easier to open a new tab than to try to find the open tab you already have. Worse, how many of us keep tabs open as reminders of something we want to do or read later? We’re all suffering from infoguilt.
We need a way to organize browsing, to see all of our tabs at once, and focus on the task at hand. In short, we need a way to get back control of our online lives.
Enter: Tab Candy.

Tab Candy effectively consolidates different windows inside of one, so when you’re looking at one group, your others are waiting inside the switching interface. The concept is still in development, and only available in an experimental version of Firefox, which Raskin has made available for brave alpha testers.
Right now it’s only feature is this tab organization, though many more features are coming, including search, clusters that can be set as a private browsing session, and public and private sharing of tab groups.

This demo video details some concepts:



This looks like a big step forward for tabbed browsing in Firefox. What do you think of Tab Candy so far?

Read Aza Raskin’s blog.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

DIY Paintable Android Figurines Coming This August

Project your true inner geek onto this paintable mini Android. The $6 Do It Yourself Android will be available at Comic-Con this week and should pop up for sale on Dyzplastics in early August.

 

But its not just dressing up Google's Android; you can make the little guy stand out anyway you want. Illustrator Sam Spratt got creative with a few mini Androids:

 

 

I'm still waiting on Dyzplastics original Android mini collectibles Series 01 to be back in stock.

 

From Dyzplastics:

Our initial stock of figures is small, at first they will be available at the online Android collectible shop (link coming soon!). In a few weeks the rest will be available at select retailers. After that you'll probably have to wait a few months!

Check back here and on the blog for a list of some places to get your hands on our robots!

 

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Metaweb Could Revolutionize Google Search

Dan Nosowitz from Fast Company has a great post on the recent purchase of Metaweb by Google.

 

Nosowitz points out that Google acquires companies all the time, little startups with a bit of helpful technology or a  nice patent or a few engineers Google wants. But the acquisition of  Metaweb should not be grouped in with those relatively small other  purchases: Metaweb's technology could change the way Google Search  works.

 

 

Metaweb is a hard concept to describe, although the video above does an admirable job. Essentially, it views keywords, the way we search now, as an inferior search method to what it calls “entities.” Words can vary in meaning, refer to different things, have different levels of importance or relevance at different times, and often return inexact results.

 

Once Metaweb figures out to which entity you’re referring, it can provide a set of results. It can even combine entities for more complex searches–”actresses over 40″ might be one entity, “actresses living in New York City” might be another, and “actresses with a movie currently playing” might be another. Instead of searching through that jumble of keywords, Metaweb would just connect you to those three entities, and file down your results.

 

 

You can see why Google would see value in Metaweb. In a recent blog post, Google said searches like the example above are “hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers.” Hopefully that means Google can integrate Metaweb’s technology into their own search functions smoothly.

 

Google will also keep Freebase, the database that provides Metaweb with its list of “entities,” alive and open:

Better yet, we plan to contribute to and further develop Freebase and would be delighted if other web companies use and contribute to the data. We believe that by improving Freebase, it will be a tremendous resource to make the web richer for everyone. And to the extent the web becomes a better place, this is good for webmasters and good for users.

 

This is great news for everyone. Just think about the time that could be saved searching online.

 

What do you think of Metaweb’s re-imagined search methods?

 

Read Dan Nosowitz’s full post at Fast Company.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

10 Internet Slang Words with Dual Meanings

We’ve all become used to the online jargon, shorthands and acronyms that have developed over years of using the Internet. Silly as they might be, most of us are guilty of trimming, abbreviating or misspelling words to shave a few seconds communicating.

Photo by photonyx

 

It’s crazy to look at how pre-Internet acronyms and abbreviations like “LOL” have taken on completely new meanings (“laughing out loud”) with the introduction of widely popular Internet terms.

 

Here are a list of 10 Internet acronyms and slang terms with unexpected dual meanings, ranging from unpredictable to hilariously ironic.

 

1. LOL

Before netizens had us “laughing out loud,” there were little old ladies participating in less bone-tickling happenings. LOL in the medical world identifies a patient as a Little Old Lady. Sometimes, in lieu of actual medical terminology, physicians use shorthands like LOLFDGB (Little Old Lady, Fall Down, Go Boom) and LOLINAD (Little Old Lady In No Apparent Distress) on patient records to describe the health statuses of hospitalized elderly females.

 

2.BRB

BRB (Be Right Back) is one of the more polite online abbreviations; respectfully letting fellow chatters know that you’ll be taking a brief vacation from your keyboard.

Traditionally, however, BRB refers to a Big Red Button, an important, non-descript button associated with a power, reset, detonation, self-destruction, emergency shut-down, or ejection switch. The only real rule for the BRB is “do not press,” unless it’s an extremely dire situation, of course.

 

3. IDK

It’s ironic that IDK once stood for “Ident-A-Kid,” the largest child-identification program in the United States, but is now a popular acronym for “I don’t know.” Of all programs, I’d vouch to say Ident-A-Kid is definitely in the know!

 

4. BFF

For all the teenyboppers out there, BFF will always mean “Best Friends Forever.” But had you asked a computer programmer in the late 1980s or early 1990s, they may have said that BFF referred to Binary File Format, a procedure for storing computer files encoded in binary.

 

Photo by L'aBe

 

5. OMG

OMG is an Internet acronym used to express shock or amazement and can be translated as, “Oh my God/gosh/goodness,” depending on your comfortableness with using the Lord’s name in vain. But that’s not the only thing to be shocked about. Law enforcement officers use OMG to refer to “Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.” One of the most notorious OMGs in America is the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, founded in 1935.

 

6. PLZ

Used online to quickly say “please,” PLZ is also well-known in aviation as the airport code for the Port Elizabeth Airport in South Africa. The airport was recently upgraded to accommodate the increased traffic due to the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

 

7. CYA

Usually, the Internet version of an acronym is way more vulgar than the “real life” application. Not this time. CYA in online speak is a pleasant misspelling of “see ya,” but for politicians, physicians, journalists and law enforcement officers, CYA is a sneaky acronym for “Cover Your Ass.”

 

8. BTW

FYI, BTW isn’t just short for “by the way.” It’s also an acronym for British Traditional Wicca. BTW refers to branches of the Neo-Pagan religion Wicca that have origins in the New Forest area of England.

 

9. FML

Before FML (F*ck My Life) became a popular site for telling screwed up life stories, FML stood for something much more family-friendly: Family and Medical Leave.

 

 

10. BC

Before there was a shorthand for “because,” there was Christ. Even before that, there was BC, or “Before Christ,” an English language acronym demarcating the epoch before he was born.

 

Bonus

With terms like BACN (emails that are a cross between spam and personal mail) it can be hard to keep up. Also here is a list of 50 Interesting Social Media Terms.

 

Is this it? Of course not! Do you know any other internet terms with dual meanings from the past? Let me know in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Wind Farm Energy To Power Google For 20 Years

Mashable is reporting that Google has just signed a contract with an Iowa wind farm to purchase clean energy at a set rate for the next 20 years.

 

This move is in keeping with Google’s strong environmental stance; with specific regard to energy consumption and wind-generated energy, the company has been pushing PowerMeter and has invested $38 million in wind farms this year alone.

 

Google gained the ability to buy and sell electricity like any other public utility in February in order to reach its goals for carbon neutrality and more efficient energy use in its expansive data centers. This Power Purchase Agreement is the first deal brokered under the guise of Google Energy.

 

Official Google blog:

“On July 30 we will begin purchasing the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation at the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa at a predetermined rate for 20 years… This power is enough to supply several data centers. While we are happy to be purchasing renewable energy as part of our environmental commitment, this is also a structure that makes long term financial sense for Google. Through the long term purchase of renewable energy at a predetermined price, we’re partially protecting ourselves against future increases in power prices. This is a case where buying green makes business sense.”

 

Do you think Google is doing enough to stay green?

 

Read the full post at Mashable.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Trees Rejoice: Amazon Sells More Kindle Books Than Hardcovers

From Amazon:

Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books.

 

Full press release below

KINDLE DEVICE UNIT SALES ACCELERATE EACH MONTH IN SECOND QUARTER;
NEW $189 PRICE RESULTS IN TIPPING POINT FOR GROWTH

Amazon.com now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books

SEATTLE-July 19, 2010-(NASDAQ: AMZN)-Millions of people are already reading on Kindles and Kindle is the #1 bestselling item on Amazon.com for two years running. It's also the most-wished-for, most-gifted, and has the most 5-star reviews of any product on Amazon.com. Today, Amazon.com announced that Kindle device unit sales accelerated each month in the second quarter-both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis.

"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle-the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books-astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."

Kindle offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read. The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 630,000 books, including New Releases and 106 of 110 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 510,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 75 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle.

Recent milestones for Kindle books include:

Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009.
The Association of American Publishers' latest data reports that e-book sales grew 163 percent in the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales in May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.

On July 6, Hachette announced that James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date. Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books.

Five authors-Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts-have each sold more than 500,000 Kindle books.

Readers are responding to Kindle's uncompromising approach to the reading experience. Weighing 10.2 ounces, Kindle can be held comfortably in one hand for hours, has an e-ink display that is easy on the eyes even in bright daylight, has two weeks of battery life, lets you buy your books once and read them everywhere-on your Kindle, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, and Android-based devices-and has free 3G wireless with no monthly fees or annual contracts-all at a $189 price.

SOURCE: Amazon.com

 

What does this mean exactly? Well it could be a tipping point. It was only a matter of time. With music, newspapers and magazines going digital over the past 10 years, books had to make the jump sooner or later.

 

What do you think? Are physical books over or do they still carry some appeal? Let me know in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Bill Gates Invests in Cleaner Car Technology

Mashable has a post on Bill Gates and his vision for a cleaner world and invest in better car technology.

 

Companies and individuals around the world are looking for better modes of transportation to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, and Bill Gates is joining that group in a fascinating way: He’s investing in a company that wants to completely rethink, reinvent and redesign the internal combustion engine as we know it.

 

The post continues to state that the cars we drive today hold some of the same essential components as a Model T Ford from 100 years ago; in fact, the core technology of the internal combustion engine is largely a product of the 1800s.

 

EcoMotors, the company Gates is investing in, is a Detroit-based startup that’s trying to change how our engines operate. But instead of simply changing the kinds of fuel we use, it wants to completely change our cars’ propulsion systems.

 

 

The engine the company is trying to build will have less mass, will cost less to make, will be more fuel-efficient and will generate lower emissions. Its first commercial product is the turbo-diesel version of the innovative opposed-piston, opposed-cylinder (opoc) engine, which uses half the parts and is half the size of a traditional automobile engine.

 

Gates gave the company $23.5 million for its Series B because he thinks the opoc engine could be a big hit in developing areas. “The opoc engine can be an important step in providing affordable, low-emission transportation for the developing world,” he said in a release.

 

“EcoMotors has developed a promising technology that could help reduce levels of greenhouse gas emissions in a low-cost, globally relevant way,” he added.

 

Read the full post at Mashable.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Google Drops Nexus One

Google for the time being, is no longer in the hardware business.

 

Despite being one of the best smartphones in 2010, the sales numbers for Google's Nexus One were dismal. In the same amount of time it took Apple to sell 1 million iPhones, Google only sold 135,000 of the Android-powered Nexus. Not as bad as the Microsoft Kin, but no where near enough to continue supporting the device.

 

Google is discontinuing the Nexus One altogether. The company announced that it received its final order from HTC.

 

There are a ton of phones available running on Android and by one measure, it is even outpacing iOS. But the Nexus One was the Google phone, as opposed to simply an Android phone. Customers will still be able to buy the Nexus One in Europe and developers will be able to lay their hands on it for the time being.

 

Customer service will still be provided for the Nexus One, even after it is no longer available from Google.

 

Did you purchase a Nexus One? Let me know in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog