Loaded: The Amazon Kindle DX 4:36
We have news on the Amazon Kindle DX, Sony sneaks in an e-reader of its own, and Digg gets Facebook Connect.

Monday, May 4, 2009 Why the Kindle HD Can’t Save Newspapers

Updated with my interview on Yahoo Tech Ticker. Amazon will reportedly introduce a new Kindle later this week, one with a big screen. Let’s give it a cute name, like the Kindle HD. And because it’s got a big screen and because it counts The New York Times among its launch partners, many of my fellow bloggers have decided that it will be the product that digitally delivers newspapers and in the process, saves the industry. Thankfully ZDNet’s Larry Dignan is keeping his wits about him, and instead of buying into the hype, proposes this much more plausible theory: Amazon may be targeting the Kindle HD at the higher education sector.

The eagerness with which people are assuming that Kindle HD will be a savior for the media business is striking. Comparisons are being made to the iPod, which came at a desperate time for the music industry. But while after eight years, the iPod is a megabillion-dollar business, the music industry is still in the toilet, with digital sales failing to grow fast enough to cover the drop in sales of physical CDs. The most recent reminder of that for me came last week, when I went to the Apple store to pick up an accessory and saw that the Virgin Megastore across the street in San Francisco had closed.

When it comes to the media business, why would things be any different? I’ve spent my entire working life in media — writing for newspapers, news agencies, magazines and web publications. Without a doubt, it can be painful to watch the slow and steady decay of the newspaper and media industry.

What’s more painful to watch is how unwilling so many people in this business are to come to terms with the shift the Internet has brought by wresting control of the distribution of content. The result has been the rise of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other publishing platforms that are creating micro-brands for what I like to call the Me Media. But the Internet is not solely responsible for the demise of the core media business model; it contains critical flaws. Clay Shirky did a good job of laying out its problems earlier this year, saying: “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.” Spot on. And new business models will emerge. My ex-boss Josh Quittner of Time magazine thinks one of these models will be “appgazines — that act more like computer programs than Web or printed pages.”

Tuesday 07 April 2009 TORONTO: BOOK SALES SURPASS XMAS LEVELS
A book industry group says book sales in Canada have risen in the first quarter. BookNet Canada says the volume of books was up 6.7 above last year's first quarter, the value of books sold increasing by 5 per cent. That represents a six-per cent increase in volume over the Christmas period. BookNet Canada says that in view of the decline in book sales in the U.S. and UK, the figures show that for Canadians books are "a staple, not a luxury." BookNet Canada is the not-for-profit agency responsible for promoting technology innovation for Canadian publishers, distributors and booksellers and is partly funded by the Canadian government.

Wednesday 18 March 2009 The Samsung Memoir

Thursday 05 March 2009 Amazon Releases Kindle iPhone App
Without fanfare, Amazon released a free Kindle app for the iPhone in Apple's App Store.
The app lets iPhone and iPod touch owners read Kindle books on their handsets, without having to lug around that suddenly-so-old Kindle 2 reader.

Thur Feb 26, 2009 Jeffrey Preston Bezos is the founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Amazon.com. Bezos, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University, worked as a financial analyst for D. E. Shaw & Co. before founding Amazon in 1994. He was TIME magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999. Talks with Charlie Rose about Kendal II $375 & $10 a book which you can download in 60
/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

Friday 06 February 2009
Google Inc. is inviting avid readers of the world to curl up with a good cellphone.

The Internet search leader announced today it is making more than 500,000 books already in the public domain available for free to smart-phone users through a mobile version of its Google Book Search website. Readers in the United States will have access to more than 1.5 million books through the service.
Through a new mobile site – books.google.com/m – users can search for and read full books on select Web-enabled cellphones.

Wednesday 18 February 2009 Authors Guild irked by Kindle's text-to-speech
Group worries 'Read to Me' feature could undermine the market for audio books

Saturday 14 February 2009 Amazon Kindle 2: 10 Things You Should Know
Sure, the Kindle 2 isn't perfect, but the benefits far outweigh its problems.
I thought I'd buy my wife one. My attempts failed but my techno lust for the device did not. When I heard about the new Amazon Kindle 2, I tried to ignore it. I was still smarting from Amazon's rejection. Of course, in the days leading up to the Amazon Kindle 2 announcement, you couldn't turn a virtual corner without stumbling over leaked information about the second-generation e-book reader.

Tuesday 10 February 2009 Amazon launches new Kindle reader
Amazon has released the second version of its Kindle electronic book reader, which is slimmer but still costs $359 (£244).

Friday 06 February 2009 Google to put 1.5 million books in your pocket
Google Inc. is inviting avid readers of the world to curl up with a good cellphone.
The Internet search leader announced today it is making more than 500,000 books already in the public domain available for free to smart-phone users through a mobile version of its Google Book Search website. Readers in the United States will have access to more than 1.5 million books through the service.
Through a new mobile site – books.google.com/m – users can search for and read full books on select Web-enabled cellphones.

2008

Thursday 04 December 2008 Fairytale launch for Rowling book
JK Rowling is to read extracts of her first book since the final Harry Potter novel as the fairytales go on sale.

Wednesday 19 November 2008 OTTAWA: LITERARY PRIZES AWARDED
The Governor-General's awards honouring the finest in Canadian literature were presented Tuesday. Toronto author Nino Ricci won the Governor General's Literary Award for his novel "The Origin of Species." It's the second time Mr. Ricci has won the prize, the first having been for his debut novel "Lives of the Saints" in 1990. Columnist Christie Blatchford of the Globe and Mail won the non-fiction prize for her book about Afghanistan "Fifteen Days" and another Globe and Mail writer, John Ibbitsen received the children's literature prize for "The Landing."

Saturday 13 September 2008 Philip Kotler

Notable publications

“Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control”, Prentice Hall, 1967; 12th edn, 2006

With Roberto, N. and Lee, N., “Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life”, 2nd edn, Sage Publications, 2002

More management gurus

This profile is adapted from “The Economist Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus”, by Tim Hindle (Profile Books; 322 pages; £20). The guide has the low-down on more than 50 of the world’s most influential management thinkers past and present and over 100 of the most influential business-management ideas. To buy this book, please visit our online shop.

Tuesday 09 September 2008 Rowling wins book copyright claim
Author JK Rowling wins her legal battle to get an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia banned from publication.

Sunday 17 August 2008 Twilight to fill Harry Potter gap
The movie of Stephenie Meyer's vampire Twilight stories gets an earlier release following the delay to the new Potter film.

Twilight the movie is from a series of five books

Twilight - the movie adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire novels - is be released early, in the slot left by the delayed Harry Potter film.

Twilight's US release was to be 12 December but is now 21 November. It is not known if the UK will follow suit.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been pushed back to July 2009.

Meyer is still relatively unknown in the UK but in the US her books create the kind of excitement enjoyed by those of JK Rowling.

Thursday 26 June 2008 MADRID: AUTHOR ATWOOD WINS SPANISH HONOUR
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has won a prestigious international award, the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters. The award celebrates excellence in literature, and in honouring Atwood, the jury noted that her work consistently "defends the dignity of women and denounces social injustice." Previous winners of the Asturias Prize are Arthur Miller and Doris Lessing.

Monday 16 June 2008 A Book Club Courts Liberals
The progressive movement has prided itself on its ability to get its messages out by harnessing the Internet, through organizations like MoveOn.org and blogs like Daily Kos or The Huffington Post.

Wednesday 11 June 2008 Potter 'prequel' sold at auction
A short Harry Potter prequel by JK Rowling is sold for £25,000 at a charity auction in London.

Wednesday Apr 23, 2008 Gazette reporter wins Business Book Award
Gazette reporter William Marsden, author of Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental...The award, presented yesterday in Toronto, is worth $20,000.
Marsden's book is a polemic against how the province of Alberta is allowing the oil industry to exploit energy resources for short-term gain
My hope is that (this award) is a reflection of businessmen as human beings beginning to take the environment seriously."

Five titles were up for the award. The short list of authors also included Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism), Rodrigo Bascunan and Christian Pearce (Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent), Jacques Poitras (Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy) and Chris Turner (The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need).

The award is sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the BMO Financial Group.

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

Saturday Dec 15, 2007 Magazines still overpriced in Canada - but 'rip-off' is less obvious to buyers
U.S. publishing giant Hearst has removed U.S. prices from the Canadian editions of its magazines - but...
On a Hearst website, the monthly price for O, the Oprah Magazine is listed at $3.95 U.S. In Canada, the single price on the January edition of O is $5.75. Cosmopolitan is listed at $4.29 U.S., but in Canada it costs $5.99.

Friday 14 December 2007 ROWLING IN THE DOUGH
The National, CTV News, the Globe, the Post, and the Star go inside with the record-breaking sale of J.K. Rowling’s latest book. One of only seven extant copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a volume alluded to in the final instalment of the Harry potter series, was sold at auction for the equivalent of $4 million yesterday. London art agent Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox was the succesful bidder, buying on behalf of Amazon.com. Rowling, in a feat that must have required infinite patience, hand-wrote and illustrated seven copies of the tome, giving six away to those “most closely connected to the Harry Potter books during the last seventeen years.” The fortune collected from the sale of the seventh copy will be donated to Rowling’s charity, The Children’s Voice, which helps vulnerable children in Eastern Europe. The manuscript was expected to fetch $100,000, but apparently the appeal of owning the very volume that, according to Potter lore, was left by pedagogue Albus Dumbledore to Harry’s buddy Hermione was enough to propel the price to the highest ever achieved by a modern literary manuscript. Still, Rowling can’t compete with the literary celebrity of Napoleon Bonaparte; a single page of a love story hand-written by The Little Corporal was sold at auction less than two weeks ago for $34,400, The National online reports. Averaged out, The Tales of Beedle the Bard fetched a paltry $25,478 per page.

Jordan Himelfarb is a Quebec City-based MediaScout writer for Maisonneuve Magazine.

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Thursday 06 December 2007 economist Pick of the bunch
History, politics, music, business, biography, memoir, letters and fiction. There is something for everyone in this round-up of the year's best books

Sunday 02 December 2007 nyt The 10 Best Books of 2007

Thursday 08 November 2007 TORONTO: TOP LITERARY PRIZE AWARDED
The richest literary prize in Canada, the Giller Prize, has been awarded this year to Elizabeth Hay. She won for her novel entitled Late Nights on Air. It's a work of fiction inspired by Miss Hay's own years working at a radio station in Canada's northern city of Yellowknife during the 1970's. The Giller Prize is $40,000.

Thursday Oct 25, 2007 Dumbledore has been diminished
Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling has caused a sensation by revealing that the beloved headmaster of Hogwarts and Harry Potter's mentor, protector and sometimes surrogate father, Albus Dumbledore, is gay. There were no clues to this bombshell in most of the books, except for recollections in the last book of a young boy Dumbledore had been close to as a youth, who then devastated Dumbledore and betrayed their friendship by taking up the Dark Arts.

Saturday 15 September 2007 Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism
One of the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-page novel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawing readers; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. (“Winning,” by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.)

Tuesday 17 July 2007 The Voice of Harry Potter Can Keep a Secret
A little less than two months ago, Mr. Dale, the veteran Broadway actor turned voice of Harry Potter, finished recording the audio version of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final installment in the colossally successful series by J. K. Rowling.

Friday 12 January 2007 nyt The 10 Best Books of 2006 and other years

2006

Menu to mitworld.mit.edu/ on-demand videos of significant public events at MIT. in RealPlayer
Ex Thomas L. Friedman. While you were Seeping The World IS Flat Video length is 1:15:04. see also his Home | amazon

Tuesday Jun 6, 2006 nyt Digital Publishing Is Scrambling the Industry's Publishers, editors and writers are grappling with the Web's ability to connect readers and writers more quickly and intimately.

Saturday May 20, 2006 Retailer's 2006 profit more than doubles
Indigo Books & Music Inc., Canada's largest book retailer, more than doubled its net income for fiscal 2006 to $25.3 million, due to a combination of rising sales and improved operating efficiency.

April 5-9, 2006 The Blue Met 2006 Festival programme
Writers, translators and publishers converge for Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montréal

Tuesday Feb 28, 2006 ts Da Vinci Code plagiarism case hits court
Author Dan Brown copied the central themes of his best-selling thriller, The Da Vinci Code, from a 1982 book, a lawyer for two of the book's three authors claims. Kevin Sullivan reports.

nyt 'Da Vinci Code' Trial Opens With Claim of Theft The authors of a nonfiction book contend that Dan Brown stole their ideas for his megaselling thriller. {9} W-N pages on "da Vinci"

Tuesday Dec 27, 2005 nyt A Chance to Meet the Author Online
By EDWARD WYATT
Amazon.com is offering author blogs and extended personal profile pages as a way to increase the visibility of books in a crowded media marketplace.

www.bookcrossing.com/ people are laving books lying around, hoping you'll find them

Friday Nov 25, 2005 nyt 100 Notable Books of the Year
The Book Review editors have compiled a list of the best books of 2005. Includes links to the original reviews.

Wednesday Nov 23, 2005 ts Library of Congress goal to create digital collection
WASHINGTON—The Library of Congress is launching a campaign to create the World Digital Library — an online collection of rare books, manuscripts, maps, posters, stamps and other materials from its holdings and those of other national libraries that would be freely accessible for viewing by anyone, anywhere with Internet access.

Sunday Nov 13, 2005 nyt YOUR MONEY
Get Rich Quick, Write a Millionaire Book By DAMON DARLIN
According to the spate of best-selling self-help books, to get rich you have to think like a millionaire.

Friday Sep 9, 2005 by 'Colin Everard

Prof. Moore, Karl wn page.

pages of WN links to Karl Moore

Wed 1211 page 2 Karl Moore & Stephen Blank

Who will rescue Air Canada?
Prof. Moore, Karl an airline analyst at McGill University, told CBC News that Onex Corp. and investment giant Texas Pacific Group might be interested in taking a run at the airline.

Thursday 10 April 2008

Rowling honoured at book awards