Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Amazon Says E-Books Now Top Hardcover Sales - NYTimes.com

Amazon Says E-Books Now Top Hardcover Sales - NYTimes.com:

"Amazon.com, one of the nation’s largest booksellers, announced Monday that for the last three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books.

In that time, Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition.

The pace of change is quickening, too, Amazon said. In the last four weeks sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books, a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the site.

I've been reading more e-books, but I don't own a Kindle, or an iPad. They're just fine on my laptop's screen. I still prefer paper, but money and shelf space are both in short supply.

All my e-books are nonfiction. None are about art or graphics, though my shelf is loaded with art and graphics. On my laptop graphic articles, but not books.

Yesterday, I downloaded Street Fighting Mathematics from M.I.T. Press. I've got the C# Pocket Reference, How To Use Twitter For Business, Sexy Web Design ( Preview), The PHP Anthology, Windows 7 Tips & Tricks. Just one design book and it's technical.

Do you read e-books? What's your pattern?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/technology/20kindle.html?th&emc=th

Sunday, July 04, 2010

America Speaks to BP



A fraction of this made the airwaves Friday on the PBS Newshour. Watch Mr. Dudley carefully. Learn to avoid without appearing to avoid
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Saturday, July 03, 2010

Book Review - The Facebook Effect - By David Kirkpatrick - NYTimes.com

Book Review - The Facebook Effect - By David Kirkpatrick - NYTimes.com: "THE FACEBOOK EFFECT
The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World
By David Kirkpatrick
Illustrated. 372 pp. Simon & Schuster"

According to “The Facebook Effect,” Facebook is the second-most-visited Web site on earth (after Google). The average member spends almost an hour there each day. It has more than 400 million active users — over 20 percent of everyone on the Internet — and is growing by 5 percent a month.

But according to David Kirkpatrick, who for many years was a technology editor at Fortune, Facebook is more than big. It’s a “platform for people to get more out of their lives,” a “technological powerhouse with unprecedented influence across modern life” and an “entirely new form of communication.”

No wonder he has written what amounts to two books about it: the first and second halves of “The Facebook Effect.” The first part is a fascinating but flawed corporate history, starring Facebook’s reticent creator, the Harvarddropout Mark Zuckerberg; the second is a thoughtful, evenhanded analysis of the Web site’s impact.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/books/review/Pogue-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3&pagewanted=all

The Invisible Bond Vigilante and The Confidence Fairy.

Op-Ed Columnist - Myths of Austerity - NYTimes.com: "So the next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you’ll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we’re bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we’re good. And real-world policy — policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families — is being built on that foundation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/opinion/02krugman.html?ref=opinion
con·cept: July 2010