E-books drive older women to digital piracy

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According to a new Digital Entertainment Survey, one in eight women over thirty five who own an ereading device have downloaded pirated ebooks.

"The picture across the entire e-reader and tablet markets is even more troubling for the publishing industry. Some 29 per cent of e-reader owners of both genders and all ages admit piracy. For tablets the figure rises to 36 per cent."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...al-piracy.html

Older women. WOMEN OVER 35.

BRB, I have to get my walker.

Purple Cloud Desktop

Adam Dachis —Earlier this week we shared a bunch of great duotone wallpapers and today's featured desktop demonstrates how effectively such simple wallpapers can be. DeviantART user apandhi took a cloudy purple wallpaper and added a bunch of nicely organized and themed Rainmeter widgets. Apandhi also used the Windows theme Elune, one of our favorites, to continue with the silvery white aesthetic.

Want to replicate this look? Here's what you'll need:

• Background: Clouds
• Windows Theme: Elune
• Rainmeter customizations:
  • Facebook Feed Menu: Omnimo 3
  • Icon Menu: Rossella Launcher (with a few edits)
  • Weather: ToxxWeather
  • Statistic Monitors: Implosion 2
  • Clock: CornerClock
  • Recycle Bin: Simple Recycle Bin

NewDesktop | apandhi on deviantART

Do you have a great beautifully productive desktop of your own that you'd like to share? Go ahead and post it to the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr Group with a description of how you made it and it may be the next featured desktop.

One of my favorite new online discoveries is Design Observer.  A print journal recently turned online only, Design Observer features great articles and essays on a wide range of design topics.  The best part it is how well-written it is.  These days when all you get are short snippets and top 10 lists and 140 character limits, Design Observer has lengthy essays with substance that actually make you think.

Last week, they published an essay by Chappell Ellison, a winner of an Education Award in the 2009 AIGA Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing and Criticism.  This essay, entitled Compulsion: Where Object Meets Anxiety is probably one of the more insightful and touching things I’ve read online in a long time.  In it, Ellison talks about her older brother who has a severe form of OCD, and his difficult interactions with everyday objects that are supposedly designed to make our lives easier.  At the end, she briefly mentions ideas of Universal Design and the possibilities of designing for someone with OCD.  Although I really enjoyed reading her stories about her brother’s experiences, I wish that she would have spent more time on the issue of designing for disabilities.  Ellison mentioned the iPhone as an inadvertent example of an object that may be helpful to people with OCD – with a smooth screen, you don’t need to worry about dirt that gets stuck in button crevices.

What I find most interesting about this is it makes me think about the issue of design vs. technology.  It’s a fuzzy line between the two these days, ie like with most Apple products.  But after reading this essay, I wanted to see what kinds of objects or things have been made specifically for people with disabilities.  After awhile, I realized that many of the most interesting products I found were still conceptual and had yet to be invented.  And most of the time, it seemed to be an issue of technology.  Here are some of my favorite finds, all conceptual devices:

self explanatory – ballet shoes that vibrate for deaf dancers

a mug for blind people that rings when it’s full

the Voice Stick – it scans documents and read them to you

not really for people with a disability – a pill organizer and container for old people that reminds you when to take your medicine, but also self locks so you don’t overdose

(via Tuvie)

Some of these just seem so obvious – like the ringing cup – that you wonder why they haven’t been invented yet.

This reminded me of another blog that I love – Roger Ebert’s Journal.  Hands down, this is my favorite blog.  One day I will write another entry solely dedicated to how much I love it.  Anyway, I only recently discovered this, but after battling thyroid cancer, Mr. Ebert is unable to speak anymore.  I was actually shocked when I read this on wikipedia, because his writing has SO much voice that I guess it just seemed so tragically ironic he couldn’t talk anymore.  In one of his many great blog posts, Finding my Own Voice, he writes about his experiences using the voices on his Mac to communicate with people.  He mentions how, with all the hundreds of videos, recordings, lectures, and DVD commentaries he’s done, you think someone would be able to create a computerized version of his voice.  But alas, though it sounds so simple an idea, the technology to do it is still lacking.

After all this, my point is that although yes, some things just still need to be invented, technology is not the end-all.  Design by itself can still play a huge role in helping people.  (The same can be said for sustainable buildings – people have been making ‘green’ buildings long before solar panels were invented ie the cliff dwellers in Mesa Verde.)  What better place to find examples of this than in architecture?

This is the Hazelwood School for the Sensory Impaired in Glasgow, designed by gm + ad architects in 2004.  Not only does the serpentine layout follow the natural contours of the site, but it provides a clear route through the school in a linear progression and allows for easy access to the outside from the classrooms.

Instead of hand railings, there is a cork-lined sensory folded wall that leads people through the school.  The architects carefully chose various materials for inside and outside the building that would be warm to the touch.  Clerestory windows provide diffuse natural light and prevent glare that would hurt students’ eyes. (images via Arch. Record)

Another example from somewhere closer to home is the Anchor Center for Blind Children in Denver, by Davis Partnership.  I love these images – it’s like a mini Ronchamp with color.

(via Sources+Design)

I think these are both great examples of how design that isn’t technology-dependent can positively influence people’s lives.  Ahhh, and isn’t that what good architecture is all about?  Of course I still hope that one day some smart person can create a computer voice for Roger Ebert.

As an ending note, one area I find extremely lacking in good case studies is (affordable) senior living centers (and assisted living, and hospices).  These are becoming more and more important, but so many of the affordable ones look like institutions and hospitals. Perkins Eastman has done a lot of good work in this field, but most of the projects look like they’re for rich people.   If anyone has found any examples of well-designed senior/assisted living centers, please let me know!  One day when I become a starchitect and have my own firm, I would love to design these types of buildings.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• “Emotions [may] make us smarter…”
• What Makes Truly Anthropocentric Design? Ask the Creators of the ATNMBL
• The Design of Everyday Things

The WordPress app for BlackBerry is at version 1.0 and is now available for download in App World. This app was in public beta for some time, and is now available free in App World.

Features include:

• Reworked UI layout for the main view, blog view, and media view.
• Ability to upload videos from your media library.
• New option to set media file properties (filename, caption, title, and position).
• Created a new file browser that resembles the native BlackBerry file browser.
• Big improvements in the speed at which you can view and manage comments.
• Lots of optimizations for uploading photos and videos using base64 encoding.
• Indonesian language support.
• Improved French language support.

Considering the Wicked WordPress app by Screaming Toaster is $10 per year, it would be great if this free version ends up packing as many features.

Download WordPress for BlackBerry in App World.

Related Posts:

• ScreamingToaster’s Wicked WordPress app for BlackBerry launches
• Open Source WordPress application for BlackBerry now in Public Beta
• vPost is FREE & featured in App World!
• U2 Mobile Album now available for free in App World
• BlackBerry App World 1.1 now available for download UPDATE

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HBO renews 'Big Love'

Playtone-produced Mormon drama picked up for fifth season

By Nellie Andreeva

Feb 3, 2010, 08:00 PM ET

HBO still has lots of love for the Mormon drama "Big Love."

Four episodes into the series' fourth season, the cable network has renewed the Playtone-produced show for a fifth season.

"Love," which centers on Utah native Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) as he balances the needs of his three wives (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin) and their broods, drew 1.7 million viewers for its season premiere last month. That was up 49% from Season 3's opener.

Despite facing the NFC Championship and the Grammys the past two Sundays, the modestly rated series is tracking 13% higher than last season.

"Love," whose current story line centers on Henrickson running for office, will be getting "deeper and darker" in the second half of the season, according to creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer.

With four eventful seasons, the fifth cycle will take a breather, "settling into the stortytelling," Olsen said.

Added Scheffer, "We want to take the temperature of the marriages."

With the exception of the departing Amanda Seyfried, the series' core cast will come back for Season 5, with Olsen and Scheffer also mulling a possible return for new additions Zeljko Ivanek and Sissy Spacek.

"Love," which earned its first best series Emmy nomination last year, is executive produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, David Knoller, Bernadette Caulfield, Olsen and Scheffer.

You would think Macmillan and Amazon were Muhammad and Malvo the way I am obsessively blogging their doings, but I do have some follow-up items:

1. KT Bradford’s piece for Laptop mag has been much-tweeted since yesterday. Either Laptop magazine has proofreading issues or Bradford just writes down whatever someone says, because the article contains an unchallenged publisher claim that printing costs “usually account for about 1% of the cover price.” That’s a full order of magnitude less than every other source I can find. Bradford and Bradford’s sources spend the two paragraphs following the 1% claim confusing fixed and incremental costs. That, admittedly, I almost expect.

2. A PW item from last spring sheds more light on what Kindle-sale economics had been: Amazon treating them as loss leaders, so publishers and authors made exactly the same gross revenue as on a hardcover sale – except without returns.

3. In a piece from last spring on his personal blog, Evan Schnittman of Oxford University Press claims that ebooks are “perhaps as expensive or in some cases more expensive than print” because of . . . wait for it . . . metadata.

4. If you can deal with wiki formatting and you have any taste for the nuts and bolts of business analysis, a reprint of PW’s Cheerful Skeptic on variable and fixed costs in book publishing is invaluable. The scary part is that he was trying to explain contribution profit to publishing CFOs.

5. A 2002 piece from Salon on book costs again establishes printing as roughly 10% of the retail price (20% of the publisher’s take). Someone tell KT Bradford.

6. Finally, I unbury the lede: John Sargent of Macmillan’s open letter from Publisher’s Lunch yesterday. Sargent says Macmillan proposed to Amazon a dynamic pricing model with new ebook retail prices ranging from 12.99-14.99, books available on the day of print launch, prices dropping over time. Macmillan’s take would be 70% of the ebook retail and Amazon’s 30%. The letter makes it clear that Macmillan did indeed say it would sharply curtail Kindle offerings if Amazon rejected their terms. [Update: Barron's says Macmillan threatened to hold out new titles from Kindle release for 7 months, not reduce the number of Kindle offerings. See updates below for what Barron's implies about the economics from Amazon's side.]

Sargent’s letter talks about fostering a vibrant variety of devices and outlets for ebooks, which sounds pleasant in the abstract. But here’s what this dispute is really all about:

Publishers have been selling new hardcovers at prices ranging from $12.50-$15.00. Call it an average of $14. They’re spending not quite $3 to print them and losing a third of each book’s value on returns and no-sales, across all channels. (Some printed copies never ship. Only 60% of printed books become net sales. See my various links from this weekend’s posts.)

There are $7-8 in incremental costs coming off of every hardcover book as we move from print to bits, with some small new incremental costs for ebook production. So call it $7 a book.

One way or another, that $7 is going to be split among authors, publishers, retailers and customers. The question is, who gets how much?

Since Macmillan wants to sell new ebooks at $9.10-10.50, they’re staking a claim to 30-50% of the new surplus. Why not? they think. It’s our costs we’re saving. Why shouldn’t we turn a chunk of that to profit? We’ve been surviving on planar margins for decades. Macmillan offers the following to the various parties:

* To the publisher, $2.10-3.50.

* To the authors, ANSWER UNCLEAR TRY AGAIN LATER. (The commission piece is not in our $7 cost savings. It’s a separate issue.)

* To Amazon, $3.50-$3.90.

* To customers, $0-1.00. Suck it up, customers. Hope you didn’t pay too much for that fancy reader doohicky.

Bigtime authors have been grossing 30% of publisher price (15% of retail list) and netting 20% because of returns. Split with their agents of course. (Most authors have been making less, but we’ve been in the hot new bestseller world for all our models this weekend.) In theory, the end of returns means authors are automatically 50% richer per unit, an extra $1.40 in their pockets, less agent commission. In practice, they’re going to have to defend that 50% bennie from the other players.

Amazon wants to pay $7 an ebook and sell it for $10. Let’s see what that means for our parties:

* The author gets her extra buck-forty, unless the publisher raids it. (Remember that the extra author commission is not in our $7 cost-savings estimate.)

* Amazon grosses $3 on an ebook sale, but was grossing $1 on a hardcover, so their net benefit is $2.

* The customer is $5 better off. Instead of paying $15 for a hardcover, he pays $10 for an ebook.

* The publisher gets bupkis. Amazon’s $2 plus the customer’s $5 equals $7. Nothing left over. Sorry! Go tell the author how expensive “metadata” is. Unless they write science fiction. You’ll have to just tell them to eat it.

Amazon tells itself that it’s responsible for the $7 in savings, not the publishers. It made the fancy device that lets everyone say goodbye to printing and returns. It took a loss on every sale for two years to build the ebook market. It knows what customers will and won’t pay for an ebook because it knows customers. The publishers are no worse off.

You can see why the publisher gets offended at Amazon here. The publisher is offering to split the windfall with Amazon; Amazon is offering to split the windfall with the customers. You can even sort of see why authors instinctively align with the publishers. If Amazon and the customer get the full windfall from manufacturing and returns, the publisher starts casting a covetous eye on the author’s returns windfall. The author’s experience is that she never comes out ahead from major changes in publishing, and she doesn’t expect to this time.

I’m not scandalized by Macmillan’s threats or Amazon’s retaliation. Both sides played chicken and now they’ve smashed up.

But it’s very hard for me to see why readers should side with the publisher in this feud. The publisher wants the reader to buy a device costing hundreds of dollars and then pay the same price for virtual books as physical ones. The best price the publisher eventually plans to offer is equivalent what readers pay for a discounted mass-market paperback now (about $6, per Sargent). We’ll trade physical clutter for the electronic clutter of DRM and licensing. For some people this will be a net benefit, for others a net cost. On the bright side, those of us with worsening vision can make the print as large as we need. The thing is, with Amazon’s model, I get that anyway, plus five dollars.

UPDATE: The Barron’s article does not substantiate an Amazon counteroffer of 70/30 on $9.99. That IS what Amazon is offering independent and self-publishers now, but there’s no indication that it has offered major publishers the same deal. Instead, the status quo seems to obtain: Amazon pays publishers the same price it pays for hardcovers and prices each unit at will: usually $9.99; occasionally more. In that case, here’s where the $7 windfall goes:

The author gets her $1.4o. Not included in $7-windfall calc.

The publisher gets: $7. All of the windfall!

The reader gets: $5 – rough discount over Amazon hardcover price.

Amazon anti-gets: $5 – rough discount over Amazon hardcover price. Amazon loses income on each hot new frontlist book.

The “Amazon deal” in the main post is not currently on the table, so far as we know.

This is a dispute about control. In the hardcover world, publishers declare list prices, but the retailer has ultimate say over the street price of the book. Macmillan wants to wrest control of street-pricing from the retailer. Amazon wants to keep it. It’s a power-grab on Macmillan’s part. If they can control street-pricing, they can strengthen their hand vis-a-vis retailers. Down the line, they can almost eliminate retailers.

What do you need Amazon for if you can sell the book directly from your own website for more than you used to sell hardcovers? Answer: nothing. Except - somebody’s got to make e-readers, either software or hardware. There may be only six major publishers, but they can’t sell six different proprietary devices. Yesterday Charlie Stross asserted that

This asinine jockeying over electronic book prices has very little to do with what’s actually good or useful for anyone other than the manufacturer of a piece of hardware… who also happens to be a book retailer. I understand Amazon’s desire to corner the electronic book market with the Kindle, which requires publishers to bend to its will on pricing, but I’m not notably sympathetic to it.

But from what I can tell, in an ebook world it’s going to be only “the manufacturer of a piece of hardware” who even has the option of being a book retailer. Nobody else offers anything the publishers need. You know what the future of ebook retail is for non-manufacturers? The Amazon affiliate program. Only not with Amazon. You’ll be a “Macmillan affiliate” or a “HarperCollins affiliate” or etc. driving traffic from your website to the publisher and making 10-15% a sale, paid quarterly. Alternatively you’ll be an iBooks or Amazon or BN or Sony affiliate, depending on whose hardware survives.

In the long term, the publishers bet on device convergence and hardware commoditization so that device-makers lose their power. Then the telcos and cable companies come sniffing around for their cut. But one day at a time!

As Venture Beat and other blogs have noticed Friday evening, books from Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the United states, have vanished from Amazon.com.

The question is why.

I’ve talked to a person with knowledge of the dispute who says the disappearance is the result of an disagreement between Amazon.com and book publishers that has been brewing for the last year. Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise to the price of e-books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books, said this person, who did not want to be quoted by name because of the state of negotiations.

Macmillan is one of the publishers signed on to offer books to Apple, as part of its new iBookstore. Its imprints include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and Henry Holt. The publisher’s books can still be purchased from third parties on the Amazon site.

Apple, as we’ve reported before, will allow publishers more leeway to set their own prices for e-books. It’s not clear yet if publishers can withhold books from Amazon while giving them to other parties like Apple – I’ve spoken to two anti-trust lawyers who say it could raise legal issues.

Macmillan has not yet returned a request for comment. Amazon refused to comment.

$15 is too much for an ebook.

Support a great cause with a great reputation. Please donate if you can, even if it's $1. Dollars add up.

A good set of resources for web design

Hannity twice stated that the Capitol Hill crowd numbered 20,000 -- before drastically walking it back

Hannity: "20,000 people showed up today." During the November 5 edition of ABC Radio Network's The Sean Hannity Show, Hannity stated, "We announced on Hannity Friday night on the Fox News Channel, we had Congresswoman Michele Bachmann [R-MN] on, and she mentioned that there was going to be on Thursday, she was going to put together in less than a week a little town hall on -- what do you want to call it -- march on our nation's Capitol. And anyway, 20,000 people showed up today."

Hannity: "[W]hat, 20,000 people showed up today." Hannity subsequently stated, "That was Jon Voight, the actor, who on his own heard -- I guess was watching Hannity last Friday -- and heard Congresswoman Michele Bachmann announce that she was going to have this rally today in preparation for what we expect to be a vote on a rare Saturday edition of Congress, and, what, 20,000 people showed up today."

Hannity: "I heard there was, like, 5,000 people plus there." Toward the end of his radio show, Hannity backtracked from his earlier estimates, responding to a caller's statement that "there was more than 1,000 people here," by stating, "I heard there was, like, 5,000 people plus there."

Citing U.S. Capitol Police, MSNBC's First Read reported much lower crowd estimates

MSNBC.com: "Three Capitol Hill police officers all guessed that the crowd numbered at about 4,000." In a November 5 First Read blog post, MSNBC.com reported, "The crowd, per [NBC'S Luke] Russert, is so far about 3,000 to 3,500, according to Capitol Police estimates." In a subsequent update, MSNBC reported, "Three Capitol Hill police officers all guessed that the crowd numbered at about 4,000."

Prior to the Fox News-promoted rally, Hannity predicted a "massive" crowd

Hannity: "I hear there's going to be a lot of people -- thousands of people." During the November 4 edition of his Fox News' show, Hannity stated, "All right, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann announced on this program last Friday that at noon tomorrow -- by the way, anybody that wants to go, you can go to the nation's capitol -- they're going to have a press conference, and then I hear there's going to be a lot of people -- thousands of people. Our cameras are going to be there. We'll have full coverage on the program tomorrow night."

Hannity: "I am told the crowd is going to be massive." During the November 4 edition his radio show, Hannity responded to a caller who said, "There's nine of us traveling in an RV with three buses behind us heading out of Georgia to go see Michele Bachmann tomorrow at noon," by stating, "I can tell you, I am told the crowd is going to be massive."

Fox News and its personalities, including Hannity, aggressively promoted protest. In the days leading up to the November 5 protest, and following its pattern of advocacy of right-wing events, Fox News and its personalities' repeatedly promoted the anti-health care reform protest spearheaded by Bachmann. Fox News previously promoted numerous other rallies such as the April 15 tea party protests, health care town hall protests, and the 9-12 march on Washington.

Conservative media previously inflated crowd estimates for the 9-12 March on Washington

Media conservatives ran wild with 9-12 protest crowd estimates. Although a D.C. Fire Department official estimated 9-12 March crowds at 60,000 to 75,000 people, media conservatives including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Gretchen Carlson cited participant numbers in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions.

PolitiFact.com: D.C. Fire Department official said "he thought between 60,000 and 75,000" participated. PolitiFact.com investigated whether conservative bloggers were falsely attributing a picture of a large crowd on the National Mall to the 9-12 events and concluded that they were. From http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/sep/14/tea-party-photo-s..." target="_blank">PolitiFact:

We spoke with Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, who said that the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. That said, on the morning of Sept. 12, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.

"It was in no way an official estimate," he said.

We asked Piringer whether there were enough protesters to fill the National Mall, as depicted in the photograph.

"It was an impressive crowd," he said. But http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/12/yes-the-picture-is-real-nutroots/" target="_blank">after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd "only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street," he said.