Category: Information

Fans Wanted!

We live in a world where fans are in high demand.  There is so much neglected art that needs to be discovered, and your duty as a fan is to discover new work and share it.  It’s how social networking works.

I was looking at the new album releases in Rdio and I noticed that many of the albums had not been listened to all all.  They had 0 plays, and thus no fans.  That made me feel sad for those artists.  Lady Gaga has legions of fans, and I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve her fans, but I think some of her devoted following should spend some of their time listening to new artists who have none.  Consider it a form of artistic charity.  It takes so little to become a patron of the arts, just love and attention.

It’s amazing how many new albums come out every week.  And if you subscribe to a subscription music service you can listen to them all for just $4.99 a month.  So, it would cost you almost nothing to be generous and play a few albums that are going without listeners.  We are all too addicted to success.  We want to hear the top albums of the week – but what if some of those CDs that never make it even to the bottom of a chart have good tunes on them?  Don’t they deserve to be heard?

And think about all those selfish baby boomers who play the same old hits from the sixties over and over again.  Wouldn’t they benefit from hearing something new?  So I say to you, become a fan of some up-and-coming band or singer.  I’m listening to Costello Music by The Fratellis who’ve gotten 11,664 plays on Rdio.  They really don’t seem all that different from a British Invasion band in the 60s.  But eleven thousand plays means they have a lot of fans.  There are 50+ pages of new CDs on Rdio and most of them have no plays at all.

It used to be you had to buy albums to become a fan, but that’s no longer true.  For $4.99 a month you can listen to dozens of new albums every week from one of many subscription music services.  And you might be surprised by the rewards of becoming a fan and discovering a new group.  I’m listening to The Naked and Famous new album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, and it makes me feel young again.  It has a wonderful 80s pop feel to it, so it’s both nostalgic and energetic.  It’s more popular than the last album, with 132,155 plays.  They are famous by Rdio standards, but they should become more famous.

I’m now listening to a very nice song now, “One Hand Loves the Other” by Bodies of Water off of Twist Again.  It reminds me of Judy Collins.  It’s only had 256 listeners.  It deserves way more fans than that.  As I page through the new releases I find albums with fewer and fewer listeners.  Natalie Walker only has 113 for her album Spark.  If you’re an old fart baby boomer and don’t like modern pop like Lady Gaga you might find Walker worthy of your fan attention.

With little effort I found three very enjoyable albums tonight by people I never heard before.  In the old days of CDs that would have cost me $45-55, but it’s just part of my $4.99 monthly fee on Rdio.  I figure if I’m going to get such a bargain I have to do my part and try several new CDs every week and help promote new artists.  Because Rdio is built around social networking, playing an album encourages other people to play it too.  Playing a song produces ripples.  If I play an album enough other people in my network will see it and maybe give it a try too.  And then people in their network will see them playing, and hopefully we help the artist find more fans.

I like myself better when I’m discovering new music.  I still love my old favorites songs that I’ve been playing for almost fifty years, but I don’t want to be trapped in my past.  Finding new music makes me feel younger.  I know I’m not, but my mind feels younger as long as I’m still discover new art.  There are rewards to be a new music fan.

JWH – 6/21/11

What Does it Cost to Read a Book? How Ebooks will Change Book Buying Habits.

With hardback and paperback sales sliding down the charts while ebook sales rising, it appears the new paperback book is the ebook.  Unlike the past, where readers had to wait months or years for the paperback edition to come out, the ebook and hardback are now published simultaneously.  This is great news for readers until you realize what has happened is the price of a paperback has been increased.  You get to read it sooner, but it costs more – but the whole point of mass market paperbacks was to read books for less.

It used to be a book would come out in hardback, say for $25.99, and then months later, a $14.99 trade edition would come out, and finally after sales for the trade edition tanked, the $7.99 mass market edition would appear.  The cost of reading a book depended on how soon you wanted to read it after first publication.  Now we’re seeing $9.99-$12.99 or more for the ebook, but we get to buy it right away.  On one hand this seems like a very fair price, because it’s such a savings off the hardback cost, but on the other hand, you get nothing but electrons for your money. 

When you buy a hardback you have something physical that will last, that’s collectable, or nice to look at on a shelf, and makes a great gift, or is wonderful to lend to your friends, or even sell.  Even if you didn’t read the book, you had something when you bought a book.

Most people only read a book once, and if you’re buying ebooks, all you’re really getting is to read it.  An ebook will last, but if you only read a book once, it’s more like renting the book.

By the way, from now on when I mention pricing, I’m going to use Amazon’s for sale pricing and not list.

You’d think pricing would be based on what you get for your money.  The ebook would be the cheapest, then mass market paperback, then trade paperback and then hardback, because of the production costs and materials that go into creating the book.  And sometimes this happens.  For example The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is $6.35 ebook, and $7.99 mass market paperback.  But Isaac Newton by James Gleick is $11.99 ebook and $10.20 trade paperback – WTF?  Does that mean a mass market paperback only costs $1.64 to produce and the ebook costs $1.79 more than a trade paperback to create?  I don’t think so.

James Gleick’s newest book, The Information is $17.21 for the hardback and $12.99 for the ebook.   What Amazon is asking the reader, are you willing to pay $4.22 more to have a hardback copy, or would you just prefer to read it on your Kindle for $12.99. 

The list price of The Information is $29.95, which is probably what you’d pay at a brick and mortar store.  So the publisher probably thinks $12.99 is a great bargain for the reader, with $16.96 savings.  The author is probably thinking, at what price and royalty rate do I earn the most money.  The pricing of a book is a really hard math problem, isn’t it?

Me, I’m thinking something different.  I’m thinking:  What does it cost to read a book?   Once we enter into the world of ebooks, I’m essentially paying to read the book.  I don’t own anything.  I can’t sell my copy when I’m done with it.  I can’t lend it to a friend (even though they are working on that, but it’s not like owning a real book which I could lend over and over again).  I can’t put it on the shelf for others to admire my large library of great books.  I read the book, and more than likely, I’ll move it to archive on the Kindle, or even delete it so I have less cluttered interface to deal with.

You’d also think ebooks would be priced by the word, to take into account the cost of writing and editing the book, so that a 100,000 word book would cost twice as much as a 50,000 word book.  That doesn’t happen either.  Basically publishers are charging whatever they can get, and each has their own system for pricing.  With ebooks I think they are guessing what the demand will be, and if they think it’s high, they will raise the price accordingly – so a new ebook off the press might be priced $12.99.  But if they think they can sell more copies at the $9.99 price they sell it for that.  When demand goes way down, they will think about lowering the price.  That’s all understandable.

But ebooks is changing the habits of bookworms.  I’ve always bought lots of hardbacks, and never read many of them because I sit them on my shelf thinking one day I’ll find time to read them when I retire.  I’m just not going to do that with ebooks.  I’m going to buy just before I start reading.  I’m not even sure I could save an ebook for twenty years before I got around to reading it, but there’s just no pleasure in owning a bunch of books I can’t see.

And since I don’t feel “buying” an ebook is like “owning” a book, when I see the price at Amazon for the Kindle edition, I’m going to check the library first to see if there is a copy I can “borrow” because reading a book on the Kindle feels a whole lot like borrowing a library book – I’ll only see it as I read it.

Recently Amazon announced that they were selling more ebooks than hardback and paperback books combined.  I’m not sure the world is really ready for the implications of this.  Essentially bookstores, both news and used, are the side effect of bookworms, and not book collectors.  Real, hardcore book collectors are rare compared to the ordinary everyday bookworm that consumes books.  If we bookworms can get our reading electronically, what happens to the bookstore?  And once bookworms realize they are only paying to read a book, and get past the illusion of owning books, how they judge what a fair price is for a book will change.  I’m not sure if publishers are ready for this.

Finally, the move to ebooks is changing me in other ways.  When I shop for books now I realize I was fooling myself.  I’m not going to read all those books I bought.  I don’t really need my shelves of books because I’ve learned I’m a consumer of words, and not a collector of books.  Several times lately I went to buy a book and stopped myself, because I knew if I didn’t read the book right away there is little chance I’d read it at all.  I can’t plan for future reading because I read by what I’m hungry for at the moment.  This is also why I don’t buy ebooks when I see one I want to read.  That impulse is different from the impulse for picking a book to read right now.  With a Kindle, you can finish a book and download another and start reading immediately, and since finding books electronically is so easy, why not wait until it’s time to read the next book.

The future price of a book won’t be based on what the publisher thinks the book is worth, but on the price readers are willing to pay to read it next.

JWH – 5/24/11

Gullible and Malicious Gossip–Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

Politics is depressing – in our times it brings out the worst in men and women.  We are not a nation that pulls together, but one that everyone wants to pull apart.

I don’t know why there’s such a passionate hatred for Barack Obama, but there is.  To me he’s a decent man, a good family man, a man who works hard to do his job the best that he knows how.  I’m sure he has plenty of flaws, but he’s a far better man than I could ever be. 

There is a growing mob of people that want to tear him down.  Conservatives have always complained that national news is biased, but Fox New’s in-your-face bias is little more than rabble rousing, yet it is nothing compared the rumor mill of blogging. 

Blogging isn’t journalism although many bloggers want to be taken as serious as national papers, yet they have no self-control, respect for journalism, or decent sense of human fairness.  Writers on the internet can say anything without any checks and balances, and the lies, misconceptions and slander they create is almost unstoppable.  There’s a reason why Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness was in the top ten sins that the old Testament God wanted to stomp out.

Although, I’m not really worried about Barack Obama, he can take care of himself.  Any conspiracy theory about him that percolates to the national news will be properly investigated.  No, who I worry about is my friends and relatives who believe the lies they send to my email box.  The beliefs you hold reveal more about your personality than any lack of clothes reveals about the nakedness of your body.  Hatred is ugly.  Passing on gossip, especially a hateful kind of gossip, undresses people’s ugly side.

In the old days people were careful to keep up a positive persona.  People dressed themselves in positive attitudes and acted with a aura of self-control.  If people expressed their negative side, their hatreds, it was usually only to very close friends and family members.  Only uncivilized people were nasty.  But two exceptions come quickly to mind:  racism and xenophobia.  Growing up, whenever I visited the South I was always shocked by mild-mannered church loving people, letting it all hang out when it came to expressing their feelings about black people.  It was frightening to me. 

Poor Obama seems to bring out people’s racism and xenophobia.

I believe that most of the hate mongering over Barack Obama is because he’s black, and maybe because people think he’s Muslim from another country.  I know conservatives hate liberals like Clinton and Gore, but they go beyond the pale in their attacks on Obama and try to find endless ways to discredit him.  Evidently the Presidency is one Jim Crow barrier they never wanted to take down.

Here is an example of one of the emails I’ve gotten:  Wadda Guy!!!!.

Here is the Snopes.com site that answers most of the issues:  Obama’s 50 Lies.

The trouble is conspiracies are very hard to pull off, and most of these stories are just gossip that people want to pass on because they oppose Obama’s politics by smearing him with lies.  And most often these emails come from Christians.  Don’t they know they are breaking the 9th commandment?  And remember what Jesus said about the golden rule….

I have to assume that most people who pass on these types of emails are just gullible and not truly malicious, but I might be wrong.  First off you shouldn’t gossip, but if you’re going to pass on these emails verify them first.  Would you want lies spread about you?  It’s easy enough to do, just get on the internet and research the issue.  Snopes.com is a great place that focuses just on this problem – verifying urban legends.

Malicious people know the stories are lies but pass them on anyway because they feel righteous about their cause.  However, if they are Christians it doesn’t justify breaking the 9th commandment.  Whether gullible or malicious, bearing false witness is very immoral and unethical.

I’m not religious, and I have two ethical rules which I apply to this kind of problem.  First is the Golden Rule, a concept that has appeared in all religions, by all philosophers and is part of all ethical systems.  If you don’t want people spreading lies about you, don’t spread them about other people.  The second rule is much simpler – don’t lie.  It should be obvious that lying is wrong.

Now if I would ask these people why are they spreading lies they will innocently claim they are revealing the truth, and they will feel quite righteously about what they are doing.  Does spreading lies when you honestly believe they are the truth a sin?  I have to say yes, because being ignorant should be a sin too.  We live in a world of ready information, so it should be everyone responsibility to fact check anything you say bad about someone else.  In the old days it was a virtue never to say anything bad about other people, but that practice is no longer common sense.

A long time ago I read a little essay called “Rules of Thumb” about how to judge facts without having to actually look them up.  Rules of Thumb is the idea that you find facts you know and compare them against what you are trying to verify.  For example, how many gallons of water does a bathtub hold?  Most people have no idea.  But people are quite familiar with a gallon jug of milk.  It’s easier to imagine how many gallon jugs of milk can fit into a bathtub, so that can be a rule of thumb.

When getting internet gossip apply rules of thumb to it.  Any story you read in an email that conveys something not publically known about a public figure should be suspect.  Here’s one rule of thumb to use.  We live in a society of pit bull journalists that would sell their mother’s souls for a story.  If you haven’t heard in the national news the story you find in an email figure it’s a lie.  Of course it might not be, but the odd are 999 to 1 it is.  We just don’t keep secrets in this society.  If Obama had not been born in the U.S. he never would have gotten elected.  Hundreds of reporters would have snooped out that story immediately.  To believe otherwise is to be very gullible.

But if you still think a story is valid, research it on Snopes.com.  If they have investigated it and say it’s true, or could be true, feel free to pass the story on.  You might include the link to Snopes with your email.

The email I got made a big deal proclaiming both Barack and Michelle Obama had had their lawyer licenses taken away from them for dishonest actions.  The email made 11 attacks on the Obama.  It had been forwarded at least 7 times because of the quote indicators, so one person can spread gossip at a speed never known before the internet.

How do I know these are lies.  Why should I trust Snopes.com?  The wise thing is to check many sites.  There is one problem though, there are a huge number of websites with conspiracy theories about the Obamas.  If you read enough you’ll find a reasonable answer, but if you’re not looking for a reasonable answer, you’ll find plenty of fuel to ignite the gossip.  Why aren’t these web stories front and center on all the national news programs?  Again, rule of thumb?  Would any national reporter pass up such stories if they could be proven?  No, they wouldn’t.  Look at the success Woodward and Bernstein created for themselves with their stories about Nixon.

So, why all the gossip about Obama?  Edge.org has a new theory that might apply here, “The Argumentative Theory.”  Now this is probably way to subtle and abstract for thinkers who believe Obama is a Muslim born in another country.  Basically it says we aren’t reasonably people because reason isn’t part of our nature, but to argue is.  In other words, most people can’t tell shit from Shinola but they will fight to the death thinking they know the absolute truth when in fact they are quite clueless.

I’ve thought about this.  Everyone acts like they know something, but for the most part we all know very little.  Most people like to think they are smart, at least about a few pet subjects.  But here’s my last rule of thumb.  Even the most specialized subjects around have hundreds of books written on them.  Some Ph.D. specialists may have read thousands of books and journals on their expertise.  Clueless people think they know it all after reading one page on the internet.  If you don’t want to be seen as something other than a crank, don’t profess facts unless you’ve read ten comprehensive books on the subject, and that will only be the beginning point where you can say you have a minor interest in the topic.  And even then, if you read the article at Edge.org, you’ll probably have found 10 books that support your personal bias.  We really don’t have the brains for exact reasoning – just remember that you want to pass off a fact.

JWH – 5/5/11

Apple’s Dangerous Storefront Paradigm

What if you bought a Sony TV and then discovered you could only watch shows that Sony okayed ahead of time?  Furthermore, what if Sony decided that anyone wanting to create a show to broadcast to your TV had to pay Sony a fee?  What if some TVs worked with some networks but not others?  How would you feel if you wanted to watch a certain show but discovered that Sony censored that TV production?

Radios, televisions, record/tape/CD/DVD players have always been sold as machines that were universal devices.  They would work with the same content everyone was providing.  You bought a RCA television and it played the same shows as a Sears set.  A GE clock radio would pick up the same stations as any other AM/FM set.

When computers came out there were many types, with different chips and operating systems, and there was no universal system.  Then came the IBM PC in 1981, followed by PC clones, and things settled down, but not quite, because in 1984 the Apple Macintosh came out with all intentions of being different.   The Mac’s market share has always hovered around 1/20th of the PCs.  It wasn’t quite disruptive, but offered an alternative.  But if you bought a Macintosh computer you could buy any Mac compatible software you wanted.

Now, with the iPhone and iPad, and the Apple App Store, Apple is creating a paradigm shift that will shake up things and change the way we do things completely on computers.  And don’t be fooled, smartphones and tablet are computers.

Apple is changing the computer from being a general purpose device that the buyer has control over into one that’s essentially a tiny Apple storefront.  Apple wants to get a cut of the action on any program, service or content that runs on their machines.  Not only that, they want to control what services, programs and content that can be used on their machines.

This is like Samsung saying “If you want to watch The Social Network on our TVs, we get a percentage of its selling price.”  Because computers never completely became universal devices like radios, TVs and DVD players, computer makers can get away with trying something different.

What Apple is saying, we don’t want to be a computer maker anymore, we want to be a retailer that sells products for computers.  They couldn’t do this before because they didn’t have the App Store.  The App Store is a choke point that Apple can control.

Under the old paradigm if you wanted a tax program for your computer you picked out a program you liked and bought it direct from its maker, or from a mail order store like Amazon or New Egg, or a retailer like Office Depot.  Now Apple can say the only way you will get a program for your iPhone, iPad, and soon maybe your iMac is through an App Store they control, and which they charge a 30% cut.  Now some people like this paradigm shift, it does have merits, but I for one find it scary too.

For instance I was going to buy the iPad 2 as soon as it came out.  I changed my mind weeks ago when Apple announced their 30% fee.  I was wanting an iPad to read magazines on, and my first magazine subscription was going to be The New Yorker.  Right now The New Yorker is $4.99 an issue on the iPad.  It’s $2.99 a month (4 issues) on the Kindle, and $39.95 for the PC version, that includes access to the complete back run of the magazine.  I don’t know what the subscription fee will be on the iPad because Apple is just now working out the deals and technology to sell subscriptions.

Now Amazon has a choke point for Kindle users too, and I’m sure Amazon is making something for selling magazines, but I doubt it’s 30%.  But see the difference?  Under the old PC model of buying content we can deal directly with the seller.  $39.95 a year is a great deal.  It’s $3 more a year than the Kindle price, but I would get all the back issues to read while I’m a subscriber, plus I’d see the full magazine page with all it’s ads and illustrations, and not just the content and cartoons as I do on the Kindle.

I was hoping The New Yorker would provide the same deal on the iPad for $39.95, but will it when Apple wants $12 for its share?  Does Apple deserve a share?  Are they really a retail store?  Google has since claimed that sellers on the Android platform will only have to kick back 10% to them.  But is being cheaper any fairer?

See the paradigm shift coming?  Computers are becoming storefronts.  Apple tells its users that programs bought from their App Store are safer than those purchased elsewhere, but isn’t that some kind of protection racket?  And isn’t this also a kind of Monopoly too?  To be legal shouldn’t iPad users have the right to visit any application store they choose?  Imagine if Ford sold you a car but enforced where you bought your gas and oil because they claimed it was safer?

Before Apple announced their shakedown plans I had imagined having an iPad with Rhapsody Music on it.  I pictured in my head what a beautiful app Rhapsody could design for listening to music while looking at appealing visuals, like large size photos of album covers.  But will Rhapsody still develop such an app?  Many content producers are saying they might have to pull their wares from the App Store, but I don’t picture that happening.  I just see them jacking up their prices.

The New York Times plans to sell the online version of their paper for PC users for $15 a month, and charge $20 a month for iPad users.  But to be fair it’s $19.99 for Kindle users now.  If they didn’t have to go through Apple or Amazon, and Kindles and iPads were just generic devices, would The New York Times just charge $15 a month to their users?

Is having the device maker controlling a choke point on sales of content for their devices really needed?  If you buy stuff from Target at their stores or online you really need Target to manage all the stuff they sale, so they deserve making money.  But do Google and Apple really do that much to run their stores?  It’s nice to have one payment system, and it’s nice to have one installation system, but is it really worth 30%.  Their fees should be more in line with what credit card companies charge retailers.  I’d say 3% tops.  And how many retail stores can get away with a 30% mark-up – most live and profit by razor thin margins.

Whether we like it or not, tablet computers are our future, and this is a good thing.  But giving Apple, Google, and Microsoft the right to control all sales on their devices is not.  Microsoft is a dark horse in the tablet race.  What if they came out with a hands off approach, and just sold their OS to tablet makers, would that change the game?  There’s a reason why PCs dominate the market share.  They may be open to attack from hackers, but they are open.

JWH – 3/20/11

Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player

I bought my wife the Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player for Christmas to keep at her apartment where she works out of town.  My wife has never been fanatical about video quality but slowly came to appreciate Blu-ray beauty from my watching 1080p shows on my LG BD390 Blu-ray player.  Last year I had bought her a Roku box so she could stream Netflix and the Sony BDP-S570 now replaces it, because not only does the Sony play BD discs, it streams Netflix, Amazon Videos on Demand, Pandora, Youtube, and many other internet video services.   Plus it supports DLNA networking to fetch photos, music and movies off our computers.

I was reading this weekend a review comparing the Roku, Apple TV and Boxee Box devices and it made me wonder if these gadgets had much a future if televisions and Blu-ray players are going to build in the same functionality?  Then today I was helping a friend who has an older MacBook find a cable that would allow her to output Netflix streaming to her television set and we discovered the cable that would handle video and audio was $99.  I told her for $79 she could get a Roku box for streaming Internet video, or spend $20-50 more and get a Blu-ray player that also streamed Internet video.

Of course, if I was helping a friend buy a new TV, I’d recommend they pick a set that had Netflix streaming built into the television.  Many sets offer various levels of Internet support.  It doesn’t take a science fiction writer to predict the future here.  If technology can eventually stream content with Blu-ray quality – why have any external boxes at all.

The El Dorado of cable subscribers is to have a la carte channels.  As the television becomes a node on the Internet it’s easy to envision this happening.  Right now you can get several paid channels this way, Netflix, Amazon on Demand, Hulu Plus, MLB, etc.  Of course TCP/IP and the Internet isn’t structured for this, but that doesn’t mean it won’t adapt.

So the question:  What to buy now?  Last year I bought my wife the Roku for $99.  A few months later the Wii started streaming Netflix.  If we had waited we could have skipped the Roku.  Then, this year, Susan wanted a Blu-ray player, which doesn’t replace the Wii.  But if the Wii played Blu-ray discs like the Playstation, we wouldn’t have needed it.  I love Blu-ray video quality, and right now Netflix HD is very nice, but not Blu-ray 1080p.

What I’d recommend is buying the cheapest device that streams Netflix at Netflix’s HD quality, and that’s the $79 Roku XD box.  However, if you really love movies and want to enjoy Blu-ray now, I’d recommend spending $20-70 more and getting a Blu-ray player that does both.  I got the BDP-S570 for $138 before Christmas on sale.  Right now it’s commonly sold for $149.  There are Ethernet wired only BD players for under a $100 that can do this.  Units with Wi-Fi built in are about $50 more. 

The BD disc players won’t have as many Internet channels as a Roku or Boxee device, but most people will be happy with Netflix.  Look for Amazon Video on Demand and Hulu Plus if you’re willing to rent movies individually, or pay for a bunch of TV shows.  The Netflix all you can eat pay model is a much better deal though.  However, when I saw True Grit at the movies recently and wanted to see the old John Wayne version, the quickest way was to pay Amazon $2.99 to stream it, which I did and it worked great.

The lesson in all of this is the television is becoming a major Internet appliance.  The trend might even kill off the cable and satellite business, and I expect eventually people will prefer to stream content rather than buy discs.  All too often I let my Netflix discs sit for days because it’s easier to stream.

The beauty of the Roku and Boxee devices is they can be upgraded to handle more Internet channels.  Blu-ray players can too, but my LG390 only added a couple of paid services.  LG did add more services to later models, which really irked me.  I hope newer Blu-ray players will be designed like the Roku and Boxee machines to be expandable.  The first time I upgraded the Sony BDP-S570 it added several channels, and it has an expanding menu, so that’s a good sign.

JWH – 1/11/11