141–150 of 199 posts
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But amazon have no problem selling me ebooks and audiobooks even thou in am located outside the us.
Sure, because those books have rights to be sold in your geo. OR, your account is based in the US (billing address).
I have not yet been declined the opportunity to buy a ebook so it's strange that the rules for renting is different.
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I can fully understand your sentiment, and to some degree emotionally connect with it, but rationally: my entire bookshelf of computer science and literary classics has gone untouched since my initial read through the vast majority of books. I keep looking around and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the "ownership" aspect of books, or a lot of stuff in general. (Having moved three times during the last six years, mov…
This may sound weird, but I actually love staring at my bookshelf. I often will go, pick up a book I haven't thought about in a while, and read it again. I've filled it with (mostly) timeless technical manuals, plate picture books (like pictures of the cosmos, airplanes and things like that), plenty of sci-fi, flight instruction manuals, foreign language dictionaries and other odds and ends. There are plenty of books…
Latency of recall affects recombination/creativity. Same reason why native apps have a perceived UX advantage over web-based apps, even milliseconds can make a difference. Typing search terms or paging through book covers is not the same.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/remembering-as-an-e...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-...
iBeacon could lead to physical objects that can be spatially arranged and use for search navigation.
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Was wondering if this could replace my Safari Books Online subscription, and the answer to that is a resounding 'no'.
I use Safari heavily and I've been hoping some sort of competitor would come along. It's not that that I dislike Safari, merely that I expect competition would push for a better product. The interface has barely changed in as long as I can remember with the same old clunky flash and limited search. It took years for the mobile app to go from horrendous to tolerable and it remains quite bad. Giving 'Online' the same v…
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Shall we also get off thine lawn? Having big stacks of books in your home is a relatively recent phenomenon. People used to borrow them from the library or circulate them from person to person. Mass availability of inexpensive books has only been with us for 100 years or so. How do you know Jeff Bezos didn't tweak a couple of sentences in your Kindle copy of Catch 22? I don't know, but I do know that detecting such a…
"Get off my lawn" is an intellectually lazy argument. George Lucas has already famously done repeated "updates" to Star Wars. If it existed only in subscription form, you'd never be able to see the original.
I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…
I think the "erosion" you observe is simply the phenomenon that many people genuinely prefer subscription models to one-time purchases, or perhaps they prefer to not manage their own files, syncing, etc. I don't think there's anything bad about that.
Unfortunately it looks like the Lending Library (which comes with Prime membership) still only works on true Kindle devices. I wonder if this is a licensing issue, or just a deliberate choice on Amazon's part.
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It's not even laws, it's just contracts. Which, if parties were motivated, could be rewritten.
"Please visit us again when it is available in your country." makes it sound like they are motivated to rewrite them. But you can't just rewrite everything at once. I understand the frustration that people outside the US feel when a new service is launched as US-only first but you have to start somewhere. And a US-based company is most likely to start at home and then branch out.
Motivation to rewrite is often tied to money. No money? No motivation.
Which is why some people in "remote places" don't really have many qualms about piracy. If it's not available at any price, what _should_ I do??
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I hear you on this, and am in sympathy with your point. But this bothers me less than Amazon selling Kindle books does, because at least this is clearly marked as rental. All your points are just as true about the Kindle books that Amazon sells to people -- you lose the right of first sale( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine ), so you can't re-sell or lend your books; they're tied to a specific DRM sche…
they're tied to a specific DRM scheme; I have an ebook available through Amazon and opted to have no DRM. I'm pretty sure this is still up to the author/publisher. I just got an E-mail about Kindle Unlimited and it had a link to make my book eligible. However, to do so you have to enroll the book in Kindle Select (or whatever it's called) and that requires that the book not be available from any other outlets. Well,…
If Amazon tries to use (monopoly) Segment A of their business to impose conditions on (emerging) Segment B, it won't help adoption or regulation.
http://www.dw.de/german-cartel-office-ups-pressure-on-amazon...
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/brief/05_2013/amaz_deuk....
I love the idea, but the selection is not good enough (for me) yet. I keep an Amazon wishlist as a "reading queue" and none of the 60 books (technical, business, pop-psych) in it were available on Kindle Unlimited. I usually buy 2-3 Kindle books a month at around $9/per, so I would definitely use this service if the selection improves. I kind of wonder if Amazon could get away with charging $9/month for any book they…