Trouble is afoot in the land of Internet domains. Specifically, in the land of “generic top-level-domains”—or as they are known by non-geeks, the letters that come after the dot.
Retail giant Amazon has launched a bid to buy 76 new domains, including “.like” “.shop” “.author.” and the particularly contentious, “.pin.” These domains will not be Read More
If you finished all the books on your Kindle last night and wanted to download more, you probably would have been out of luck. The “buy” buttons for Kindle books disappeared, prompting panic and conspiracy theories–especially in light of the fact that only the big six publishers: Random House, Penguin, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and, Read More
We recently noticed an interesting reader-submitted review on Amazon for Jessica Grose’s new novel Sad Desk Salad. Slate editor David Plotz (Ms. Grose’s former boss, as she was a senior editor at Slate and most recently wrote for the site in August 2012) submitted a review just like any other normal book-buyer. “I am Read More
Libor-ated: U.S. prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges this fall in the Libor-rigging scandal, and employees at more than one bank are said to be implicated, Bloomberg reports. (Earlier in the week, John Carney looked at what types of criminal charges might be filed, and writes that decades-long sentences could be at Read More
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is famous for changing the way we shop for books (and a lot of other stuff), shaking up entire industries in the process. He’s less well known for “The 10,000 Year Clock,” the 200-foot-tall clock designed to outlast human civilization, into which he’s sunk $42 M., according to the Wall Street Journal Read More
Computers. What are they good for? To make human errors more pervasive and therefore funnier, for one. Consider this Nook version of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in which, according to blogger Philip Howard (hat tip Ars Technica), every instance of the word “kindled” has been replaced with “Nookd.” Read More
A scientific survey done by the crack researchers at Amazon.com revealed yesterday that the city that reads the most (i.e. buys the most books from Amazon.com) happens to be Alexandria, V.A. Though it should be noted that quality counts a little over quantity: the majority of books bought–er–read by the D.C. suburbanites happen to be Fifty Shades of Grey-style romance novels. Not exactly The Art of Fielding, if you catch our drift.
But who are we to judge? Out of the top cities listed for voracious reading Amazon.com accounts, New York didn’t even break the Top 20. Read More
Shortly after Amazon yanked 5,000 Independent Publishers Group titles off its virtual shelves in a contract dispute, the retail giant offered an olive branch of sorts to the world of letters: a $25,000 grant to the Los Angeles Review of Books, the non-profit online literary review that planted a flag in the scorched earth of Sunday books supplements in 2011.
“It’s a pittance for them,” said Steve Wasserman, former editor of the shuttered Los Angeles Times Book Review, who nonetheless applauded Amazon’s recognition of LARB.
“Criticism is the oxygen of literature,” he said. “I’m happy to see the establishment of something of really grand ambition.” Read More
Big isn’t always better!
Best Buy did a monstrous belly flop in the pool of big retailers last Thursday, reporting a $2.6 billion quarter loss and sending tidal waves to similar retailers. Best Buy, along with many of its retailing rivals, is shifting their focus to opening smaller locations. We are facing down the end of the big box story, according to Bloomberg. Read More
Fordham University published their Fourth Quarter 2011 V-Positive Report, which measures the Consumer Value Index. The methodology is based off of a few psychological theories that reflect the “understanding of the motivation to consume.” In short: a thousand people are surveyed at the end of the year and answer several attributes for each of the seven domains. Read More
