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TKC 250 Vivienne Roumani

Vivienne RoumaniDirector of “Out of Print”

Interview Starts at 16:37

He [Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos] wanted to give me a half an hour–he gave me 45 minutes. And it was really an amazing interview. He was very bright, very warm, very gracious, and you got the sense that he really wanted to do good. That’s the sense you got–of course, still being a brilliant businessman, and those are not mutually exclusive.

Show Notes and Links:

Intro

Belmont Hill School

News

“Amazon is Going to Buy Liquavista” by Nate Hoffelder – January 21, 2013

“Confirmed: Amazon Bought Liquavista — Color Kindle to Follow?” by Nate Hoffelder – May 13, 2013

The Electrowetting Display - January 2, 2013 video of Liquivista display

Liquavista screen demonstrated outdoors - May 18, 2010 video of Liquivista display

“Did Samsung Just Give Amazon a Way to Fight Apple?” by Haydn Shaughnessy at Forbes – May 15, 2013

“U.S. judge sets 2013 trial date for Apple e-book lawsuit” by Basil Katz at Reuters – June 22, 2012

“U.S. Now Paints Apple as ‘Ringmaster’ in Its Lawsuit on E-Book Price-Fixing” by Edward Wyatt and Nick Wingfield in The New York Times - May 14, 2013

Filings at Department of Justice web site related to U.S. v. Apple et al case

Plaintiffs’ Response to Apple’s Pretrial Memorandum of Law (PDF) – filed May 14, 2003 at Department of Justice website

Exhibit F - redacted emails in Apple case (PDF) filed May 15, 20013

“Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Employee Says Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS) NOOK Deal ‘Not Happening’”by David Woodburn at Insider Monkey – May 13, 2013

“Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase For $1 Billion” by Erick Eldon and Ingrid Eldon at TechCrunch – May 8, 2013

Tech Tips

AT&T Data plan

Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ with 4G LTE - 32GB with special offers – $399

Interview with Vivienne Roumani

Out of Print web site

The Last Jews of Libya web site

Content 

Suggestions for Spending your 500 Amazon Coins on your Kindle Fire:

Mindmaps by Endare – $3.99 at Apps for Android store

Insight Timer by Spotlight Six Sofware – $1.99 at Apps for Android

Where’s My Water? game by Disney – 99 cents at Apps for Android

Osmos HD by Hemisphere Games – $2.99 at Apps for Android

“Breaking news! Amazon launches Kindle Love Stories podcast” by Joyce Lamb in USA Today – May 12, 2013

Kindle Love Stories podcast web site

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

The Indy bag by Waterfield -Thanks, Eolake!

Next Week’s Guest

Kevin Franco of Entrhill

Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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Posted 17 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Kindle § Kindle News § Podcast ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Amazon Coins Arrive on Your Kindle Fire

Screen Shot 2013-05-13 at 9.15.46 AMI’m at my parents’ home, without my Kindle Fires, so I can’t check this out personally yet. But Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com’s landing page is announcing that everyone with a Kindle Fire will find 500 Amazon Coins, worth $5, in their account.

“You can use the coins to buy apps and games, as well as items inside apps and games,” Amazon’s CEO writes. “And if you want to purchase additional coins for yourself or your family, you get to do so at a discount.”

So the coins apparently won’t help you buy your next Kindle book to read on your Fire, but there are indeed lots of fun games to try at the Appstore for Android. Two of my favorites are a game named Cut the Rope, which will use up only 99 of your Amazon Coins, and Mindmaps by Endare, which is the tool I use for planning out each episode of The Kindle Chronicles. Mindmaps will set you back 399 Amazon Coins.

I see there is a new way to pay for apps that appears at the right of an app or game. You can click the radio button for “Spend Amazon Coins” in addition to the usual “Use 1-Click Settings,” which is how you can still pay using “real” money.

Click here for the February 5, 2013, press release announcing the program.

And don’t spend all your Amazon Coins in one place!

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Posted 13 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Blog § Kindle Fire Deal § News ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Doug Rushkoff’s Preparation for Colbert Pays off Handsomely


If you heard my interview with Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock, in TKC 244 last month, you know he planned to spend two full days getting ready for his encounter with Stephen Colbert. Well, it looks as if his preparation paid off, because the interview on May 7 went very well indeed. 

It was a lightning round of ideas, manic theorizing and hilarious parries. At one point Colbert illustrated the interruptibility of our present-shocked lives by taking out his iPhone and tweeting a photo of Rushkoff making a point. “I want to send this out to my friend Lou-Dog,” Colbert said.

Colbert’s iPhone made another appearance when the host described it as a friend he can even take to the toilet, an image that cracked Rushkoff up and left him speechless. And so it went for nearly five minutes, with a dramatic ending that left Colbert not knowing what to say.

“Look at investors today,” Rushkoff began. “They don’t invest in a stock in order for it to make money in the future.  They try to invest in some kind of derivative that is the stock in the future. You buy a stock 30 days from now. Derivatives have gotten so big they’ve actually bought the stock exchange. The New York Stock Exchange was bought by its own abstraction. It was bought by its own futures.”

Brow furrowed, Colbert was following along pretty well at this point. “So it’s like a snake buying the tail that’s in its own mouth,” he offered.

“Yeah, by an abstraction of the tail that’s in its own mouth,” Rushkoff corrected.

Colbert: “So not even the real tail.”

Rushkoff: “Not even the real tail.”

Three seconds of silence pass.

Colbert raises his right forefinger, grins, and declares the round over with this:

“You just blew my mind.”

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Posted 11 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Blog § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

TKC 249 Guy Kawasaki

Guy

Founder of Alltop, 

author of APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book

Interview Starts at 13:55

People say, “Well, Guy, if you’re successful and more people become self-publishers there’s going to be more crap out there.” That’s true…. You could make the case that the cave-in started when Gutenberg had a printing press. Up till then you only had scribes working for the Pharaohs and the Pope and rich people. Let’s just face it: that horse is out of the barn, and that horse is procreating already, so you ain’t going to put it back in the barn. So now more people will write, and at least now rather than six editorial committees in New York deciding what’s worth reading, now the crowd decides what’s worth reading.

Show Notes and Links:

Intro

Susan Carlson’s quilts

The Harpswell Inn, founded in 1761

News

Kindle for iOS update - more on accessibility improvements from Peter Tighe in Austin, Texas

“Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase for $1 Billion” by Eric Eldon and Ingred Lunden at Techcrunch – May 8, 2013

“Robbie Bach’s four startup lessons from Xbox and Zune” by Todd Bishop at Geekwire – May 11, 2012

“Amazon Making Smartphone with 3D Screen, Dedicated Audio Streaming Device, WSJ Reports” by Darrell Etherington at TechCrunch – May 9, 2013

Tech Tips

Goodreads blog

The Kindle Chronicles group’s tech support thread at Goodreads

Interview with Guy Kawaski

APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki – $9.99 on Kindle

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki – $9.99 on Kindle

What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us by Guy Kawasaki – .99 on Kindle

Web site for APE

Entrhill book-sale cards

CreateSpace print on demand by Amazon

If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence, and Spirit by Brenda Ueland – $3.99 on Kindle

Content

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon – $7.55 on Kindle

Saints Preserve Us! Everything You Need to Know About Every Saint You’ll Ever Need by Sean kelly and Roesmary Rogers – $12.99 on Kindle

Living Dangerously: American Women Who Risked Their Lives for Adventure by Doreen Rappaport – $6.99 on Kindle

Give Her This Day: A Daybook of Women’s Words edited and compiled by Lois Stiles Edgerly – $14.38 at the Google Play store

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Vivienne Roumani, producer-director of the new documentary Out of Print

Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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Posted 10 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Joy of Reading § Kindle § Kindle News § Podcast ‡ Comments (3) ° Tagged: ,

Sam Tanenhaus Interview – Video Excerpt

This is a video excerpt from my May 1, 2013, Skype interview with Sam Tanenhaus, newly named as a writer-at-large at The New York Times after nine years as editor of The New York Times Book Review and host of the long-running Book Review podcast. The full audio interview is in Episode 248 of The Kindle Chronicles.

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Posted 09 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Hey Mom! Here’s a Heart-Warming $20 Kindle Fire HD 7″ Discount for Mothers’ Day

Mom Kindle Fire

I just spotted this Mothers Day special at Amazon.com, good in the U.S. through Mothers Day on May 12, 2013: $20 off any of the Kindle Fire HD 7″ models, as follows, showing the new, discounted prices:

To receive the discount, enter the discount code FIRE4MOM at checkout.

The discount is good while supplies last, and there is a limit of one per customer. The code doesn’t work for a one-click purchase, so make sure you buy the Kindle Fire 7″ using regular checkout.

As usual, I have used my Amazon Associates code in creating the links above to the products, so if you purchase a Kindle Fire for your mother from these links you will also be helping The Kindle Chronicles with commission revenue–without affecting the price you pay for the Fire. Thank you, and please give Mom our best!

 

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Posted 05 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Blog § Kindle Fire Deal ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged:

TKC 248 Sam Tanenhaus

Sam TanenhausNew York Times writer at large, former editor of The Times’ Sunday Book Review, and longtime host of The Book Review podcast

Interview Starts at 16:29

When I say, “Well, Mr. Amis, it seems to me this is what your novel does,” and he says, “Well no. That’s exactly what it doesn’t do”–part of me cringes, but I know as a listener I’m thinking, “Now Martin Amis is going to set me straight.” The listener I think empathizes with the host a little bit. One is the surrogate for the listener, not the debating rival of the guest. And so to keep the questions short and simple…let the listener open up whatever direction they want to get. If they say something that makes me sound silly, I probably am silly, and if the listener is deriving something from it, all the better.

 Sponsor: Try GotoMeeting with HD Faces Today Free for 30 Days!

Show Notes and Links:

Intro

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor – $12.99 on Kindle

Emily Bazelon’s review of My Beloved World in the New York Times Sunday Book Review

News

Jeff Bezos: Boy Billionaire 2000 History Channel documentary (41 minutes)

“Long Live the Book: An Interview with Vivienne Roumani, Director of the Indie Film, ‘Out of Print’” by Loren Kleinman at IndieReader – April 24, 2013

Out of Print trailer and background

Kindle Kids TV Commercial

Tech Tips

Tom Semple’s help with the updated Kindle for iOS app for text to speech

George from Tulsa’s tip on using an iPad charger for Kindle devices

Interview with Sam Tanenhaus

Book Review Podcast

“Pamela Paul Named New York Times Book Review Editor” by David Freedlander in The Daily Beast – April 9, 2013

Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1997) by Sam Tanenhaus – $15.99 on Kindle

The Death of Conservatism: The Movement and its Consequences (2009) by Sam Tanenhaus – $9.99 on Kindle

Content

The Banks of Certain Rivers: A Novel by Jon Harrison – $2.99 on Kindle (Also available in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library if you have an Amazon Prime Membership)

Option to Kill: A Nathan McBride Novel by Andrew Peterson (Kindle Serial & Kindle Owners’ Lending Library) – $3.99

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Guy Kawasaki, co-author of APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book

Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Send to Kindle
Posted 04 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Kindle § Kindle News § Podcast ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , ,

A Great Deal Today from O’Reilly Media!

Screen Shot 2013-05-03 at 12.37.18 PM

I love this: O’Reilly Media today (May 3, 2013) is celebrating what they call “Day Against DRM” by offering ALL their eBooks and videos at 50 percent off or 60 percent off orders over $100. Click here to browse their titles. Use discount code DRM2013.

O’Reilly has long championed DRM-free books, and it’s a movement which is picking up momentum, with good reason. I just interviewed Guy Kawasaki here in Denver for next week’s podcast, and you should hear the weary disgust in his voice when he talks about the futility of trying to lock books up with DRM.

This sale ends tonight at 11:59 PM Pacific time.

O’Reilly’s offerings are mainly in the technology area–no romance novels or mysteries on the list. But their books are top-quality resources for just about any topic you might need to learn. I picked up one on paper a few years ago, Podcasting Hacks: Tips & Tools for Blogging Out Loud by Jack D. Herrington that I still find useful, even though it was published in 2005. I see that one is only available in print, so you can’t get it for half price. But I see there’s another one that might be of interest, Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac by Andy Williams Affleck selling for $10 in digital format, including .mobi for the Kindle, so if you are a Mac wizard you can grab that one for $5 today and start your own show!

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Posted 03 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Blog § Book Deals § Joy of Reading § News ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

A terrific temporarily free eBook about Chicago that you can read on your Kindle Fire, in only 10 steps…

You Were Never in ChicagoHere’s a sweet deal from the University of Chicago Press: You Were Never in Chicago, a writerly portrait of the Windy City by Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, is free for the first five days in May. Roger Ebert called the book, published in October of last year, “a poetic mosaic of his [Steinberg's] life and the life of Chicago–past, present, real, imagined.”

Sadly, the free promotion is not available for reading on an E Ink Kindle, and you can only read it on a Kindle Fire if you have a free Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) account and have downloaded an Android app named Bluefire. And in order to download Bluefire, you have to first download a third-party app named GetJar. If you’re with me so far, here are the steps that will get you to reading this fine book for free on your Kindle Fire, if you do it by May 5, 2013:

1. From the dropdown settings menu of your Kindle Fire, tap on More, then Device. Make sure “Allow Installation of Applications from unknown sources” is On.

2. Point your Fire’s browser to http://m.getjar.com .

3. Enter “GetJar” in the search field. Tap on the yellow “Free” button next to “GetJar Apps.” Then tap on “Download” and follow the steps for installing and opening the GetJar application on your Kindle Fire.

4. Open the GetJar app and search for “Bluefire.” Tap on the yellow “Free” button next to “Bluefire Reader.” Then tap on “Download” and follow the steps to install and open the app.

5. Authorize your Bluefire reader with Adobe Digital Editions, as indicated within the Bluefire app. If you do not have an ADE account, you will be prompted to set one up, I believe, but it’s been a long time since I created my own ADE account, so I’m not exactly sure how that process works.

5. With your Fire’s browser, navigate to http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html

6. Enter your email address, then click on the “Get E-Book” button.

7. On your Fire, open the email that you will receive from The University of Chicago Press. In the email, lick on the link to download your eBook.

8. On the page where you will land, scroll down to “Note for Kindle Fire users” and click on the link.

9. Since you already have Bluefire Reader on your Kindle Fire, simply tap on the link labeled “download this file.”

10. Complete action using “Download to Bluefire Reader.”

Start reading! Here is a sample from the first essay, titled “Manus manum lavat:”

There is a tendency to denigrate the present, whatever it is, because we know so much about it, while romanticizing the past, whatever it was, because its less pleasant details grow fuzzier with each passing year, accentuating the cherished highlights even more. This impulse can be particularly acute for newcomers, who missed the great era of the day before yesterday, arriving, as they must, in the confusing, compromised swirl of today, and so can be left with a permanent sense that the party is always ending just as they show up. The party is never now.

It’s good to see a university press making a popular book available in a free promotion like this, even if the process is far from optimal for the eReader platform with by far the biggest share of the market. If you have any questions about this procedure, please feel free to leave them here in comments, or you can send me an email at PodChronicles AT Gmail dot Com.

If you are interested in the book enough to purchase it for your Kindle, without going through all these steps, it’s available at the Kindle Store for $8.10.

5/2/13 UPDATE: Via Twitter follower @chexrex, I was reminded this morning that you can read this book on an iOS device using the free Bluefire app on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.  I just tried it, and apparently I had enough extra seats in Adobe Digital Editions to authorize my iPad mini for Bluefire and download the book. Sweet.

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Posted 01 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Blog § Free Book § Kindle ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Kindle for iOS update adds new accessibility features for blind and visually impaired

Amazon this morning announced a major update for Kindle for iPhone and iPad, making it easier for blind and visually impaired readers to use the Kindle iOS apps.

If you have the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPad, you will see an update for it this morning, to version 3.7. I made the update on my iPhone and iPad mini. The changes are not readily apparent to a reader who is not using the VoiceOver feature in the device settings. You turn VoiceOver on by going to Settings->General->Accessibility and tapping on VoiceOver. It’s easy to get lost in the voice commands if you are not used to them, so I will be looking for reviews of the new capability from those who depend on VoiceOver and understand its details.

The press release states that the new accessibility features “will be added to other Kindle apps in the future.”

Here is the complete text of the release, which hit my inbox today at 7:14 am Mountain Time:

Amazon Bringing New Accessibility Features to Free Kindle Reading Apps

Kindle for iPhone and iPad is the first Kindle app to receive the new accessibility features

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May. 1, 2013– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today announced new accessibility features for the Kindle reading app, making it easier than ever for blind and visually impaired customers to navigate their Kindle libraries, read and interact with their books, and more. These new features are available starting today on Kindle for iOS, and accessibility enhancements will be available on additional platforms in the future.

“We’re excited to introduce these new features to our Kindle for iOS app, making it easier than ever for our blind and visually impaired customers to access the vast selection of over 1.8 million books in the Kindle Store on their iPhone or iPad,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “With this update, we’re also making customer-favorite features—such as X-Ray, End Actions, sharing, highlighting and bookmarking—more accessible. We look forward to continuing to develop and extend our accessibility features on Kindle Fire and our other Kindle apps.”

New accessibility features of the Kindle app enable blind and visually impaired customers to:

  • Read aloud over 1.8 million titles available in the Kindle Store using Apple’s VoiceOver technology. Over 300,000 of these books are exclusive to the Kindle Store. Over 900,000 books are less than $4.99; over 1.5 million are less than $9.99.
  • Seamlessly navigate within their library or within a book, with consistent title, menu and button names; navigate to a specific page within a book and sort books in the library by author or title.
  • Read character-by-character, word-by-word, line-by-line, or continuously, as well as move forward or backward in the text.
  • Search for a book within their library or search within their book and navigate to specific text.
  • Add and delete notes, bookmarks, and highlights.
  • Use customer-favorite features like X-Ray, End Actions and sharing on Facebook and Twitter.
  • Look up words in the dictionary and Wikipedia.
  • Customize the reading experience including changing the font, text size, background color, margin, and brightness.
  • Use iOS accessibility features like Zoom, Assistive Touch, and Stereo to Mono, as well as peripheral braille displays.

Here’s some early feedback on the updated Kindle app:

  • “I very much appreciate the effort put forth to make Kindle more accessible for the blind. The new iOS App is easy and fun to use. I found the functionalities to my liking and above my initial expectations, with the ease of use being my favorite. Frankly, due to continued vision loss and vision changes, I hadn’t read very much at all. Now, I’ve read more books in the past few weeks than in the last five years – ‘Thank you.’” – Kevin D. Daniel, The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.
  • “The ability to highlight, jump to pages and look up words or research phrases from a book is fabulous. Enhancements like these serve as great equalizers for a community of individuals whose access to the printed word has been severely limited. As an avid reader in her sixties, I am honored and excited to see and test these changes.” – Marlaina Lieberg, Retired Assistive Technology Teacher
  • “I’m thrilled to see the effort and attention to detail that Amazon is putting into the accessibility of the Kindle app for the iPhone. This greatly increases its usability by people who are blind and benefits students, professionals and anyone else wishing to read electronically and stay current with the mainstream.” – Peggy Martinez, The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.

These new accessibility features are available first on the Kindle app for iOS and accessibility features will be added to other Kindle apps in the future. Customers can download the new Kindle for iOS app for free from the App Store on iPad, iPhone or iPod touch or athttp://www.itunes.com/appstore. Blind and visually impaired customers can also choose Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin, a free application for Windows PCs.

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Posted 01 May 2013 † Len Edgerly § Blog § Kindle News ‡ Comments (0) °

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