BlogAllAlong

If there is one eBook reader that is promising to me right now, it’s this one

It looks fancier, overall bit smaller than Amazon Kindle, cheaper, comes with 100 FREE classic eBooks, and best of all… it’s open. It can be used to view images, unsecured audio, unsecured text books, and for DRM books, you can use eBooks purchased somewhere else than Sony on them, unlike the Amazon monopoly scheme.

I will be keeping an eye on it and see how it goes.

Popularity: 14% [?]

With more restrictions, and yet more compound solution, as opposed to the Amazon separately offered services that you have to combine, Google App Engine has just recently launched as the first serious threat to Amazon Web Services. It’s a great chance I guess that you get to run your web application on the “same system that powers Google applications”, but Google’s record in providing enterprise solutions does not speak well for it. Other limitations that I didn’t like is having to use Python, while the options are much more open with Amazon Web Services. Also, Amazon web services is giving you the option to use only the parts you need of the service, while Google App Engine is designed so that you host your whole application there. Not something I may want to do until I’m sure about it. I would’ve much preferred something similar to what Amazon is offering. Gives more flexibility, and it also means that I can go with one option, if I don’t like it, I can with some work switch to the other. The service is still in limited version for first 10,000 developers (already taken), and there is no pricing yet for full version. They’re still trying to get feedback and measure performance it seems.

For some more discussion of the service, checkout TechCrunch blog, and if you are interested, you should also subscribe to the new Google App Engine Blog, which surprisingly still has zero subscribers… Including me!

UPDATE: After going through the Google Videos on the new App Engine, I came to know I was wrong assuming it an Amazon Web Service competitor. The thing is, Google is aiming to provide a framework for people to easily deploy their apps without going through the normal deployment procedure hassles, in addition to utilizing and hosting their app on the same framework Google uses.  It is not meant (as they mentioned) for doing heavy computation. With Amazon however, you can use their services for doing the heavy computation your normal host would not be able to handle. Google is not meant for this. It’s meant to host your normal application. Google App Engine may be suitable in cases where the app requires to expand in storage capacity. This will become clear when they announce their enterprise app engine packages.

Popularity: 38% [?]

I got this weird Amazon suggestion below:

I tried reading it several times and what they are saying is, customers who bought Programming Collective Intelligence also purchased Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Making Web 2.0 Work, which is due to be released in 2008! This is either some cheap marketing or they are considering pre-orders as purchases :). Either ways, the book seems worthy of adding to Wish List and keeping an eye on rating. I’m not gonna rush and pre-order it though. It won’t reach here in time anyways!

Popularity: 36% [?]

So Amazon have revealed their hope for revolution of eBook reading, portable reader called Kindle. Ever since the announcement and people have been submitting bad and worse reviews. Most from people who did not even buy it, but just can’t bare the concept of paying $400 for a book reader that if someday breaks, you would lose all your collected books. Currently Kindle has 3/5 Star rating on Amazon after it was 2.5 only. But what about the sales? Amazon are promoting this thing like crazy and so far I haven’t heard a lot about the sales. So let’s check Amazon Sales rank for this item.

Ohhh… It’s # 1 seller…

On Kindle Store! What a nice way to hide sales figures ;). Not sure if it’s intentional or not, but this sales rank is just useless this way.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Just when Amazon announced their new Kindle with strong front page message from Jeff Bezos, and thought they are going to change the way people look at books with their product, soon the Kindle page got flooded with bad reviews that brought it to 2.5/5! A total of 558 reviews as of now. I remember seeing it the first day and I was excited to have one thing for all, looking at the size and posted weight. Yeah I’d buy it I thought. But then the number of bad reviews was so high I said to my self: “This is an old product then! Why the hell are they so happy about it now?” But soon after I realized its all new reviews, and many from people who did not even try it.

But looking at where people are coming from, they do have a point. Several points actually, and I will add one my self also:

• Price Tag: This might be something out of their hand, I’m not sure about it. But in the end, you as a consumer are paying $400 for a way to buy and read books. A single non-transferable way!
• As I said, it’s only one way of reading. Say it got stolen, broken, or it turns out to be a piece of crap after all. Or there is a new Apple reader in market and you are just crazy enough Apple fan that you have to buy and use it, or you will lose your privilege of being called Apple fanboy. Can you do that? No, not without losing all the books you bought, as all these contents are protected by DRM and are of specific Amazon file types that you cannot move around. Most you can hope for is Amazon will send you new similar copy only working on Kindle. And you will have to wish only Kindle doesn’t run out of business. And, sooner or later, this product will have to be replaced by superior one, only God knows if it will be backward compatible.
• You can’t lend it to someone else to read. Also, you can’t resell it.
• EDVO network: I am not sure how good and reliable is that but at least in Kuwait it’s not cheap at all.
• Listed Book Price: When you enter the market with yet to be adapted technology, and you are adding another variable to the formula with the DRM and content locking to your hardware, you have to be more persuading on the outcome of it. However what you see is that Amazon tries to show the difference between Kindle and List Price as something like $24.99-$9.99 = $15 saving, like The Almost Moon for example. However this ignores the fact that the selling price for the hard-cover book on Amazon is $13.73 only! Thus the saving is less than $4. I’d say it should be cheaper as all my contents there have no guarantee if being immortal. I could lose them all at once.

In the end, I’m just thinking. What if this same exact product had the name iBook (Trademark Jobs don’t steal it as you did with iPhone!). Do you think people’s opinion and reaction would be different? I’d say it must be out of stock already and 5/5 is just not enough for it :).

Popularity: 35% [?]

For months and months Amazon have been promoting the anticipated Assassin’s Creed video game for pre-orders. Usually, pre-ordering the item means reserving your copy for the release date to receive it ASAP. I did just that, and I even registered to Amazon prime to enjoy FREE 2 day so called shipping. I did that only to receive such a silly email from Amazon saying:

“We wanted to let you know that there is an unexpected delay with your
video game order (Order# 104-3371841-0424220) you placed on November 12 2007 02:32 PST. Unfortunately, we are unable
to ship the product(s) as soon as we expected and need to provide you with a new estimate of when
they may be delivered:

“Assassin’s Creed” [Video Game]
Estimated arrival date: 11/16/2007

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this delay.”

What? What am I supposed to do with this stupid apology? I sent them an email to clarify why the hell the item is still Shipping Soon (as of yesterday and up till now!). Their reply came simple:

“Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

I’ve checked your order and can confirm that we are currently
preparing it for shipment.

Please know that we dont offer release date delivery for the
item “Assassin’s Creed”.

We still expect to ship it in time for delivery by the date listed
in Your Account: November 16, 2007″

Very overwhelming right? The fact they still claim they (expect) to ship it IN TIME for the date listed in my account. Nov 16! Let’s just review facts here, as they seem to change the shipping date however they like and then refer back to it as evidence. The item was pre-ordered, expected to be shipped on Nov 13. On Nov 14 only, it’s status changed to Shipping Soon. Today, and as I am writing this post right now, it’s still shipping soon. I.e., almost 24 hours and it’s still shipping soon. While in fact, today should’ve been the worst delivery estimate, they are still hoping to make it the best shipping estimate. And since it’s shipping soon, I cannot even cancel the order. I wonder why they listed it for pre-order if they don’t have enough of it.

Also, for me, it’s not only a matter of convenience. I am grouping my items as one shipment for the courier forwarding company to send over to Kuwait. Alas, now I am paying an extra over $10 for the previlige of receiving late shipment. But you know what? I think it’s my mistake I didn’t listen to my friend’s advise about GameStop. I’m just not sure how they will handle delivery to US courier forwarding companies, and international price is high.

[UPDATE]: They did come back to me with a bit long and polite email offering $5 credit. It’s not much, and won’t cover the delay and separate shipment cost as they know and stated it, but what can you do? Fine. At least they admit the problem was from their end this time. The item is out for delivery now. Can’t wait to get my hands on it :)

Popularity: 34% [?]

I am playing with some new Amazon Associates widgets that I came across today. These are the new ones to me:

• Unbox Video: Lists some videos to play from. Nice feature, but it’s too wide to fit into a blog, and there isn’t large variety of videos. For example, I chose documentaries and biographies, but ended up having only movie films showing. Why? Simply, no variety or it’s still buggy. Both ways I can’t risk showing any type of video on my site.
• Slideshow: I love this kind of interactive ad. You can fade in from one item to another. Again, minimum size is 336×280. Not suitable for a blog.
• Product Cloud: The typical cloud of words, bigger is most popular. I don’t like that type of ad very much.
• My Favorites: This is what I used to list down another list of What I’m Reading. So far, I prefer the old links as they are faster to load and take less space. What do you think?
• Wish List: If you want everyone to know your wish list. Not that it’s very different than my Favorite list, but I just don’t feel like letting people in. Ofcourse my wife sneaks on my list from my PC I can do nothing about it :(.
• Quick Linker: This might be interesting for some. Installing the widget on your blog/site will enable you to use custom HTML tags for quick associate linking to Amazon like this:
  • <a type=”amzn” >Harry Potter</a> –> Links to Amazon.com search results page for “Harry Potter”
  • <a type=”amzn” search=”Harry Potter”>My favorite hero</a> –> The link reads “My favorite hero” and points to a search results page for the phrase”Harry Potter”.
• Search: On the fly AJAX based search results. Width can fit sidebar of a blog.

As to how is the overall experience with Amazon conversions? Not so great at all. I just have it there become it doesn’t harm for one, plus I want to list my recommended items and guide the site visitors to buying it. What do you think?

Popularity: 56% [?]