e-Books Outsell Hard Copies on Christmas Day

I came across an article through Digg claiming that e-books outsold hard copy books on Amazon on Christmas day.

I bought a Sony Reader recently so I've been keeping an eye on developments with e-books. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, I've been reading The Long Tail, and there's a lot of material in the book on the advantages of digital distribution for retailers. It'll be interesting to see whether this was just an anomaly or the beginning of a move towards consumers buying e-books more than hard copies.

Calais

I've been doing some research for a report I have to do on the semantic web and I came across this ZDNet blog post on how Oracle will be offering support for Thomson Reuter's Calais service. Calais is a service that generates semantic metadata. It looks interesting and the site is worth a visit.

This video gives a brief overview of the service.

No Bricks-and-Mortar Stores for Amazon

I posted earlier in the week on Amazon's plan to open bricks-and-mortar stores. Silicon Republic carried a story on Tuesday reporting that Amazon have made an offical denial in response to the Sunday Times article.

It's too bad that this doesn't seem to be going ahead - it would have been interesting to see how opening bricks-and-mortar stores would have impacted on their business model.

Murdoch vs. Google - Sunday Business Show/Wall Street Journal

Today FM's Sunday Business Show had a short piece yesterday on Rupert Murdoch's conflict with Google.

The whole show is nearly an hour long so you may want to skip forward to the relevant bit at around 54 minutes in. (The first few minutes might be worth a listen too, because Amazon gets a mention in the show's investment advice section.)

They refer to a Wall Street Journal article that Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote during the week outlining his take on the future of media (interestingly, the WSJ is owned by Murdoch).

Amazon Move to Bricks-and-Mortar

The Sunday Times has an interesting article on Amazon's secret search for property. The article says that Amazon plan to begin opening bricks-and-mortar stores, operating these as collection points for customers who don't want their goods delivered to their homes. It will be interesting to see how they design and locate the physical stores. They could end up locating them in retail parks and maybe having a superficially similar layout to Argos stores.

I wonder if they'll open one in Cork at any stage (Mahon Point or Blackpool please!).

PlinkArt

Silicon Republic has an interesting article about Plink, an Irish firm that just won a prize as part of the Google Android Developer Challenge.

Their product, PlinkArt, is is a "visual search engine", a sort of a visual equivalent of Shazam or Midomi. It allows you to photograph a piece of art and get information on that piece returned to your smartphone.

It looks pretty cool, and it's nice to hear of an Irish firm doing well.

Update

Just a quick update. Things have been a bit chaotic with UCC going the way of Atlantis and I've got exams to study for, so I'm putting the posts on The Long Tail on hold for a while.

I'll still try to put up content over the next few weeks, but it's going to be pretty brief stuff.

Hopefully I'll be able to make regular posts again soon.

The Long Tail - Chapter 1

I got through chapter one of The Long Tail Last night and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The book seems very readable and I'm looking forward to getting properly stuck into the rest of the chapters.

He discusses some really interesting ideas, like how "Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply and demand matching" (Anderson, 2006:16). He goes on to describe how the online retailers like Amazon and Rhapsody are making big money by selling to niche markets, and outlines the long tail concept itself.

It's thought-provoking stuff and really makes sense once you get into it. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of direction he takes for the next few chapters. Sorry for the shortness of this one but I'm wrecked from being in late doing assignments. I'll try and be more elaborate and insightful with the next few posts!

Reference
Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail, London: Random House

The Long Tail

I've been snowed under with assignments lately so I haven't gotten a chance to put up a new post in a few weeks.

Now that I've got a bit of breathing room I thought I might take a look at some of the books that were mentioned in the lectures. I bought a copy of Wired editor Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail at the weekend. I'll be reading it over the next few weeks and I'll try and put up a post on my thoughts about each chapter as I go along. If it all goes well I'll be doing the same for Don Tapscott's book on mass collaboration, Wikinomics.

I came across some of Anderson's stuff while doing some research for an assignment. He's got some interesting thoughts on the new business models that are emerging on the web. Here's a good video featuring his take on "freemium", which he calls "the first business model of the 21st century":

In the video Anderson references Alan Murray, executive editor of The Wall Street Journal Online. Here's a link to another interesting video where Murray gives his opinion on what content should be charged for, and what should be free.

In his second book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Anderson discusses his ideas on the future of free.

That's it for now. I'll try and post again as soon as I've finished the first chapter of The Long Tail.

Google Wave Invitations

I just got my invitation to Google Wave tonight so I'll be trying it out over the next few days. I'll do a blog post about it once I familiarise myself with it.

Also, I'm allowed to send out a limited amount of invitations to people so leave a comment with your email address if you'd like an invite.

CCleaner

In today's lecture, Simon mentioned that he uses a program called CCleaner to free up space on his laptop. I've been using this myself for a few months now and I find it works quite well. It's a free download too, so you can't really go wrong with it.

Here's the link for the download.

NetBeans Intro. for IS6115

If you're anything like me then you probably felt a bit lost in the NetBeans tutorials during the week. My main problem was that I didn't understand the terminology or the grammar/vocab/syntax of Java. Also, the results of what we were doing weren't immediately apparent, unlike our HTML tutorials, so what we were doing felt out of context to me and I didn't know what it was leading to. I came across a few bits and pieces that might be helpful and I've listed them below.

Wikipedia has an article on the "Hello World" program. This explains what the program does and why it's used.

Sun Microsystems, the company behind Java, have their own set of tutorials, including a handy section that explains the basic concepts of object-oriented programming.

Here are a few introductory video tutorials on NetBeans.

This video shows how to download and set up NetBeans on your home computer or laptop. You don't really need to watch all of this one.



This second video is short and is similar to the material we covered in the IS6115 tutorials during the week and shows how to create the "Hello World" program.




In this third video, Tim Layton also demonstrates the "Hello World" program. It's worth watching the whole thing because he looks at some small applications that he made with NetBeans.



I hope all of this makes the whole thing seem a little less daunting.

World Community Grid

Bill Emerson mentioned the SETI at home project in today's lecture. I participate in a similar project called World Community Grid. Both projects are a form of distributed computing. World Community Grid uses the world's largest computing grid to conduct scientific research projects for the benefit of humanity, such as fighting childhood cancer. It is funded and operated by IBM. I use it on my laptop at home and it runs whenever the laptop is idle. I recommend getting involved as it's an easy way to do some good without any financial or time commitment.

Larry Ellison on Cloud Computing

This video features Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, giving his take on the cloud computing phenomenon. Ellison is of the opinion that cloud computing is merely a buzzword to re-brand existing technologies. While I can't say I agree with him fully, there might be a kernel of truth in what he's saying. So is cloud computing the future of e-business or just a buzzword? Have a look at the clip and decide.

Welcome

This is a blog I've set up as part of my masters, the MBS e-business in UCC. I'm not sure what direction it's going to go in terms of content but I'll try to stay focused on e-business topics and avoid going on tangents. Mainly, I'll be putting up links to interesting e-business-related articles or videos I come across on the web and also commenting on some of the readings for the various modules.

I think the blog will be useful to me during the year for keeping track of my own reading and I'd be very happy if it helps anyone else on the course during the year.

Enjoy!