Linked List: January 18, 2012

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Confessions of a Publisher: ‘We’re in Amazon’s Sights and They’re Going to Kill Us’ 

Fascinating email to Sarah Lacy from a book publishing insider, on Amazon’s upheaval of the industry.

It’s occurred to me that Apple’s stunning successes over the last decade could be a hindrance to its ongoing negotiations with content companies — movie studios, TV networks, book publishers, etc. Imagine a weekly poker game where, week after week, the same player wins. Every goddamn week. Pretty soon that player is going to stop being invited to play. That’s Apple.

Apple’s opportunity with books is that there’s already a dominant money-winning bully at the table: Amazon.

Google Web Fonts: Good-Natured Grifting 

Matthew Butterick:

In the design world, there’s a well-known swin­dle where a pres­ti­gious but stingy client says “I wish I could pay you, but I don’t have the bud­get. How about you let me use your work for free? I know it’ll be great expo­sure for you, and lead to pay­ing work.” In truth, it’s not, and it won’t. Designer Jes­sica His­che aptly calls this “the most toxic line of bull­shit any­one will ever feed you.” Why? Because it’s just good-natured grift­ing, an exploita­tion of the weaker by the stronger. Nev­er­the­less, it works, because there will always be design­ers hun­gry enough to believe that they don’t have other choices.

Google Web Fonts uses a vari­a­tion of this toxic line as part of its pitch to poten­tial open-source font con­trib­u­tors.

Color Hopes You’ll Want to Broadcast Your Makeout Sessions and Illegal Pool Parties to Facebook 

Someone should make a list of every jackass tech site that took these Color idiots seriously simply because they raised dickety million dollars in VC funding.

Heating Up 

Todd Haselton, BGR:

While the iPad’s lead in the tablet market is obvious, it’s becoming more clear there’s strong competition for market share below it. The Amazon Kindle Fire represented an average of 2.4 ad impressions on Chitikas network for every 100 iPad impressions, but RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook wasn’t far behind; it viewed an average of 1.8 ad impressions for every 100 iPad impressions on Chitika’s mobile ad network. That’s followed closely by the Samsung Galaxy with 1.6 ad impressions and the Motorola XOOM with 1.55 add impressions.

Impressions per hundred iPad impressions? What a great metric for the “non-iPad tablet” category.

DF reader Andrew Wood re-did BGR’s graph to include the iPad. Hot competition indeed.

Update: Here’s another graph that includes the iPad, by Greg Scown.

Agenda: iOS Calendar App 

I saw Ben Brooks recommend this iPhone/iPad calendaring app the other day, and I figured it was worth a shot, since I’ve never really been satisfied with Apple’s built-in calendar app. Glad I did, because Agenda is really neat. Thoughtful, clean, useful layout. The name “Agenda” really captures the appeal — the presentation is all about what you have scheduled today and over the next few days.

Plus, amazingly, it’s only $.99. With the trend toward free apps that either badger you up for in-app upgrades or take up useful screen space with advertising (or both) I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m more willing to try a $.99 app than a free one.

‘Time to Sell Apple’ 

Thomas H. Kee Jr., giving investment advice at MarketWatch:

In the case of Apple, this is happening in front of our eyes, and the risks are therefore very high. Apple has stopped serving their customers well, and unless they start to serve their customers better the company will begin to lose more market share and revenue and earnings projections will come down aggressively.

Most people think Apple’s customers are the end user, but because Apple relies so heavily on third-party resellers like Verizon and Sprint, both of which are feeling margin contraction and negative effects on earnings because of the extremely high cost of iPhones, the real customers are third-party resellers, and Apple is not treating them right. As long as margins and earnings are negatively affected by sales of Apple’s products, those resellers will look for alternatives and eventually they will find them. Nothing could be clearer.

Let me get this straight. Apple entered the phone business five years ago with a strategy completely different than any other handset maker: treating the user as the customer, rather than the carriers. With this strategy, Apple has now captured two-thirds of the profit in the worldwide handset market. And but now, according to Kee, what Apple should do is start acting like all the other handset makers.

Where do they find these guys?