Uncategorized

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Amazon’s Bold Tablet Play

Amazon announced FOUR new Kindles today, including the first-ever plausible iPad competitor. Pretty awesome stuff. Enough to get me excited, even though I probably won’t be springing for one given that I already own an iPad and a recent-generation Kindle. At $200 though, the Kindle Fire tablet is dangerously close to impulse buy territory.

In addition to the new hardware, Amazon also announced Amazon Silk, a cloud browser that has the ability to deliver blazing fast speeds. But the technology behind Silk gives Amazon a major advantage in the consumer retail and media space. Chris Espinosa breaks it down:

[W]hat this means is that Amazon will capture and control every Web transaction performed by Fire users. Every page they see, every link they follow, every click they make, every ad they see is going to be intermediated by one of the largest server farms on the planet. People who cringe at the privacy and data-mining implications of the Facebook Timeline ought to be just floored by the magnitude of Amazon’s opportunity here. Amazon now has what every storefront lusts for: the knowledge of what other stores your customers are shopping in and what prices they’re being offered there.

College Graduation Rates Are Still Terrible

Some sobering statistics via the NYTimes:

Currently, federal education statistics generally focus on first-time full-time students. But according to the [Complete College] report, about 4 of every 10 public college students attend part time — and no more than a quarter of part-time students ever graduate.

As a part-time student myself, I’m determined to be one of the few that makes it to the finish line.

Why did ‘Drive’ Fail to Connect with Audiences?

I loved Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, and so did the rest of the film critic community. But the film has thus far failed to connect with audiences. Writers at Salon try to break down why:

People show up expecting a glossy sexy movie about a man driving a car, when in reality it’s basically a hyper-violent European art-house movie that offers little in the way of car chases or romance. That’s one way of thinking about it, but I honestly think the bigger problem is that this movie is too gut-churningly violent.

Facebook Removes Choice From Your Sharing Options

Farhad Manjoo, on the money as usual about Facebook’s new changes and, in particular, the “ticker” feature:

Zuckerberg calls this “frictionless” sharing. What he means is that I don’t have to bother with the “friction” of choosing to tell you that I like something. On Facebook, now, merely experiencing something is enough to trigger sharing. Once I sign up for Spotify’s Facebook app, my consent is assumed: When I listen, I share. The same goes for the many other apps that Facebook’s partners are launching. When I watch something on Netflix or Hulu, when I read something on the Daily, or when I play a game like Words With Friends, Facebook will tell my friends. Everyone I know on Facebook will now have a running log of my life.

This is a nightmare, but not for the reasons you might suspect. I don’t hate this new model because of its lack of “privacy,” or due to Facebook’s clear financial interest in collecting my personal information…My problem with “frictionless sharing” is much more basic: Facebook is killing taste.

Laura June also has a smart take on the matter.

The Economics of Business Insider

Felix Salmon reveals the stark truths about Henry Blodget’s online news machine:

[T]here’s reason to be concerned about what Blodget’s team has sacrificed along the way. It’s worth noting that venture-backed media companies can very much be in a race against time for growth. Investors want a return on their money and, given the economics of web news, that almost always requires exponential growth in uniques and pageviews.

See also Marco Arment’s analysis of Business Insider’s copy-and-pasting of his material.

Update: And Business Insider responds to Arment (with aplomb)!

How to Survive Falling Out of a Plane

Thank you, internet:

Admit it: You want to be the sole survivor of an airline disaster. You aren’t looking for a disaster to happen, but if it does, you see yourself coming through it. I’m here to tell you that you’re not out of touch with reality—you can do it. Sure, you’ll take a few hits, and I’m not saying there won’t be some sweaty flashbacks later on, but you’ll make it. You’ll sit up in your hospital bed and meet the press. Refreshingly, you will keep God out of your public comments, knowing that it’s unfair to sing His praises when all of your dead fellow-passengers have no platform from which to offer an alternative view.

Let’s say your jet blows apart at 35,000 feet. You exit the aircraft, and you begin to descend independently. Now what?