Sivamani: Rhythm is everything, everywhere | Video on TED.com

Sivamani: Rhythm is everything, everywhere | Video on TED.com

Definitely one of the hippest & original solo acts I've ever seen!

RCA's New Lexi eReader

Here's a quick video interview of Audiovox President, Tom Malone, showing off the new RCA Lexi eReader shown at CES 2010 two weeks ago. MSRP is $229 and content will be provided by Barnes & Noble.

To learn more, the press release is HERE...

Amazon Offers 70% Royalty

Source: Publishers Lunch

Amazon Offers 70% Royalty--If You Self-Publish Inexpensively, and Comprehensively
Amazon has offered authors and publishers using their self-service digital text platform a significantly enhanced royalty option as of June 30--70 percent instead of 30 percent--provided that certain specific conditions are met:

* The ebook should be not too cheap and not too expensive--priced between $9.99 and $2.99--and the digital list price has to be "at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the print book"

* It has to be available for sale in all territories in which the author or publisher has rights

* It has to be available for text-to-speech, and whatever other new features Kindle adds in the future

* "Books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price."

Release

Word of the Day

DISPOSITIVE - providing a final resolution (as of an issue) : having control over an outcome [Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.]

4 Easy Steps for Making Free Ringtones for iPhones

Ever wanted to make a ringtone for your iPhone, but didn’t want to pay again for a song that you already own?  Well, now you can…..Simply use Quicktime Pro (not the new dumbed-down Quicktime 7 player)

 

STEP 1 - Open your music source file and select the desired ringtone portion  

STEP 2 - Crop to that selection and then "Save As iTunes Movie" with some name like MyZippyRingtone.  QTPro will save it with the .m4v extension

STEP 3- Change the extension to .m4r and drag the file to iTunes, where it will be added to the library as a Ringtone 

STEP 4 - Sync it to your iPhone and select it from the Settings screen

 

 (Thanks Tom N. !)

Is there a model for success selling content?

Great post by Mike Shatzkin on his Idea Logical Blog about the downfall of the publishing business…Couple of direct quotes below…[btw - I don’t think he’s being pessimistic, just brutally honest!]

 

• So far, all that is clear is that publishers that stick to an audience fare better in the digital world than the ones who don’t. Their marketing costs are lower and their reach to the audience is both more effective and less dependent on intermediaries

 

• Publishers have always focused primarily on the content. Survival in the future will require focusing on the market

 

• If you don’t own the audience, the cost of reaching it for one book at a time will be prohibitive

Urgent note to book industry: There's a better way to window eBooks

HERE is a great post by James McQuivey over at Forrester...I haven't read a better blog post than this for quite a while and I really appreciate his honesty and bluntness to the Publishing industry!

eBook Research

Here's some recent research from Mediamark related to eBooks...

- 2.1 million U.S. adults own electronic book readers
- Mostly well educated with high incomes (i.e.  Bachelor's or post-graduate degree and earning over 100K)
- Adults ages 35-54 are the "sweet spot" for this product
- E-book owners are particularly Web-centric

http://www.mediamark.com

Open Mobile Summit Presentations

If you missed the recent Open Mobile Summit in SF...download the PDF's and Podcasts here! http://htxt.it/R0rr

App Store: Books, Usurping Games for the 1st Time Ever!

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/27796/Flurry-Smartphone-Industry-Pulse-October-2009

Open Road Media's Jane Friedman

Here are a few nuggets from Jane Friedman's recent speech at NYU-SCPS Center for Publishing, who is Open Road Media's CEO. (Thanks to Alyssa Léal for blogging it)

• With 70% of the population having access to the internet, 30% of all books in the U.S. being purchased online, and 96% of young adults being connected to a social network
  
  
• In addition to publishing electronic editions of the literary giants, Open Road will create “e-riginals”, a term Friedman has coined for books that will be born in digital format.
  
  
• Although, Open Road will not provide author advances, Friedman feels the profit sharing model could be extremely rewarding to authors.
  
  
• Friedman said she though the value of an e-book should be roughly the same as a trade paperback, and cited $14, possibly more for premium content.

Fight the Telemarketers !!

Don't let the telemarketers get you!!! I just did this and it only takes a minute. REMEMBER: Cell Phone Numbers Go Public this month..... all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. .... YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS  To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222.

Stats of the Day

• Smartphone penetration is at 19 percent according to Palm, and will double by 2013
• Listenership for Internet radio was up almost 40 percent in 2008 over 2007, hitting 6.67 billion hours last year, according to AccuStream iMedia Research
• Pandora claimed more than 9 million downloads to the iPhone, and half of those users listen to Pandora in a car
• 4 million people have downloaded Pandora to a BlackBerry, Android or Palm Pre
• Pandora has been adding a total of 2 million registered U.S. users (including PC users) per month
• 4G/LTE won't be fully deployed until 2014 or later (iSuppli)

Word of the Day - MALAPROPISM

malapropism: an act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, esp. by the confusion of words that are similar in sound; a verbal blunder in which one word is replaced by another similar in sound but different in meaning. (Example - "Lead the way and we'll precede.")

2009 PMA U.S. Consumer Photo Buying Report Stats

According to the 2009 PMA U.S. Consumer Photo Buying Report:

- 73 percent of U.S. households own digital cameras
- % of households without any internet access has increased over the past few years, from 8 percent in 2005 to 12 percent in 2008
- As digital cameras grew in pouplarity, camcorder ownership has remained steady (i.e. 34% of digital camera owners owned camcorders in 2005 & 36% owned them in 2008)

pmaforesight.com/2009/11/09/pma-data-watch-activity-of-digital-camera-owners.aspx