Amazon awarded patent for electronic gift-giving

When you get an email announcing you've got a gift you can download -- an e-book, a movie or music -- think of Amazon. It doesn't matter where your gift was purchased: Amazon has patented e-gifting, Geekwire reports, asking, "Did Amazon.com just patent Christmas?"

That's because the electronic gift-giving process described in Amazon's patent sounds like something that is widely used. From the patent description:

Electronic transfer has become a prominent method for distributing media content and other electronically transferrable items. Electronically transferrable items may include, for example, electronically accessible services or digital media content such as songs, ringtones, movies, magazines, books, and other content. The electronically transferrable items can be accessed on computers, as well as on portable media players or home audiovisual systems using set top boxes or other devices. In downloading or streaming the electronically transferrable items from a network, such as the Internet, consumers can select and access desired electronically transferrable items in minutes or seconds. Thus, consumers can enjoy the electronically transferrable items without leaving their homes to purchase or rent physical media storing the electronically transferrable items and without waiting for delivery of physical media, such as via the mail.

The prospect of electronically transferrable items offers an alternative to conventional methods of giving gifts that might include music, movies, television programs, games, or books. For example, instead of giving a gift certificate for a retail store that would allow a recipient to select a gift of the recipient's own choosing, one can give a gift certificate for electronically transferrable items. Using the gift certificate, the recipient can conveniently access the desired electronically transferrable items.

Amazon's patent includes charging the giver only when the electronic gift certificate has been redeemed. Geekwire writes, "Broad patents like these have become a lightning rod in the tech industry, helping to fuel criticism of the U.S. patent system."

Don't be surprised if some post-patent action follows. Speculating that this conflicts with a recent Facebook acquisition, Business Insider writes, "Amazon has aggressively enforced its patent on one-click checkout — even Apple agreed to license it."

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Image: Screen shot of Amazon.com gift certificate page. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

Protesters disrupt Amazon shareholders meeting

Amazon's traditionally quiet shareholders meeting in Seattle was disrupted by protesters Thursday who questioned the company's support of a conservative group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and its treatment of workers, the Seattle Times reports.

Responding to criticism of poor working conditions in its warehouses, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos showed an aerial photograph of an air conditioning unit. "It's not easy to retrofit an existing fulfillment center with air conditioning," he said. "We're really leading the way here."

Outside, a rally of more than 100 protesters called attention to Amazon's association with ALEC and its warehouse working conditions. The protest was organized by a worker advocacy group, Working Washington, which also called upon Amazon to pay more of its share in taxes. While Bezos explained the company's efforts to provide air conditioning in its warehouses, and Amazon has agreed to stop supporting ALEC, the tax issue remained less clearly addressed.

One critic blogging about the meeting wrote, "During the presentation, Amazon CEO Bezos said that in the last two years the company has paid $1.3 billion in taxes, including withholding and property taxes. Withholding means money collected from employees that includes Social Security and personal income taxes. Called on this later, a company spokesman hedged and obfuscated, without providing information on just how much the company pays in actual corporate taxes."

Preliminary voting results of two issues before the shareholders were announced; although the numbers were not final, it was clear that neither proposal would succeed. The first asked the company to sign on to the Carbon Discosure Project, an international nonprofit that works with companies and municipalities to track and manage carbon emissions and water use; the second asked the company to be transparent about its political contributions.

At the end of the hourlong meeting, protesters stood and began chanting; they were escorted out by police. After the noise died down, Jeff Bezos thanked the shareholders in the room for attending.

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Photo: At an Amazon warehouse in 2004. Credit: Scott Sady / Associated Press

Waterstones makes deal to sell the Amazon Kindle, dismaying many

British bookstore chain Waterstones announced Monday that it would soon sell Amazon's Kindles in its stores. The news was met with dismay from almost all quarters of the publishing industry.

That's partly because Waterstones' chief executive, James Daunt, had been a vocal critic of Amazon and its tactics. In December, Daunt called the company "a ruthless, money-making devil." In the announcement, he said, "It is a truly exciting prospect to harness also the respective strengths of Waterstones and Amazon to provide a dramatically better digital reading experience for our customers. The best digital readers, the Kindle family, will be married to the singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop." That's quite a turnaround.

Reactions were swift and strong. At the Guardian, Richard Lea wrote that what Daunt had done was "welcome a ravening tiger into his living room." "[T]his shot at the e-book market seems to be aimed directly at Waterstone's own foot," wrote Martha Gill at the New Statesman. The Bookseller's Philip Downer pointed out that "the opportunity to create an independent online business, benefitting from HMV firepower and leading one day to an ebook solution, was lost." The headline at the English Gizmodo site read, "Waterstones Surrenders to the Amazon Ebook Behemoth and Agrees to Stock Kindles."

Many American observers, including GigaOm's Laura Hazard Owen, recalled a hauntingly similar deal between Amazon and Borders. Back in 2001, when Borders was a major brick-and-mortar bookseller on par with Barnes & Noble (remember that?), it cut a deal with Amazon, letting Jeff Bezos' company handle Borders' online book sales. That six-year deal left Borders tragically behind when it came to the Internet, and was part of the bookseller's decline and eventual bankruptcy.

Although most see Waterstone's choice to sell Amazon's Kindle as a bad idea, a few think it may have some merit. "Some commentators have likened the deal to Neville Chamberlain's infamous pact with Nazi Germany," writes Philip Jones at Futurebook, "but it feels more like Dunkirk. A strategic retreat: allowing the business to refocus its efforts on those fronts where it can continue to fight on."

At the Verge, Tim Carmody takes a moment to look at the deal from Amazon's point of view: "For Amazon, the long-term strategy is much clearer. This is about eliminating real and potential e-book competitors by sucking out all the oxygen in the room." And that, for those who would like Amazon to have a little e-book competition, is the rub.

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Photo: An American shopper tries out a Kindle at Best Buy. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times.

Stephen King wants to tax the rich -- including himself

Stephen King, who with his wife donates about $4 million per year to worthy causes, has said he should give more — that he should be mandated to, by the tax code. He thinks the wealthy should pay more in  income tax.

At the Daily Beast, King shows why charitable intentions don't do the same thing as the federal government (using spicy language):

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility — America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny....

Most rich folks paying 28 percent taxes do not give out another 28 percent of their income to charity. Most rich folks like to keep their dough. They don’t strip their bank accounts and investment portfolios. They keep them and then pass them on to their children, their children’s children. And what they do give away is — like the monies my wife and I donate — totally at their own discretion. That’s the rich-guy philosophy in a nutshell: don’t tell us how to use our money; we’ll tell you.

The Koch brothers are right-wing creepazoids, but they’re giving right-wing creepazoids. Here’s an example: 68 million fine American dollars to Deerfield Academy. Which is great for Deerfield Academy. But it won’t do squat for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where food fish are now showing up with black lesions. It won’t pay for stronger regulations to keep BP (or some other bunch of ... oil drillers) from doing it again. It won’t repair the levees surrounding New Orleans. It won’t improve education in Mississippi or Alabama.

King, a prolific writer whose imaginings have often attracted the attention of Hollywood, regularly lands on Forbes' highest-paid authors list; in 2010, he was at No. 3. His net worth is estimated to be as much as $400 million — that's huge for a writer but small change when it comes to big finance. Warren Buffett, another tax-the-rich advocate, is worth about $4.4 billion.

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Photo: Stephen King in 1998. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Barnes & Noble spins off Nook e-reader with $300M from Microsoft

Microsoft will provide $300 million to a new Nook-led unit of Barnes & Noble, the companies announced Monday. Microsoft will get a 17.6 share in the new subsidiary, which has the temporary placeholder name of Newco.

Part of the announcement -- spinning the Nook off into a subsidiary -- did not come as a complete surprise. In January, Barnes & Noble Chief Executive William Lynch hinted that it was in the works, saying, "We see substantial value in what we've built with our Nook business in only two years, and we believe it's the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value." 

Microsoft's investment was, at least by most in publishing, unexpected. Last we heard, Microsoft was suing Barnes & Noble over alleged patent infringements related to the Nook, which could have blocked importation to the U.S. after its offshore manufacture. As part of the new Nook deal, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble announced settlement of the patent suit.

Another part of the deal: The new subsidiary will include Barnes & Noble's college textbook business.

Until now, Microsoft has stayed out of the e-reader wars, allowing Amazon and Apple to lead the device evolution. Amazon brought e-readers into the mainstream when it debuted its Kindle in 2007; Apple's iPad changed the landscape when it introduced its tablet in 2010.

For its part, Barnes & Noble's e-reader had a bumpy start: When it launched in late 2009, it didn't reach some customers, as promised, for the holidays. Since then, it's pulled on track and up to speed, launching its own tablet. Its competitively affordable Nook line gets consistently good reviews, and sales during the 2011 holidays were up 70%.

In Monday's announcement, Barnes & Noble's Lynch said, "Microsoft's investment in Newco, and our exciting collaboration to bring world-class digital reading technologies and content to the Windows platform and its hundreds of millions of users, will allow us to significantly expand the business."

Microsoft President Andy Lees agreed. "Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them," he said. "We’re on the cusp of a revolution in reading."

The cusp? That sounds strangely out of date -- aren't we well into a revolution in reading? Or does Microsoft have something entirely new in store for its Newco Nook?

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Mike Daisey's notoriety not translating to book sales

There used to be a saying, "all publicity is good publicity." For monologist Mike Daisey, that doesn't seem to be the case -- at least in terms of book sales.

Daisey is the performer whose work "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" was excerpted on public radio's "This American Life" in February; its harsh critique of Foxxcon, a Chinese factory that makes Apple products, made it the most-downloaded program in "This American Life's" history.

But that was just the beginning; news broke Friday that "Marketplace" reporter Rob Schmitz started looking into Daisey's tale and found it to include portions that were represented as facts that had been embroidered and invented. "This American Life," which had presented it as journalism, ran an hourlong show called "Retraction" this weekend, which included an interview with Schmitz and host Ira Glass confronting Daisey about how he represented the piece to the program's staff, and about the piece itself.

The retraction and re-examination of Daisey's piece have meant that a tremendous amount of attention has been turned his way. For a time, "This American Life's" servers were so swamped the site went down. A search in Google News turns up more than 1,550 articles, all posted in the last 96 hours, with stories from major outlets including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Associated Press, Forbes, CNN, Slate and the New York Times.

All that coverage -- shouldn't it lead people to buy his books? Daisey published "21 Dog Years: Doing Time @Amazon.com" with the Free Press back in 2002; it came out in paperback in 2003. It's an adaptation of a stage show he was performing in Seattle in 2001, describing three years he spent working at Amazon. Or, as Gawker points out, possibly dramatically enhancing the three years he spent working at Amazon.

Creative license notwithstanding, Daisey is one heck of a storyteller; I heard his original Foxconn piece broadcast on "This American Life" and found it arresting.

Daisey's notoriety, and that promise of a good (if possibly exaggerated) tale, might be enough to lure readers; a decade ago, "21 Dog Years" was successful, published in both hardcover and paperback.

Now, either can be purchased on Amazon for less than $6. It may have moved up in Amazon's sales rankings, but only to position #533,976 in Books -- not very high. No reader has reviewed the book on Amazon since 2009. And secondary vendors at Barnes & Noble online are selling the hardcover for just 99 cents.

All that attention, and what does he get? Not book sales, at least, not yet.

Daisey, who is a practictioner of documentary theater that includes broad dramatic license, addresses his audiences on his blog. "It's you that I owe the most to. I want you all to know that I will not go silent—I will be making a full accounting of this work, shining a light through this monologue and telling the story of its origins, construction, and details." Which might well mean a theater production about his recent experiences -- and maybe even a book.

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Photo: Mike Daisey performing at the Speakeasy Cafe in Seattle in 2001. Credit: Associated Press.

Kickstarter and the NEA: Who funds more?

Last week, based on two record-breaking campaigns, the crowd-sourcing fund-raising site Kickstarter projected that it would distribute $150 million in 2012. That's just a shade more than the National Endowment for the Arts; the NEA will distribute $146 million.

The comparison to the NEA immediately led to confusion -- even on the part of Kickstarter itself. Talking Points Memo spoke with  Yancey Strickler, one of Kickstarter's three founders, about the news Friday.

“It is probable Kickstarter will distribute more money this year than the NEA,” said Stricker in an exclusive phone interview with TPM. “We view that number and our relationship to it in both a good and bad way.”

As Strickler explained, the milestone is "good" in the sense that it means that Kickstarter may now reach a point where it will funnel as much money to the arts as the federal agency primarily responsible for supporting them, effectively doubling the amount of art that can get funded in the country.

While I'm all for increasing arts funding, and also all for Kickstarter, something here didn't ring true. My cousin and her friends used Kickstarter to help establish an Internet cafe and microbusiness incubator in Cambodia -- a worthy cause that I was delighted to support, but hardly an arts project. Just because the amount Kickstarter may distribute is similar to that of the NEA, it doesn't mean Kickstarter will provide more funding to the arts -- or does it?

It does not, as Clay Johnson shows today at the Information Diet, by taking a snapshot of Kickstarter's currently funded projects (be sure to check out the graph). In his reckoning, 33% of the project funding is going to design; those projects are predominantly iPhone and other Apple accessories, with a pair for coffee, one for photography and a pen. Only the last two, at a stretch, could be considered arts funding.  Similarly, technology, which made up 17% of the project funding, was full of interesting projects that had little to do with the arts.

Johnson rightly points out that part of the NEA's mandate is to provide access to the arts, to fund projects all over the country. I would add that another key difference is that the NEA mostly funds nonprofits, which have to meet certain state and national requirements to ensure fiscal responsibility. When not funding nonprofits, it provides grants to individual artists, who must fill out long applications, which are vetted and selected by experts.

Kickstarter, on the other hand, is kind of a free-for-all, which is part of its charm. It has projects from real companies with proven successes, like gamemaker Double Fine Productions, one of the million-dollar projects (trying to raise $400,000, its tally now stands at more than $2 million) -- yet it also has projects like a zine-to-be about Eastern European arts and culture by a Chicago graduate student. It's come one, come all. It's exciting. Its projects can be outrageous, profane, individual, monumental, even crazy. 

Interestingly, of the obviously arts-ish Kickstarter funding that Johnson tallied, film/video is the biggest share, followed, in descending order, by comics, music, art, publishing, theater, photography and dance. Maybe Kickstarter could be even more of a resource for independent publishers.

Kickstarter is stepping in where traditional business funders and institutions such as the NEA have left a gap. But it's not fulfulling an identical function. And it doesn't seem to be anywhere near meeting the amount of arts dollars the NEA provides.

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Photo: Rocco Landesman, head of the National Endowment for the Arts, at the Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times.

Amazon targets Apple's iPad in Kindle ad [video]

Amazon has a new advertisement that lauds the e-ink styling of its traditional Kindle e-reader and the low price of its new tablet, the Kindle Fire. What's the target? Apple's iPad, of course, carried along by a dorky dude. The smart Amazon buyer is a bright-eyed bikini-clad mother of two.

Amazon's point: She bought three Kindles for the price of an iPad.

Gizmodo isn't buying the argument. The technology blog says the Kindle Fire is "significantly less capable" than the iPad, adding, "you're basically making fun of a Lexus for not being a Kia."

Meanwhile, those low-cost Kindles actually cost more to manufacture than they do to buy. Both the $79 Kindle e-reader and the Kindle Fire tablet are loss leaders. It costs Amazon $84.25 to make the $79 Kindle, and the $199 Kindle Fire costs Amazon $201.70. The bikini mom's gain is, literally, Amazon's loss.

Exactly how many Kindles Amazon has sold at this losing rate is uncertain. While analysts regularly make predictions and estimates, Amazon has never released specific sales numbers for its line of e-readers.

Amazon ad-watchers may recognize the bikini mom. Just 18 months ago, she was the bikini girl who bragged that her Kindle cost less than her sunglasses, stirring a brief online controversy. Back then, she didn't have any kids; now they look to be about 10. They grow up so fast when you raise them in a surreal beach-side environment, don't they?

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Wednesday book news: Bezos, the Elsevier boycott and more

 

What was it like to sit in Westminster Abbey while Prince Charles, Camilla, Ralph Fiennes and 200 descendants feted Charles Dickens on his 200th birthday? Alison Devers teared up, she writes at Slate.

Scientists and academics worldwide have signed a petition boycotting the high pricing of publisher Elsevier's acadmic journals. Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, Cal State L.A., and universities in Australia, India, Italy and France are just a sampling of the more than 4,600 who have signed the online petition, refusing to publish with or act as peer reviewers for articles being published in Elsevier's journals. Other complaints: that the company's policy of offering journals to libraries in bundles means the libraries are forced to take those they don't want, and that Elsevier supported the controversial SOPA and PIPA legislation. For its part, Elsevier says the $10 price per article is "bang on the mean." Leave it to a science publisher to use a term like "mean" to make me realize I don't quite remember the difference between mean, median and, wait, what was the other one?

A popular Android voice app called Iris (an inversion of Apple's Siri) has turned up some unusual resuts. Ask "Is Noah's Ark real?" and the answer is that it "is biblically believed to be real. It gave forth a new beginning to a underserving earth." Ask if humans come from monkeys, and the answer is "a part of Darwin's Theory of Evolution is that human's over time evolved from apes. Since it is a theory, it can't be proven." Curious about these answers -- and others that are even more extreme -- Gizmodo dug into the companies behind them. They come from a Q&A site called ChaCha, which boasts that one of its "prestigious investors" is Bezos Expeditions, the personal funding arm of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Read the complete report at Gizmodo, which includes many other surprising Iris answers.

Elsewhere in England, the Hatchet Job of the Year was awarded Tuesday. The winner of the first annual award for a deliciously nasty book review went to Adam Mars-Jones for his review of Michael Cunningham's "By Nightfall." The judges wrote:

Every one of his zingers –- “like tin-cans tied to a tricycle”; “it seems to be the prestige of the modernists he admires, rather than their stringency”; “that’s not an epiphany, that’s a postcard” –- is earned by the argument it arises from. By the end of it Cunningham’s reputation is, well, prone.

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Photo: Ralph Fiennes reads Charles Dickens at Westminster Abbey as Prince Charles and Camilla look on. Credit: Arthur Edwards / WPA Pool / Getty Images

 

 

Amazon announces millions of Kindle sales. Wait, how many?

In what has become a post-Christmas tradition, Amazon released news Thursday that its Kindle e-readers sold big -- really big. In the millions, in fact.

That's more specific than the less-than-transparent online retailer usually gets; in November, a Techcrunch headline noted "Amazon: Kindles Are Flying Off The Shelves (But We’re Still Not Sharing Numbers)." Unlike Apple and other hardware companies, Amazon declines to say exactly how many units of its Kindle it has sold.

Now with the "millions" number, Amazon has gotten more specific, but its Kindle sales numbers are still something of a guessing game. Amazon's press release, while seeming to announce sales figures, leaves analysts chasing tea leaves. It says:

• Throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.
• The new Kindle family held the top three spots on the Amazon.com best seller charts – #1: Kindle Fire, #2: Kindle Touch, #3: Kindle.
• Kindle Fire is the #1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 13 weeks ago.

It's hard to say exactly how well the Kindle Fire tablet is selling. The more-than-a-million-per-week sales figure is not just the Kindle Fire; it includes all the Kindle e-readers, some of which sell for as low as $79.

On the heels of Kindle sales news earlier this month, Jared Newman wrote at PC World:

The company didn't break down sales by device, so we don't know how many Kindle Fires have been sold compared to Kindle e-readers. (Amazon's Kindle Vice President Dave Limp says the Fire is "the most successful product we've ever launched.")

And we still have no idea how many Kindles have been sold to date, or how many have been sold since the latest generation of devices went on sale. I don't think those are accidents or oversights. The company probably wants to avoid direct comparisons between the Kindle Fire and Apple's iPad, whose sales have been mighty compared to other tablets so far. To date, Apple has sold more than 40 million iPads, and the original iPad sold two million units in its first 60 days.

Trying to put those numbers together, Kindle Fire tablet sales might just be competitive with Apple's iPad. But until Amazon releases actual sales numbers, we really can't say.

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Photo: Amazon's Kindle, Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire tablet. Credit: Amazon, for the individual images, Collage, Carolyn Kellogg