The future of books?

Christmas has gone by and some days of rest has been used, which basically means food, family, friends and reading time for me.

Having been lured into the Cult of Jobs and forsaken paper based books for kindle and ibooks on an iPad. I've spent to much time browsing amazon for ebooks to get.
Then somebody I follow on twitter linked to Cory Doctorow's latest release, http://craphound.com/walh/ , which is free as in beer. So as the cheap guy I am, I downloaded the ePub version onto my iPad.
Now, I know of Cory Doctorow, but I have never read any of his stuff, I do not know why, but there seems to have been a certain "it" missing that would make me read it.
And I would probably would not have read it, I currently on read one story and the "essay" by the agent. If it was not for the fact it was mentioned that Mark Shuttleworth had commissoned the a story, I like Ubuntu and I probably got a lower membership number in the Cult of Shuttleworth/Ubuntu than in the Cult of Jobs.

Now the story was very much to my liking, but I also read the next chapter, that was penned by Doctorow's literary agent Russel Galen. And the "essay" was the big eye opner to me, especially the following part:

Publishing economics are ridiculous. Suppose we'd sold this volume to a conventional publisher, and let's call it a $15.95 trade paperback. The author's share would be 7.5% of the cover price, or $1.17. We're leaving 92.5% -- $14.78 -- to bookstores and publishers. There's no room to negotiate a better share for the author because most of that $14.78 goes to people who won't reduce their shares: bookstores, paper suppliers, printers, warehouses, shippers, the owner of the publisher's office building, taxes, and so on.

Now if an author is left with 7.5% of the cover price and most likely Doctorow wold get some what more than an unknown writer. There must be a way or model for the author to collect the same amount of money through other channels? The math is not that hard, to earn 10k with a cover price of 15, todays model dictates that you need to sell 8889 copies.
But lets say you drop the price to 7.5, ie 50% and the author gets to keep 5 and 2.50 is for the cost of digital distribution and payment then the author only needs to sell 2000 copies to earn 10000.

So why are there not more sites promoting ebooks for authors, not everybody cares for the New York Times best seller list, I usually go for my friends suggestions and other word of mouth avenues already, independant web sites would be just as good for me.
With no upsell needs, just "pure" recommendation of ebooks only.

Damn right I got the blues

These are not very good, but I wrote them and I'll stick by it, also by storing them on the cloud somebody else might read them...

--

She was perfect

Actually she was far from perfect.
Yet again she was perfect, I couldnt explain, I still cant.
But my heart skipped a beat each time I laid my eyes on her.
One instance she made me feel like I was in paradis,
and like with a flick of a switch or maybe more like a snap of the fingers,
I was in black hole I couldnt get out of.

Each day I looked at her, saw imperfections normal to any human
and still tought she was the most beautiful woman on this earth.
Wether she dressed for a special occasion, casual clothing
or just walking around the apartement in a sweat suit,
she was still the most perfect woman on this planet.

I woke up with her by my side everyday for awhile,
when I ever I looked over at her, she just seemed to shine.
Or maybe illuminate is a better word, I dont know,
she was blinding, she still is the times I see her.
When our paths cross, instead of my life flashing in front of me,
she does in all the variations and looks she got from the I am tired and hungover
to the hello world look at me I am beatiful and the outcome is still the same

She is perfect

I dont know, is it the way she looks, the way she moves,
the way she speaks, the way she is?
All I know, is that she touched me deeply and crushed me easily.

--

I am alone
I like it alone
I sit alone as time fly
Days go by while I'm alone
I like it alone
I want to be alone
Do I miss somebody?
YES! I want somebody
But I want to be alone
Alone is good
No highs or lows that implodes your heart
Just alone
And the slow trickle of a bleeding heart


--


Paris broken?

When I broke I was dreaming of Paris.
Not sure if it was Rick and Elsa's rainy gloom black and white Paris.
Or Nikita's junkie desperate garish Paris, maybe even disastrous Paris trip with the x.
But it was painful Paris.

Then again, maybe it was the pain of being broken.....

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."

My "15 minutes of fame", http://goo.gl/HSEN @ 3:59 - 4:09 and 5:35 - 5:39 so where is my Oscar? :P

Peace and Business Norwegian style

I've never heard of Liu Xiaobo before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but I assume that since he "won" the award this year, he has done or does something to bring about peace in the world.

China thinks he is a criminal and claims he should not be given the prize,  but my convoluted mind went into conspiracy high alert, when Norwegian media started running stories that China would terminate a new trade agreement deal that was being brokered between China and Norway. Especially when our foreign minister stays calm and says China has no reason punish Norway for this, because the Nobel committee is independent and not under the Norwegian government influence. 

Which is a bit to cool, especially after the minister of Trade and Industry in the past has highlighted it as important for Norway.

Now is this just Norwegian political infighting going on? Or did Norway want to back out of the trade agreement, but let China take the blame? 

Who knows, but I know that many people have voiced concerns about Huawei being the LTE vendor for Telenor (incumbent telco) and what security implications that might have. And according to the latest rumors in the telco business is that Huwei has been kicked out and the "official" reason is that the equipment does not work. 

When the ***** does one spread the rumour with a highlighted official reason tagged on? 

From what I have heard Huawei, can be a bit of a handful to cooperate with if your not experienced with dealing with Chinese culture, but I never heard that Telenor done an equipment does not work 180 on a vendor like this. Especially if their sticking with their LTE is for 2012 goal.

The upgrade path for your phone will depend on the specific device, manufacturer, operator, and region.

Flash for Android, whether you think its the best thing since sliced bread or the worst thing since something bad :)
The distribution model is utterly broken, fine you need a minimum level of hardware and os requirement, but adding operator and region requirements? Come on its a globalized world, barriers like that is so yesterday in the day of the Internet.

That is the old way of doing it, the broken way they do it with movies and tv series and what not. But Adobe is pushing this stuff out over the internet why the restriction on region and operator?

If we look into the entertainment world, there are tons of service to stream or rent movies and tv's online, but its region based due to old archaic licensing rules made for yesterdays world.
The ones that get global distribution working from a technical standpoint and licensing point of view, probably will be the big media conglomerate of the future.
And if things keeps going as they are, it will not be a western company, mainly because their stuck in their old ways. Many interesting things are going on with OTT delivery and the ones leading the pack are currently not Hollywood based, but they do have the rights for doing Bollywood OTT which probably is better considering their target market segment.
Niche and cultural content will most likely get these companies of the ground and when they have a working delivery vehicle, then the content world is your oyster.

So if their model is  able to deliver none western entertainment across the internet with an OTT model, will they end up being bought by traditional western media or will it be the other way around?

Who ever said content is king, probably lives in a cave, without the delivery vehicle your out of the game, content + delivery are the regents, who will turn out be our new king and queen and where is the kingmaker?

In general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help train us in perseverance.

Earlier this year I started exercising more regularly, haven't done much after the available time to practice Eskrima dwindled away. But now I am playing floorball once a week, jogging once a week and going on bike rides  a couple of times a week.

But what got me over the first obstacle of keep on doing it, instead of ending up with it being a one of thing, was my phone. Or rather one of the multitude of smartphone applications that uses the built in GPS to track your progress and creates a training diary. Now with Zephyr Bluetooth Heart rate monitor, it can also record my heart rate during my exercise session.
And for a gadget geek that is a 3 for 1, reason to splash out on a smartphone, extra bluetooth gadget and the motivation to see the progress you make.

And who does not like the rush of feeling physically tired, but in a non stressed kind of way.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

When starting of fresh, I had the idea, that I should take time to scribble down random thoughts and musing a bit more regularly. And I had some snippets of information that I wanted to write, but seems like Google moves faster than I am able to formulate my take on the current situation.
I planned to write a bit about Android and where I though it was going and what I believed Google was trying to do. Then Google I/O 2010 of course ruined all of that and made my musings redundant.

On a business trip, Telecom Line, I ended up discussing the rumored Google TV project with other attendants in the seminar. Of course Google went public at that time and once again my brilliant rhetoric on the subject was rendered useless.
Only comment I can add to the Google TV, is that I hear Google is having a difficult time in convincing the content owners to hand over their content for free to Google, so that Google can monetize from it with their OTT push.
When I heard the that snip it of information, my first thought was NIH (Not Invented Here) ie Google got their own agenda shining so brightly that they can not accept that others don't see the world in the same way.