Buy These Books As Holiday Gifts

This post is a sticky for the next few weeks. Scroll down one for the new stuff.

I’m not, but if you do… click that above for suggestions.

My own quick short list:

Declan Burke (help the guy out!)
Winterland by Alan Glynn
Anthony Neil Smith
Victor Gischler
Christopher Fowler
Karl Alexander
Warren Ellis

And because she will kill me if I leave her off:

Moriah Jovan

Don’t complain if you were left off. This was a quickie. No Comments.

Happy Happy Turkey Day!

This blog will be closed tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day in America.

Not because I’ll be doing anything special — but all the rest of you will.

We cannot break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations.Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadsides. You will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, “Do not trust the pilgrims.”

Syntron Android Mini-Tablet: 3G, 8.9″ Screen

Companies are beginning to use YouTube to pimp their products.

I haven’t seen this make news anywhere else (according to a Google search), so you’re seeing it here first.

Its the Mirror from Syntron. It boasts an 8.9″ screen, 3G, WiFi, and a multi-windowing modification of the Android OS.

What interests me is they’ve thought about eBooks. CoverFlow:

And Vook-like thinking:

See a video after the break.

Camangi Android Mini-Tablet: ePub Built-In

I was very, very interested in this — moreso than the five inch-screen Archos — but then I discovered it cannot play DiXV AVI videos. Such a tragedy!

On the other hand, early-bird buyers can get this for US$400.00 (with a coupon code that must be requested by November 26th). That price makes it superior to any dedicated eBook device in my mind since it’s color, interactive, and can also access the Internet. And it has a seven-inch screen too — larger than most eInk gadgets.

And today it I learned it will also have ePub capability built-in:

Click=big

eBook functionality is specially featured in Camangi WebStation. Camangi WebStation supports standard EPUB and TXT format; therefore you can easily download and read almost every eBooks from an online store or read Google Books online easily. Furthermore, unlike other eBooks readers that only produce black and white images, your book reading experience will be enhanced by full color pictures within an article when applicable.

Go here to read more — click on the eBook icon.

And remember this too: eReader was just released for Android. Once Barnes & Noble does its version of that and adapts its code for a larger screen, who would need a Nook?

Previously here:

The Coming Android Mini-Tablet Flood
Barnes & Noble eReader For Android Coming?

UPDATE: Simplicit.E.Reader NOT On Sale

See Update at bottom:

Got this via email today:

So, it’s on.

This is a new eBook device unearthed over at the MobileRead forums.

This is the ordering page.

This is what it looks like:

The lack of screen specs makes me suspicious. I think it might be a paltry 240×320 — a repurposed photo frame screen.

Update:

Robin Lenz on Twitter dug up the email address of the company making this.

They said:

The product is actually not going to
release until 1st quarter of 2010.

And when I pressed about J.C. Penney allowing orders, they responded:

Apparent miscommunication. Should not be live on JCP site.

So put away your credit card, kids!

YOUR Creation, YOUR Work, YOUR Art

Still Bourne

One explanation for why Van Lustbader’s Bourne books are so bad – and they are truly terrible – is that as a sober and professional author of made-to-order literature Van Lustbader is the wrong man to craft entertainments whose major selling point was that they appeared to have been written by someone who was seriously unhinged. Lacking Ludlum’s inspired sense of lunacy as well as his convulsive plotting, Van Lustbader sucks all the fun out of books whose appeal was never their plausibility. His world is a dry, flat place where the action only moves in one direction and you can spot a plot twist from a mile away.

Boldface emphasis added by me.

For Writers Only

Con Artists, Sell-Outs, Whores

The Magic Christian, a movie from 1969, ended with a memorable scene. A giant tub of shit was filled with money to see who would throw away their dignity for cash.

And now this, forty years later …

A Friend’s Tweet Could Be an Ad

Mr. Chow is among a growing group of celebrities, bloggers and regular Internet users who are allowing advertisers to send commercial messages to their personal contacts on social networks. For the last month, he has used the services of Ad.ly, a start-up based in Los Angeles, and Izea, based in Orlando, Fla., to periodically surrender his Twitter stream to the likes of Charter Communications, the Make a Wish Foundation and an online seminar about working from home.

In October, Mr. Chow’s income from Twitter ads was around $3,000. “I get paid for pushing a button,” he said.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

And by pushing that button you blow your credibility to smithereens.

Previously here:

FTC Wants Bloggers To Disclose: My Disclosure

Previously at Mike Cane 2008:

The Ultimate Weapon Is Trust

Previously at Mike Cane’s Blog:

PayPerScum
Like This Shit Is News?
My Response To “10 Things Your Blogger Won’t Tell You”
I’m Beginning To Think There Isn’t A Single Tech Site That Can Be Trusted

Twilight Of The Suit System

This popped up in a tweet by @lefsetz:

Quantifying how blog posts affect music sales

The study, Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales, done with student Elaine Chang, found that a flurry of “legitimate” blog posts influenced sales threefold.

When blog posts hit 240, sales went up six times on average, regardless of whether an album was released by a major or independent label.

“It is possible for an album to overcome the disadvantage of being released by an independent label,” the study reported. “In fact, albums with such extreme highs in chatter correspond to sales even higher than major label, high-chatter albums.”

Under that 240 benchmark, high blog chatter will translate into more sales, although they’ll still be relatively low if the album is released by an indie label.

I wonder why “legitimate” is in quotes and what is meant by that?

Here is the bullet to the head of the Suits:

“We were surprised at the importance of it. We expected that the views of the traditional media would count more. But in some cases, blogs were more important than media ratings. Basically, what that suggested is that when it comes to music, people tend to trust people with views similar to them more than (they do) the experts. People who are looking at the world in the same way as you (do) are becoming increasingly important.“

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Which is why Twitter has become so popular. Which is why Word-Of-Mouth works.

Previously here:

Why We’re Not Biting — And You Do!

AMC’s The Prisoner: The Problem Is In Bill Gallagher’s Mind

If you are one of the very few people reading this who never saw the original TV series of The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan, you have been leading a deprived life. It’s a series that influenced countless writers and stands as one of the immortal high points of television drama.

I don’t know of any writers who haven’t contemplated what they’d do if they had the chance to update that series.

When AMC said it would be doing so, I did not have a warm feeling inside. I ignored all the pre-show material they put on their website.

I did, however, bite when they released the nine-minute trailer.

And I did an analysis of that here.

I’d watched it so many times before the show premiered that I could cite lines from it — and often did on Twitter.

I wanted to watch the series and judge it for myself, so I didn’t read any of the reviews that sprouted all over the Internet just hours before its premiere. So everything in the following post — for I still haven’t read any of those reviews — is all mine.

Beyond here are spoilers!

No. Wait. WTF?

Dear cable channel AMC: Please take the advice at the end of this post.

I have four more hours of this abomination to slog through.

Then I will go all nuclear with a post.