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iPad e-Books Pricing to Compete Competitively Against Kindle

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When the issue on the e-books pricing of those who will be in the iPad’s iBookstore started spreading, many are saying that it will be to Amazon’s advantage.  The Kindle Store’s average price for an e-book is pegged at $9.99 and Amazon is even sacrificing some sales just to maintain this pricing even at a loss for them.

Analysts are saying that the iBookstore will not be able to compete against this pricing and that e-books to be sold will be priced higher than the e-books sold in the Kindle Store.

That may not be necessarily true at all.  The blog AppAdvice got hold of a preview that shows otherwise. It seems that most e-books that will be sold in the iBookstore  are also priced at $9.99. In fact, out of the 32 e-books that were on the New York Time’s Bestsellers, 27 titles have $9.99 price tag.

In fact 4 of  the top 5 bestsellers will be sold in the iBookstore for $9.99.

If the iBookstore will be able maintain this price ceilings for most of the books that will be made available once the iPad is launched, Amazon is definitely facing a stiff challenge to their well established and widely accepted e-book business.  Indeed Amazon has all the reason to be worried and should start working on various enhancements to the Kindle store as well possibly on the Kindle device as well.  But except for the lack of color display and other computing functionalities, I think Amazon may have already exhausted all possible features that it could probably include in the Kindle.

So, will you be buying the iPad and use it as an e-book reader and purchase your e-books from the iBookstore? Or will you use the Kindle App for Tablets which will also run in the iPad and purchase your e-books from the Amazon Kindle Store still?

Originally posted on March 24, 2010 @ 8:22 pm

Introducing the iPad’s Latest Challenger, Samsung Slate PC

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Whether we all like it or not, the Apple iPad has already marked its niche into the electronics industry. Despite the fact that it hasn’t even arrived on any user’s lap yet, the iPad, despite the many flaws and shortcomings thrown at it by critics is now becoming a benchmark for all other tablet PCs that are to be released by other manufacturers.

Take the case of Samsung which is reportedly preparing their own slate-like tablet PC. According to Philip Newton – Samsung Australia’s director of  IT Division, Samsung’s planned slate PC will boast of PC-grade processor and connectivity. It will be powerful enough that will drive users to make it as their primary computing devices. Incidentally, in case you’re not aware this is one feature that the iPad won’t probably achieved with any of its soon-to-be-released units.

Speaking at the Samsung Forum in Singapore, Mr. Newton even hits on the iPad saying that it lacks the processing power and connectivity features that slate-type platforms should have to spark interests among users.  Mr. Newton even said that those Atom-powered devices even have more potential than the iPad has.

Is this a hint that the Samsung slate PC will be running on Android? Unfortunately, that remains to be seen, since details and information about the Samsung slate PC are not yet known.

The good news is, we only have to wait until the second half of this year as Samsung promises to deliver the said device by then. In case you’re doubting Samsung’s capabilities to come with mini-computing device, just take a look at the picture above which is actually the Samsung Q1 UMPC  released sometime in 2006.  Unfortunately that UMPC didn’t reap much success for Samsung. But hey, who knows, with the interest on tablet-like devices today, Samsung might actually become successful with this one.

Originally posted on March 16, 2010 @ 6:01 pm

Surprise! Folks Don’t Go to Twitter for Breaking News, Facebook Wins Again

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Following their report that Facebook has just beaten Google again as the U.S. most visited site, Hitwise is now reporting another Facebook triumph. This time is has something to do with where people go to if they want to know the latest and most breaking news. Opsie! Sorry folks, you’re wrong, not from Twitter but from Facebook.

According to Hitwise, Twitter is only at the no.39 of the list of which sites people go for breaking news. And you’ve guessed it right, Facebook is almost at the lead, landing at the no. 3 spot. It even beat Google which is at eleventh place.

Additionally, Facebook drives 3.64% traffic to news and media sites, followed by Google  with 1.27% and Twitter accounting for only 0.14% of traffic driven to those sites.

Now, here’s a rather interesting point raised by Hitwise’s data. Twitter visits may have more than doubled and yet where could these visitors go to right after they’ve gone through Twitter.com? According to the report, majority of those visitors go to social networking and entertainment sites.

But wait, how come then that Twitter is hailed as the new media news source if it doesn’t even comes close to Facebook as leader in driving traffic to news sites. Venture Beat has an interesting analysis. According to VB, those news posted on Twitter timeline came from variety of sources. And most often than not those tweets do not link back to the “traditional media” source of news. Another reason is the fact that most of the news reported by Twitter users are based on their experiences and were not yet reported by news media sites.

There you go folks, it looks like we need to call Facebook as the new king of new media news source and take the title away from Twitter now.

Originally posted on March 16, 2010 @ 5:00 pm

Techmeme Intros Mediagazer, Media News Aggregator

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From the same people behind tech news aggregator Techmeme comes a similar service called Mediagazer, aggregating your daily dose of media news. Mediagazer is backed by media companies such as WordPress, Seesmic, Zemanta and others.

So, if in your daily browsing of the Internet you encounter questions such as “What do news organizations need to do to survive?”,  “Will books become extinct?”, “Can video bring television and the internet together?” and other questions regarding new or old media Mediagazer will organize them in a similar fashion as Techmeme. In other words, everything else that don’t fall under Techmeme, you can find it on Mediagazer.

Mediagazer is organized through the same technology and process as Techmeme, that is combining automated aggregation technologies with direct editorial input from human editors. The media news memetracker collects relevant takes on an issue and package these into group of links.

And just like Techmeme, Mediagazer also makes it easier to share headlines via a recently introduced “share” button. A mobile site is also up and running if  need to get your daily fix of media news  via smartphones on mediagazer.com/m or through mediagazer.com/mini for simpler phones.

So there, another site to monitor for daily news coverage. Hopefully, the human editors of Techmeme and Mediagazer will be able to distinguish clearly what should be aggregated on each of these news verticals and duplication of entries will not happen.  Otherwise, they  might as well combined these two aggregators later on.

Originally posted on March 8, 2010 @ 5:05 pm

Internet TV Guide Clicker Redesigns its Homepage, Goes Full Blast with New Features

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Clicker, an Internet TV guide which just launched 3 months ago is gearing up for a full blast operation as it launches a new homepage coupled with some new features.  If you’re like me who just learned about this site now, Clicker’s dictum is to help you, Internet TV consumers to find the right show, right when you need to find it – as in Now.

What Clicker does is to catalog all broadcast programming online including TV-quality web original shows. It then delivers a seamless and well organized experience for you to find what’s available to watch and watch isn’t. It also tells you where to watch the Internet TV show as well as which of these shows are well worth watching.

And to make all these happen, Clicker has redesigned its homepage and peppered it with social, personalization, recommendation and management features.

Key features of Clicker’s new homepage include the following:

  • Search on top – to make it easy for users with small screen resolution to use Clicker’s main service – Search
  • Headliners – include important shows and episodes, breaking news and other important TV content
  • Popular Shows/Episodes – a placeholder for soon to be personalized recommendations feature of Clicker
  • Clicker Right Now – lets you peek into what other Clicker users are doing/watching
  • Categories – browsing Clicker’s catalog by subject
  • Playlist – used to be buried on the second layer of Clicker’s site and is now place prominently on the homepage

So there, if you’re into Internet TV programs, check out the newly redesigned Clicker.com now.

Originally posted on March 5, 2010 @ 9:42 am