Authors Guild president: Kindle's a swindle
We're not sure his tone or rhetoric are the most convincing, but Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr. has a little op-ed in the New York Times today attempting to explain his organization's objection to the Kindle 2's text-to-speech features. If you read our little Know Your Rights piece, you already know what he's on about: the main problem is that Amazon isn't paying for both ebook and audiobook rights for Kindle content, and Roy's worried that eventually computerized text-to-speech will be good enough for consumers to eschew buying audiobooks entirely. Take a deep breath, count to ten, consider that audiobooks are a billion-dollar business, and you can sort of see where the Authors Guild is coming from -- Roy doesn't sound too crazy when he says he thinks "authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2's version of books."
What does this mean for you? Well, probably just higher prices in the short term, as we're guessing publishers will start increasing ebook license fees to cover what they think they're going to lose on audiobook sales, and Amazon and other ebook retailers will just pass those costs along. Lame, sure, but it's not the crackdown some were hysterically predicting -- Roy's pretty clear that the Authors Guild doesn't care about parents reading to kids or text-to-speech for the blind, just the Kindle's impact on the audiobook market. We'll see how Amazon and the Guild resolve this one over the next few months -- in the meantime, point your Kindle to the read link and blow Roy's mind by having Tom read the op-ed to you.
MSI have officially announced their all-in-one nettop. The MSI Wind NetOn AP1900, which was first spotted back in November, has an 18.5-inch WSXGA 16:9 display, Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor, up to 2GB of DDR2 memory and both a 160GB SATA hard-drive and DVD burner. According to MSI, at full operating load the 35mm wide NetOn AP1900 requires just 35W, saving around 86-percent on a traditional PC.
Logitech’s Harmony 1100 universal remote has finally gone on sale at Newegg, offering a 3.5-inch touchscreen, both infrared and RF capabilities, customizable icons, layouts and macros, and the ability to set it all up via a PC. The Harmony 1100 has access to Logitech’s 225,000 device-strong A/V control database, including models from 5,000 brands.
Corsair has today taken the wraps off its fastest DDR3 Dominator FT family designed to work for Intel Core i7-based processors. Announcement of the new Dominator GT features a bright racing red color scheme with company’s patent’s-pending Dual-path Heat exchange (DHX) technology high-end stick with remarkably low latencies (7-8-7) running at high frequency of 2000Mhz.
Garmin have announced their latest GPS-enabled exercise trainer, the FR60 Fitness Watch. Thanks to the ANT+ wireless fitness equipment standard, the FR60 can track time, calories burned, heart rate and other data from linked fitness equipment, then - with the supplied ANT+ USB stick - wirelessly transfer that information to your PC when it comes into range.
Further evidence suggesting Google is preparing to launch an online file storage service called GDrive has emerged, this time detailed in a file within the company’s Google Pack. Categorizing GDrive under “Online file backup and storage”, it goes on to describe it as “reliable storage” for files and media that can be accessed from multiple devices including cellphones.
Denon set tone with the announcement of DVD-A1UD (DVD-A1UDCI, US release), the world’s first universal desk with inclusion of SACD, DVD-A, HDCD in their flagship Blu-ray universal player months ago, and was scheduled to due this month. Interested buyers with deep pocket may have to wait couple months longer, the $4,200 do-it-all desk has been postponed to due in March.
Here’s one high tech and feature-rich cell phone you may not get to use outside of Japan. A Hitachi branded AU phone by KDDI Japanese cellular services featuring an IPS-enabled display with 3D capability, 5MP camera capture, CDMA 1X WIN, Bluetooth, TV tuners and eWallet functionality.
Samsung Electronics have put 50 nanometer’s memory technology and manufacturing processes in good uses. Developed from the new technology, higher density and more power efficient chipsets were achieved to fabricate a single stick 4GB DDR3 SDRAM chip.
The Hitachi Business groups has let loose of an industry-grade projector with ANSI lumen rating of 4000. The 3LCD CP-SC635 sports a 4:3, natively SVGA+ (1400×1050) resolution screen panel with durable inorganic, and is able to resolve resolutions of up to 1600×1200. Also, Its HDMI connectivity allows HD video formats feed of up to 1080p at 60hz.
