Claire Cain Miller reports in the New York Times that Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving and a barometer of the health of the retail business, was the second-heaviest online spending day on record. It capped a weekend of strong online sales that topped last year’s post-Thanksgiving Day weekend numbers by 13%.

It will come as no surprise that a lot of turnover was in “big-box” items. “Online, the virtual big-box stores, which had some of the steepest discounts, got the most visits. On Monday, eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy were the top e-commerce sites,” Miller writes, citing Nielsen Online as a source for the info. The hottest seller? Nintendo’s Wii game console. (See our blog about the marketing of the Wii.)

Even though the gross for the three-day period was close to $1 billion, it’s by no means a sign that e-commerce is singlehandedly going to pull the economy out of its current doldrums. The reason why, according to an analyst at ComScore, is very aggressive discounting. What was gained in volume was countered by lower margins, in other words. Overall, for the current season compared to last, online sales are down 2%.

Nevertheless, given the slump in some other sectors of the economy like the auto biz, we take comfort that things could be worse

RC

The New York Times Sunday Magazine of November 23, 2008, called “The Screens Issue”, is dedicated to the ubiquity of screens in every aspect of our daily life. If you can get through a typical day without once viewing a screen – cell phone or Blackberry, TV or computer monitor, gas station pump display or automobile GPS, DVD or Kindle — then skip this important publication. It’s okay. You’re probably dead anyway.

In a fascinating profile by Virginia Heffernan, a benevolent hacker named Virgil Griffith describes his motives for developing WikiScanner. The tool
“makes it possible to figure out which organization made which edits to a Wikipedia entry by cross-referencing IP addresses with a database of IP address owners.”

“You can imagine how much fun this tool is to deploy,” writes Heffernan, ” — to see how someone with a senate.gov address tinkers with the Jeremiah Wright entry, or how Diebold apparently protects its reputation by deleting criticism of its voting machines and political connections. The promise of WikiScanner is to help free Wikipedia from both propaganda and sabotage.”

It also help Griffith get girls, according to the author of the Times article.

RC

It’s never a good thing for a major manufacturer to recall a flawed chip, especially if the manufacturer is named Intel. But that’s just what happened in 1994 when the discovery of a miscalculation caused Intel to call back its Pentium chip at a cost to the company of some $420 million. The flaw was infinitesimal but multiplied by the factors that scientists need to send satellites to Jupiter or rockets to huts containing terrorists, the error was intolerable.

With billions of dollars at stake, it’s no wonder that Pentium has tested the hell out of the Nehalem, the chip it’s releasing today, according to John Markoff in the New York Times. To visualize the 731 million transistors packed into roughly the same space as the current generation of chips, an Intel executive used the simile of shrinking the land mass and complexity of Europe to something the size of Ithaca, New York. And I once got lost in Ithaca, New York.

What does Nehalem mean? For one thing it’s a town in Oregon 73.54 miles from Hillsboro, Oregon where Intel’s labs have been putting the new chip through its paces. Why do I suspect an Intel executive lives in Nehalem?

Or the word is simply Melahen spelled backwards.

At any rate, if the chip is all it’s hyped to be it would be a huge boost for American technology, which could use a good boost right about now. So good luck to Intel.

RC

John Markoff writing in the New York Times (A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer) describes the terrifying phenomenon of robot-herding cybercriminals turning computers loose on other computers to take them over for the purpose of sending out email spam, mine for financial information, or spread viruses. For all you know, your computer might be one of these very “zombies”.

Markoff writes,

Botnets remain an Internet scourge. Active zombie networks created by a growing criminal underground peaked last month at more than half a million computers, according to shadowserver.org, an organization that tracks botnets. Even though security experts have diminished the botnets to about 300,000 computers, that is still twice the number detected a year ago.

The actual numbers may be far larger; Microsoft investigators, who say they are tracking about 1,000 botnets at any given time, say the largest network still controls several million PCs.

As I read the Times article bells went off and I remembered a marvelous novel, Lingo by Jim Menick, which I agented a while back and have since reissued in E-Reads. “Lingo” was Brewster Billings pet name for the home computer he programmed with the ability to talk to its owner. In time Lingo’s intellectual achievements began to grow exponentially, rapidly exhausting its existing memory. Given the fact that the novel was published in 1991, you can imagine just how limited Lingo’s memory was — four or five megabytes of RAM, maybe?

Then Lingo figures out how to penetrate the memory banks of the military’s ultra-secret computer network and ballistic missile launch system, and suddenly this light science fiction romp turns scary dark, especially when US government officials threaten to pull Lingo’s plug. The Soviet Union’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile command is on full alert in case Lingo doesn’t take kindly to threats.

Read Lingo, then reread Markoff’s article and contemplate the power of today’s computer’s and the possibility that they could do a Lingo of their own and shake hands with their brothers and sisters in the Defense Department. If you don’t have enough worries to keep you up all night long, that’s definitely a candidate.

The reviews for Lingo were glowing:

“In the end, Lingo turns out to be among the more lighthearted catastrophe thrillers to be conceived since The Mouse That Roared. It makes you think a little, and it makes you smile a lot.”
–-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times

“A witty, ingenious, and thought-provoking gambol with a Frankenstein monster in computer clothing.”
-–Kirkus Reviews

“A delightful romp into a funny but frightening world of high-tech probabilities.”
-–Chicago Tribune

“Wildly comedic…realizes your worst fear of a computer taking over the world.”
-–Los Angeles Times

“Hilarious…entertaining and thought provoking.”
-–The Washington Post

– Richard Curtis

After tormenting e-book technorati with teasers, iRex has now revealed its Reader 1000. Some bloggers are calling it a Kindle Killer. Time will tell. Here’s what it looks like, and below is iRex’s press release predicting that the Reader 1000 spells “the end of the printed word for business professionals.”

Media Release
22nd September 2008
iRex Opens New Chapter In E‐Reading
Eindhoven, 22 September 2008

- The world’s leading provider of e-reading solutions, Netherlands
based iRex Technologies, has opened a new chapter in professional digital reading with the launch of the iRex 1000 series Digital Reader. The iRex suite of e-reading products is growing steadily following the success of the iLiad and iLiad Book Edition amongst the consumer market. Now the launch of the iRex 1000 series, with its larger display size and memory, is spelling the end of the printed word for business professionals. “The success of digital reading has been focused on and measured by its impact upon the book market when in fact the real revolution is happening in the business world.” Said Hans Brons, CEO of iRex. “The computer revolutionised the way we do business, but it has never offered a solution to match paper.

With the launch of the 1000 series it is now possible to ‘print’ documents onto electronic paper for the first time.” Although the iRex iLiad products with their larger screen and superior functionality have been extremely successful, the company recognised the need for a new generation solution for business. The result is the iRex 1000 series, offering superior functionality and a unique 10.2 inch screen size to allow easy reading and referencing of documents from A4 Powerpoint presentations to sophisticated PDF files and from HTML to TXT and JPEG. Increased memory ensures that users can be confident that the device will hold any and all documents they require.

Weighing less than 570 grams and only 1.2cm deep the 1000 series is an open system which synchronises easily with the PC and is able to read all common formats. The large display has 16 grey tones and storage capacity is delivered via a changeable 1GB SD card. The universal mini‐USB connector can be used for transferring files as well as uploading and content can be easily transferred from the internet. The chargeable built in Li‐Ion battery has sufficient power to last for several days.

The 1000 series will offer three products within the range from the DR1000 base version equipped with a USB connector, through the DR1000 S equipped with a stylus for writing which can serve as an unending notepad, to the DR1000 SW with stylus, plus WIFI and Bluetooth connectivity. The later model will not be available at the launch date but will be introduced at a later stage.

With a recent study demonstrating that the average US office worker prints more than 10,000 pages of paper a year, of which three quarters is thrown away within one week and more than half the same day, the 1000 series finally offers a way for companies and individuals to cut out the billions of pages of printed paper they produce each year, making a powerful contribution to the environment.

“Tax specialists, accountants and lawyers that previously had thick piles of documents can carry them in their digital reader; students and academics can easily save their textbooks in the device.” Says Brons. “Government and public sector organisations can make minutes and reports available electronically whilst medical specialists can have all their patient information and key texts at their fingertips. Plus, in addition to their professional documents they can also have their e‐books and newspapers available.”

The new devices and their place in the suite of iRex products marks a step change in the world of digital reading consolidating iRex’s position as the first choice provider of e‐reading solutions. “Our partnership with our customers, partners and particularly the developer community is vital to drive new and better technology. By offering a suite of separate e‐reader products we are not only meeting the needs but revolutionising the expectations of our customers.”

About iRex Technologies:

iRex Technologies BV have been instrumental in pushing the frontiers of digital reading since 2001 when their team developed the electronic paper display for the Sony Librié the first commercially available ereader launched in 2004. Following the formation of iRex Technologies in 2005 as a spin‐off company from Royal Philips Electronics their focus on open innovation and co‐operation has seen them become the world’s leading provider of solutions for reading written digital content with the ease and comfort of print on paper. This is combined with the interactivity, flexibility and up‐dating functionality provided by digital information.

Located on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, the Netherlands iRex serves the B2B market as well as the consumer market and works closely with companies and publishers to enable them to offer their content (newspapers, books, documents) digitally to clients, subscribers and employees.

– Richard Curtis

Hard on the heels of the announced unveiling of Plastic Logic’s unnamed tablet reader, Andy Greenberg of Forbes reports the imminent launch of iRex Technologies’ iRex Reader 1000. What does it look like? The image at the right is all that anyone gets to see until Monday September 22nd.

With Sony and Amazon developing next-generation e-books, the race for the hearts, minds and wallets of the consumer is on, and tablet-sized screens will definitely be a critical factor. Forbes will win handily in that aspect, as Plastic Logic won’t get its product out till late spring at the very earliest. But who will win the contest on the basis of quality is anybody’s guess. In any case both business and student users will be the beneficiaries, and though this blogger has restrained his temptation to buy a tablet up to now, it’s more than likely he will succumb when all the entries are available.

One thing that will affect my decision is the price: the projected price for the basic iRex 1000 will be about $650 but add-ons will increase the cost, bringing it to about twice the price of Kindle and Sony. On the other hand, that’s about half the price of a tablet PC. And iRex may deliver twice the value.

According to Greenberg,

The iRex Reader 1000 offers a 10.2-inch diagonal E-Inkscreen, far larger than Kindle’s 6-inch screen or even iRex’s own 8.1-inch diagonal iLiad, its last e-book model. That stretched display is designed to work with any file format, be it an e-book, a full-sized PDF, a Word document or HTML. Like earlier iRex devices, it sports a stylus and touch screen for taking notes and marking documents.

Some other issues inhibiting consumers are lack of color and no video, says Greenberg. So, even business men and women who can afford it (assuming they can even afford lead pencils in the current economy) might want to sit out the dance until those features are in place. That will happen in the next four years.

-Richard Curtis

If you’ve been wondering, as I have, when the E-Book Revolution would find its way to textbooks, it’s now no further than your keyboard.

If any aspect of the book business were ripe for revolution it’s textbooks, because it’s closest to the music industry in terms of the SRI – the Student Resentment Index. College students have been complaining for decades about being compelled to pay preposterously high prices for school books of which they may be required to use only a few chapters. Though there is a secondary market for those books, publishers and authors have gotten around it by producing new editions, often merely cosmetically enhanced, and requiring students to buy them instead of used ones. The process is particularly cruel on families on a tight budget. And it’s not that hot on the spines of students lugging fifteen or twenty pounds of books in their backpacks.

The logical question is, “Why can’t we just download?”

Noam Cohen’s article in the New York Times, Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free discusses new approaches by students and parents who feel ripped off by a conspiracy of publishers, textbook authors, and colleges.

Recognizing the injustice, at least one denizen of academia, Professor R. Preston McAfee of Cal Tech, has forgone the traditional route and a big advance in order to deliver a free download of an economics textbook he has authored. The book is also for sale in an on-demand print edition, but for a fraction of the price that students would have to pay at their college bookstore. “This market is not working very well — except for the shareholders in the textbook publishers,” Cohen quotes Professor McAfee. “We have lots of knowledge, but we are not getting it out.”

Cohen cites other attractively priced approaches to Web delivery of math, science, economics and other big-ticket textbooks. These breakthroughs come along just as tablet-reader technology solutions accelerate. A tipping point may be closer than anyone (except a core group of wild-eyed visionaries like yours truly) could have imagined a few years ago.

– Richard Curtis

David Pogue in the New York Times announces the imminent rollout – in Target Stores of all places — of The Peek, a device so single-mindedly dedicated to email that if you dissect it you will find not a trace of a bell nor a hint of a whistle. Go ahead and dissect it: for $100 you can replace it. But don’t try to browse the Web on it, check your calendar, watch a video, produce a spreadsheet, or even phone home. You want convergence? Buy a BlackBerry. The only thing The Peek converges with is your email account.

Call it a DumbPhone, but there are a lot of people who don’t care, don’t want anything more sophisticated and can’t afford it anyway.

At a glance The Peek looks like BlackBerry’s skinny kid sister in a training bra.

“The first time you turn on the Peek,” Pogue writes, “you’re asked for your e-mail address and password. If it’s a Web-based account like Hotmail, Gmail or AOL, that’s all there is to it. The Peek automatically checks for new messages every 5 to 15 minutes, and notifies you with a little chime, a little vibrating buzz and a blinking blue light in the corner. (You can also check on demand.)”

Navigation couldn’t be easier, and if you’re from the K.I.S.S. school — Keep It Simple, Stupid — the Peek is refreshingly fundamental. You can read about it in Pogue’s article or visit getpeek.com. Thumbs not included.

My prediction? A runaway hit!

– Richard Curtis

The excitement for the next generation Kindle, fueled by lots of speculation at Wired.com, was quickly doused with some cold, wet reality from Amazon spokesman Craig Berman. Even though he didn’t deny Frog Design were up to something special for the Kindle 2.0, he’s quoted as saying “a new version will come out sometime next year at the earliest,” in a recent interview with Dow Jones.

So, that leaves another key player in the ebook device market, Sony, some nice wiggle room in the months leading up to the holiday season. Sony has yet to make any announcements about what might be coming down the pipe, but they have just started expanding into Europe, most notably by partnering with Waterstone’s, one of the UK’s biggest book retailers.

From September 2008 onwards Waterstone’s will be selling the Reader itself in over 200 of their High Street bookshops. And the product is available to pre-order for September delivery now via their online store. – From Sony’s Website, here.

It’s very likely that this is just the tip of the iceberg for Sony’s competitive march against the Kindle. Of course, E-Reads wishes them both the best of success, so we’re currently prepping many more titles to be released in both Kindle format through Amazon and as Sony ebooks (and Reader compatible ePub) this fall, supplementing the over 450+ titles we have currently available at the Sony Connect eBook Store and Amazon.

- Michael Gaudet

Further to our discussion of Kindles as learning tools, if Apple can pull off a scheme to create a full-sized keyboard for a tablet device, they will be that much closer winning what I call the Premio Gordo: universal adoption of a tablet (or tablet-oid) computer by colleges.

According to Sam Oliver, writing in AppleInsider, a 52-page patent filed by Apple Inc. “illustrates a number of techniques that would pave the way for tablet Macs that display a near full-sized multi-touch keyboard and run an undiluted version of the Mac OS X operating system.” In plain English, Mac users would be able type with both hands on the screen, an absolutely essential feature of any student computer.

– Richard Curtis