Clipmarks | Bezos Clips

Amazon's Foot firmly in Mouth

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:23:50 GMT

clipped by: bjkeltz

What was Bejos’ response back then? ''Those who make choices that are genuinely good for customers, authors, and publishers will prevail. Goliath is always in range of a good slingshot.'' To which Barnes and Noble responded with another news release stating, ''Well, Mr. Bezos, what with market capitalization of some $6 billion and more than four million customers, we suppose you know a Goliath when you see one. Your company is now worth more than Barnes & Noble, Borders and all of the independent booksellers combined. Might we suggest that slingshots and potshots should not be part of your arsenal.''

Bezos’ team quickly shot back, ''Oh.''

B..U..R..N!

Tags: amazon.com, booklocker.com, barnes & noble, pooperscoopers, anti trust laws, class action lawsuit

Amazon Kindle 2.0

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:52:47 GMT

clipped by: dgreplay
clipper's remarks: Nice balance to this biz week article. Not sure i'm sold on the Kindle either, but its tough to question John Doerr. He's been right many, many times...and his wins typically come with many, many zeros behind it.

Clip Source: www.businessweek.com

Amazon.com plans to unveil a larger-screen model of its Kindle e-book player, aimed at students, in the coming months

sources say the new version is significantly thinner, has a better screen, is more stylish and includes fixes to some of the user interface annoyances with the first version

“They’ve jumped from Generation One to Generation Four or Five. It just looks better, and feels better,”

Kleiner Perkins VC John Doerr, an original backer of Bezos, told me he thinks the Kindle will be a $1 billion business before too long.

the cynic in me thinks Amazon may be forced to talk up the Kindle beyond its potential: because it may be the company's best hope to become a true digital media power

Tags: kindle, amazon.com, kleiner perkins, john doerr

5 Unlikely Music Industry Heroes

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:38:36 GMT

clipped by: axgrndr

Clip Source: www.hypebot.com

1) TRENT REZNOR - Lets' face it, Nine Inch Nails makes music that most of us find about as pleasant as a trip to the dentist. But Reznor markets and sells that music in ways that his fans - from casual to fanatic - relate to; and they reward him with their dollars. If I controlled a major, I'd give him a label to run.

2) JEFF BEZOS - The founder of Amazon proved that people will buy stuff online if you treat them well. When he applied that to music, it meant that he wouldn't sell downloads unless they were DRM-free. Add a dose of variable pricing and a pinch of "lets screw iTunes" and the labels dropped copy protection and came rushing in.

These five men don't follow the unwritten rules of how the music industry (or any industry) is "supposed to" run and because of that they're helping to change it.

Tags: music, new media

Booklocker vs. Amazon Class Action Lawsuit

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:06:00 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.spannet.org

Recently, the SPAN Board voted to support the class action antitrust lawsuit, BookLocker.com, Inc. vs. Amazon.com, Inc.
In late March, the news broke that Amazon had begun a new policy requiring print on demand (POD) publishers using Amazon’s distribution services to print their books using Amazon’s subsidiary BookSurge

In April, SPAN announced it opposed the policy and I wrote a letter to Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos. I said, in short, the new policy was not in the best interest of either Amazon or SPAN members. Despite public outcry, Amazon has stuck to its new POD policy. This led BookLocker.com, Inc., a POD publisher, to initiate a class action antitrust lawsuit challenging the legality of the policy.

The lawsuit says that Amazon is illegally tying the BookSurge printing to Amazon’s distribution services. According to antitrust law, companies generally cannot require a customer to buy one product or service in order to have access to another distinct product or service.

Classic Celebrity Quotes About Coffee

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:38:58 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: www.industrialjoe.com

#001

"The more complicated the order, the bigger the asshole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a 'decaf grandee, half soy, half lowfat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n'-Low and one NutraSweet,' ooooh, you're a huge asshole."

- George Carlin

#002

"I never laugh until I've had my coffee."

- Clark Gable

#003

"In Seattle you haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running."

- Jeff Bezos

#004

"If it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever."

- David Letterman

#005

"After a few months' acquaintance with European 'coffee' one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with it's clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed."

- Mark Twain

#006

"I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon."

- Ronald Reagan

Clip: FlyontheWeb

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:58:28 GMT

clipped by: altaloman

Clip Source: blogs.cqpolitics.com

Who Should Be Obama's Tech Czar?

June 30, 2008 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has proposed creating a Cabinet-level position for a chief technology officer. Washingtonian.com finds the idea intriguing, and reviews some of the names being kicked around among techies. Should the czar be Google's Vint Cerf, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, or someone else? Author Garrett Graff says the push for a national CTO comes at a time when Washington and Silicon Valley are trying to develop closer relationships

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Is Amazon's Kindle about to Tip?

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:44:52 GMT

clipped by: dgreplay
clipper's remarks: hmmm...2,500 four-year universities in the U.S. The author of this article says Amazon has a long way to go. I say, that's 2,500 highly qualified "Glengary" leads to go after!

I can hear Bezos now..."We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. "

Clip Source: news.cnet.com

Another prestigious school is embracing Amazon's Kindle e-reader.

Princeton University has announced that it will start printing Kindle-edition textbooks this fall, according to a story in The Christian Science Monitor.

Princeton follows Yale, Oxford, and UC Berkeley in creating textbooks for the Kindle. In the United States, there are about 2,500 four-year universities, so Amazon still has a long way to go.

Tags: amazon, kindle

Electronic Device Stirs Unease at Book Fair

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:48:54 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Electronic Device Stirs Unease at Book Fair

The Kindle can download books.

That topic both energized and unnerved people attending BookExpo America, the publishing and bookselling industry’s annual trade show, which ended at the convention center here on Sunday.

Much of the talk was focused on the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, which has gained widespread acclaim for its ease of use. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, spent much of a packed session on Friday evangelizing about the Kindle, which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company’s unit sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic formats.

Tags: e-books, reader

15 People Who Changed the Internet

Sun, 18 May 2008 20:21:25 GMT

clipped by: karokan

Clip Source: www.grademoney.com

15 People Who Changed the Internet (Revised Version)

1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Inc.)

2. Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Created World Wide Web)

3. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

4. Shawn Fanning (Napster, Rupture)

5. Kevin Rose (Digg)

6. Matt Mullenweg (WordPress)

7. Bram Cohen (BitTorrent)

8. Pierre Omidyar (eBay)

9. Mike Morhaime (Blizzard Entertainment - World of Warcraft)

10. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)

11. Craig Newmark (Craigslist)

12. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube)

13. David Filo and Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc)

14. Jack Ma (Alibaba)

15. Jeff Preston Bezos (Amazon)

Tags: people, change, internet, innovation, ideas

The charmed life of Jeff Bezos

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:11:37 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: money.cnn.com

The charmed life of Jeff Bezos

Common wisdom once pegged Amazon and Bezos as goners. But guess what? They're thriving.

(Fortune Magazine) -- The helicopter was out of control and Jeff Bezos, the dotcom billionaire who founded Amazon, was pretty sure he was about to die. He was pinioned in the front passenger seat as the pilot frantically tried to thread the cherry-red copter through a field of trees.

Bezos had been flying around the boondocks of West Texas to scout out a site for Blue Origin, a space tourism venture he'd long dreamed of starting. The helicopter ferried them to a remote area that a government report would later describe as "mountainous terrain next to a creek." After a brief look around, Bezos and two employees hopped back into the helicopter, and the pilot tried to take off. That's when things went bad.

Tags: bezos, amazon, wisdom, billionaire, space tourism

The Ends Justify...

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:24:25 GMT

clipped by: rfnajera

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Putin is named Time 'Person of the Year'

NEW YORK - Time magazine on Wednesday named Russian President Vladimir Putin its 2007 "Person of the Year."

The nod went to the Russian leader because of Putin's "extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability," said Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor.

But critics say he has moved the country away from Russia's democratic reforms of the 1990s by tightening control of the media, courts and parliament.

"He's the new czar of Russia and he's dangerous in the sense that he doesn't care about civil liberties, he doesn't care about free speech," Stengel said.

Putin would remain Russia's real leader, regardless of his title

Previous individual winners have included Bono, President George W. Bush and Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.

Tags: russia, vladimir, putin, time magazine

The Titans of Tech

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:17:22 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: L.Torvalds?

Clip Source: 60minutes.yahoo.com

Meet the titans of tech. Here are some of the extraordinary individuals who have changed the world through the power of the computer. From Bill Gates to Steve Jobs to the Google Guys and the founders of Napster and eBay, "60 Minutes" has covered the high-tech revolution from DOS to the iPhone.

Bill Gates

Eating burgers with Bill » Watch Clip

View Video

Amazon

Jeff Bezos on nerdiness » Watch Clip

View Video

Steve Jobs

Sayings of Chairman Steve » Watch Clip

View Video

Larry Ellison

Did he really fly a plane under the Golden Gate Bridge? » Watch Clip

View Video

REVOLUTIONARIES

eBay » Watch Clip View Video

Napster » Watch Clip View Video

The Google Guys » Watch Clip View Video

Mark Cuban » Watch Clip View Video

Who do you think most deserves to be in a high-tech hall of fame?

Tags: technology, poll, revolutionary

Free shipping on graphic novels and manga

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:21:43 GMT

clipped by: chrisfeola

Clip Source: www.instapundit.com

MY EARLIER POST ON FREE SHIPPING and Amazon Prime produced this email from reader Travis Corcoran:

I'm an entrepreneur (I launched SmartFlix.com and grew it to about $1 million/year in revenue...with no venture capital!), and last month I launched HeavyInk.com: sort ofan Amazon.com for comic books, graphic novels, etc., crossed with the social networking aspects of Facebook.

I've been insistent from the get-go that we offer free shipping on everything. You can come in, order a comic book for $1.99, and you get a 20% discount, and free shipping.

Yeah, we lose big money on the person who orders one comic book.

...but the value proposition is so simple and compelling, that we get tons of customers, who soon start buying enough stuff that it's, on average, worthwhile.

Bezos was/is right!

Tags: graphic novels, manga, online shopping

Kindler

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:51:59 GMT

clipped by: sidhartav

Clip Source: nomadlife.org

"Amazon's Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore. Now he believes he can improve upon one of humankind's most divine creations: the book itself."

- Newsweek

After the TV, the PC and the Phone .. companies have gambled entire fortunes on figuring out what the next 'screen' could be. It could very well be this electronic reader - 'Kindle', and it could replace the dog that fetched your newspaper every morning :)

Labels: technology

Tags: books

Bezos

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:02:50 GMT

clipped by: PeterTCoyne

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Tags: bezos, amazon, books, book