Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Free Online Education Will be the Great Equalizer for the World's Poor; But…

January 28th, 2013

Free Online Education Will be the Great Equalizer for the World's Poor; But it Sure Won't Be Through Modern Poetry, Sustainability and Sociology Courses

Before they can afford to spend time on fluffy courses, the developing world needs courses that give basic literacy and numeracy along with home and small business accounting.

Then they need to learn the hard sciences and engineering. Learn why plants do what they do, learn how to program computers and weld a broken bicycle. Learn to wire together an electric generator and a local area network… then how to keep them going. Learn about how the human body works and why hygiene matters so much. Learn the basics of the health industry and how to apply that in the developing world.

There are thousands of vital things they need to learn if they want to change their lives for the better.

Once they have created as functioning economy and lifted themselves out of poverty- then they can afford to while away their time on courses that are an economic cost rather than a benefit. Seriously, the only job that comes out of most "soft science" and liberal arts courses is teaching those courses to others. The return on investment is close to -100%. The poor of the developing world can't afford that.

Learn to read, to write and do arithmetic. Learn to spend what little you make wisely and how to start a business. Learn as much about that business as you can and learn how to apply that knowledge.

Already, much of this knowledge is as near as a smartphone and an internet connection; soon it will all be there. The developing world has the chance to advance faster in the next twenty years than they have in the last one hundred.

Welcome to the world of +Abundance 

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Revolution Hits the Universities
Nothing has more potential to let us reimagine higher education than massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms.

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Ray Kurzweil and Google are Creating the First Truly "Personal" Comput…

January 8th, 2013

Ray Kurzweil and Google are Creating the First Truly "Personal" Computer

Not "personal" as in "your own", but personal as in it knows you, understands you, and can help you before you even know you need help. It will read everything you write, look at every picture you take… and it will go out and do the same with what your friends and foes post as well. To better serve you, your "cybernetic friend" will be tasked with surveilling you to an extent that no totalitarian regime in history could ever dream.

It will communicate with every other iteration of this software on the planet and collate trillions of bits of data to figure out everything it can about you… it will know you better than anyone else… eventually better than you know yourself.

Give it time and this software will know that you would have a rather boring time in Cancun for a week if you go in August like you planned… but there is a cruise that stops there for a day that would let you see everything that you would be interested in. The cruise is also going to be hosting a convention on romance writing- a subject that you have never been interested in. This software would understand that there is a 98% chance that you will have the time of your life on that cruise and that it will spark an interest in writing romance that will engage you for years. It also knows you'll write dreck nobody will buy but that you won't mind because you are writing for yourself.

It will know that you would hate Ethiopian cuisine before you try it but that there is a Kenyan restaurant in Los Angeles that would become your favorite if you ever tried it.

It will know that you would not actually like living in the city you always wanted to move to and that you would be bored stiff after 8 months in what you consider to be your dream job.

You will ignore it but it will know that person you just met will make you miserable… you know, that "love at first sight" person?

You think you want more spontaneity in your life than this will give you? This software will learn that as well and also know just how much you really want as compared to how much you think you want.

It will creepify plenty of people but it will happen anyway because it will make life vastly better for those who embrace it.

Where it gets complicated is in the fringes of society. What happens when the software discovers a sociopathic killer in the making? Notice I said "when" not "if".

Even without being used by that broken person, with people all around them using this software, sooner or later it will find someone who is planning to carry a gun into a place where guns are not allowed, and start shooting people.

How will privacy laws cover this? What do you do with someone who has never committed a crime but who this software insists is going to? Does the software have a legal obligation to report anyone who has a greater than X% chance of committing any crime? Does that requirement to report work on a sliding scale where it can only report a minor crime once it has been committed but is triggered as soon as a pedophile crosses the 50% likely to offend line? What happens when they hurt a child when the system only predicts a 49% probability?

The surveillance in George Orwell's 1984 was put in place to service the needs of an oppressive and totalitarian regime… what do you do when the same means are put in place with the end justification of saving lives and making the world a safer place?

Not only will we accept this surveillance, we will actively participate in it and our lives really will be made safer, more enjoyable and richer for it… but it will not come without a cost.

Interesting times indeed.

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Google’s New Director Of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’ | TechCrunch
World-renowned artificial intelligence expert and Google’s new Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, wants to build a search engine so sophisticated that it could act like a ‘cybernetic friend,’ who …

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Microsoft Surface and Windows 8 are Transitional Moves That Will Pay Off Big Time…

January 5th, 2013

Microsoft Surface and Windows 8 are Transitional Moves That Will Pay Off Big Time Within Five Years

It is a move toward a full featured operating system on a tablet that Apple and +Google could not have made with their tablets, and one that they will be slow to follow now.

By the time Apple grew the iPad out of the iPhone, iOS devices had eclipsed the MacOS as Apples primary source of income. It would have cost three times as much to make a MacOS tablet as a limited and low powered iOS device.

I had been using a Motion Control TabletPC running stylus optomized Windows for five years before the iPad came out and it was worth every penny of the $2,000 asking price… but  Apple would have sold less than 1% as many >$2,000  TabletMacs as <$800 iPads. It would have been a failure that delayed the tablet market for years.

In hindsight, Apple did exactly what it should have done.

Google would have had an even bigger failure on its hands if it had tried to replace the desktop. The market share for Linux on the desktop is a rounding error on the Windows share. By the time they were bringing Android tablets to the market, the  TabletPC I was using was a Lenovo that cost me $1,600. How many $1,600 Android tablets do you think would have been sold? My guess is a number that is so close to zero as to be statistically equivalent.

Google also did exactly what they needed to do and were fantastically successful at it.

Now, the cost of a tablet able to hold a full desktop OS is down to the $1,000 mark and Microsoft is making the move that in five years will be seen as exactly the right one for them. They have been eyeing this move for years and the Surface with Windows 8 is just the transitional opening salvo. They may not expect to sell 10 million Microsoft Surface Pros this year… they do expect to be selling 100 million running Windows 9 in 2018.

Apple is heavily invested in the iPad so they will be reluctant to put billions into developing a MacOS tablet that will have a slimmer profit and require another billion on modifying MacOS to touch and stylus. I don't think they will have a choice five years from now but they will be playing catchup with Microsoft.

Google is in an even more precarious position- but they also have a far greater opportunity from it. The Android tablet market will continue to grow for a few years but what do they do when a Windows Surface device running Windows 9 costs $299? They can only compete on price then and that means ever slimmer profit margins. I think their market share will start to shrink in two or three years in the developed world while it continues to grow in the developing world where the $100 difference is truly significant. That means the smart thing for Google to do is go after the emerging markets and try to establish a solid presence Android tablets that they can use to transition to a full powered Android Linux distro.

There are a few billion customers out there who's lives would be greatly enriched by computers and Google has a chance to be the one to bring that to them. This could instill loyalty and familiarity that carries on for a decade or more.

Apple and Google look to be fighting the war of 2013 while Microsoft is setting itself up strategically for the war of 2018.

Apple looks to be in the worst position as I don't really see a future where they will gain market share. They will continue to be a solid supplier of technological devices to those who are emotionally attached to the style and aesthetics and I expect them to continue to sell billions of dollars of iDevices every year. They just won't have a repeat of the anomalous growth spurt that the timely introduction of the iOS platform gave them.

Google has a huge opportunity in the emerging markets and I think they are smart enough to engage in that. In five years they could have a market valuation two or three hundred billion more than they have today. If they play their game right, they could be the first company to pass the trillion dollar valuation mark some time in the 2020s.

This isn't a sure bet because Microsoft's back is up against the wall and they will do what they have to do to survive… and they are very good at what they do.

Microsoft is playing a smart game and one that will probably see them with a valuation higher than Apple in five years… this will probably come about through their share price rising while Apple's falls. If their play for the tablet market with a full OS works as well as I expect it to, they may be able to target the developing world almost as well as Google can. That actually may be the true purpose of Windows 8 RT. The $100-200 difference in price between devices running the "light" Windows 8 and the full version doesn't mean a lot when seen through the eyes of someone living in a country where making $50,000 is normal… but when normal is $5,000, that $100 starts to mean a lot.

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This looks to be one to keep an eye on

December 20th, 2012 Clint

I think that as Internet access speeds increase through the world and the cost of content creation come down, small group and individual initiative will create thousands of shows like this that can serve ever narrower niche interests. 

While 'Inventing the Future' may garner an audience in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, I think that smaller, tighter shows could be produced at a profit (socially and/or monetarily) for audiences in the thousands.

Reshared post from +Brad Acker

New Web TV Series: INVENTING THE FUTURE
Robert Tercek is one of the world’s most prolific creators of interactive content. He has created breakthrough, entertainment experiences on every digital platform, including satellite television, game consoles, broadband Internet, interactive television, and mobile networks. His expertise spans television, telecommunications, and software. In 2009, he was named one of the “25 Executives to Watch” by Digital Media Wire. Variety has named him one of the “Digital Dozen” most influential players in new media. The Industry Standard dubbed him a “TV Anarchist.”

I've been a disciple of Robert Tercek for a number of years. He's my "go-to guy" about the history and future of analog and digital media.

http://www.blogworld.com/2012/12/19/tv-show-to-premiere-live-as-nmx-closing-keynote/

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Ray Kurzweil is one of the brightest and most original organic minds working on…

December 15th, 2012 Clint

Ray Kurzweil is one of the brightest and most original organic minds working on artificial minds. He doesn't need the money so I am thinking that they lured him in with amazing projects that challenge him and give him access to the resources of a $300 billion company… I'd bet he would take that for $1 a year… I would also bet that they ended up paying him a lot more than that.

And it is a real jerk move to claim +Ray Kurzweil on Google+ if you are not Ray Kurzweil.

Reshared post from +TechCrunch

Famed inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist Ray Kurzweil announced this afternoon that he has been hired by Google.

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Ray Kurzweil Joins Google As Engineering Director Focused On Machine Learning And Language Processing Tech | TechCrunch
Famed inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist Ray Kurzweil announced this afternoon that he has been hired by search engine giant Google as a director of engineering focused on machine learning and langu…

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It is nice to see some heavyweight companies lining up in opposition to the stifling…

December 11th, 2012 Clint

It is nice to see some heavyweight companies lining up in opposition to the stifling and ludicrously broad patents that are being handed out. I am shocked that Apple isn't joining in… shocked I tell you!

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Google and Facebook join forces against software patents – The H Open: News and Features
In a brief submitted to a US Court of Appeals, various major internet and IT companies have stated that the combination of an abstract idea and a computer should not be eligible for patent protection….

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Crowd Funding In Canada

May 9th, 2012 Clint

Bank of Canada

It is illegal in Canada to set up or use a service like Kickstarter that allows people to fund projects that they believe in. Some small sites such as StartupFuel or Ideavibes are getting around the rules but they are very limited in scope and really struggling under the regulatory shadow. There are dozens of these services just waiting for the Canadian financial regulators to let them go to work letting us get to work.

What will be even more damaging going forward is that we are even further behind on the crowd investing that was the most important part of the JOBS Act that was passed last month on April 5th, 2012.

Under the JOBS Act, small business and start ups can raise a limited amount of money from investors through a registered crowd funding webservice. There are a lot of rules and regulations around it but it is far less than it has been. It can allow a good idea get that initial seed capital that has stymied so many. It could be anywhere from thousands of dollars to the low millions of dollars.

There are some complaints against the JOBS Act but they are almost exclusively coming from those with vested interests in the status quo and controlling the small investor while ensuring small companies have to go through them if they want funding. There are some areas of caution but those can be addressed without caving to those who want to subjugate regulations to their own interests.

The crux of it is that the Canadian Ruling Class is stifling the start up and the small investor in favour of big business and big finance.

There are three broad aspects to the "crowd" as creators, facilitators and investors. This isn’t carved in stone and there can be plenty of overlap here.

  1. Crowd Sourcing where the crowd does the direct creating. An open source game where the crowd itself does the programming, graphics and audio is an example of this.
  2. Crowd Funding is where the costs are covered by the crowd by way of donations or pre-purchasing of the game so that the creative team can afford to do the programming, graphics and audio themselves. At the end, the funders have the satisfaction of helping and/or a copy of the game with perhaps some limited extras for having funded earlier or to a higher amount.
  3. Crowd Investing is when the crowd actually invests money in the game so that the costs of developing the game are covered and in turn they get a share of the profits from selling the completed game.

Where the above example is for a game, this works for any endeavour that can capture the imagination and support of a "crowd" that is sufficiently large and/or dedicated enough to finance it. It could be a book, a movie, a micro lending institute, a brewery, a better mouse trap, a lunar micro-rover, an artificial intelligence financial advisor app- or to directly address a specific and finite need like building a desalination plant for Haiti where the profit is as much social as financial.

Without the enabling power of crowd funding, millions of great little ideas brewing in the minds of Canadians will never see the light of day or have the chance to grow into amazing big ideas. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are going unrealized every day that the government keeps this road-blocked.

The primary stumbling block to this is the professional worrying class and their pathological obsession with the fairy tale of eliminating all risks and downsides. There will be fraud and theft… deal with it. Yes, I mean that literally- deal with the fraud and theft that is inevitable whenever money changes hands. Punishing fraud is a legitimate role of the state BUT it needs to be as rigorous as necessary and not one rule or regulation more. Regulate it so that it can be tracked and when fraud does arise THEN the police step in to investigate and if appropriate they lay criminal charges.

Regulating to placate the worrying class is harmful and immoral as you are actively harming the many for the illusory benefit of the few. It is less damaging to under regulate than to over regulate. The financial mess in the US is not from under regulating but from the fraud being able to hide in the tens of thousands of pages of regulations that the financial institutes themselves "helped" write.

The rules and regulations for crowd funding in the US has set an example we can observe and see where they’ve done things right and where they have gone too far. It is almost axiomatic that they have gone too far since the regulatory bureaucracy devolves to cover their own ass. The regulators won’t get in trouble for the billions that won’t be made but they will get in trouble for letting even the most minor of frauds to take place. It is hard to overstate how important it is that these bureaucratic tendencies be held in check.

One plus in the Canada column is that each province has its own financial regulatory body which means you don’t have to convince both Alberta and Quebec that working hard, taking chances while creating wealth and jobs is a good thing. With different approaches to the opportunity we can have the best ideas rising to the top and be adopted by the other provinces… or the politicians will play politics and stick to their ideology no matter how many times it is proven wrong.

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Google+ & Anonymity

September 5th, 2011 Clint

google-plus-plus

Even though they aren’t actually verifying that “John Doe” is your real name, there has been much hue and cry over Google+ requiring people to use a real names. This is a concern that Google could address while making their offering more versatile and valuable.

I would suggest a tiered system where the current honour system of "please use a real name" users are "Google+", properly verified users are "Google++" and anonymous users are tagged "Google-". These would have overlapping sites, utility and functions that could be mixed and matched to best suit what the user is looking for.

The users and creators inside Google’s social site could have the ability to limit their contact and interaction to the level that best suits them. There is no reason that it couldn’t be as fine grained as you want with some parts open to every level and the adjacent area limited to Google++ or Google-.

Real name policies lead to a far more civil and useful site than the boorish name calling and self aggrandizing BS hammered out by people hiding behind anonymity to say things that they would never say to anyone’s face. There is a reason a lot of sites that allow anonymous posting give those users the nom de plume of "Anonymous Coward". You might try and say that people are more honest when masked but it always seemed to be the mean spirited and destructive few that drive out the thoughtful and constructive many.

Wherever possible I sign up with the closest variation to Clint Johnson and try to include links back this eponymous website.

I understand that there are places and circumstances where anonymity means life and death but that doesn’t mean we need to hide everywhere and at all times.

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To Create an Oligarchy You Must Regulate.

April 9th, 2011 Clint

KvFinkenstein-Sopranos

Yes it’s a protection racket…
do your really think it is us they are protecting?

Well, we’re wending our way through another round of renewal hearings on the television industry up and we are being assured that this time they will fix things. They won’t change anything of course but if we all wish really hard then they are sure that things will work out better this time ‘round.

Not that anything is decided at these hearings, not even the in-camera portions. I would bet that any changes, or lack therein of, will be agreed on over lunches and in backroom meetings that we never hear about.

I say it is time that the CRTC slept with the fishes.

The CRTC was originally created to conserve and regulate a scarce resource of spectrum to ensure that Canada’s culture is protected.

First off, their is no scarce spectrum any more- we can have a million channels if anyone wanted to fill them. The CRTC is trapped pretending that the industry they oversee hasn’t changed in the last half century. They can’t work with the world as it actually is or it would be obvious that they serve no purpose and are simply an anachronistic throwback that needs to be trimmed to help balance the budget.

What’s that you say; they are still charged with protecting Canadian culture? And how good a job are they doing there? The rules they create are designed to ensure that Canadians will be protected from the cultural imperialism of the big bad American media machine by… uhh… continuing to prop up a business model where all the profit for Canadian broadcasters comes from mainlining American content into Canadian living rooms?

Sure they say that, without the profits from the American shows they couldn’t afford to create all the great Canadian content that they do. Do they mean that rare interstitial content between American shows that they spend the absolute minimum of time and money creating?

Really, if you wanted to create a system where all that matters is quarterly profits for the broadcasters then you couldn’t do much better than the CRTC has done. Hell, when an American broadcaster sends a feed into Canada they are supposed to automatically strip out their own advertisement and substitute in the ads from the Canadian broadcaster- the Canadian broadcaster makes money for doing absolutely nothing but get in the way.

To make it look better to the rest of Canada they suggest that broadcasters put some content on the air that could be wrapped in red tape to meet incredibly lax rules to be considered Canadian content. Of course this FauxCanCon gets the lowest possible expenditure in resources- it takes a lot more effort, skill and money to create content than it does to buy a plane ticket and bid on someone else’s content so teh CRTC isn’t going to push them too hard on it.

When it comes right down to it, Canadian content is not the business of Canadian broadcasters, it is a cost of doing business. Like electricity or printer paper, Canadian content is an expense that they will continuously try to cut in search of a better bottom line. The actual business of Canadian broadcasted is to barge in between American content owners and Canadian citizens so they can transfer something they didn’t create to an audience that they demand be forced to go through them.

Keep in mind that this is standard operating procedure for ALL government regulatory proceedings. The lack of knowledge and experience on the part of the regulators is used by the industry stakeholders to twist and distort the rules to their own needs while asserting that it is all being done in the best interests of the country at large.

The corruption of regulation by those who are regulated isn’t a flaw that can be eliminated, it is a feature that is inherent to regulation. The business and organized labour that comes under the aegis of the regulators will do everything in their power to tilt the field in their favour. This isn’t evil, it is human nature and to think they would do otherwise is naive to a destructive level.

When a regulating body like the CRTC can move billions of dollars into and out of bank accounts with the stroke of a pen, there is no way that the people who have the most to gain or lose can avoid manipulating it. The companies shareholders and the union members could reasonably make a case of negligence against the board members or union reps.

What is taking place with the CRTC is taking place in greater obscurity in the agriculture, banking, housing, energy, resource, health… hell, there is no corner of our lives that is safe from over-regulation and mis-regulation.

That isn’t to say there is no need for regulating, just that the harm done by current regulations is outstripping the good. The cleanest, safest and least corrupting regulation is that which regulates only as much as it needs and no more. For example, the Canadian film and television industry doesn’t need regulating outside the rules against fraud and crime that we are all subject to.

If you really want a corporate oligarchy, all you need to do is create a highly regulated industry.

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Amazon KindleDroid? When Not If.

March 21st, 2011 Clint

Amazon isn’t releasing hard numbers but have said that the Kindle is now the highest selling item at Amazon. Industry estimates are that they sold about five to six million units last year and that so far this year it is actually outpacing projections so might well top ten million units in 2011. Those rather nebulous numbers mean that we will probably see Amazon sell almost half as many “tablets” as the much hyped Apple this year.

That is with a device that is pretty much relegated to e-reading only; what would happen if Amazon’s next generation Kindle is a full on Android tablet? How about one that is sized between the Kindle 3 and the DX while dropping the physical keyboard and thinning the bezel to allow it a 10“ screen?

First off, why would they want to do that?

Well, Apple is being a real dick with their new “if you want to sell anything through your own app, you need to give us a cut” policy. In the future, when Amazon sells an eBook through their own Kindle app, without ever sending an electron through Apple’s App Store, Apple wants a kickback because… uhhh… ummm… they want more money? It is probably a combination of an overt money grab and a covert herding of iOS users away from Amazon and to iBooks.

Extorting money from our customers? There’s an app for that.

So Amazon doesn’t want to gouge their customers for Apple or lose money if they stick to a level pricing for all devices. They won’t abandon the iOS field but they should want to give a viable option to the iPad.

Another reason is that, while the Kindle is selling well enough right now, it will start to lose sales as full featured tablets gain on it in price, readability and battery life while maintaining a large edge in utility. As more and more people get used to carrying tablets around with them all the time it becomes annoying to carry around a second device just for reading – although a few hundred thousand people do just that, they would probably prefer not to.

Then there is the rich media consumption, you can’t watch video on the Kindle and Amazon really wants to stream you video.

What do they need to add for a KindleDroid?

The primary bit of gear that is holding them back is the display. The Kindle uses a reflective, gray scale E Ink display that is really easy on the eyes and sips power at a tiny fraction of what an LCD does. The same company that makes the current display has recently introduced the “E Ink Triton Imaging Film” display… that is not adequate for motion of touch control. Amazon would have to switch to another source and that would be Qualcomm with their Mirasol technology. It does motion closer to LCDs and they are touting even lower power consumption than the greyscale e-ink displays.

mirasol

The processor also needs to be bumped up. The current CPU is inadequate for some of the more demanding apps and that needs to be addressed. They can stay inside the same processor family and simply move up from the Freescale i.MX353 to something from the i.MX 6 series… they don’t even have to go to the top, the i.MX6Solo should be able to do everything they need.

The Kindle uses a custom Linux OS so it shouldn’t take much to transition to the likewise custom Linux called Android.

Having only 4GB of memory is not a problem when it can hold thousands of books. It is a problem when you want to load up a few dozen apps and store a few full length videos on it. It needs at least 16GB built in and an SDHC card reader to let you bump that up to whatever level you need and/or can afford.

The “nice to have” items like gyroscopic sensors, GPS, front and back facing cameras… if they can get them in there while keeping the price down then I say go for it. If it pushes the price well above the iPad then drop them until the next generation.

What can’t it lose?

There are a lot of people who own both an iPad or Android Tablet and a Kindle. They use the tablets for all the browsing, games, videos and the creativity-lite that they can handle while using the Kindle for reading. They prefer that the batteries last for days and that it is easier on the eyes for extended reading- especially outside.

People praise the iPad for lasting ten hours on a charge… the Kindle DX will run for well over a hundred hours and that means you don’t have to constantly be looking for an outlet to charge your ereader. I’m not saying that the KindleDroid needs to last 150 hours on a charge… but it can’t only last 10 hours. The closer it gets to 50 hours the better. The Mirasol display and the i.MX6Solo have a real shot at deliver an adequate user experience while getting it into that ballpark. Video playback and games will erode most of that battery life down from the Kindle DX’s 170 hours but there is hope that it can still last several times longer than the iPad.

The Kindle 3 sells for only $139 while the Kindle DX costs $379… they don’t want to lose the pricing edge over the iPad but it can’t stay as wide when you are adding a lot of new hardware. The iPad starts at $499 and it would be great if the KindleDroid could come out at $399… but I would buy it if it was the same $499 (or even a bit above) but came with a near 50 hour battery life.

What signs are there for KindleDroid development?

As of March 21, 2011, a search at Lab126 (Amazon’s eReader development team)  with the keyword “android” returns job openings for seven software engineers and three managers. I think that ten job openings are seven or eight too many for just an Android app.

Last year, they bought a small company called Touchco that was developing multi-touch screens… and folded it into Lab126. I really like that this technology has multiple levels of pressure sensitivity and can use styli for accurate touch as well as our clumsy big fingers for general interface control. A Manga Studio app would be great but is not possible without a pressure sensitive stylus.

Amazon Studios and Instant Video for Premium Members means there will be a pile of content that needs a place to go. What with Netflix getting into the content creation racket with House of Cards, how long will it take for Amazon to do the same?* Once they have a series in production, not being able to play the show on their own tablet would be problematic.

Also, how can you own the Internet Movie Database without taking advantage of deep linking content streaming right from the site? You have people looking up movies, television shows, actors, directors and… don’t you need a one click button to watch it on your Amazon Premium account enable tablet as well as you desktop/laptop/TV?

Within the next few days, Amazon will be opening the Amazon Appstore to deliver apps to the Android platform. Now would you do that if you didn’t have any device that actually ran the Android OS? That would be like selling ebooks without an ereader.

So they have tons of content to sell through a more capable tablet and they are hiring engineers who know the Android platform… I may be getting a KindleDroid for next Christmas.

android1

  *Jeff- we need to sit down with Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman to talk about a dramatic series set in the current civilian space race as Amazon’s first original series. I’ve got a first draft of the pilot done and we can get it into development for this fall if we get right on it… just puttin’ it out there.  
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