In 1998, Jeff Bezos sat down with the Commonwealth Club to discuss the history and future of Amazon. The speech itself is amazing — one of my favorite things I’ve read ever. But today, I discovered that he also did a Q&A with the audience. One question in particular shows just how forward looking Bezos has been.
Q. What is the future of purely electronic books, for example, of downloadable books?
A. I’m a huge believer in downloadable books. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. I think that it’s still early. I suspect that it’ll take a few more years – who knows exactly how many: three, five, maybe even ten years – before electronic books are a big deal. The limiting factor at this point for electronic downloadable books isn’t bandwidth. With downloadable music and downloadable video, the limiting factor is bandwidth. With books, it’s something completely different; it’s display technology.
It’s still the case that paper is just a darn good display device and is much better than any computer display device we have. It’s higher resolution, higher contrast; it doesn’t need backlighting, blah, blah, blah. So, at some point, technology will catch up with paper, and then I think you’ll see electronic books be very important.
One of the Kindle’s big selling point is its e-ink technology; you can read a book on a Kindle in glaring sunlight because of it. High resolution, high contrast, no backlighting needed, blah blah blah. The first generation Kindle came out on November 19, 2007 — almost ten years after Bezos described it above.
Wow.
Q: How do you get people in Arkansas to care about the public library?
A: I’m not sure, but this is something they’ve tried.
Found in Craighead County, AR
The Webby’s Save the Date lacks the date you should be saving.
I took this picture today. Yes, I was at a bus stop. You can’t park at a bus stop.
And yes, that’s a police car — parked right at the bus stop.
The officers were very nice, though. They tried to move the police car out of the way of the bus stop (this was the result!) but they really couldn’t given what they were doing. Of course, it looked like I was in custody, standing behind a police car and between two officers. The bus driver, jokingly I hoped, said “I couldn’t tell if you were waiting for the bus or in trouble!”
The April 18th issue of Now I Know had, in the bonus fact, a link to a page on Wikipedia which housed an unfinished portrait of FDR. According to my Mailchimp stats, I sent about 10,000 clicks over to that Wikipedia page. I told a couple people and the reaction was a mix of “wow!” and “are you sure Mailchimp has it right?”
And then I remembered that you can check the page traffic on Wikipedia entries.
So I did that. It’s above. Mailchimp had it right.
This morning’s Now I Know discusses the NYPD’s “color of the day,” a color worn by undercover cops which informs other officers that the wearer is, also, law enforcement. In it, I say that this safety “the system may no longer be in effect.”
It looks like it is.
A reader (thanks Jeigh!) with a link to this video from October of last year. (Caution: the video has a lot of not-so-nice language.) I took a screen shot of it at the 2:32 mark, above, and you’ll note that there are three people with orange wristbands but, otherwise, in plain clothes. All three are undercover officers.
[video]
I may have to actually buy this.
(via laughingsquid)
I’m not a big fan of the robo-umpires movement in baseball, but…
yeeeeeeeeeeesh.
All I can say is: Wow.
To put this in perspective: When I hit the “Create Post” button below, I do so assuming that you can read it. In many places in the world, I’d be wrong.
Map via this study (PDF).