That is, Amazon will reach the point in global sales where there total $$ from general merchandise surpasses their book/media sales. Pretty good for a company that is still generally known for their media presence –

Fifteen years after Jeffrey P. Bezos founded the company as an online bookstore, Amazon is set to cross a significant threshold. Sometime later this year, if current trends continue, worldwide sales of media products - the books, movies, and music that Amazon started with - will be surpassed by sales of other merchandise on the site. (That already occurred this year in its North American business.)

In other words, in an increasingly digital age, Amazon is quickly becoming the world’s general store. Alongside the books and CDs and DVDs are diapers, Legos, and power drills, not to mention replacement car clutches and more arcane items like the Jackalope Buck taxidermy mount ($69.97).

“Amazon has gone from ‘that bookstore’ in people’s mind to a general online retailer, and that is a great place to be,’’ said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, an eBay-backed company that helps stores like Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney sell online. Wingo envisions e-commerce growing to 15 percent of overall retail in the next decade from around 7 percent.

This says something about retail in general. Even though Amazon might appear to have a total cost disadvantage over a typical retail store. That is probably not the case. For one, Amazon’s in-store loss numbers are nonexistent as they don’t have any, vs the B&M retailer whose losses are in the 1-3% range. So if Amazon can be more efficient in warehouse mgt they have the chance to beat the B&M retailer on a net profit basis.

The market seem to agree. Amazon is rated at 60 times earnings.

Linky.

Well if you believe the Markwatch article that is what they intone. Kindle has a serious head start but their bumbling of late, especially with content leaves the door open for a different standard –

Amazon’s competitors, after fumbling about like the Washington Nationals for the past couple of years, are starting to get their act together. They’re moving toward a shared e-book format, called ePub, that’s different from the one on the Kindle.

And Allen Weiner, an expert in the e-book business at technology consultancy Gartner, Inc., says he knows that other manufacturers are poised to launch new reading devices with Kindle-style 3G wireless connections. Some may be announced as early as the next few weeks, he says.

It’s been a busy summer for Amazon’s competitors.

Last week, Sony announced two new e-book readers, including one for $199. A third, with a wireless connection, is thought to be coming.

The competing consortium has decided on ePub as the standard. Its a viable, published e-reader format which could prove Kindle’s undoing. As far as I know of there has been no other adopter of the Kindle eText format.

The real question is will Amazon be a stumbling block to the new entrants on their website? If Amazon says ‘No Mas’ then the players will have to come up with their own distribution channel. Were that to come to pass my suggestion to that group is they partner with Project Gutenberg. Get every single title PG has in ePub format and offer them all up for free.

Linky.

You heard that right. What’s the use of passing a law if the main source of that proposed income will just withdraw from the field? Eh? –

Earlier this month, Governor Linda Lingle vetoed the unconstitutional tax collection scheme passed by the Hawaii legislature in HB 1405. Because the effective date of that bill preceded both her veto and the legislature’s veto override session, we had little choice but to end our advertising relationships with all Hawaii-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program. Now that the override session is over, and the legislature did not override Governor Lingle’s veto of HB 1405, we would like to invite all Hawaii Associates whose accounts were closed due to the pending legislation to re-enroll in the Associates Program.

To do so, please click here. When asked to sign in, please use the same account username and password that were previously associated with your Associates account. To make your return to the Program as seamless as possible, when you re-enroll, your account information (login, store-ID, etc.) will be the same as it was prior to termination. For further information about re-enrollment, please click here for FAQs.

— From the Amazon presser.

So Hawaii affiliates can now resign-up their accounts and get cooking again.

Linky.
HT: Instapundit

Initial post: Jul 23, 2009 12:16 PM PDT
Jeffrey P. Bezos says:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

With this Amazon issues an apology. Readers how would you rate it? Good, Fair, not worth the electrons?

Here’s my take. Amazon should have ate it. The cost I mean. They should have worked out whatever deal they could with the publisher for the customers to be able to keep the books. Another words Amazon should NOT have inconvenienced the customers and ate the costs. Absurd? Well what if it had been a physical book? You think Amazon would have gone through the pain and shipping costs for something that would not have been successful? Of course not. The fact they had the delete key was the only reason they went that route. Oh and every version of Kindle made in the future should have the remote delete feature removed. Period.

So the apology was NOT ENOUGH!

Linky.

The Boss had a piece on NC attempting to tax associate income in the State here. Well they passed the legislation and so Amazon is pulling out. They are ending their association with anyone who is a partner in NC. –

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.

Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team

I would not be surprised if Google follows suit. Were I a online merchant that was making serious money from the affiliates program I would move. Not me, my servers and my business address. Say Texas or South Dakota. Open up a bank account there and contract with a mail forwarding service. (Talk to any full time RV’er they will fill you in.) Be back in business in a week.

But it does not solve the core problem. The NC legislature does not understand the Internet. It is not like a physical business presence. Mobility is almost second nature on the internet. And of course even if NC tried to go after Amazon proper, Amazon could just say — “hold on a second.” Few taps of the keyboard and they could be servicing NC clients from Ireland where they have Cloudfront data centers. “Tax what?”, says the datacenter manager.

Linky.

So much for needing a label to create or release a big seller. While  Cheap Trick has made quite a bit of money for the labels during its career, the band decided to keep all of the money in the family this time around by doing its own release sans label:

The veteran rock group will start taking pre-orders for the 13-track set, which it recorded during the past year mostly in Los Angeles with producer Julian Raymond, on Friday via its official web site, http://www.cheaptrick.com , and at Amazon.com.

Those who pre-order will receive “The Latest” on June 23, the day Cheap Trick starts it summer tour with Def Leppard and Poison in Camden, N.J.

Amazon will have exclusive rights for one month, and the album will also be available in limited LP and 8-track editions. (Yahoo)

Historically the big labels counted on the revenues from their established talent to fund their crazy adventures. It looks like at least one of them will have to be a bit less adventurous this time around. There’s going to be a lot more of this happening as the relevance of music labels who missed the opportunity to adapt slowly fade away.

Jeff Bezo’s cloud keeps getting more accessible. PHP, arguably the web’s most pervasive development language has just taken up residence within.

On Friday, the company unveiled version 1.8 of its Zend Framework, and for the first time, users can tap directly into the processing and storage resources offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
On Friday, the company unveiled version 1.8 of its Zend Framework, and for the first time, users can tap directly into the processing and storage resources offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“We’re allowing PHP developers to utilize Zend Framework components in order to interact with Amazon’s services,” Zend Framework project leader and architect Matthew Weier O’Phinney told The Reg. (The Register)

How about scaling your PHP based site on demand? It just got easier. This could potentially impact the already thin margins in the traditional web hosting business. It could also make that day when some of us old school server huggers must adapt or die come sooner than we expected.

I sympathize with the feeling behind these protests, but they are directed at the wrong target.

The protestors rightly condemn the Authors Guild for demanding the removal of the screen reader feature, but the way they are doing it makes Amazon look like a victim. Actually it is the main perpetrator.

The reason that Amazon can turn off the screen reader capability is that the machines use non-free software, controlled by Amazon rather than by the user. If Amazon can turn this off retroactively (does anyone know for certain if they did?), it implies the product has a dangerous back door.

In addition, the Amazon Swindle is designed with Digital Restrictions Management to stop people from sharing. It is a nasty product with an evil goal.

I hope there will be protests against Amazon’s role in these events.

The topic? Why the yielding of Amazon to the pressure from the Authors Guild on the issues related around Text-to-Speech. Is Richard ‘GPL’ Stallman right. Well yes and no. Yes for the fact that in Amazon so disabling the technology it leaves a gaping hole and does not address the the fact that there are some 16 centuries of written material that is completely open to TTS that the Authors Guild has no relationship to. No, in the fact that there are issues related to audio books that are derivative works that authors should be compensated for.

All told though, the right solution is not to be found in the Kindle. The right solution is to be found in Open Source. Stallman ought to get together with Arrington and influence him to include ePub reader software in his tablet if he produces it. Then you go to the Artist Guild and tell them that TTS block is automatic but can be turned on with a software key that can be updated in the XML dictionary. Any public domain works will work with TTS automatically and can be shared.

Linky

[Update] More here on the issues of being a Kindle owner.

When App Engine was first introduced, almost a year ago to the day, it stuck with Python, a favorite among code-happy Google Oompa Loompas. But after countless request from developers outside the Mountain View Chocolate Factory, the platform has now embraced Java as well.

“We wanted to give developers something that they could be ecstatic about, but we knew we would have to marry the simplicity of Google App Engine with the power and flexibility of the Java platform,” Google engineers Don Schwarz and Toby Reyelts wrote in this evening’s post to the official App Engine Blog. “We also wanted to leverage the App Engine infrastructure - and by extension Google’s infrastructure - as much as possible, without giving up compatibility with existing Java standards and tools.

“And so that’s what we did. App Engine now supports the standards that make Java tooling great.”

According to Cnet, the service’s new incarnation runs version 1.6 of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). So, in theory, it can also handle code written in such languages as Ruby on Rails and JavaScript.

With that Google opens up a new world of possibilities. Java either partially or totally is a component of so many common tools. That lack of support on GAE has been an issue for many with GAE as a python only platform. One should expect to see a new bevy of applications show up on GAE as a consequence.

There is one other plus out of this. GAE can now give AWS some competition. As Google rounds out the support matrix of other languages we can expect a minor price war to be engaged between the two. Can’t wait.

On a GAE related note, be advised that GAE now has a Cron module available for use. Details here on the Google Labs site.

Linky.

Well the next version of Ubuntu is to be named Karmic Koala according to Shuttleworth. Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope is to be released in April and an Alpha release is available for the intrepid souls out there.

But the most important item for the Koala release will be a heavy integration of the OS in support of Cloud Services. Here’s the pitch from Shuttleworth –

A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API’s of Amazon EC2, and making it easy for anybody to setup their own cloud using entirely open tools. We’re currently in beta with official Ubuntu base AMI’s for use on Amazon EC2. During the Karmic cycle we want to make it easy to deploy applications into the cloud, with ready-to-run appliances or by quickly assembling a custom image. Ubuntu-vmbuilder makes it easy to create a custom AMI today, but a portfolio of standard image profiles will allow easier collaboration between people doing similar things on EC2. Wouldn’t it be apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?

What if you want to build an EC2-style cloud of your own? Of all the trees in the wood, a Koala’s favorite leaf is Eucalyptus. The Eucalyptus project, from UCSB, enables you to create an EC2-style cloud in your own data center, on your own hardware. It’s no coincidence that Eucalyptus has just been uploaded to universe and will be part of Jaunty - during the Karmic cycle we expect to make those clouds dance, with dynamically growing and shrinking resource allocations depending on your needs. A savvy Koala knows that the best way to conserve energy is to go to sleep, and these days even servers can suspend and resume, so imagine if we could make it possible to build a cloud computing facility that drops its energy use virtually to zero by napping in the midday heat, and waking up when there’s work to be done. No need to drink at the energy fountain when there’s nothing going on. If we get all of this right, our Koala will help take the edge off the bear market.

A tad too spritzy? Well that’s Ubuntu when it comes to marketing and press releases. But it boils down to two things:

• Koala will have an active toolset for the design and construction of AMI’s on the AWS EC2 infrastructure. That’s native to the server core.
• Koala will also allow you, the sys admin, if it is desired build your own cloud infrastructure using the Eucalyptus system. Eucalyptus is gaining favor with many in the FOSS community for its good performance and maintainability.

Does this signal a different direction for Ubuntu? Compared to say Red Hat and SuSe I would say so^. When I look at the marketplace Red Hat and SuSe seem to be stongly focused on the Virtualization space. Or providing AMI’s for the AWS space. Canonical plays in this space as well with KVM and VMWare support. But native cloud support is a clear departure from their competitors. At a minimum Canonical is ratching up the cloud wars.

Many an IT pundit is suggesting that cloud computing will be the demise of standalone compute environments and FOSS based ones in particular. The reality might very well be quite different. When the tools are such that even a oaf like myself can set up their own cloud environment then the tables turn. There are industries that due to regulatory concerns need to keep data private. They will internalize these tools to their benefit. The other is hardware is getting cheaper all the time. I don’t have to buy an HP DL585 to get good graphics rendering peformance. I could just as well buy 4 soon to be cheap quadcores and cloud the whole thing. Folks like Google and Amazon will generally have the economic upper hand due to economies of scale. But the stand alone cloud environment has a winning chance as the tools improve.

Linky

^ Both vendors inter operate on AWS as an (pre)configurable AMI. Different from what I see Canonical attempting.