Apparently there's some research that indicates that people are actually slightly more likely to buy a $x.99 priced product over its $x+1 identical counterpart.
Even if it's just 0.01%, when you're looking at inventories as massive as Wal-Mart or Amazon, that can be a LOT of sales.
The problem is that Apple has and Amazon will shortly have a "you can't sell your book for cheaper at other ebook stores" clauses in their agreements. (The Amazon one is part of their newer pricing model, which matches Apple's 70% cut but adds restrictions on pricing, which should go into effect this summer.)
A hypothetical:
You've been selling your ebook on Amazon, and you've done some pricing experiments. You've found that you sell half again as many books at $2.49 than you do at $2.99, and the volume more than makes up the difference, so you set your price accordingly. In order to expand to the iBookStore, you must price your book at $2.99 there, and take the hit in sales. But wait! Apple will refuse to sell your book if you're selling for cheaper on Amazon, so you have to raise your price to $2.99 at the Amazon store as well.
So, now all your customers are paying more, even the ones who are not buying from Apple, and you have fewer of them. You are not making as much money, and neither are any of the distributing companies that make their money by taking a cut off yours. Everyone loses, all for the sake of a nice round (?!) number.
A few points:
-AT&T doesn't like downloads over their network larger than 10MB in size. If you buy an app larger than that, it'll tell you to find a WiFi connection and try again. Some of the previous iPhone software updates have been a few hundred megabytes - try downloading that over 3G in a reasonable amount of time.
-Plugging in to a computer before updating the software forces the user to make a backup. The otherwise stand-alone nature of the iPhone makes it rare for me to plug my phone in to my computer, so updates are just about the only time I actually do back up my phone.
The reason there's no Offline capability in the new GoogleDocs is cause it's not ready yet. They say, in so many words, that they plan to have the HTML5 Offline Mode up and running soon. Until then, use the Old Version + Gears.
This may not have been a good idea, but it is very Google-esque to roll out a new product with features missing.
I don't believe Pages will save to ePub, but iBooks can read third-party non-DRM ePub files. So, you can always type it up as a Pages file, export it to your computer as a Doc, and use some other program to convert it to ePub, and then move it back to your iPad, but ugh.
As for getting your book onto the iBookstore for others to buy, currently only Amazon allows individuals to self-publish ebooks for their store.
However, you can publish with SmashWords, who offers none of the editing/marketing assistance of a big publishing house, but they have negotiated publishing agreements with the big ebook vendors. Just upload your work, and they will in turn publish your book on iBooks, Amazon, B&N, Sony, and Kobo, or any subset thereof, in return for a cut of your cut. (http://www.smashwords.com/)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "Net neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.
The ruling marks a serious setback for the FCC, which is trying to adopt official net neutrality regulations. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat, argues that such rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over Internet access to favor some online content and services over others.
The decision also has serious implications for the massive national broadband plan released by the FCC last month. The FCC needs clear authority to regulate broadband in order to push ahead with some its key recommendations, including a proposal to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural communities.
I'll say it. I don't get fiction. As far as I can tell it serves no purpose besides idle entertainment*.
Pretty much. But it's a far more interesting form of idle entertainment than TV or movies. Also, fewer ways to go wrong. Fiction can be poorly paced and badly written. Movies/TV shows can be poorly paces and badly written, with poor direction and terrible acting, and cheesy special effects. Also, you're not limited to a 30 minute TV show or a 2 hour movie- you can take as much time as your story needs to tell, without worrying that your audience will have to go to the bathroom and miss something important.
A lot of fiction, primarily science fiction, also can explore the future. Not insofar as the new gadgets that people will have (so many science fiction gadgets have already become real, although I'm still waiting on my flying car), but how those devices will affect our society. If AIs gain sentience, if robots become more prevalent as anything but vacuum cleaners, if people can connect to the internet straight from their brain, how will these things effect people. They are thought experiments, of a sort.
Definitely the case -- "best" and "favourite" don't necessarily overlap at all. Quintessential film example, that everyone seems to agree on: Hawk the Slayer.
Oh god, that movie. Total production budget: estimated $50. It's one of the few movies that has earned a permanent place on my hard drive.
2001: A Space Odyssey remains one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. I'm sorry that it didn't have enough lasers going PEW PEW and ships roaring loudly through space (which is, you know, impossible in a vacuum) to hold your interest.
I read the book when I was in middle school, and I loved it. I read all four of the books, even. They go downhill after the first two, but what book series doesn't?
I saw the movie for the first time two weeks ago. It's TERRIBLE. There's no sense of pacing at all; 10 minutes go by just staring at a guy looking a little nervous. The exposition is nonexistent, so you really have no clue what the hell is going on, especially near the end, unless you're read the book. The soundtrack is terrible, for being largely nonexistent, and then being acutely painful to listen to at times; the wailing part near the end made me mute my TV.
In my opinion, the worst thing you can do to the Classics is to foist them on children.
Children aren't mentally prepared to tackle the deeper issues that earned these books the title "classic." They don't get anything out of them- I certainly didn't. At best, a kid slogs through the book in order to memorize enough names and events in order to pass the test/write the paper, and then moves on. At worst, the child extrapolates the displeasure to be found in reading *this* book to *all* books.
I am a total bookworm. I always have been. I read probably 50 novels a year through middle and high school. I had a city library card before the school made us sign up for them. But required reading in grade school put me off of the Classics and nonfiction and any books with real substance until just recently, and I graduated from high school seven years ago. Even children's books were ruined for me, in some ways. I was first introduced to the Chronicles of Narnia hand in hand with a lecture about identifying symbolism in literature. We read the book as a class and pointed out every Christian symbol and motif to be found (and there are many). I was never able to enjoy those stories as just stories; to me, as a non-Christian, they are and have always been Christian propaganda. To my classmates who found those books before English 2, they are cherished childhood memories.
I recognize that there might be some deep and important message to take away from The Grapes of Wrath, All Quiet on the Western Front, or Lord of the Flies. But all I remember are stories so boring that my classmates prevailed upon the teacher: "If it's so boring that even she (me) won't read it, why do we have to?" I recall little to nothing of the events or characters of those books, but I do get a bitter taste in my mouth thinking about it.
Few people ever enjoy something they have been forced to read.
Taco may have skipped this issue, but other reviewers haven't:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/193389/ipad_as_ereader_glaring_problems_promising_apps.html?tk=twt_strohmy
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ipad_ebooks_kindle_for_ipad_ibooks.php
Based purely on my iPhone (also known as "the precious"), I would skip the iPad and get a Kindle if reading is your primary goal. If you want to do all sorts of stuff, and read books too, then you may be happier with the iPad.
If you own an iPhone, pick up LoseIt! from the app store. Otherwise, there are several online databases that have calorie values that are freely searchable. Honestly, google "food item + calories" will get you just about all the info you need on that regard.
the US banks are backward
Pretty much.
Alpha Centari, Escape Velocity, the list goes on...
Dynamically binding, you realize the magic. Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.
