International customers can buy Amazon Kindle ebook readers without jumping through tricksy hoops!
I am quite excited about this. I spend a lot on books shipped via Amazon. The Kindle means that I would spend less per book and eliminate shipping costs.
Edit: Though it looks like they’re only going to sell the plain Kindle, not the enlarged DX variant. Fooey.
Edit 2: You need to order at this page in order to get it shipped to Australia.
A cat named Hartigan has apparently put himself amongst the blogging pigeons. A generous amount of fur and feathers has flown as a result.
For example, Hartigan has defended traditional media reporting and newsroom methods; bloggers say that News Ltd don’t “get it”, or are already giving in, or their content sucks, or some combination of these.
As I pointed out about a month ago, what the content-producers for News Ltd and bloggers do is a total sideshow. This purely tribal confrontation between hacks, flacks and new jacks is just that: tribal. The internet is strangling News Ltd’s money supply, which is what counts.
It’s a mistake so common that even wise economists are missing the money.
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NAB’s CEO has decided to work amongst his hoi-polloi in a corner cubicle.
Cubicles are one of worst false economies created by bean-counting. Managerial types seem to thrive on interruption. They love a crisis in which they can prove that they are as good as Captain Hornblower.
However it’s been known for a long time that cubicles are dreadful for productivity, particular in businesses where attention to abstract detail is important. Such as, I don’t know, banking.
Still, it could be worse. He could decide to introduce hot-desking.
British Airways chair Willie Walsh has asked the company’s 40,000 employees to work unpaid for a month to save the company and their jobs.
The airline made a £401 million loss for the year ending in March. This seems to be due primarily to higher fuel prices, but partly to declining revenue. Total passengers seem to have fallen only slightly, but the number of business class and first class tickets fell by 13%, so it’s through the reduction in business trips that the global recession has stung.
According to a company spin doctor who spoke to the Guardian, some unspecified number of staff has taken the suggestion up. But it’s hard to imagine that a significant number of workers would do this off their own bat; if it happens at all, it will be through a collective agreement. Here the prospects don’t look good either: last week they asked ground crew to accept a pay cut or face voluntary redundancies, and the staff voted six to one against the deal.
Radio presenters yesterday were asking experts and callers for their opinions or interpretations, but it’s hard to provide either unless the question is clearly framed. There are a couple of quite distinct issues involved. Continue reading
In the last few months, the discussion of the future of newspapers has become a recurring topic in the media and online. Several common themes and arguments have emerged. The most common gripes are either that newspapers are being killed by bloggers, or that newspapers are being killed by failing to get their own news, relying on wire services instead.
The truth has little to do with quality, reporting or bloggers. It’s all about money.
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Australia’s economy may be officially in recession, but Lateral Economics at least is doing its bit to reduce the effects. In addition to the research assistant Nicholas advertised for earlier this week, we also need someone with some web design and Wordpress backend experience for a particular urgent project.
It involves using Wordpress for collaborative work with functions having some characteristics of a wiki and some of a blog. It also needs to be easy to use/”intuitive” for non-nerds. It probably doesn’t need any programming work but does require some “tweaking” of Wordpress “look and feel” and some use of plugins.
Just as importantly, the timeframe is tight. The project has been long delayed and we really need a functioning, respectable “beta” site within a couple of weeks. You would be working closely with both Nicholas Gruen and Ken Parish on developing and finalising the project.
Remuneration by discussion/negotiation with Nicholas, and applications to Nicholas via the Troppo contact facility (see sidebar).
In ancient greece, the Oracle at Delphi drew its authority and oracular insight from Apollo, the Sun God. In the org-chart of ancient greece this made the Sun more important than the Oracle.
Of course the greeks had it wrong. The Oracle had knowledge; that made it a local power. Apollo received lip service, Delphi received pilgrims and gifts.
Echoes of greece have just taken place in the IT world. Database company Oracle have bought hardware and software company Sun. It’s the most important such event in quite a while and will make a big dent in the IT business landscape for the next decade or so.
My lame punditocratic take on this event below the fold.
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My startup dot-com project continues to plod along in the gap between university labs, assignments, tests and other studious miscellanea.
Today I spent some time getting down to the nuts and holts of payment systems.
I’ve done some work on this before, of course. Westpac knocked me back for their ordinary merchant account. I began to look further into third-party payment services. I have concluded that Australia is a terrible country for entrepreneurs who aren’t doing something ordinary.
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