“Amazon Prime Air is a future service that will deliver packages up to five pounds in 30 minutes or less using small drones. Flying under 400 feet and weighing less than 55 pounds, Prime Air vehicles will take advantage of sophisticated ‘sense and avoid’ technology, as well as a high degree of automation, to safely operate beyond the line of sight to distances of 10 miles or more.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is buying the Washington Post. Responses to the surprise deal are noted by Jim Romenesko (here and here) and Ed Kilgore; journo tweets Storified by Mallary Tenore. Reactions by Hamilton Nolan, Lydia DePillis, Neil Irwin, Andy Borowitz, Ezra Klein, Post publisher Donald Graham and Jeff Bezos. Paul Farhi wrote the story for WaPo.
Combine Memorial Day Weekend cooking and holiday bargain shopping without leaving your computer. Mark Bittman has a new Kindle Single e-book, What I Grill and Why. It’s on sale for the Memorial Day Weekend ($1.99). We recommend it.
Cooking tip: don’t put your Kindle too close to the grill or it will melt.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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“What bothers me … is not the Kindle’s functionality, or the decommissioning of the physical book (to the sound of Taps) that will inevitably result, but the outlandish, and at times outrageous rhetoric surrounding a machine that displays a fraction of available texts for a minority of people who can afford yet another endlessly upgradeable technology.”
— “The Cult of Kindle and the Myth of Digital Utopia,” Kelly Roberts, PopMatters.
A more recent iteration of this article is at Slow Pendulums.
Image (“Mrs. Duffee Seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading Her Kindle, After Mary Cassatt”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Amazon.com reported that, in its last quarter, eBooks outsold hardbacks. The media went mad:
Told you so. Six months ago Stephanie at UrbZen pointed out the downside of the web-based Kindle digital book reader, the ability of the content provider to alter the text without warning or reader agreement. Her concerns were echoed by Nicholas Carr.
Amazon decided to demonstrate this principle by making digital copies of George Orwell’s 1984 disappear from devices after readers had paid for and downloaded them. Could any book be more appropriate? Here’s some initial coverage:
“Orwellian Amazon kindles Big Brother fears,” Sydney Morning Herald
“Amazon’s Orwellian Instincts,” Faster Times
“Amazon Apologizes For Its ‘Big Brother’ Move on Kindle,” Switched.com
“Why did Big Brother remove paid-for content from Amazon’s Kindles?” The Guardian
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