A bill allowing states to collect sales tax from online retailers that lack a physical presence in their borders appears primed to pass the Senate this week“Internet Sales Tax Poised to Pass Senate,” Mashable (via alexjamesfitz)
Maria Popova is a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, regular author for The Atlantic, and was named to the Fast Company 100 Most Creative in Business list. I let her know I was a regular reader of her site when I sent her an email a few months ago after she wrote an article about the dangers of advertising in journalism. She detailed a scenario in which a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist was offered money from Xerox to write an article. I sent her a message to ask for clarity in what she meant, given that I was aware of her practice of putting affiliate advertising links in her articles while at the same time asking users at the end of each article to donate to her site by telling them that she runs an ad-free site that is subsidized by user contributions (screenshot). It is often controversial for a site to make money off of affiliate ads without notifying users in any terms of use (i.e. Pinterest), or to write reviews on products without notifying users they are making money when the reader clicks and purchases those products (the FTC enforces laws for certain types of blogs), but Popova has been going a bit further - while keeping the ads undisclosed, she also writes at the end of each article and in each email newsletter that the site is ad-free and needs user donations to support it.
This is a situation where a little bit of forthrightness would go a long way. It’s worth pointing out that Popova, by not disclosing this anywhere on her site, is likely violating FTC rules. She could easily fix this, be straight-up about it, and go on her way. But if these allegations are accurate (and yes, a casual observation shows she’s using affiliate links), it exposes her for being hypocritical and could foster a backlash.
Really, this all could have been solved with a short little blurb on a page somewhere. Which is to say: Always. Be. Transparent.
The company’s shares are down a bit today, but the company’s stock is taking a much less catastrophic plunge in already-meager profits than Apple, whose stock plunged simply because its Q4 profits increased at an unexpectedly slow rate. That’s because Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers. The shareholders put up the equity, and instead of owning a claim on a steady stream of fat profits, they get a claim on a mighty engine of consumer surplus. Amazon sells things to people at prices that seem impossible because it actually is impossible to make money that way. And the competitive pressure of needing to square off against Amazon cuts profit margins at other companies, thus benefiting people who don’t even buy anything from Amazon.
They have really thin margins. Extremely thin.
Well, this is it. Two mysterious packages appeared today, courtesy of the bot I wrote to buy me things at random on Amazon.
In case you haven’t caught this, Here’s the Tumblr of a guy who has set an automated bot to buy him random crap from Amazon. Above is the first post. Click to see what he received.
Om Malik argues that Bezos is the inheritor to Steve Jobs’s crown. I agree. Not because Bezos has copied anything Jobs did, but because he has not. What he’s done that is Jobs-like is doggedly pursue, year after year, iteration after iteration, a vision unlike that of any other company — all in the name of making customers happy.Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber • Offering his take on Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, which does something interesting — it undercuts Apple’s prices by hundreds of dollars and offers an approach that’s unique in that it’s so doggedly focused on content consumption as its main driver. “Apple’s goal is to sell as many iPads as it can,” he says. “Amazon’s goal is to sell as many Kindle Fires as it can to a specific audience: active Amazon.com customers.” But then again, a series of reviews out tonight seem to suggest that the Fire HD is good, but not perfect. Then there are those ready to take out the daggers. Still though, watching the press conference from last week, you get the feeling that Jeff Bezos is onto something. Think Bezos lives up to Gruber’s billing above?
Kindle updates: As expected, today’s Amazon event included official confirmation for a multitude of new Kindle devices. The Kindle Fire HD will be offered in 7 ($199) and 8.9-inch ($299) varieties, while the company’s e-reader has been rebranded the Kindle Paperwhite ($119 with Wi-Fi or $179 3G/Wi-Fi). The original Kindle Fire ($159) will also receive an update, and Amazon will jump into the data game with a variety of plans for their Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE ($499) starting at $49.99 a year for 250Mb per month. (Photo via The Verge) source
It seems to me that unlike so many other Apple rivals, Amazon actually does a good job with buzz surrounding their events. Tonight, they debuted a commercial during the NFL kickoff that clearly teases out some new Kindles (the current Kindle Touch readers have a silver bezel, not the charcoal one found in the commercial — which looks great).
This isn’t something Apple would do, but that’s fine. No one says everyone has to do everything exactly as Apple would do it (no, not even me) — in fact, I think it’s good that Amazon has their own style.
As a result, I find myself actually interested/excited for what they announce tomorrow. New Kindles? New Kindle Fires (though I disagree with Bryan Bishop, I think the commercial still only shows one size, as was previously reported by CNet — we’ll see)? A phone?!
Who thinks Amazon is going to do something cool today?
Right now, our system does not allow us to reset passwords. I don’t know why.An Apple customer service representative • Speaking to Wired over the phone about the iCloud password-reset function, which appears to be down at least for a full day, in the wake of an epic article their writer Mat Honan wrote about his hacking incident. (Presumptively to close a certain security loophole, though Apple has not confirmed this.) The representative told the magazine to go to Apple’s iCloud Web site to reset the iCloud password. Amazon also tightened security as a result of Honan’s article, closing a loophole which allowed users to gain control of accounts with just a name, e-mail address and mailing address. It’s good to see the loophole closed after the fact, even if it did cost Honan much of his digital identity.
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
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Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
He really wanted Tom Petty to play his wedding! Brian Valentine, 52, is just rich enough that he can afford Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers to play at his wedding. One problem: Valentine went through a fake booking agency, and gave $165,000 to a con artist who had no tie to the band, and disappeared with the money before Petty could rip through “American Girl” on one of his Rickenbacker guitars. (Which, strangely enough, were stolen around the time Valentine got swindled.) Fortunately, this story ends (somewhat) well: While Valentine is out of his money, the man suspected of swindling him, Chris Lund, was captured by the FBI, and he still managed to get Tom Petty to play his wedding last month — this time, by going through the proper channels. Oh yeah! All right!
Those security lapses are my fault, and I deeply, deeply regret them.
But what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s. Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification. The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry, and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.
This isn’t just my problem. Since Friday, Aug. 3, when hackers broke into my accounts, I’ve heard from other users who were compromised in the same way, at least one of whom was targeted by the same group.
While Amazon’s system has flaws, it’s Apple’s — with the remote wipe function exposed by merely having a billing address and the last four digits of a credit card — that leads to real questions. Also, Apple’s support was less than helpful for Honan, as they misunderstood him and thought his last name was Herman, not Honan. This story is enough to make you want reconsider using credit cards on Apple accounts. Read the whole thing. It’s scary.
» A grand gesture by Amazon’s founder: With Bezos’ donation, the man who created Amazon from nothing will now be one of the largest donors to same-sex marriage efforts in the country. So what got him to support the effort? An e-mail from a very early employee who is now a lesbian mother of four. “I want to have the right to marry the love of my life and to let my children and grandchildren know their family is honored like a ‘real’ family,” wrote Jennifer Cast, who left the company in 2001. “We need help from straight people. To be very frank, we need help from wealthy straight people who care about us and who want to help us win.” Cast’s e-mail helped make Bezos the largest individual donor in the effort to pass Referendum 74.
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An outage of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud in North Virginia has taken down Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram, and other services. According to numerous Twitter updates and our own checks, all three services are unavailable as of Friday evening at 9:10 p.m. PT.
Amazon’s service health dashboard indicates that there are power issues in its North Virginia data center, most likely caused by severe storms in the region.
OH GOD THE POWER IS OUT AND NETFLIX IS DOWN. WHAT DO I DO? — Ernie @ SFB
Update (7:45 a.m.): Netflix and Pinterest? Back up. (Hearing word Instagram is still down, though.) Bigger problem? The power’s still out. More than 2 million lost power in the Mid-Atlantic region last night. Mind you, it was insanely hot yesterday, so this is bad.
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