Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold

By BRAD STONE and MOTOKO RICH The New York Times

Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from paper to pixels?

For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com’s wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold.

The $359 Kindle, which is slim, white and about the size of a trade paperback, was introduced a year ago. Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Now it is out of stock and unavailable until February. Analysts credit Oprah Winfrey, who praised the Kindle on her show in October, and blame Amazon for poor holiday planning.

The shortage is providing an opening for Sony, which embarked on an intense publicity campaign for its Reader device during the gift-buying season. The stepped-up competition may represent a coming of age for the entire idea of reading longer texts on a portable digital device.

“The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven’t done anything,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division. “But it’s happening now. This is really starting to take off.”

Sony’s efforts have been overshadowed by Amazon’s. But this month it began a promotional blitz in airports, train stations and bookstores, with the ambitious goal of personally demonstrating the Reader to two million people by the end of the year.

The company’s latest model, the Reader 700, is a $400 device with a reading light and a touch screen that allows users to annotate what they are reading. Mr. Haber said Sony’s sales had tripled this holiday season over last, in part because the device is now available in major stores. He said Sony had sold more than 300,000 devices since the debut of the original Reader in 2006.

It is difficult to quantify the success of the Kindle, since Amazon will not disclose how many it has sold and analysts’ estimates vary widely. Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company, said he believed Amazon had sold as many as 260,000 units through the beginning of October, before Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement. Others say the number could be as high as a million.

Many Kindle buyers appear to be outside the usual gadget-hound demographic. Almost as many women as men are buying it, Mr. Hildick-Smith said, and the device is most popular among 55- to 64-year-olds.

So far, publishers like HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster say that sales of e-books for any device — including simple laptop downloads — constitute less than 1 percent of total book sales. But there are signs of momentum. The publishers say sales of e-books have tripled or quadrupled in the last year.

Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.

The Kindle version of the book, which can be downloaded by the device itself through its wireless modem, costs $9.99 in the Amazon Kindle store. The Reader version costs $11.99 from Sony’s e-book library, accessible from an Internet-connected computer.

Even authors who were once wary of selling their work in bits and bytes are coming around. After some initial hesitation, authors like Danielle Steel and John Grisham are soon expected to add their titles to the e-book catalog, their agents say.

“E-books will become the go-to-first format for an ever-expanding group of readers who are newly discovering how much they enjoy reading books on a screen,” said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.

Nobody knows how much consumer habits will shift. Some of the most committed bibliophiles maintain an almost fetishistic devotion to the physical book. But the technology may have more appeal for particular kinds of people, like those who are the heaviest readers.

At Harlequin Enterprises, the Toronto-based publisher of bodice-ripping romances, Malle Vallik, director for digital content and interactivity, said she expected sales of digital versions of the company’s books someday to match or potentially outstrip sales in print.

Harlequin, which publishes 120 books a month, makes all of its new titles available digitally, and has even started publishing digital-only short stories that it sells for $2.99 each, including an erotica collection called Spice Briefs.

Perhaps the most overlooked boost to e-books this year — and a challenge to some of the standard thinking about them — came from Apple’s do-it-all gadget, the iPhone.

Several e-book-reading programs have been created for the device, and at least two of them, Stanza from LexCycle and the eReader from Fictionwise, have been downloaded more than 600,000 times. Another company, Scroll Motion, announced this week that it would begin selling e-books for the iPhone from major publishers like Simon & Schuster, Random House and Penguin.

All of these companies say they are now tailoring their software for other kinds of smartphones, including BlackBerrys.

Publishers say these iPhone applications are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.

Top gadgets in 2008

By Shane McGlaun

It’s almost Christmas and that means 2008 has but a few days left before we roll into 2009. Looking back at 2008, a few products, and product categories have stood out from the majority of the gadgets offered up this year. Today I am going to talk a bit about some of my picks for the best gear of 2008.

Best Smartphone

Smartphones were a big hit this year and for me the stand out product was definitely the iPhone . Once Apple offered up the iPhone with the addition of 3G capability the smartphone took off like a rocket and went on to dominate the U.S. sales charts and grab a large percentage of the smartphone market worldwide. The iPhone 3g was the standout smartphone this year, but there were other devices worth mentioning. The T-Mobile G1 gets a nod for being the first smartphone running Google’s open source Android OS.

Best Netbook

I have said it before, 2008 was the year of the netbook. ?the low-cost little machines have helped keep the computer market afloat during the tough economy worldwide. I have looked at a few netbooks 3G. over 2008 and my favorite product has been the MSI Wind. The Wind is notable for its bright 10-inch screen and its fantastic keyboard. I also found the Asus Eee 1002HA very appealing, but the Wind has a better keyboard. MSI is releasing an updated Wind at CES in a few weeks so my favorite netbook of 2008 looks to be getting even better.

Best Digital Picture Frame

I am a big fan of digital picture frames and have several of them around my home and office. The entire digital picture frame category often gets a bad rap based on the poor performance of some of the products in the category. One digital frame that people will be very pleased with is the Impact7 from eStarling. The frame offers up integrated Wi-Fi that allows images to be synced from social networks (though it lacks MySpace capability). The image quality is very good and the frame offers all of this up at a great price.

Best Video Game Accessory

There are tons of video game accessories that hit the market this year. My favorite was the Starpex Guitar Controller for the PS3. The controller offers up a wooden body and neck with the weight and size of a real guitar. The fret buttons are excellent and the overall build quality it top notch. The controller even works with Rock band, Rock Band 2, and Guitar Hero. This was the best video game accessory of 2008.

Best iPod Accessory

One of the coolest iPod accessories that I found this year was the SoundCast OutCast wireless speaker system. The system docks with an iPod and sends the tunes wirelessly to an outdoor speaker system. The large speaker system includes a 100W amp, 8-inch woofer, and 3-inch drivers. The system sounds good and is a great way to get tunes outside for activities like cookouts and pool parties.

Best Robot

The best robot gadget/toy of 2008 is the WowWee Rovio. The robot looks like something that would be sent to explore Mars and features a 640 x 480 pixel camera to shoot video as it moves around your home or office. The device also features a two-way mic so you can talk to the people or pets you find. Rovio features NorthStar smart navigation and positioning which is sort of like a micro-GPS system that allows the bot to navigate on its own.

Best Music Player

The best music player of 2008 is definitely the iPod Touch 2G. This device is so much more than a simple music player with the gyroscope from the iPhone along with a touchscreen it is one of the most potent mobile gaming platforms around. The device also works very well for playing music. The Touch 2G is an easy pick for top music player of 2008.

Best CPU

Intel’s new Core i7 CPU offers more performance, better power consumption and more improvements when compared to anything form AMD or the older Intel core 2 Duo CPUs. Core i7 parts are certainly not cheap with the high-end extreme edition selling for well over $1000. The new CPU requires a new socket mainboard and offers up performance that is well over that of most other processors on the market.

Best TV

The best TV of 2008 is the Mitsubishi LaserVue set. LaserVue offers more color reproduction that other HDTVs on the market, improved depth of field, clarity and significantly reduced power needs. Mitsubishi says that the set consumes about half of the power needed by a similarly sized plasma TV. A nice feature for future-proofing is that Mitsubishi LaserVue sets are 3D viewing ready.

Best Home Theater Device

The best home theater device of 2008 is the Roku Netflix Player. The little player was the first device to stream movie rentals directly from Netflix to our TVs. Roku offers the device at a price most can afford at $99 and recently upgraded the device for free to handle HD streams from Netflix. With a MSRP much less than the similar Apple TV device, the Roku Netflix Player is one of the best gadgets to launch this year.

Love, loss and the world wide web

Paris is not just for lovers, it is for web entrepreneurs too

“Starting up a business is similar to falling in love,” said Loic Le Meur, organiser of the Le Web conference that brought the cream of Europe’s web developers together in Paris this week.

“When you start a business you’re obsessed with it,” he said. “When it goes well you are very happy, but if it goes bad you fail with it. By learning about love, you can use that passion to help cultivate your ideas and improve your own businesses.”

That love for entrepreneurship was the theme of the conference – now in its fifth year – which was upbeat about the prospects for new firms despite the economic downturn.

Seen and heard

Many speakers rejected the notion that tough times were bad. Instead many reflected on why the downturn was a good thing for entrepreneurs.

“Markets fail, but they are rebuilt, and in this there are great opportunities for entrepreneurs,” said Dan’l Lewin, corporate vice president from Microsoft, who pointed out that a number of successful internet companies, such as HP, Apple and Google, were founded during previous recessions.

Nikesh Arora, Google’s senior vice president, also had words for those building their businesses, He said: “If you can ride out the next twelve to eighteen months, then your business will be in good shape.”

He added: “The economic climate does not determine success or failure, it creates a way to focus your mind.”

Erepublik lets people use social media to lead a nation

But he also issued a warning to European start-ups to evangelise themselves and become more visible around the world.

One company using Le Web to gain that visibility is Erepublik.

Based in Ireland, developed in Romania and managed from Spain, Erepublik mixes social media and strategy gaming to meld the real with a virtual world.

“We started Erepublik with a mirror of the real world, but with no rule book,” said Alexis Bonte, head of Erepublik. “Where many modern games are scripted, we are letting the players decide where to go next, and the worlds have drastically diverted.”

Soon after the game started, America invaded Canada, which promptly formalised an alliance with Spain to supply mercenaries who successfully repelled the marauders from the south.

Those joining the game choose a country, and through the publishing of social media, communicating with other players, working for gold or hiring others, they build a power-base in their chosen nation and can then declare war on other countries. Provided they can prove their worth to lead the country be that through fair means, or foul.

Erepublik brings together many tools people love to use. By aggregating content in the same way as the real world, it gives a depth to the gaming world that Mr Bonte and his team hope will lead to more players joining the game.

Site seeing

Another company that can help bestow that visibility is San Francisco based Techmeme. Founder Gabe Rivera was one of many American delegates who flew in for the conference.

“It’s nice to get out of the San Francisco bubble,” he said. “This is my way of meeting the European side of the web.”

What’s next for Rivera? He gave nothing away but did admit that the next news vertical he’ll curate will “probably be a site with an international flavour”.

Posting anonymously to Twitter could unleash big changes

Visibility is all well and good but often what people are saying needs to be managed – not least because that public output, such as comments made on blogs and in discussions groups, can easily found on the web.

This transparency is often seen as one of the strengths of the internet and Web 2.0, but can sometimes hold back the free exchange of ideas (especially if you know your parents, employers or significant others read your comments or blog).

Gabe MacIntyre is looking to address that with his anonymous Twitter project. By allowing people to post messages to Twitter without being identified as the author, he hopes to answer the question of what it means to Twitter, and to hopefully see how these social tools are used when the results are not tied to a digital identity.

“When people can post anonymously, interesting things start to happen,” said Mr MacIntyre.

“This isn’t for myself, it’s an outlet for anyone to let off steam. Twitter is more interesting than blogs, it boils everything down to short, concise, ideas,” he said. “This project is for the love of people.”

Article taken from bbc

Open source software cheaper option for government bodies

Written by Okuttah Mark

December 22, 2008: Linux Professional Association on Kenya,  a group of local software developers, has embarked on a sensitisation programme among government bodies with the aim of wooing them to use Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Among government bodies targeted are the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) and the Kenya ICT board. PPOA is mandated to enforce and oversee the implementation of the Public Procurement and Disposal Act. An Act which the organisation says is being flouted, thus locking them out of public tenders. Linux says the use of open source software will not only save the Government lots of money, but also create employment for small and medium entrepreneurs engaged in software development locally. The move comes barely five weeks after the Information minister, Mr Samuel Poghisio, directed that all government bodies ensure that half of their budgets on software is spent on locally developed software so as to boost the sector. Linux is engaging PPOA with an aim of coming up with solutions on how the authority could help government bodies when tendering for software. Although the public procurement and disposal Act states that tendering documents should not refer to a particular trade mark, name patent or producer or service provider, software tendering documents from a number of ministries always specifies that the software should be from a particular firm or brand, thus locking local FOSS providers out of competition. Linux Professional Association says the law has been flouted by agents, leading to FOSS members being locked out of  public contracts. “We would like to see a situation where there is a level playing ground,” said Mr Evans Ikua, the chairman of Linux. High fees A research commissioned by the group found that 99 per cent of software used by the government is proprietary. Spending on software by government ministries has nearly doubled in the last two years. Statistics from the Ministry of Finance show that in the financial 2006/2007 the  Government spent Sh254,501,543 on software. This figure increased to Sh580,686,819 in the financial year 2007/2008. The association notes that this expenditure can be reduced by more than 60 per cent. Proprietary software requires users to pay licensing fees that amount to billions of shillings for heavy users such as the Government. Use of FOSS codes on the other hand is free. However, consumers are required to pay for training or cost of customising the software to fit specific needs. “Many proprietary software vendors have turned to donating software to the education sector with subsidised licensing agreements. This is a dangerous precedence which must be rejected by the government as it will lead to vendor lock-in, with the vendors gaining a firm foothold in the market and later holding the country at ransom with high licensing fee  for their software,” said Mr Ikua. Article from: bdafrica.com

New technology to offer mass market BlackBerry service

Written by Kui Kinyanjui

The new service dubbed ‘Mwananchi’s BlackBerry’ will allow users to read emails without using Internet. December 19, 2008: A new partnership between a Kenyan value-added mobile services provider and an Indian programming firm seeks to introduce what its creators call the ‘Mwananchi’s BlackBerry’ to the market. Owners of low-end handsets will now be able to access email services on their phones without using internet connectivity on the new service, dubbed Mobee. “Mobee is an email2SMS service based on the push-mail concept similar to that used on BlackBerries.  It enables one to send and receive emails on a mobile phone via SMS without any internet connection,” said Symon Ndirangu, CEO of Information Convergence Technologies (ICT Kenya). Push mail is a concept that has come to prominence in recent years as users increasingly seek out products that will enhance their productivity while on the move. It is defined as the automatic forwarding of mail from servers to a mobile device. Push mail works by keeping an active connection open between the mobile device and the server that will  notify the mobile device immediately a new email has arrived, allowing users to read mail as it arrives in real time on their phone. Research In Motion, the manufacturer of BlackBerry, the specialised devices that allow consumers to access their email using a hand-held device has enjoyed commercial success as the concept becomes increasingly popular with office workers around the world. Both Safaricom and Zain launched their version of the service, allowing Kenyans to access push email from around Sh2,000 a month. Mr Ndirangu’s company hopes to enable low-end handsets – those that do not have the internet capability necessary for push email services – to access a similar product. “There are no installations necessary and we are offering the service for free until the end of next month so users can experience it,” he said. Mr Ndirangu met with BitlaSoft, a company that has rolled out Mobee services in Bangalore in August this year during an industry conference.  His company then signed working agreement that will see his company roll out the product in this market. The Indian company will provide ongoing technical expertise while ICT Kenya is responsible for marketing and getting mobile providers on board to support the project. The mutual benefit partnership is based on revenue share. In the next few weeks, the joint venture hopes to roll out a Business to Customer oriented product that will allow users to transact with firms using their mobile phones. Kenyan users will need to register on the mobee.co.ke website to use the service, and can forward mail from Outlook, G-mail, Yahoo and other mail servers to their phones. There are currently 20 million Blackberry subscribers around the world. Limited uptake Since Zain and Safaricom launched their BlackBerry services, uptake has mostly been limited to corporate customers whose staff are able to afford monthly access costs starting from Sh2,000 in addition to a one-off purchase of a specialised device which can receive the service. No figures are available on the uptake of the service locally. Osterman Research, an industry trend watchdog, estimates the uptake of push email services by corporate workers will increase to include half the workforce by 2010. “If an organisation’s mobile device or service was down, more than 80 per cent of respondents told us that this downtime would have an impact on their senior managers ability to make critical, time-sensitive decisions — one in ten told us it would have a very serious impact,” said the research firm in its report ‘Mobile Messaging Trends’ 2008.

Article taken from: www.bdafrica.com

TECHNOLOGY-KENYA: On the Way to Getting Wired

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Jul 1 (IPS) – In 1961, there was just one to be had. By 1985, that figure had increased to 1,800 — and at the beginning of last year, it stood at about 520,000, according to government figures.

There’s no disputing that computer ownership in Kenya is on the increase.

Even so, the path to ensuring that the majority of Kenyans are able to benefit from information and communication technology (ICT) is littered with obstacles — something that came to the fore during a conference held this week in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

ICT Africa was organised by, amongst others, the Nairobi-based African Telecommunications Union and the Union of National Radio and Television Organisations of Africa, headquartered in Senegal. The four-day event (Jun. 27 to 30) brought together delegates from the continent and abroad to discuss a variety of ICT-related issues, including the challenges of extending communications technology to all in Africa.

According to the ICT Africa organisers, less than two percent of Africans currently make use of the internet. In North America, the figure is about 70 percent says Jabulani Dhliwayo, chairman of the ICT commission at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). The NEPAD initiative is aimed at attracting more investment to Africa through improving standards of governance on the continent.

However, a glance at the official statistics from 2004 for fixed telephone lines in Kenya gives an idea of why so few are logging on.

While it has a population of some 30 million, the country only had about 240,000 subscribers last year for fixed phone lines, which are normally required for internet connections.

Of further concern is the fact that most of these lines are found in cities and towns.

”We do not have a robust network…which connects the rural and urban areas, and therefore you find that ICT facilities are concentrated in large cities and not spread out evenly to rural areas where 80 percent of our population lives,” Shem Ochuodho, chairman of the African Regional Centre for Computing, told IPS at the conference. His Nairobi-based organisation is involved in ICT research and training.

Even if phone lines were laid down in remote areas, those living there who were also fortunate enough to have computers might not be able to switch the machines on.

”Electricity…is absent in most of rural Kenya. If we have to achieve universal access to ICT, then electricity is one issue that needs to be addressed adequately,” noted Ochuodho.

The Kenya ICT Trust Fund may have come up with an interesting solution to this lack of electricity, however — albeit just for schools. Established by government and the private sector in 2004 to promote the use of ICTs in education, the fund is trying to power rural schools with solar energy.

It has also joined forces with civil society groups in an effort to equip public secondary schools across the country with computers. Of the 4,000 institutions in question, 400 have already benefited. Then, it will be the turn of Kenya’s 17,600 public primary schools, and private schools which lack computer facilities.

At present, computers are prohibitively expensive in Kenya. For the 56 percent of Kenyans who live on less than a dollar a day, even the cheapest machines can cost more than they would spend in a year.

As efforts proceed to make sure that Kenya’s children are not left on the wrong side of the digital divide, concerns are growing about computer literacy amongst adults. According to government figures, about 30 percent of adults cannot read and write, which effectively excludes them from taking advantage of ICTs. (The 2004 Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Programme, puts illiteracy figures somewhat lower, at about 16 percent of Kenyan adults.)

”For one to be able to make use of a computer, they must first be able to read and write. This calls for measures to contain the illiteracy level from all fronts,” says George Okado, who lobbies for more effective policies to promote the ICT sector in Kenya.

Under the ‘Dakar Framework for Action’, the country has committed itself to halving adult illiteracy by 2015, and to providing opportunities for continued education amongst adults. The framework was adopted by 164 states at the World Education Forum, which took place in the Senegalese capital five years ago.

But, pending improvements in literacy and computer availability, a great many adults in Kenya — and elsewhere — will continue to receive information in a more old-fashioned way: via radio.

ICT Africa figures show that 22 percent of Africans have access to radios. And, while 10 million personal computers have made their way to the continent, 205 million radio sets are in use. (END/2005)

Article taken from: http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=29302

2009 security predictions: Deja vu all over again