Sanders Media

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has apologized for the remote deletions of customer’s purchased materials. Those included George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Here is his statement:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

While he is still a little vague regarding how Amazon would have done the current situation different, it is good that Amazon sees the harm they’ve done to themselves. I would still like to see them explicitly explain their policies from here on.

The recent row over Amazon’s decision to delete readers’ Kindle copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm has highlighted a growing problem. Do we really own our digital content?

I find this to be a disturbing question to have to ask. In the traditional world of buying and selling, once you’ve paid, the product or service is yours to keep. The seller or creator did not have rights thereafter. You could do with the product as you pleased. Now, Amazon has changed that equation by remotely removing purchased copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from its customer’s Kindles. Here is Amazon’s statement to it’s customers:

The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.

I really have a problem with this. You wouldn’t have seen this happen with paper books. Therein lies another issue. Should merchants and content providers have the right to remove previously purchased content without the buyers permission?

Amazon tried to further explain themselves in this statement:

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.

That still doesn’t address why the consumer should have to lose out because of Amazon’s mistake. In the end, I shouldn’t have to worry that iTunes, Amazon or any other digital merchant will remotely “disappear” content I’ve purchased. It feels like an invasion of privacy. Companies risk losing the consumer’s trust by acting in this way. Hopefully, they will soon understand that.

Today, my friend and colleague, Bill LaViolette and I participated in Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk. It is a very cool event where you walk around a designated part of the city and take photos. It is quite interesting the things you’ll find when viewing through a lens.

We chose the Knoxville walk because we’ve both taken plenty of photos of Nashville. I’ve really only driven though Knoxville before, so it was a lot of fun to spend some time in the older parts of town. We also spent some time in the Market Square section of the city.

Feel free to check out my Flickr photostream to see the photos I took on the walk. If you get the chance to participate next year, I would highly recommend it.

I am  making some changes to my websites in the coming weeks. I am shifting my business over to my new company, Nerdy Work. Sanders Media will remain as a tech talk blog. I will also be blogging over at Nerdy Work.

I hope you enjoy the coming changes. I look forward to serving you.

Google’s dominance in the search engine market is well documented. However, there are quality alternatives. Here are a few.

1. Bing: This is Microsoft’s long anticipated Google rival. After their previous search engine attempt, Live, did nothing to dent Google’s market dominance, they tried again with Bing. The early results are promising. Bing has some great features that will surely steer some users it’s way. Take a tour of Bing here.
2. WolframAlpha: This is mainly a computational search engine. In fact, WolframAlpha calls itself a computational knowledge engine. For instance, enter the name of your city, and  you’ll find several bits of data. You can do the same with your birth date. It is a very useful source of raw data. It can even do calculus.
3. Yahoo: This has been around the longest among Google competitors. In fact, Yahoo once dominated the search market. Fantasy Sports, Shopping and Weather are among the useful services you can find here. Yahoo continues to try new things to make up ground on Google, so new features are surely coming.
4. Ask.com: This site was originally known as AskJeeves.com. They have added functionality that includes standard search functions. Ask.com is a good source for How-To’s and research information.

Of course, I’m leaving out a few others. Feel free to email me with your suggestions. Google is still the leader, and doesn’t appear to be letting up. However, there may come a time that you want to try something new. These are a good start.

Today, I wanted to go over some of the various Twitter clients. Whether you use Windows, Mac or Linux, there is one for you.

1. Nambu: This is my personal favorite. However, it is Mac only. It sports a very clean interface, and almost has the look of Apple’s Mail application. It’s very easy to use, and it’s free.
2. TweetDeck: A few of my Windows friends like this one a lot. It is available in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux versions. It sports some handy features including spam protection and Facebook updates. It’s also free.
3. Twitterrific: This client has two versions: free and paid. The free version is fully functional, but is ad supported. It is Mac only. The iPhone version is one of the App Store’s top Twitter related downloads.
4. Twhirl: This is another popular Twitter client. It is available for Mac OS X and Windows. It has some great features including English spell check and image posting.
5. TwitterFox: This is more of a plugin than a client, but it bears mentioning. It is platform agnostic because it is a plugin for the Firefox web browser. It displays a small icon near your status bar that tells you when there are new tweets to your account.

If you’re a Mac user, I would definitely give Nambu a try. Windows and Linux users should look into TweetDeck. Because of TweetDeck’s Facebook inclusion, I may eventually switch over. Since many of us are on multiple social networking services, this becomes increasingly useful.

Today, I’m here with a reminder to maintain your computer. There’s no reason you can’t get 3 to 4 very productive years out of your computer. Here are some things that will help.

1. Use compressed (canned) air to blow out your computer if you have a desktop. I would suggest you do this at least twice a year. Dust in your computer case has a nasty habit of causing computers to overheat and underperform.
2. If you leave your computer on all of the time, shut it down at least once a month.
3. Run virus and spyware cleanup software at least once a week.
4. Backup everything. I can never emphasize this enough. Yet again, I have a client who may lose her files because she didn’t back them up. External hard drive are inexpensive, and online services, like Mozy, provide unlimited space.
5. If you do all of these things, and you still have a problem, call me.

I’ve just finished a website for Jason Moore, a musician in Oklahoma. Among other things, he composes music for film and commercials. Naturally he wanted to showcase his work. I just needed to come up with a way for people to hear his compositions without being able to download the music. I needed a player.

Flash is usually a great option for players. After a short Google search, I found PremiumBeat.com. They provide Flash music players that are free with their logo embedded. This turned out to be exactly what I needed. The installation was very easy.

If you’d like to showcase your compositions, surf over to PremiumBeat.com. It’s an elegant and efficient solution. Also, if you need high quality music for a project, consider contacting Jason. His email address is jasonmooremusic@gmail.com. You’ll be glad you did.

There has been a surge of lawsuits involving intellectual property and patent infringement recently. Many of them cross the border into the absurd. Here are a few examples.

1. A company called Psion filed suit against any company using the term “netbook”. Despite “netbook” being a generic term referring to small, very mobile laptops, Psion felt its trademarked “netBook” was being infringed. Never mind that their “netBook” was a completely different product. They had also ceased to manufacture their device several years ago.
2. A company in Texas is suing at least 20 companies for storing consumer payment information and allowing either stored value payments or one-click payments on their sites. Apple, MasterCard, Visa and Walmart are among the companies being sued. The company bringing the suit is a notorious patent hoarder. Their only form of income seems to come from lawsuits.
3. A very popular iTunes app store game, EDGE, has been forced out by a patent infringement lawsuit. The man bringing the suit has a history of bullying game developers with his numerous lawsuits. He claims to have the trademark on any software using the word “edge”.

These lawsuits may be merely an annoyance to larger companies, but they threaten to stifle the innovation that smaller companies have long provided. Another consequence is higher prices. How else do companies like Apple and Walmart make up for the millions paid out in these suits?

President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, could become the first Supreme Court justice to have a history of precedent-setting rulings on cyberlaw issues. Her nomination is key as cyberlaw issues continue to show up in this country’s courtrooms.

Her experience includes time as an IP (Intellectual Property) lawyer. As a judge, she’s ruled in cases involving Netscape and the New York Times. She’s known for her feisty demeanor and hard hitting questions.

Right now, it is hard to know which way she would lean in her rulings. Regardless, Judge Sotomayor’s nomination is a welcome development. Too many judges have too little understanding of cyberlaw issues, thus making them susceptible to the propaganda of special interests. We live in a digital world, and we must have lawmakers who understand the issues involved.