Comments for The User Experience of the Book

Comment on For Love, But Not Now for Money by Sal Covarrubias

Sal Covarrubias — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:03:10 +0000

Congratulations. I assume you’ll be working with Marc V.

The last place I worked at was supposed to be a TV station, and it was…sort of, but, as my business partner at the time used to say, the company tried to come up with solutions and then would go out to try and find the problems. They would apply for grants that had nothing to do with television production and if/when they got the occasional money, they would re-assign anyone who could help to do tasks that were not remotely part of the core business and left everyone confused and disillusioned. ADHD is not a disease specific to humans; sometimes companies suffer from the same exact symptoms. It’s a shitty prevalent pattern, unfortunately.

Anyway onward, upward, etc.

Comment on For Love, But Not Now for Money by Dawn Bovasso

Dawn Bovasso — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:45:33 +0000

Thanks, Noreen! I hope we get to work together again someday.

Comment on For Love, But Not Now for Money by Noreen Compton

Noreen Compton — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:42:40 +0000

Great stuff, Dawn. I hope you get to do some innovative work at your next gig. I know you bring great experience, wit and skills to the party. Enjoy!

Comment on Choosing “the Book” by best los angeles match maker

best los angeles match maker — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:11:47 +0000

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Comment on Something More to Amazon’s New Tablet by Aaron Krivitzky

Aaron Krivitzky — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:13:28 +0000

It drives me crazy…the media keeps comparing the Kindle to the iPad, when I don’t believe it is actually created to compete with iPad. Nobody(in the media, anyway) seems to realize this. The Kindle device, including the new Fire, is a device to unlock Amazon’s content and media distribution. That’s where Amazon wants to make their money! Not on sales of a device. Sure, any profit on the device is a plus, but it is not the primary goal, as it is for Apple. Remember, the iPad has Kindle apps already available for it. If Amazon wanted to compete via the end-user device, they would be making their content proprietary to the Kindle hardware.

People keep comparing the end-user device, but they do not see the beauty in the strategy of the whole system, which includes the hardware, but also the unseen, backend content and application availability and distribution. Apple and Amazon are going to square off more directly eventually, as they seem to be building dualing content distribution systems. But, the point is its not the specs of the end-user device that should be focused on, but the whole of the consumer’s “experience” when using that device.

Comment on Something More to Amazon’s New Tablet by Don Garrett

Don Garrett — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:51:44 +0000

There’s got to be an Amazon TV running Silk in the works somewhere.

Comment on Something More to Amazon’s New Tablet by Something More to Amazon's New Tablet « The User Experience of … - Amazon Tablet Reviews | Amazon Tablet Reviews

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:58:39 +0000

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Comment on The Beauty and Risk of Crowdsourced Content: Amazon Partners with Wikipedia by Dawn Bovasso

Dawn Bovasso — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:16:35 +0000

Thank you for this – it’s fascinating. We’ve been talking about this at work for a few days now, and even though Wikipedia is free through the Creative Commons, we [apparently incorrectly] guessed that Amazon was giving Wikipedia the affiliate fee.

I wonder if this model would actually call Wikipedia’s neutrality into question? Maybe not, if Amazon just takes the data dump and doesn’t do any modifications. Yet considering how Goliath they are, it might be impossible for their presence to leave the main Wikipedia source unaffected.

Please keep me updated!

Comment on The Beauty and Risk of Crowdsourced Content: Amazon Partners with Wikipedia by HaeB

HaeB — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:52:45 +0000

It’s not a “win-win”. Wikipedia doesn’t get compensated – in fact it wasn’t even consulted when Amazon introduced these pages. Because Wikipedia articles are under a free Creative Commons license, Amazon was not required to ask for permission. But the Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation (which hosts Wikipedia) said he was “concerned” about Amazon’s reuse undermining Wikipedia’s no-ads reputation, and your blog post proves the fears he articulated three months ago:

“Wikipedia is currently understood to be one of the few mainstream sources of information that isn’t commercialized, and which aims to provide a neutral and inclusive view of any given topic. A third party adding single-vendor shopping ads into the content, while the way the content is presented closely resembles Wikipedia, threatens to undermine that perception, as Amazon.com visitors may assume that this is something that’s part of our operating model.”

See an article I wrote for the “Signpost”, the English Wikipedia’s weekly internal news bulletin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-12-06/In_the_news#Amazon_adds_.22shopping-enabled.22_Wikipedia_pages

Comment on A Book Budget is Ironic, Hypocritical, and Somewhat Painful for Me by Dawn Bovasso

Dawn Bovasso — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:17:46 +0000

Hey Sadie!! I miss you! I’ve been meaning to write a full blog post about your question, and I hope to get to it in the next few days. In the meantime, I will say – honestly, and not as a BN employee – that I love my nook and that it’s great for reading library books. The interface blows away the Sony. More in a few days!