As much fun as pelting Susie Derkins with Water Balloons

Candy Pop...Ur doin it right

Via Pitchfork

Sounds like a lot of bright colors thrown about with abandon! Go ahead & listen!

Okie, this is more like last week’s releases. But that’s ok, cover pr0n is always mucho appreciato

Usually IRC dumps are 90% Torquere & Cousins/Project Gutenberg and 10% recent fiction. The trend continues this week; a few notables though

Top 15 Fiction Bestsellers for upto Oct 2008  in India – take a look

1. Solve Your Problems The Birbal Way  – Anita S R {2005}
2. 3 Mistakes Of My Life – Chetan Bhagat {2008}
3. One Night @ The Call Center  – Chetan Bhagat {2005}
4. Five Point Someone – Chetan Bhagat {2004}
5. Inheritance 3: Brisingr  – Christopher Paolini {2008}
6. Story Of My Experiments With Truth – Gandhi M K {forever}
7. A Prisoner Of Birth  – Jeffrey Archer {2008}
8. Kite Runner  – Khaled Hosseini {2003}
9. Creation Of Wealth  – Lala R M {2006}
10. Wordpower Made Easy  – Norman Lewis {forever}
11. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho {1993}
12. Brida  – Paulo Coelho {1990}
13. Secret – Rhonda Byrne {2006}
14. Monk Who Sold His Ferrari – Robin S Sharma {2003}
15. The Greatness Guide 2  – Robin S Sharma {2002}

Any name in that list that you havent been seeing for ages. Now, compare that with the NYT lot…

PAPERBACK MASS-MARKET FICTION
Top 5 at a Glance

1. MURDER GAME, by Christine Feehan
2. THE APPEAL, by John Grisham
3. THE PAGAN STONE, by Nora Roberts
4. GLITTER BABY, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
5. MARRIED IN SEATTLE, by Debbie Macomber

PAPERBACK ADVICE
Top 5 at a Glance

1. SUZE ORMAN’S 2009 ACTION PLAN, by Suze Orman
2. TWILIGHT, by Mark Cotta Vaz
3. THE LOVE DARE, by Stephen and Alex Kendrick with Lawrence Kimbrough
4. SKINNY BITCH, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin
5. WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel

PAPERBACK NONFICTION
Top 5 at a Glance

1. MARLEY & ME, by John Grogan
2. DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, by Barack Obama
3. THE AUDACITY OF HOPE, by Barack Obama
4. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
5. TEAM OF RIVALS, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Clearly, there is a huge sync gap between what we read in India compared to what is being read in an English country. Barring a few major ups and downs, I don’t see this list changing drastically for any other country apart from US. Which is really weird because in all places where English is not native, you’d expect ethnic literature selling; which does not seem to be happening in India either. We seem to have been caught in some sort of time bubble as far as new book releases are concerned
Maybe we are less willing to spend that much amount of money on an activity as frivolous as fiction reading. As the table clearly shows, we tend to buy things that are cheaper and known VFM {Value for Moneys}. I’d hate to be a newly published author here. Here’s the pricing table

1. Solve Your Problems The Birbal Way  – Anita S R –> INR 80
2. 3 Mistakes Of My Life – Chetan Bhagat –> INR 95
3. One Night @ The Call Center  – Chetan Bhagat –> INR 95
4. Five Point Someone – Chetan Bhagat –> INR 95
5. Inheritance 3: Brisingr  – Christopher Paolini –> INR 600
6. Story Of My Experiments With Truth – Gandhi M K –> INR 30
7. A Prisoner Of Birth  – Jeffrey Archer –> INR 180
8. Kite Runner  – Khaled Hosseini –> INR 300
9. Creation Of Wealth  – Lala R M –> INR 295
10. Wordpower Made Easy  – Norman Lewis –> INR 95
11. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho –> INR 195
12. Brida  – Paulo Coelho –> INR 295
13. Secret – Rhonda Byrne –> INR 550
14. Monk Who Sold His Ferrari – Robin S Sharma –> INR 185
15. The Greatness Guide 2  – Robin S Sharma –> INR 185

Note: 50 INR= 1 USD

Well, I suppose book publishers do have a business case for churning out reprints after reprints of back catalog instead of putting out newer authors. Which means that for a reader like me, who unlike the rest of the countrymen is abreast of what is happening around the world, has only one way of getting hold of a Pat Rothfuss or a Joe Abercrombie – and that’s ebooks. Sadly, no marketing/BTL push has been happening on the book front here. It still is very much a second-hand/pirate market than anything else. And we ALL know how many titles are available as ebooks So, if I say I’ve read all of Scott Lynch’s/Tobias Buckell books, you know where I got them from.

Teleread is one of the blogs that’s pretty much keyed into the whole ebook scene (note: ebook & not #bookwarez) and they’re promoting a Read An ebook Week in March. And i’ll welcome anything that lessens the upward eyebrows which get drawn as soon as i start speaking e-speak. I wish them the best. Here’s the banner (plz click, o! irregular reader)

read an ebook week

Okie, it’s still a few days before November ends. But i have free time only now was thinking of doing it for October also, but never got around to actually doing it; guess iwll update as soon as November ends

Peter V. Brett: The Painted Man (aka The Warded Man)

Brilliant fantasy debut. I’d say 8.5/10

Robert Charles Wilson: The Divide

Was the usual RCW Spin style book. Interesting, but the ending felt flat. 6.5/10

Simon R. Green: The Author of the month, i’d say. Read tonnes of his stuff. All of them would be 7-7.5/10

Nightside Series

Something from the Nightside
Agents of Light and Darkness
Nightingale’s Lament
Hex and the City
Paths not Taken
Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth
Hell to Pay
The Unnatural Inquirer

Deathstalker Series

# Deathstalker
# Deathstalker Rebellion

Hawk & Fisher Series

Hawk & Fisher; No Haven for the Guilty

T.A. Pratt: (YAUFA) Yet Another Urban Fantasy Author. 7/10

Marla Mason Series

Blood Engines
Poison Sleep
Dead Reign

Scott Lynch: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Book 2 of the Gentleman Bastards)

Did not have quite the flavor of the first book, Lies of Locke Lamorra…but still quite an entertaining read 7.5/10

Brent Weeks: Way of The Shadows

Good fantasy debut. Assassin, trainee assassin, court intrigue…all checks in place 8/10

Michael Moorcock: Elric of Melnibone

somehow did not get into the book at all. a weak 4.5/10

Richard Kadrey: Butcher Bird

good writing and a stronger plot than the usual urban fantasy mess. i’d like to read more from this guy. 8/10

My slow descent into Alcoholism…

…saved by cheezeburger kitteh!!

been listening to some indie rock for some time; Flaming Lips, White Stripes (ok, not indie anymore), the new pornographers et al.  And as teh kitteh wud sey…

This post has got nothing to do with the iPhone; 3G or otherwise

Sometime back, when i was still an B-schooler unschooled in the art of marketing, i had made a few video ads for a competition @ IIM Kozhikode. Our presentation was on Touch-screen mobile phones & i remember we got ripped apart by the judges because they perceived touch-screen technology to be a distant futuristic invention & we weren’t to sully the good ol’ name of the art of snake-oil selling. Now, that the iPhone has seen the light of the day even amongst cave-dwellers, i hope those good folks are living on a steady diet of humble pie. Here ends the obscure iPhone reference.

Disclaimer: I don’t have the license to use music from Enya’s Watermark, Gladiator OST & Enigma’s Greatest Hits Disc compilations. I just hope that they dont mind

The videos are courtesy Getty Images

From An Advertising perspective, i guess the copy-work is pretty bad; but hey, these were my first vid (and last till now ) vid edits

a) Theme – Doctor & Baby

b) Theme – Redemption

c) Theme – Sensual

Note: Here’s the CC License

Touchscreen Ads by Q is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at dotstuff.wordpress.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://dotstuff.wordpress.com.

i detest my sysadmin. Or, to put it more accurately, i think their IT policy is moronic

lemme list out the weirdo rules:

1. No Admin Rights
2. Scheduled AV scans; daily, weekly, monthly
3. No USB access
4. This is all ofcourse, on top of outdated hardware; pis-poor RAM power

In the often meandering & confused fight against piracy; these guys have the typical buried-head-in-the-sands routine…lets shut everything down, no sysadmin rights to users, no new software, no piracy blah blah blah.

What does it matter that Xobni is revolutionizing the way we(I) use Outlook, Evernote is making my notes seamless between machines, Dmailer sync is eliminating 3.5 kgs of Laptop lugging everyday…Feed Demon, Google Talk, WinRAR; are all what i NEED!

So, anyway. here’s the guide to a more powered existence. Death to syadmin rules!

a) Power-Up from user to admin

Download this Zip File (Link). Burn CD. Follow instructions. You’re set

USB Access is ofcourse granted the minute you get admin rights

b) Delete scheduled Admin scans on Symantec AV

Run REGEDIT on CMD

Goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>INTEL>LANDesk>VirusProtect6>CurrentVersion>LocalScans>

Delete all “ClientServerScheduledScan” folders

Anybody else has a solved/unsolved grouse, do write in!

P.S.>No Torrent/P2P/mIRC How-To’s to be posted

P.S.2>psst, use Usenet

the kind folks over @ PaGaLGuY.com have put up my gobspeak for all the world to see. And, i haven’t managed to string “tow coherent sentences toga-thor” (see!) for the past 6 months. Plus, this is a very very neglected blog, desperately in need of new posts. ergo, here’s the link:

http://www.pagalguy.com/index.php?categoryid=52&p2_articleid=1250

<<<—thatz Quinty v1.0. the newer version weighs lesser, plays the guitar, drives a Bentley (okie, kidding); but is generally cooler than ever before (i.e. last week)

Finally! after months of idle speculation of the ugly device in picture, Amazon has finally revealed the whole deal behind the Kindle package and needless to add, the canning has started.

MobileRead’s Bob Russell marks it off as the worst thing that could happen to ebooks, while the Techdirt Insider community feels that overpriced content is only leading kindle to the road of failure. Teleread hasn’t really waded into the debate yet, except for some grumblings about the clear snub to .epub (and, accept it guys, you are obsessed over the Tower of eBabel). And, while we get an onslaught of marketing videos on the Amazon Site, another to be launched e-ink device (Cybook) languishes in an insipid YouTube video and my own Sony Reader..well, did you know that there is a version 505 out there ?

Anyway, back to the topic under discussion! While the tech community is less than enthused over this new package, i am extremely happy at the way Amazon has put across a very amazing business model.

first up, a list of things the Kindle is providing: Boing Boing & Wikipedia cover almost all of it, but in short simple terms:

1. Yes, except for PDF & secure mobi, all the ebooks that you currently own can be transferred & read for free on the Kindle
2. No, there is no way to convert those $ 9.99 azw beauties into a format of your choice and to be read on another device/PC…yet! (Bad Amazon!)
3. Yes, it does audio and audiobook enthusiasts; the milli-ens of them would be pretty happy to hear (hehe) that they can transfer their own files to the device themselves.
4. No, they havent hacked the free EV-DO internet to work for laptops yet

ok! the last one was mostly in jest. But seriously, some good thinking on part of the Amazon gang.

Now, i say the device is good and i am never going to buy it ! i think the business model behind Kindle is brilliant even though the device is damn ugly.

If you look from the rampant ebook piracy point of view, ebook selling websites shouldn’t exist. But they do (Baen, Sony Connet, ebooks.com, mobipocket.com)! and so do sites for Music (iTunes) & Videos (Netflix). So basically there is a market out there which is being currently served/serviced.The next question is, ” is the market big enough?”

Simple answer is NO! I do not believe that the current market is even 1.5-2 million “paid” downloads. So, market opportunity cannot be more than $10-20 mn. Now, which company is even looking at a New Media Industry like that, when in comparision, the new Wii consoles have sold 15 mn units, since Dec 2006 (Xbox – 10 million & PS3 – 8.8 million); Industry behemoth ipod sold 18 million units..hell, even Zune sold 1.2 mn units ! look at the figures and despair…all ye ebook reader companies!

The immediate need of the market is rapid expansion – like the Wii did for the console business. What i contend is that the business model behind Kindle is really going to blow up the market.

Lets look at the reasons why -

No. 1 - Instant Gratification – Ever wondered why all those Point-of-sale terminals are loaded with small goodies? That’s for enticing you to spend your money rather than taking the view away from the pretty cash-countress :p Look at Kindle. Instant Wireless connectivity…get any of 90k books/blogs/magazines. All it takes is 1 second of need and you’d have bought yourself a monthly Times subscription, a BusinessWeek or a NYT bestseller. Sitting in your drawing room and having Coffee next to a roaring fire ain’t gonna boost sales…an idle, boring wait at the conference you went to, or the local subway ride..and there the money would flow.

No. 2 – Convenience – I can reasonably source almost any possible fiction book on the planet, that i need, given enough time. My sis, who just has to mail me to ask for a new book, couldn’t be bothered. She already has too much stuff on her plate. This is the reason why people buy the Norton Antivirus’s or the Windows Vista DVD’s – it’s not that they can’t source it illegally – it’s just that they do not have the time or familiarity to trawl through the wastes of pirate cells and look for stuff they want.

And what do we get in return…

We get a bloody bigger TG. More people into ebook reading. And that gives rise to consumer choice! All those screamers about getting bogged down by format, seller, DRM etc all exist because the industry is monopolistic. Once an adoption of readers happens, be it the Kindle, CyBook, Illiad..or anything else, we can have lower prices, better devices and services. Planning 25 years from now for owned content is stupid (Sorry, Cory Doctorow, your books are good but this is incomprehensible nonsense to me). Hell, all the paperbacks from my college days (which wasn’t that long ago) have all wasted away.

A growing market right now can be better news than a great device which supports all formats, has color display and costs $150. That device willl only come if there is a market for it. Otherwise, no one is gonna plonk down their shareholder wealth in this particular mess.

That’s why i think Kindle is good. It’s good for the industry. It will force companies to change their whole idea about this marketplace. It brings in new technologies and delivery mechanisms…which might not be perfect, but are radically different! that counts for a lot, i say!

And all those internet based (text) content services, finally also have a revenue model that is not based on Advertising or Premium Services. Good old-fashioned subscription…finally making a pie, albeit a very small one, out of the $0.00 internet service!

I think that it is great to have something of this sort come up now. Let’s hope the ebook industry becomes bigger…its in the interest of all of us!