snapshot 8/15/07

HarperCollins offers digital book content for iPhone
Publisher HarperCollins said on Wednesday it would make samples from 14 new book titles available for Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) Web-browsing iPhone in a new effort to extend publishing into digital formats. Most of the new books will debut in August and September, with the iPhone-compatible versions available at HarperCollins mobile Web site.

HarperCollins' "Browse Inside" applications allows readers to sample pages of its books on the Web. The company began to build up its digital warehouse of published material in 2006 with digital technology firm LibreDigital and now has 10,000 titles available. After sampling the stories, customers can choose to buy or pre-order the book from retailers through the mobile application.


Microsoft Points - what’s next for the company’s virtual currency?
Perhaps the initial reason Microsoft created the points system was to help cut down on costs. Many items available at the Xbox Live Marketplace may have a low price to you, but the transaction fees that Microsoft is charged by payment processors quickly add up. It’s the same reason that many restaurants and shops require you to make a minimum purchase before they’ll accept debit or credit cards. Small transactions are just very costly to process.

As the company sells more and more products and services online, having a common currency between them becomes very attractive. Already you can purchase Microsoft Points from the Zune Marketplace and use them on Xbox Live, and vice-versa. Almost all of the major forces in the digital living room have a payments system of some sort. Sony has the PlayStation Network Card, Nintendo has Wii Points, Google has Checkout, and Amazon recently launched FPS. Sony and Nintendo’s systems are virtual currencies, whereas Google and Amazon’s are payment services. Microsoft could be the first company to offer both by opening up Microsoft Points to the world.


PassAlong Spins Off Indie Download Enabler Speakerheart
Music distribution developer PassAlong Networks is spinning off Speakerheart, an online platform for independent artists and bands to upload and sell own music, as its own company. Speakerheart is a Rich Internet Application built using Adobe Flex that enables artists to upload music, create track samples, set prices and sell it in custom storefronts. Artists can access sales reports and receive payments via PayPal. Artists also have access to promotional tools called Shelves, which can be pasted onto Facebook, Friendster and MySpace pages plus artist blogs and fan sites.


Apple My iTunes widgets
Apple is syndicating iTunes purchase history and user reviews as Flash widgets and Atom feeds under a new program called My iTunes Widgets. Any iTunes Music Store customer can opt-in to sharing their subscribed podcasts, purchased music, music video, TV shows, movies, and positive reviews through an account preference set in the iTunes application.


Microsoft licenses audio watermarking technology
Microsoft said Wednesday that it has signed a deal to license audio watermarking technology from its research labs to Seattle-based Activated Content. While watermarking technology is often used as an antipiracy measure, Microsoft said its technology allows companies to add-in other types of content and services into the watermarked music. One of the big potential applications is adding in advertising into streaming media, according to a report on MediaPost.


Harry Potter and the death of books
The pirating of a blockbuster novel onto the peer-to-peer networks is one of those seminal moments that is supposed to herald a new era, wherein the old way (books) is cleared out by the new way (computers, e-books) and the days of paperbacks and hard-bound volumes become marginalized to the sentimental periphery of culture along with vinyl records and postcards.

But the book world is a hard target for digital technology. If anything, the Harry Potter piracy should serve as an interesting anomaly. Whereas digital music, mail and now cinema are quickly changing the landscape of communication and entertainment, digital books seem to have had a much slower evolution. If digital novel sharing marks the death of books, I assure you it will be a long, slow death.