07-09-2012, 08:35 AM | #1 |
Wizard
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"Amazon is an infrastructure company"
From this morning's Shelf Awareness:
"What makes the Kindle unique is what makes Amazon unique: its physical presence is a mere avatar for a stream of digital services. In the spirit of its parent, it is more infrastructure than device. And it is as infrastructure that it disrupts, as its biblioclastic name intends." --James Bridle in his Domus magazine "design report" exploring the "open secret" that Amazon is "not a book company, or a retail company, or an Internet company; it's an infrastructure company." Check out the cool graphics accompanying Bridle's piece, particularly the stunning circular timeline of Amazon's life. |
07-10-2012, 01:41 AM | #2 |
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Great article!
(There's an extra http:// at the end of the link though, so those clicking it will get an error.) |
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07-10-2012, 06:26 AM | #3 |
The Dank Side of the Moon
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Yep. No surprise to me.
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07-10-2012, 08:03 AM | #4 | ||
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One particular bit points out just how far out of the conventional box Amazon operates:
Quote:
The last paragraph suggests he himself isn't wholly comfortable with the Kindle operational model, mostly because he sees the Kindle ecosystem as a "substitute" for the internet itself (a bit of a reach there) instead of an ultra-accessible subset of the commercial side of the internet. Quote:
Kinda blew it at the end there. (Probably just trying to throw a bone to the haters.) |
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07-16-2012, 01:27 PM | #5 | ||||
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TIME has another "Amazon is going to take over the world" story:
http://business.time.com/2012/07/16/...ver-the-world/ It does have a few interesting nuggets, including this one: Quote:
The bold-italic bit? The other segment that caught my eye explains *why* Amazon's services are worth their cut of the revenue: Quote:
Viewed that way, Amazon looks a lot more like EBAY (with its Paypal subsidiary) and a lot less like a Walmart, Sears, or Best Buy. Seen as an infrastructure play, Amazon expanding into local repositories for next day or even same day delivery looks inevitable. (And even more likely to take them into UPS territory--via partnership, merger, or... competition?) Hmm... How are FedEx finances? Or... We know USPS has all those under-used facilities... maybe Amazon will take over USPS? Last edited by fjtorres; 07-16-2012 at 01:33 PM. |
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07-16-2012, 01:49 PM | #6 |
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Very good article. Thanx for sharing
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07-16-2012, 01:51 PM | #7 |
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07-16-2012, 07:18 PM | #8 | |
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Quote:
Right now those folks can't agree on whether the sun came out this morning. And that is before the Alliance for MainStreet Fairness astroturfers have had their say. ($$$$) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allianc...s#Organization It'll be a cold day in... the amazon basin... when that happens. |
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07-17-2012, 11:37 PM | #9 | |
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Quote:
Until the chain stores came, we didn't have a proper bookstore; we had a book-and-card shop with a very small book selection. The person behind the counter could tell you where to find birthday cards, but she didn't know anything about science fiction, which was what I was looking for. (They only had maybe 50 sf titles). When the chain stores opened (Waldenbooks and B.Dalton), things changed dramatically. They may not have known my personal tastes, but they carried *so many more books.* Quantity - as Stalin said - has a quality all its own. And the students and other people working at these mall bookstores knew a lot more about sf than the book-and-cards ladies did. So I'm a little jaded on the whole mom-and-pop idea. I don't really need someone who knows my tastes. I'm not sure that I know my tastes; they seem to change. What I want is information and selection; I can usually go from there. (I also don't find Amazon's suggestions to be that helpful; I suspect that their algorithms are off because they know that I liked a particular book, but don't understand what it was. I think that there is a lot of room for improvement.) |
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07-18-2012, 12:50 AM | #10 | |
monkey on the fringe
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Quote:
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07-18-2012, 07:00 AM | #11 |
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I'd actually prefer non-improvement. I find it comforting when computers don't quite get me.
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07-18-2012, 11:35 AM | #12 |
Spork Connoisseur
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Couple of good reads here. Thanks.
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07-18-2012, 06:05 PM | #13 |
K. C. Lee
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