October 24, 2005

Bezos interview in Guardian:

Taking a look at Amazon’s stock chart shows that the price shot from the equivalent of $1.50 in 1997 to more than $110 during the last boom, then sunk as low as $6 after September 11, 2001. The shares today are trading at around $45.

“But if you look instead at metrics that are representative of the underlying business results,” says Bezos, “you see these smooth curves that go up and to the right.”

He points to “metrics” such as the number of customers that Amazon is attracting - from 14 million during the peak of the dotcom boom, to 20 million when the stock hit its low, and now more than 50 million active customers.

He also points out: “We have always tried to be very clear with people that we are an appropriate company only for long-term-oriented investors.”

Internet Outsider: Sorry, Google is Not a Technology Company:

What does Google sell? Advertising. For better or worse, this makes it a media company (an online media company, but a media company). From a financial forecasting perspective, this also means that the pool of Google’s potential revenue, at least in the company’s current incarnation, is global advertising and direct marketing spending, not global technology spending. This is important, in part, because global advertising and marketing spending is not growing as quickly as global technology spending.

Viewed as a media company, Google is a far more distinctive presence in its market than as a technology company. Google as media company with unique technology = buy?

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Tech Fun at 10/24/2005 09:53:07 AM

Top-notch fantasy.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/24/2005 09:43:00 AM

ALA | American Library Association to hold 2006 Annual Conference in New Orleans: “(CHICAGO) The following statement has been issued by American Library Association (ALA) President Michael Gorman:

‘I am pleased to announce that we are planning to hold our 2006 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.”

Right on!

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Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/24/2005 08:57:02 AM

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | How much for your notes?:

Our writers are excited. They have thrown down their pencils, head-butted their rubbers and kicked their thesauri out of windows. The calamity is this: writers’ archives are fleeing Blighty to sit in the libraries of universities across the Atlantic.

While the University of the Shetland Islands can afford just �1.12 for a Zadie Smith council tax bill - “You’re in band F” - or 40p for a photocopy of Evelyn Waugh’s 1936 tax return - “Is claret de

Good news for both authors and book-lovers that their notes are becoming increasingly valuable.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/24/2005 08:39:27 AM

About the Blog at The Da Vinci Code Movie Blog:

his independent site is not affiliated with Columbia Pictures. It’s a blog that does one thing: Collects all the news about The Da Vinci Code movie as it breaks. Please email tips to tips@the-da-vinci-code-movie.com.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to The Solomon Key and Beyond: Dan Brown News at 10/24/2005 08:35:29 AM

1590 Broadcaster Online - Lifestyle/Arts:

The novelist is always the adaptation’s most skeptical audience, but I’ve got to tell you, I think this movie will blow people away,” Brown told a soldout crowd of 800 at the event, an audience that included his wife and parents. “The script has emerged as powerful and thought-provoking, and the cast is world-class. I truly believe moviegoers will come out of the theater feeling like they’ve just watched the novel.”

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Posted by wfzimmerman to The Solomon Key and Beyond: Dan Brown News at 10/24/2005 08:27:13 AM

The Gospel According to Anne - Newsweek Entertainment - MSNBC.com:

In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. “I promised,” she says, “that from now on I would write only for the Lord.

Until this, Anne Rice has been filed under Books I Won’t Be Reading. I’m curious, although I have a queasy feeling …

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Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/24/2005 08:20:07 AM

Bezos interview in Guardian:

aking a look at Amazon’s stock chart shows that the price shot from the equivalent of $1.50 in 1997 to more than $110 during the last boom, then sunk as low as $6 after September 11, 2001. The shares today are trading at around $45.

“But if you look instead at metrics that are representative of the underlying business results,” says Bezos, “you see these smooth curves that go up and to the right.”

He points to “metrics” such as the number of customers that Amazon is attracting - from 14 million during the peak of the dotcom boom, to 20 million when the stock hit its low, and now more than 50 million active customers.

He also points out: “We have always tried to be very clear with people that we are an appropriate company only for long-term-oriented investors.”

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Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/24/2005 06:59:46 AM