Tag: Wall Street Journal.

Apple TV Sales Increase, Tim Cook @ WSJ’s All Things D Conference & Amazon Picks Up Five Pilots & New Dimension Media Titles Available In Prime Library

Linda Reimer

Apple TV Sales Increase: The Verge printed a short article noting one of the things Apple CEO Tim Cook said the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D tech conference yesterday – they noted that according to Cook sales of the Apple TV streaming media player have grown dramatically surpassing 13 million with almost half of that tally of units being sold this year. I thought that was an interesting point to note because it illustrates the shift that is occurring in how people watch movies and television shows – we are moving away from the era where video fans predominantly watched videos offered by cable TV companies like Time Warner Cable & Comcast and moving into an era where more and more video content is offered to video fans on demand via the Internet.

Here’s a link to the short Verge piece titled simply “Apple TV Sales 13 Million to Date;”

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/28/4374480/apple-tv-sales-13-million-to-date

Tim Cook @ WSJ’s All Things D Conference: And speaking of Apple CEO Tim Cook; Cook gave an interview yesterday to WSJ All Things D tech staff Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Cook was as usual mum on details about specific Apple product that are currently in the works but has some interesting things to say about wearable technology, Apple TV (as already mentioned) and Google Glass glasses among other things.

Here’s a link to a text version the Cook All Things D interview:

http://allthingsd.com/20130528/liveblog-apple-ceo-tim-cook-kicks-off-d11/

And a link to a video version of the same interview:

http://allthingsd.com/20130529/apples-tim-cook-the-full-d11-interview-video/

Amazon Picks Up Five Pilots: Amazon has picked up five of its recently created pilots to turn into fully fledge TV series thus dipping its whole foot in the creation-of-TV-shows business! The TV series that it has picked up were voted on by viewers and include “Alpha House” with John Goodman, “Betas” which is a sitcom set in Silicon Valley and three kid’s series “Annebots,” “Tumbleaf” and “Creative Galaxy.

Amazon passed on putting the other nine pilots it created into production as television series based again upon viewer feedback.

Here’s a link to an All Things D article on the subject titled “Amazon’s Pilot Season Ends With Five Pickups:”

http://allthingsd.com/20130529/amazons-pilot-season-ends-with-five-pickups/

New Dimension Media Titles Available In Prime Library: If you like documentaries and you have an Amazon Prime membership you may want to search the Amazon catalog for “New Dimension Media” titles. I noticed this morning that that are many, many short documentary pieces produced by the educational media company in the Amazon Instant Video catalog. Most of the documentaries offer an introduction to a subject and run only thirty minutes so they’re idea of students looking for an introduction to a subject and worth a watch for those of us that simply like documentaries. These short documentaries seem to focus on science, history and bios and include the following titles:

Digestion & Nutrition

Ancient Israel & Jerusalem

The Solar System: Outer Gas Planets

Harrison, Tyler, Polk, & Taylor

Rome: Village To Republic

True Whispers: The Story Of The Navajo Code Talkers

Here’s a link to the Amazon Video page where you can type in “Dimension Media” and see the titles for yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/movies-tv-dvd-bluray/b/ref=topnav_storetab_mov?ie=UTF8&node=2625373011

And if you’d like to check it out here’s a link to the website of the educational production company itself:

http://www.ndmquestar.com/

Have a great day!

Linda R.

P.S. And don’t forget if you just bought, or received as a gift a new tablet, e-reader, PC or other tech item and would like to know more about how to use it — you can make an appointment at the library for a free On-On-One tech session and a member of our tech team will show you the digital ropes! Call the Reference Desk at: 607-936-3713 to make an appointment! Did I mention it is a free service the library offers? It is!

References

Fried, Ina. (2013, May 28). Apple Has More Game-Changing Tech in the Works, Says CEO Tim Cook. All Things D. Online.

Fried, Ina. (2013, May 28). Apple’s Tim Cook: The Full D11 Interview (Video). All Things D. Online. Accessed May 29, 2013.

Kafka. Peter. (2013, May 29). Amazon’s Pilot Season Ends With Five Pickups. All Things D. Online.

Welch, Chris. (2013, May 28). Apple TV sales surpass 13 million, ‘about half’ sold this year. The Verge. Online. Accessed May 29, 2013. 

New York Times To Offer Cheaper Digital Subscriptions & Link To Wall Mossberg’s Annual Spring Laptop Buyers Guide

Linda Reimer

New York Times To Offer Cheaper Digital Subscriptions: The New York Times released information to the press today that indicates they will be offering cheaper niche subscriptions to New York Times digital content sometime later this year. The Times spokesman wouldn’t offer specific information regarding what New York Times material would be available at a cheaper price but it is believed that the pricing will be for articles within categories; for example all cooking articles or all tech articles might be offered for a cheaper price as compared to price the Times charges for access to all content on their site.

The price the New York Times currently charges for a digital subscription actually varies depending upon the device you use to access the content. Access to the Times website and content via a smartphone app costs $15 per month, access to the Times site and a content via a tablet app costs $20 per month and full digital access to Times content for all your devices currently costs $35 per month. So one would assume that the niche access would cost less than $15 per month but we’ll just have to wait and see on that point because the Times isn’t saying just yet!

And I for one would be interested in being able to pay a cheaper price to access digital New York Times content. The library has a subscription to the New York Times so you can read it for free at the library (you can even read it for free on an iPad at the library!).

However, when I am at home I frequently like to read articles found on the New York Times website and although right now there is a work-around for their 10-free-articles-and-you-must-pay-for–a-subscription-to-read-more rule – you simply clear your browser history by pressing the Ctrl, Shift and Delete keys (on a PC) and then you’ll be able to read ten more articles for free – I don’t imagine that work-around will work forever though… And although I don’t mind paying to read well written articles I personally find a $15 monthly fee to be an expensive one when the Times has until relatively recently allowed anyone to read all the articles on their site for free. And honestly I don’t have time to read all the articles on the Times site everyday– if I could pay say $7.00 a month to read all the tech stories, all the headlines stories and perhaps 20 other stories from any category I chose each month – that I wouldn’t mind paying $7 for that access but for $15 a month – I’ll read the Times at the library.

The paidContent article I came across on this subject is titled “NYT says new products to be profitable by late 2014” and can be accessed via the following link:
http://paidcontent.org/2013/04/25/nyt-says-new-products-to-be-profitable-by-late-2014/

And here’s the link to the Subscription page on the New York Times website that shows the various digital tiers you can subscribe to:

http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/account/purchases/subscriptions-and-purchases.html#purchasesq01

Link To Wall Mossberg’s Annual Spring Laptop Buyers Guide: Walt Mossberg, the Personal Technology Columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has put forth his annual Spring Laptop Buying Guide video. And basically what he says about buying a laptop right now is two-fold:

  1. If you can wait to buy a laptop – wait until fall to do so because right now prices are rather high for touch screen Windows 8 computers
  2.  If you can’t wait to buy a laptop – buy a Windows 8 touchscreen computer or, if you prefer a non-touch screen computer consider buying a Mac instead of a non-touchscreen Windows 8 PC (the non-touchscreen Windows 8 PCs are cheaper than the touchscreen versions over all)

And I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment about Windows 8 – Windows 8 is most user friendly if you buy a touchscreen computer to use – it is much more cumbersome if you try to use it on a non-touchscreen computer. And Macs are very good machines so if you want no part whatsoever of a touchscreen computer you might consider buying a Mac.

Here’s the link to the article titled “Mossberg’s Annual Spring Laptop Buyer’s Guide:”

http://live.wsj.com/video/mossberg-annual-spring-laptop-buyer-guide/D6BE6C47-FE64-4272-9549-BF39217F7BC1.html

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Mossberg, Walt. (2013, May 1). Mossberg’s Annual Spring Laptop Buyer’s Guide. Wall Street Journal. Online.

Roberts, Jeff John. (2013, May 25). NYT says new products to be profitable by late 2014. paidContent. Online.