Allen Weiner

As the wheels turns in every aspect of the e-book market, Amazon, the Seattle retailer who would like nothing better than to dominate all aspects of the emerging value chain (distribution, management, and devices),  is “girding its loins” for the possible entry of Apple into its space. If, as rampant speculation [...]

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During Yahoo’s second quarter earnings call, CEO Carol Bartz talked of her company’s many current and planned projects aimed at providing operational stability, the tools to hit the ground running when the economy recovers and offering the market a sense of “wow” related to Yahoo’s products and services. Bartz pointed to [...]

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The cognoscente’s meme of the day is whether or not harsh words on Twitter cut off Sasha Baron Cohen’s “Bruno’s” U.S. box office hopes at the knees. Time’s noted film critic Richard Corliss believes that a decline in opening day revenue to the following day was due in part to bad cyberword of mouth. That [...]

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It’s been a month now since the launch of Bing, Microsoft’s most recent entry into the consumer search arena. In our report, “Bing Takes Wing Against All Odds,” we pointed out that the Redmond software giant was entering the game rather late and was taking on the difficult challenge of moving up from third place [...]

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For those of us deeply entrenched in following the e-book world, we watch and marvel as Amazon’s purchase of Lexcycle, developer of Stanza, a the most popular iPhone e-book application, further distances the Seattle company from the competition. Question: is everyone else in this space either asleep at the switch or too busy worrying about [...]

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The long-anticipated deal in which Hulu adds ABC’s prime time shows to its lineup, as well as its daytime soaps and programming from ABC Family, Disney Channel and SOAPnet is official. Besides licensing content, Disney is taking an equity stake in Hulu, with Disney getting three seats on the Hulu board that will be filled [...]

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In this podcast, I talk briefly about a concept that I have been pondering (and talking about) regarding the notion of a mobile content creation device to facilitate content and audience immediacy. What should it be? What sort of functionality should it have? How much would it cost? Who are the buyers for such a [...]

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As Yahoo enters the command and control part of its evolution, new CEO Carol Bartz sums up on the company’s blog the reason for a new, more centralized corporate structure: “Mention Yahoo! practically anywhere in the world, and people yodel. But in the past few years, we haven’t been as clear in showing the world [...]

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In the research that led to our report, “Publishers Explore Digital Editions, Devices as New Channel Opportunities,” Mike McGuire and I debated/handicapped the merits of various e-reader devices and their chances of becoming the go-to gadgets for reading books, magazines and newspapers. Our conclusions were, well…inconclusive. With recent events, those inconclusive conclusions are even more…well… [...]

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As reported on its home page, Harper Collins announced its will offering a video edition of Jeff Jarvis’ new book, “What Would Google Do?” The video book amounts to 20 minutes of the author standing in front of a white screen talking about his book. The video retails for the low, low price of $9.99 [...]

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