Month: December 2010

Hopefully, tonight… it will be the Roku Review!

What does it all mean? What about my Kindle? Yikes! I guess we will see soon!

Google Editions e-book venture to launch by year’s end

“Computerworld – After months of delays, Google will launch its e-book retail business, now being called Google Editions, in the U.S. before the end of the year, a spokesman for the company confirmed today.

The spokesman gave no reason for the delay and declined to offer other details. A Google executive had said in May that the company planned to sell digital books last summer.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the venture had cleared some technical and legal hurdles and that Google Editions would launch in the U.S. by year’s end and internationally in the first quarter of 2011. A federal court recently gave preliminary approval to a settlement agreement between Google and authors and publishers, which apparently has provided further impetus for the Google e-book concept.

Under the Google system, independent booksellers are expected to be able to sell e-books through Google Editions — and they have received contracts to make that happen, according to the WSJ report. Independent booksellers would benefit the most from Google’s concept.”

Grrrrr! This is the kind of thing that is SO frustrating! An ISP charges you ONCE for service, they shouldn’t be able to come back and say, “Oh by the way, we NOW want to charge you because you are using too much bandwidth!”

FCC getting involved in Level 3, Comcast Internet traffic spat

“Comcast is being criticized after it has decided to charge Level 3 Communications a surcharge for ‘excessive’ bandwidth usage. According to the cable provider, Level 3 is sending about five times as much data to Comcast as is going the other way, it said in a statement.

Under protest that it violates open Internet principles Level 3 is paying the surcharge. It claims Comcast essentially gave the company an ultimatum to accept its terms, which Level 3 had no choice but agree to or face possible disruptions. Comcast’s move has also spurred the FCC to ask for more information on the deal.

Level 3’s core business previously entailed the carriage of Internet traffic across the US, but it has increasingly turned to a distribution model in order to expand its business. Netflix’s popular streaming video service being one of its chief customers in this space. Obviously this change will also boost the amount of bandwidth that Level 3 would require.

‘Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network, enabling it to unilaterally decide how much to charge for content,’ Level 3 chief legal officer Thomas Stortz said in a statement. ‘This action … is a clear abuse of the dominant control that Comcast exerts in broadband access markets.'”