Category Archives: Books

Amazon Content Rich Advertising with Streaming Video & Audio

The Amazon advertising program should include a plugin for personal web sites and blogs that instead of getting a static image with a link to a movie, or song (with Album cover), the plug in, provided by Amazon, should have an option to have a static image, as per today, or:

  • Any movies, where trailers are available, especially for Amazon Instant Movies, have two formats for an associate plug-in.  The first plugin for low bandwidth sites, the user still continues to see a flattened image of the DVD case or CD album, but in addition, have two links, play trailer, or play music. 
  • The second, more content rich plugin, would have either one, or a rotating collection of playing trailers and/or music, with album image.  The trailer can play the standard or an abridge trailer, as defined in the settings. The music would play at the normal sample length, or an curtailed length, based on the settings.  Finally, there are two image overlays, one in the bottom left, the other in the right, but the user may click, the left has a More Info, the right says Buy @ Amazon.

The user would select a collection of songs as well as movie trailers, or the user may make multiple collections, that have movies, songs, or both.

This same Amazon Associates plugin for web sites or blogs, may be applied to other products, such as Audible.com and audio books with samples.  In the Amazon Associates Product Advertising API WSDL, I did not notice references to ‘sample’ or ‘Trailer’, so I do not think a third party can build this plugin or widget as of yet.

Press regulation in the U.K.: Royal Charter Applies to Internet

BBC News – Press regulation: How royal charter applies to internet.

In this article, I find it extremely interesting, and I see both sides of the coin.  On one side, we have a regulated press, where approved concepts and ideas are allowed to be expressed, even by the common blogger.  In the U.K. you need a license for a T.V., however, some of the rationale for this may be specifically for news or stories that are accurate comes back from a long history at the Associated Press, where news needed to be confirmed by three sources.  In addition, the history of the Assiociated Press is an interesting one.  If there was a ship from England entering the bay, people would take row boats out, and compete to get the news from the ship, so it was agreed to send one ship and share the news.

In essence, regulated news, maybe for political reasons, maybe to not ensure a panic to maintain a society in case of an emergency, after all, a thought, a single idea, as they say on the Internet can be believed to be true if articulated well, and go ‘virual’ as they say, and pass for believable, and something that was not true, may cause societal breakdown, to the extreme.  One case of this is the broadcast in the United States that caused a mild panic, because people thought it was a plausable story, it was 1938, and it was the War of the Worlds, appropriately coined a few years before world war.

An argument can be made to the contrary, which is one person may report a factual story, but yet, without government sanction, the story would have legal precident to be blocked, recended, and the person may be fined or jailed, depending on the story.  Is this good, is this a removal of such liberties as the United States has the freedom of speech, which this country was founded upon?  Is this now an archaic principle?  Only time will tell.

E-Commerce Platform Maturity: Reviews, and MP3 Cloud Players

I have read a few complaints on line regarding book reviews, specifically, it seems most  E-Commerce platforms have given the user carte blanche on entering the rating products, i.e. they have the ability to rate any product, without proof the’ve read / used the product.  This approach does encourage the user to have a user friendly experience to add ratings, as users are mostly discouraged to populate any surveys, i.e. time is money, and people just rather do something else, unless they are very motivated.  Some of those motivation reasons: they are passionate about a book, for example, with great distain, or passionate about the material, typically passionate readers.  Historically, in the early days of E-Commerce platforms, ease of entry of ratings, and encouragement was the mantra to make sure users are able to guide fellow users.  We now have matured E-Commerce platforms that don’t necessarily need, en-mass ratings, i.e. sales tool to show potential buyers that people buy from their site.  An issue has arisen especially with amateur writers that have spawned up everywhere, or even with mature publishers, and social media, just like we see in negative political campaigns, mud slinging, so justified, some not, or at least may be interpretative, it gives less credibility to the politician, or book, in this case, and not necessarily for the correct reasons.

It sounds like mature E-Commerce platforms should probably start taking the high road, and give confidence and credibility to the reviews, and not just by relying on standard deviation, and outliers on the bell curve being negated.  This is also amplified with products that have fewer reviewers, i.e. budding authors trying to get their break.

One suggestion, for a book, for example, an author may provide a list of 100 questions or so regarding parts of the content of the book, and before being allowed to rate the book, the reviewer must answer three random multiple choice questions correctly.  Of course, they may have at least two or three sets of questions to press on with the review.  The author, especially the startup authors, would probably be encouraged to write the questions, and attempt to deflect invalid mud slinging, i.e. person never read the book.

The other topic I wanted to touch upon was Amazon’s MP3 Cloud Player.  I have come to rely on Amazon’s player, and my kids use it on their iPod, iPads, computers, etc.  Two small issues I have at least on the Mac Safari browser, I think it also is lacking on my Windows computer, a) I cannot sort any of the columns within any of the filters.  I am unable to select Artist, for example, in a playlist, and resort by the artist name, as one example.  I may be doing something wrong, but it seems like a basic feature.  b) my own personal ratings, like we see on iTunes do not appear as a column that I can sort upon, as well as other meta data available, seems skimpy, both to enter, as well as to sort upon.  As this product seems to have matured to the point to justify it’s existence seems only logical these two features must be on their road map.  I won’t rip the Cloud Player apart, because all fairness, Apple iTunes had a leap on these folks.  It would be cool to actually see lyrics automatically imported with purchased songs.  I haven’t checked iTunes in awhile.  At some point, Apple made a free form text field where you could copy in the lyrics, but you would need to paste in the lyrics yourself.  Yes, there are third party apps that display it, and they actually follow along on the lyrics, which is super cool, but nothing in the cloud player itself.  Oh, well, my two bits for the day.  Note:  this takes into account the premium player only offers additional storage, as implied by their sales and marketing, not features