My First Vlog!

Finally!  My vlog for your viewing pleasure (with all its imperfections).  What a hoot to publish on YouTube.  :->

Hans Rosling's Presentation

Wow - I'm so impressed with Hans Rosling's presentation.  First I thought it was great because it was on a huge screen with the print being dark and the background being light so it was easy on the eyes.  Then it was unique because he used dots of different sizes and colors to represent countries instead of the usual bar graphs.  But didn't he ever get his point across when the dots started moving according to world changes while at the same time, the years in the background changed!  It was an eye opener as a presentation as was the substance of his talk.  It made the viewer totally get the message he was trying to bring across.  Then he changed to his discussion of world wealth and begin to drop layers to represent which countries held the wealth.  It was so incredibly easy to follow and at no time did he lose your interest.  This method of presenting data - through moving representations of each statistic - is the way to go!  It makes otherwise possibly dull information actually come alive for the viewer.  Very cool!  It did cross my mind though that the work behind it would be pretty intense.  Imagine having to add in each bit of data for each country and for each year and attach it to a visual.  Probably lots more time consuming than a bar graph. 

Kindle's Text to Speech Capability

The issue of whether the Kindle's text to speech capability is violating copyright laws is a little tricky (but just a little).  I tend to agree that the Author's Guild has something to worry about.  Even though the Dvice review of the Kindle said that the voice for the reader sounded like an obnoxious robot, we know that technology continues to improve and get better all the time.  It won't be long before digital voices will be indistinguishable from the real thing.  There is no doubt that the Kindle is the way of the future for anyone that doesn't want to lug a book around, and the fact that you can listen to a book while driving or doing anything else is a super idea.  The text to speech feature is what I think will make the Kindle idea take off (at least I'm more interested!).  So I can understand their argument.  However, it's also true that it's not a real voice, and therefore, isn't quite the same thing as an audio book.

But no matter what the courts decide about whether it's the same thing or not, if Amazon purchased the copy for sale and use by the Kindle, then haven't they already paid what's due?  How many times does Amazon have to pay for something before it really becomes theirs to use as they wish?  It's like giving a gift then expecting to tell the receiver what they can and can't do with it.  The rule there is that once the gift is given, the recipient can do with it as they please.  Why is this rule of thumb not true for something you purchase, knowing it's purpose is resale from the get-go?  Why should authors get paid for Amazon's good idea that is separate and distinct from the creation of the book?  In any case, it doesn't appear that Amazon is worried about losing sales for their Audible division by the creation of the text to speech feature.  It seems to me that if there really was a concern about audio books being replaced by Kindle, then Amazon might not have incorporated this feature in the Kindle2.  They don't seem to be worried about it.

Maybe the answer is for authors to charge more for their books knowing that once purchased by places like Amazon, the book might be read on a Kindle.  Isn't this what the Author's Guild is looking for?  But the higher prices get, the less affordable the books become, then everyone loses (especially us, the buyers).  In the end, the most reasonable answer is for the Author's Guild to let it go.