Source:Valleywag
It may well be the second-worst job in the Valley after screening YouTube videos for copyrighted content. But we suspect that one of you twisted sorts reading this might actually enjoy this gig. Valleywag is looking for a video producer. Part of the job is sitting on your couch watching TV clips; part of it is getting out and about, digital camera in hand. If you’re interested, apply on Valleywag Jobs.
Source:Valleywag
Radiohead’s experiment in distributing In Rainbows, allowing consumers to download the album for free, highlights a growing problem in the music business: Kids these days, thanks to BitTorrent, don’t think they should pay for music. As more independent acts follow Radiohead’s lead, opting to make their cash touring, the record industry will struggle to find a new business model. Surprisingly, suing its customers actually seems to be working out . [Telegraph]
Source:Valleywag
MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte has insisted that his One Laptop Per Child program is a charity that will only sell its wares to governments of developing nations. So who convinced him it was okay to sell the device to consumers in North America and Europe at twice the price? Why, Negroponte pal Jeff Bezos, who knows a little bit about selling and marketing. Not only did the Amazon.com founder convince the philanthropist to turn his charity into a business, he convinced him that the best way to market the cute laptops was to turn them into a status symbol for the wealthy elite — a symbol on the order of Lance Armstrong’s iconic yellow Livestrong bracelets, which is where Bezos really got the idea.
What we are going to do is the following, and Jeff Bezos, bless his heart, he’s got wonderful creativity for these sorts of jingles. He said you know Nick there’s this expression, “Buy one and get two.” Yeah, they see that. He said you’ve got to… have a jingle that says, “Buy two and get one.” Bingo: 100 percent margin. So, we will release it in the United States and Europe on a buy two and get one basis where you pay whatever it is $300 for it, and what you’re doing is you’re buying one or more for a kid in Africa and when you walk around with this it will [be] like a yellow bracelet, it will be an expression, it will actually say that. [Sic.]
While this plan may actually finance the production of some devices for children in Africa, it also concedes that the One Laptop project cannot survive as a pure charity. And that the vaunted laptop its engineers have worked so hard to design will not, at first, serve to educate children. Instead, it will salve the fragile egos of wealthy geeks. That, too, is a subject on which Bezos might advise Negroponte.
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on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Jeff Bezos, nicholas negroponte, Olpc.
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