As part of the analysis of The Jungle’s first $10 billion quarter, the latest earnings statement notes that “Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com.”

I’m not going to tell anybody to hurl their stock certificates in Random House into the creek, screaming epithets to the sky. Book publishing is by no means going away. But as always, times they are a-changin’. Books are one of the last mediums to democratize. Frankly, it’s about freakin’ time.

TV and movies have been independent for pretty much forever, though certainly websites like YouTube and Vimeo have helped distribute folks’ video creations to the masses, and the plummeting price of increasingly powerful cameras and editing suites help to make those endeavors ever easier. Music has been set free thanks to the Internet as well, and I’m not talking Napster. Any aspiring band can set up a website and make their music available for the cost of a single CD, which anybody can burn at their desk, now. Game developers can distribute their work on the web as well. Journalists can build a blog, develop a media empire of sorts if they like. Just ask Nick Denton or Julian Assange about that one.

So why not books? Why NOT books? Up until devices like the Kindle, Nook or iPad came around, the only method for publishing a book were the traditional routes or via vanity presses that generally cost more to produce than they made for the vast majority of authors.

But with digital books, the several barriers to entry go away. Concerns and scare resources like shelf space and manufacturing costs are gone, and ultimately the biggest concern is quality. The best books can rise to the top, regardless of who they come from. And the idea of the rare book can fall by the wayside as well, since anybody can get a copy of a desired book whenever they want.

Now this doesn’t mean that printed books have to go away. There’ll always be room for printed works, either for wildly popular works and seminal classics, or important books that need to be spread as far and as wide as they can. And in areas that don’t have an infrastructure that can support electronic books, they’ll be even more important.

But e-books have the power to revolutionize, and more importantly, democratize their given medium. Finally books can catch up to their other counterparts in media, and now, nearly 600 years after Gutenberg’s debut of his own printing press is book authorship really open to everybody. Any book can be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere. It’s a change we’d do well to embrace.

The first thing to consider whenever talking about any law regarding the regulation of games is the medium’s First Amendment protection. This was first called into question back in 2002 when a U.S. District Court judge, Stephen Limbaugh, ruled that they did not in fact, deserve such protections. This was overturned in 2003 when the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, citing other unusual works and their First Amendment protections, and the simple fact that video games are a “novel medium” does not negate the right to First Amendment protection.

So fast forward seven years to today. Since that time, several states have tried to pass legislation to restrict the sale of violent games to children, and spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to do so, and each time these states have failed to make it stick. Why is that?

Well, it goes back to the very first thing to consider – games as protected speech under the first amendment. We may not like gory, schlocky, ham-fisted violence carnivals, but we as citizens have every right to produce them. To stop this would require the United States to create an exception in the First Amendment for games, which to date has only been done for porn, which one would be hard-pressed to equate games to porn. After all, if there are no Federal regulations on films, or books, why should games get set up for a metaphorical headshot?

Of course, no law as presented tries to restrict this: That’s true enough, but here is the sticker. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, we are guaranteed that no state may make a law that deprives citizens of our general rights, which we can interpret to include our entrepreneurial freedoms and freedom of enterprise. So logically, no state may enact a law that stops a store from selling unregulated material to whomever they want.

Further, to this point every law proposed suggests that government regulate these sales based on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s E through AO rating system. This goes against the Federal code of ethics, in which the government may not endorse a private enterprise. So that’s right out.

With the legal status of the laws or potential laws established, let’s look at the practical side of things.

One wonders how states or districts would enforce such laws, with many police departments stretched thin already, especially here in Detroit. Things aren’t as cushy as they look on Detroit 1-8-7. It’d be a waste of time and resources.

And further, the gaming industry does everything it can to make families aware of the content in the games they buy for their children. The ESRB has websites, pamphlets, point-of-sale documentation, shelf liners, all of which they distribute and are placed in stores to help parents make good decisions for their kids. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time or energy to take a look at what one’s son or daughter is asking after and determine whether it does or if it doesn’t have a place in the home. Of course, if one DID take more time on the subject, it could be a great jumping off point for some rather potent discussions between parent and child, and provide some great opportunities for parents to get involved and create some learning opportunities for kids. Everybody wins in that situation.

The fact of the matter is that legislating against games, whether they be violent or otherwise, is not possible from a legal standpoint. The furor that arises from this issue is the same that showed up when rock music first appeared, or TV and movies actually depicted couples kissing and Rhett Butler told Scarlett that he didn’t give a damn. It’s the same threat to our nation’s “family values” that was posed by Gangster Rap, and that “dilemma” was solved with a sticker.

Certainly there are games out there that kids should – perhaps even must – not be allowed to play. However, the answer to the problem does not lay within creating new laws, and new restrictions on our Constitutionally-declared freedoms. The answer lies in education, and a little bit of dedication and interest on the part of our families. Retailers as well, could do better in observing the ratings suggestions and in many cases – following their own corporate policies by keeping sales within those guidelines. Our legislators however, and our judges, need to keep out of it. They’ve got bigger and better fish to fry.

So the good folks at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have really been on a roll over the last few years, throwing down some serious cash on technology bets which, it seems, have come up big. Two years ago, they kicked off the $100 million iFund, focused solely on businesses developing products for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. This March, they doubled that amount. Now today, Kleiner Perkins got together with Amazon, Facebook and Zynga to announce the new sFund, $250 million focused on social applications.

It’s interesting to note that Google and Yahoo! were not present for this gathering, whatsoever. According to KPCB partner John Doerr, Facebook is the social platform to focus on. “Facebook is it,” he said.

This isn’t saying that Kleiner Perkins is a kingmaker or anything, I’m not saying we’ll be seeing Facebook eclipse Google anytime soon. But it’s been pretty clear over the latter portion of the decade that KPCB seems to know how to pick winners. Other companies that WERE present and are partners in the fund included Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company, LLC.

The fund has already invested in one company, Cafébots, who announced a $5 million round this morning – it’s not precisely clear what they do, but they claim to be working on a product involved in “Friend Relationship Management.” That sounds pretty social. They expect to have a product ready by the end of the year.

The thing about “social” is that is kind of a nebulous term. Obviously, it means involving other people, but just about anything can involve other people.

Could it be that this is just another tech bubble, like the dot-com bubble of years past? Kleiner Perks put down $250 million saying it isn’t. What do you think? Are you out to grab a piece of that for yourself?

Disclosure: I write this article as an Apple iPhone developer, but not as somebody privileged enough to receive advance information on the impending tablet device which we believe will be officially announced this month according to a Wall Street Journal report. I don’t have any other information aside from what most other tech bloggers and prognosticators have, it’s all speculation on my part.

I was pretty on the fence about Apple’s iPhone, when it was first announced. Truth be told I was pretty on the fence about smartphones in general. I had an iPod, I had a PDA, I had a cell phone. I liked using all of those devices, but thought that convergence was going to be a problem – why would I listen to music all day and then prevent myself from making phone calls? It just didn’t jive for me. Even when I finally did wind up with a smartphone for necessity’s sake – an HTC Wizard (Cingular 8125 for the locals) – it just wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. It was slow, the web browser never worked, it was bulky, it had a terrible OS and its software support was abysmal.

During the time I used this phone, I had come to use an Apple laptop at the urging of one of my programmers and good friend. Boot Camp had come out and he insisted that Apple machines would be just as viable of a development platform as any otherwise-built pure Windows machine and then some. I’d discovered that OS X and its associated programs (iCal, Mail.app, et al) fit my workflow so much more perfectly that I made that switch, and bought a Mac Pro as soon as it was feasible.

And then the iPhone came out – as a recent Apple convert I was interested, but it was a smartphone. I’d had a terrible experience with a smartphone – my 8125 refused to synchronize well with my Macs, even with a copy of The Missing Sync helping it out. But by this point I could see the promise.

I bought the iPhone almost on a whim. I hadn’t planned on buying one, but I was in the local Apple store on launch day and there was one left. With a “what the hell” and a swipe of the credit card, I was on my way.

I’ve never looked back.

I can honestly say, unflinchingly, that the iPhone absolutely changed my digital life. Everything works the way it should, it’s accessible, it’s extensible, and quite frankly it’s everything I could want in a phone.

Recently on a trip to Asia, I bought a netbook for some easy portable computing. I had a deal on a Dell, I didn’t spend a lot and I didn’t want to, I do believe I got what I paid for. Netbooks however, were another bit of tech that I was on the fence on. Less so than smartphones, I ‘got’ the netbook’s utility a lot sooner, but never took the plunge until I really needed one, as opposed to my usual stance as an early adopter.

I hesitated, though, because I’d heard the rumor of Apple planning on releasing a netbook of its own – except not quite a netbook, but a tablet! Like an iPhone, only bigger! My mind whirled with the potential of such a device.

And it was my iPhone that sold me on the product: What the iPhone does for me in mobile connectivity and computing, I believe the iSlate will do on a larger scale.

It won’t be as powerful as a MacBook, but it won’t have to be. Certainly we will expect ports of existing iPhone apps – just shifting them over to the new device will cause the 480×320 pixel applications to look pretty darn ugly.

But much like how applications made the iPhone successful, the same model will apply here. When we find out precisely what hardware it’s working with later this month, we’ll know precisely how it’ll affect our lives, but after the iPhone, I’m convinced that it’ll be for the better.

You’ll find me in line on launch day.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, “the new 35% rate applies to what is known as “carried interest,” which is income that only materializes if fund managers wisely invest the fund’s capital and only after other investors in the fund have benefited. Venture and private equity fund managers already pay normal income taxes on their regular salary derived from management fees. The carried interest, no sure thing, represents a capital gain on a successful investment and has therefore been taxed that way.”

Even better, the whole thing was couched as an addition to a completely unrelated research & development bill. House Resolution 4213, otherwise known as the Tax Extenders Act, is billed as legislation that “renews a crucial research and development tax credit, as well as tax credits for middle class families and teachers.”

And lest the whole thing be dismissed as scaremongering by News Corp., the Coalition on Human Needs highlights the bill in their report from that week, and the press release from the House of Representatives is right here.

This is the kind of thing that has to stop. In the press release, it states that “the bill, which is deficit neutral, is paid for by closing tax loopholes that allow investment fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than other Americans, and by empowering the Treasury Department with new tools to crack down on tax evasion.”

Let me address our elected officials for a moment: Friend Representatives, reclassifying a category of income is not closing a loophole. It is not even a ‘crackdown’ on tax evasion. This is rejiggering the books, pure and simple, and to hide it in this manner is shameful, and wholly unacceptable. I do not expect all our elected officials to be economists, or even well versed in economics or investment-related things. However, when attempting to pass a resolution of this nature, some education is paramount to the creation of quality legislature. So if I may – a capital gain is a profit that comes from the investment into a capital asset, such as stocks, bonds or real estate. It is the very result of the axiom “buy low, sell high.”

Unless one wishes to claim that a fund manager is employed by the very companies they invest in, then this is not regular income and should not be classified as such. It’s basic stuff, really, but the need for clarification is apparent – so I’m just doing my part, my civic duty.

Thankfully the bill is only through the House, and it’d be great if this thing is nipped in the bud. But if the President is serious about stimulating small-business growth, especially in science and technology, then he needs to make that capital gains elimination permanent, instead of a mere one-year tease, and take steps to ensure that this kind of tax increase does not, and will not happen under his watch.

After all, the goal is to grow the economy, not frustrate it.

Update, May 2010: I wrote the President about it, and I got a response back. This is what it said.

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing to me.  I appreciate hearing
from you and value your input.

Each day, I am moved by the messages I receive
from people across the country.  Far too many Americans
are struggling–falling behind on mortgage payments,
coping with illness, or losing a job without warning.  My
Administration is working to address the serious challenges
our Nation faces.  I am committed to taking immediate
steps that generate job creation and economic recovery, and
I am determined to make investments that lay a new
foundation for real and lasting progress.

As I move forward on key initiatives, I am making
my Administration the most open and transparent in
history.  Part of delivering on that promise is hearing from
people like you.  I take seriously your opinions and respect
your point of view.  Please know that your concerns will be
on my mind in the days ahead.

I hope you continue to explore
www.WhiteHouse.gov, which is regularly updated and
more interactive than ever before.  Thank you again for
writing.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

I’m not entirely sure he read my letter.

One of the big talking points for Apple has been that this upgrade only costs $29 – well below the standard price of an operating system upgrade. (Unless you’re using Linux or something.) So the question remains – is it worth your $29?

One of the first things I noticed about Snow Leopard is how long it took to install. I put it on my older Mac Pro on top of a clean 10.5 – or, Leopard – installation, having backed everything up to a Time Machine drive, as well as a spare drive for safety and redundancy. It took about 45 minutes just to apply Snow Leopard to my machine from start to finish. For me, that wasn’t a big deal, I had other things to do, but I was astonished at how long this took, when a full install of the previous OS didn’t even take that long. This is not common with other experiences out there, generally people have found Snow Leopard to install more quickly than Leopard – sensibly so, since it is a smaller package, but for some reason it took me longer.

Apple made a big deal out of Snow Leopard being able to save you space by being smaller than its predecessors. There’s two ways it does this – both are noteworthy, but it’s not as straightforward as you’d think.

Less conspicuously, Snow Leopard has changed the way it reports disk space. In 10.6, disk space is reported to match manufacturers’ reports, so that if you buy a 100gb hard drive, then it will show up as a 100gb hard drive. It does this by calculating the disk size in base 10 instead of base 2, which all previous Apple OSes have used, as well as every version of Windows to date. It’s debatable as to whether this is beneficial, since software uses base 2 computation, and developers will be left without consistent file size and usage statistics across operating systems, but it does match up more with consumer expectation. Personally, I don’t know if more clearly reporting where that extra .3gb went is more useful, but maybe people will like that. It remains to be seen.

Then what most people have heard about by now, is that Snow Leopard removes “Rosetta,” which allows older programs not explicitly written for Intel machines. It’s part of Apple’s push to get everybody to upgrade, of course, but what this also results in is a bunch of broken programs. The good folks over at Wikidot have compiled a fairly exhaustive list of OS X programs, and their compatibilities with Snow Leopard. It’s absolutely worth checking, to see if your favorite programs work in Snow Leopard before taking the plunge. This also doesn’t include plugins for Safari, or other items that live in your System Preferences pane, so do a little extra research first.

Other things that break, I’ve found, include some custom Apache installs and server scripts – I haven’t delved too deep into why this is yet, and it may take somebody more learned on the subject than myself to really get it, but as with your software, if there’s anything essential, proceed with caution.

As far as speed goes, tech blog Gizmodo did a number of benchmark tests, which note a number of interesting results. Ultimately, they found that Snow Leopard is faster than Leopard – though mostly in first-party applications. This is pretty consistent with my own experience, while Mail, iCal, iTunes and other Apple apps absolutely ran snappier, neither Photoshop CS4 Extended, Flash CS4 nor even Firefox really seemed to experience any kind of benefit from the new OS.

So how does Snow Leopard get faster? In a nutshell, Apple has improved its multicore processor support, and rewritten most of the applications it ships with to run in 64-bit mode to take advantage of this. Since most third-party apps AREN’T written in 64-bit, that generally explains the discrepancy.

While Apple has been pretty satisfied with their UI as of Leopard, they did make a few tweaks in Snow Leopard that some folks might find useful.

For one, icons in Finder are now scalable, via a little slider in the window.

Icons now scale up to 512×512, which is not really that useful for most people, but it does mean that you can preview movie files in the icon now. I personally prefer the quick look functionality introduced in 10.5, but everybody has their own preferences of course.

The dock, and Exposé have been improved as well, enabling users to select which instance of a window they’d like open, which is nice. Stacks, which came about in the previous OS has been improved as well, enabling users to do more than just drag items in and out of the stack, or open a file. Scrolling has now been enabled in grid view, as well as adding a “smart list” view which helps to see more items in the stack at one time.

Some of the included apps have seen upgrades beyond simply running in 64-bit, as well. Mail, Address Book and iCal now work with Microsoft Exchange, which has been a big deal for a number of enterprise workers who have wanted to hook their Macs into their work network.

Quicktime 10 has seen a particularly notable upgrade, enabling video editing as well as screen (video) capture – great for amateur filmmakers and screencasters alike.

There’re more added features as well, which Gizmodo has done a great job of visually rounding up. Take a look for more of the gooey details on that front.

Of course, the ultimate question is whether Snow Leopard is worth it. The big thing – which a number of other critics agree – is that Snow Leopard is essentially a service pack for 10.5. There aren’t enough new features to really go ahead and call it a new operating system. However, the improvements it DOES make are certainly worthwhile, if you could use them. Exchange support, built-in screencasting utilities and other accoutrements are pretty nice to have – they’re nothing that you didn’t know you needed, but they’re great for folks who need them.

Is it worth shelling out $29 for a service pack? Well in my case, I was going to buy a screencasting package in the coming weeks so getting an update to my operating system along with it sure isn’t a bad way to go. It was good for me, but your mileage may vary.

Images courtesy of Apple Co. and Gizmodo. Thanks guys!

Even now as the console approaches its second birthday, supplies for the units are scare and hard to come by. Nintendo of America CEO and President Reggie Fils-Aime has stated that during this holiday season, Wii consoles will likely still be somewhat rare. In other words, if you see one grab one, because you’ll be out of luck later. Though this leads to speculation that Nintendo is creating a demand for the system by creating an artificial scarcity – after all, how is it that two years after launch a multinational, profitable corporation cannot get their manufacturing lines up to speed – the fact remains that the company has struck digital gold with their latest device.

But technology continues to progress, our thoughts – and Nintendo’s R&D directives – will inevitably turn to what’s next. In an interview with the UK’s Channel 4, Shigeru Miyamoto – Senior Managing Director of Nintendo Co. Ltd., the Japanese parent company – made clear that Nintendo’s mission is to “improve and to take advantage of cheap technology to create reasonable and affordable entertainment.” Indeed, the Wii is a step in this direction, with Nintendo execs refusing to even attempt to compete with market contemporaries Sony and Microsoft on any level of technological supremacy. The Wii is a console that is made purposefully weaker, but on the other hand is comparatively inexpensive to manufacture. Indeed, Nintendo is the only company in the industry that actually makes money on their game systems, instead of treating them as a loss leader.

So what does this mean for the future of the Wii, and indeed, the game industry? As one of its biggest players attempts to create a new dialogue focusing on unique input methodology and design specifications, we face a potential deeper splitting of the market, deeper than we have seen in this generation as Nintendo expands on the concepts they’ve introduced.

For one thing, cheaper hardware can mean more frequent iterations. According to former 1UP.com editorial director John Davison, it’s possible we’ll see a new Wii by 2011. R&D spending at Nintendo has tripled since the Wii’s launch in 2006, and it is wholly plausible that the next-generation is already around the corner. It stands to reason that a number of the improvements that are appearing on the Wii will be present in the next version, namely its 1:1 motion tracking technology MotionPlus, and with any luck Nintendo will learn from its mistakes and provide improved storage and Internet solutions as well. Technology that is cheap now, will only be cheaper in the next go-round, and at that point we should also expect to see things like HD output and RF connectivity, instead of the Bluetooth that is in place now. Indeed, recent announcements from Nintendo have noted that their production costs have been cut by half since the Wii’s launch.

Past this point, as developers get used to the idea of developing with the unique input system that the Wii and its inevitable progeny will feature, different modes and methods of gameplay will certainly result.

What remains to be seen is whether the company will learn from its mistakes in this recent generation of hardware when it comes to its online presence, which is, in a word, terrible. Though it has been demonstrated that it is not the system with the best online capability is the one that achieves market dominance, it will certainly be a welcome addition to a machine that will surely be looked at closely, as the next round of technology dawns.

Though Barkley has some interesting ideas on the American presidency – notably that the American president, despite being the most powerful person in the free world, does not have an impact on a person’s day to day life. I call this an interesting idea, because lately it seems that by and large, a lot of folks have this weird belief that President Bush has been climbing into their window at night and sucking their blood or something. Though I do believe Barkley takes the notion a little too far, as he continues to say “realistically, whoever the president is doesn’t have a huge effect on anybody’s life, to be honest with you.”

Noting the intended policy decisions by both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain in this current election, I think this could not be further from the truth. In a world where a President Obama would levy increased taxes on the population making anywhere from $42k-$300k per year, where fees would be inflicted on companies that don’t provide health care despite paying additional taxes to provide for the nationalized program, or where a President McCain would tax health care benefits for the first time in history, there are very real effects that the average citizen would experience, acutely and directly.

Barkley does make a number of good points with regard to race and education. Being but a stone’s throw outside the Detroit Public School system, his points are more keenly felt. In the wake of a shooting death at one of the local high school, Barkley’s point that “(unless) we as black people stop killing each other, not getting our education, we have to do better. Racism does exist. It is always going to exist, but until we as a people stop killing each other and stop not getting our education we are never going to be successful” hits harder than ever. He isn’t just speaking for his home state of Alabama. A similar cancer plagues Michigan, it plagues Louisiana, it plagues even our major cities like Los Angeles and New York.

Though he’s no economist – Barkley makes no bones about how the Republican party “ran (this) economy into the ground.” It’s not for a complete lack of awareness, I think Mr. Barkley simply buys into the Democratic party line that the Republican president caused all our woes, when in fact congressional and house Republicans have been pushing for years to enact the regulation which would have forestalled if not prevented the economic crisis we now face. Of course, regulation is not necessarily a Republican precept, so it’s understandable that one might not quickly come to such a conclusion, but the evidence is out there.

Regardless, overall I could get behind a Barkley administration. His heart seems to be in the right place and with the right state advisors behind him, I think he could make some good things happen regardless of ideology. One doesn’t need to be a Liberal or a Conservative to want better schools for our children and better economic opportunities for our citizens. It’s not a bipartisan issue to want to improve our states and bring up the level of our general welfare.

It’s not even a political thing. It’s an American thing.