About libraries and books, from Inside Higher Ed:
Somehow, books signify a more intentional and contemplative relationship with knowledge. It’s partly because nobody shoves a message about a pizza party or a note about a funny video between the pages as you are reading. And unless you are a skilled reader of endnotes and unusually impatient, it’s less tempting than when online to interrupt your reading of one text to go looking for another in mid-sentence. Books just seem calmer, slower: slower to write, slower to read, more sustained in their narrative style than what fits onto a computer screen. It could well be because they are not really in the business of advertising, as Google and Facebook are, and they don’t fret about dominating the attention economy. They are more patient about discovery and don’t count readers by the eyeball.
Or, how about ignoring ethics to make a buck? Amazon is letting you sell your soul for $5.00. I'm sure they will get a lot of takers :( In fairness, this offer doesn't apply to books, but I'm sure it will soon...
Amazon’s Price Check app, which is available for iPhone and Android, allows shoppers to scan a bar code, take a picture of an item or conduct a text search to find the lowest prices. Amazon is also asking consumers to submit the prices of items with the app, so Amazon knows if it is still offering the best prices.
“We scour online and in-store advertisements from other retailers, every day, year-round,” said Sam Hall, director of Amazon Mobile. “Now, we are enabling customers to use the Price Check app to share in-store prices while they search for the best deals.”
While Amazon’s applications and its $5 incentive can be viewed as friendly to consumers, physical retailers will see it only one way — as an attack.
<idle musing>
That's right, tell people to walk into a retail store, do their research for them, walk out without buying anything, then purchase it on Amazon, get 5% off. Sounds good, right? Unless you are the local business, which, by the way, employs local people, pays local sales tax and income taxes that pave the streets you drive. To them it is nothing less than an attack...doesn't this seem unethical?!
</idle musing>
2 comments:
Walmart is selling Amazon gift cards to go with Kindles now, but, of course, they spend on anything on Amazon.
Hmm, maybe we should think about this again....
Chuck Grantham
Chuck,
That's a different matter. You are purchasing something there; they get a cut of the gift card purchase price.
Now, whether or not to shop at WalMart is another issue—I don't. I don't like the way they treat their employees or their suppliers. I worked for a company that supplied to WalMart; we quit doing so because they were strong-arming us into a position where we would lose money. It took us over a year to get our last check out of them...
James
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