Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: amazon

Daily Reading List — October 15th

October 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Infrastructure – Not just countries and business organizations either. This stuff can be applied at the family level. And should be.

Las Vegas has one of the biggest populations of ‘sugar daddies’ – Third? THIRD?!?!?!

Step it up Vegas! This is one you should be able to win.

Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices – Um…how about just adding chromecast support to an Amazon Prive Video app.

Before I cancel my Prime account. Ok…seriously, I’m not even close to that, and hardly ever use Prime Video.

But still.

Last – The first person who ran 26.2 miles died. He died. – I’ve always had a lot of admiration for anyone who takes longer than me to run a marathon. They have to deal with at least one second more of suffering than I have to endure.

Still, not itching to be last either.

Are Your Barbecued Chicken Kebabs Missing a Key Ingredient? – Well…duh.

10 Stubborn Food Myths That Just Won’t Die – Did you know it takes more calories to digest a serving of Cap’n Crunch than there are calories in a serving of Cap’n Crunch?

Or wait…maybe that’s Fruity Pebbles.

School District Bans Tag for Reasons of ‘Emotional Safety’ – It’s getting to the point that my biggest concern as a parent is how to teach my kids to learn empathy and have mercy on their peers once they are all adults.

Their world is going to be filled with peaches.

Body found in suitcase near Boulder Highway – Wait…what? “Body found in suitcase”?

WHAT?!?!?!

Daily Reading List — February 3rd

February 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Pre-Season Weaknesses: Become A Faster Runner – "The Fit, But Slow Runner" caught my attention right out of the gates. 10k training may be in full effect. After rest.

Amazon looks at boosting Prime fee – Not happy about this, but I feel like our family makes money on Prime as it is, so can't complain too loudly.

Trainer Road Will Make You Stronger – Trainerraod: Best. Value. In. Cycling

Effective as hell too.

Finally, A Digital DJ That Knows Its Stuff – This is my biggest complaint with Google Music. I don't understand how a company so good at meta-data processing can offer up a product so bad at DJing radio stations. Pandora was way better at this in 2008 than Google is right now.

Reading between the lines of the latest Facebook usage data – “We’ve asked about Google+ in the past and were worried when we heard respondents being interviewed that they weren’t sure if we were asking about the social networking platform or more broadly about use of any Google product. That was a while ago and we will likely be including Google+ the next time we ask people about social networking platforms.”

Well…yeah. I'm pretty sure that's exactly where Google is going with Plus. It's not as much of a destination as it is a layer that connects all Google products and services. Sure, there's a site there you can use as a "red Facebook", but the scope is way past status updates, likes, and shares.

I think Google is perfectly content to sit back and play possum with this for now.

What Should a 4 Year Old Know? – Yes. Yes. Yes.

7 Tools That Let You Control Your Own Data – OpenPDS is very interesting especially. I don't mind the idea of sharing data so much if I have more control over the precision of that data.

Google Launches AdSense Direct, A New Tool For Direct Ad Sales – I'm open for bizniss.

Daily Reading List — August 21st

August 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Mall Becoming Cheaper Than Amazon – And the consumer wins again!

The problem with the mall is that I have to go to the mall. Triple B (Bed, Bath, Beyond) is like a SkyMall you can walk through.

John R. Mathers 2 Mile Cross River Swim – This is tentatively scheduled for September 15 this year, and I can't wait. I really like the John Mathers story Rob gives us in this post. That there was a real man.

The Internet: We’re Doing It Wrong – By wrong, I thought they meant we just spend too much time on it. Turns out, that's not what they meant at all.

Preventing Swamp Crotch – Blue Gold Bond powder is definitely the most manly choice. Baby's butt paste is highly recommended though.

Amazon’s Table Announcement…Let’s Get To The Important Part

September 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Pricing.

The E-Ink Kindle is now only $79. Yeah…$79. That’s with “special offers.” For me, upgrading to the $100 version seems worth it because you can play mp3s and it has a touch screen.

And what about their new Android tablet?

The Kindle Fire 7″ tablet is $200. That’s right…a high functioning Android tablet for $200. That’s less than 50% of what the iPad costs. I was excited to get the Acer Iconia for $300 with a coupon earlier this summer. It seems like Amazon is going to basically give these things away knowing they can make it up on the back end by selling content through the stores that are tightly integrated with the device.

If I didn’t already have a tablet, I’d jump all over one of these. They are going to be great little media consumption devices. All the other things you can do with them are just going to be bonuses. I think Amazon is making a great bet here by leaving off the stuff most people don’t really care about for a tablet. I’ve never even considered using the camera on my tablet for instance.

iPad killer? No.

iPad competitor? I don’t think so.

I think Amazon just put this device out at a crazy low price with a strong brand behind it that will expand the market for tablet devices, and I think they are going to own the lion’s share of the new market growth.

Big Bird and Amazon

June 22, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Amazon has released even more movies and TV shows for Prime subscribers today, including the last 7 seasons of Sesame Street. Cool!

We ditched cable about a year and a half ago and are exclusively streaming stuff from Netflix, Amazon, and Pandora through our Roku box. No regrets, and we haven’t looked back. There’s a ton of good children’s programming available that way, and the adults in the house only watch TV on purpose these days–no more turning it on and flipping through channels to find something to watch.

$11 a month for Netflix plus $79 a year for Amazon Prime gives us way more TV than we could ever watch.

Getting Ready To Bite On An E-Reader?

May 24, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been looking at (wanting) a Kindle for a while. But, I’m cheap. And I know the prices are going to keep dropping. Besides, it’s not like I haven’t been reading just because I don’t have a Kindle yet. I just keep having to go to the library, reserve books online, pay late fees, etc. Several things have happened recently that have me (almost) ready to buy, but the sum of these things makes me think I should wait it out just a little bit longer.

There’s speculation that Amazon is going to have two Android powered tablets out by Christmas for under $500. That means they’ll be motivated to empty out some of their lower end Kindles between now and then. They’ve already started to do so with the $114 6″ Kindle with ads for a screen saver.

This seems like the best choice for me…if I was going to buy yesterday. I’m really wanting the e-ink display instead of the LCD the tablets will have, and it doesn’t matter to me if it’s a touch screen or not. I just want something easy to look at with long batter life. Also, I don’t care if it’s 3G or not. I’m home most of the time, and I’m sure I can load it up with plenty of stuff to keep me entertained in the event I’m away for a few days, so Wi-Fi connection is fine with me. The screen size is actually perfect. I currently use the Kindle app on my phone, and my two biggest complaints with it are that the screen size is small and the display. A bigger screen would be nicer to look at, but the 6″ screen is about right for lugging around the house and holding without being cumbersome.

Barnes & Noble announced its own 6″ Nook today, priced exactly the same as the 6″ ad-free Kindle. It’s not a Nook color; it’s black and white e-ink. But unlike the Kindle, it’s running Android 2.1 and has a full touch screen. It also features a two month batter life. Sounds like a nice little device. It’ s not the one I want to buy though…I want to see what kind of pressure this puts on Amazon to lower their price even further, especially considering what they have coming later this year.

For the kicker, there was a rumor a while back that Amazon was considering giving a free Kindle to all of its Prime customers. That’s what I hope actually happens. I’m all about free. Now would seem like the perfect time. I could imagine one scenario where they do this sooner rather than later as a “reward” for existing Prime customers. Another possibility would be to not only give current Prime customers a free Kindle, but also send one out to new customers around October/November. This would be a great way to get rid of existing inventory while putting the device in the hands of people who don’t yet have one to entice them to request/purchase the newer devices as gifts. Wouldn’t hurt to entice people to try out Prime right around Christmas and have their gifts shipped (and purchased) through Amazon.

I think the end game here is control of the market itself. Readers are eventually going to be available for next to nothing either way.

Self Directed Effort, Google Music vs. iTunes, and…Bowling!

May 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Is bowling becoming too easy? – Yep. I just read an entire six page article on bowling. I didn’t know about 90% of the information here. Now I know.

Self directed effort is the best kind

Are you addicted to a taskmaster, to someone else’s to do list, to short term external rewards that sell your long-term plans short? If no one is watching, are you helpless, just a web surfing, time wasting couch potato? Who owns the extra work you do now that you’re being directed?

Apple Has Keys To The Cloud Music Kingdom – Agreed. The beauty of Lala was that it worked without uploading. Long term though, the labels are still doomed. They will only matter for older tracks; you know…the good stuff. Oh…wait…

How good is Google’s Instant Mix? – Just the fact that it has a “WTF Score” makes this worth skimming.

Libertarianism and Selfishness – It’s important to note that libertarianism != objectivism.

Reading of Excerpts at Tucson School Board Meeting – Please refrain from reading the profanity in the public school text books in school board meetings. KThanksBye.

Stuff You Should See– February 11th through February 22nd

February 22, 2010 / / 0 Comments

NASA Releases First-Ever iPhone Game, Complete With Wiseass Remarks – And to think, it was just the other day I was telling a NASA employee that the private market could do a lot of the same stuff they do and it would be more cost efficient. She threw “we invented velcro” at me. If only she’d known they were releasing this iPhone app, she could have shut my point down completely. At least they are giving it away, so your tax dollars are being returned to you…if you happen to have an iPhone.

Marijuana use by seniors goes up as boomers age – Disclaimer: I don’t set things in fire and put them in my mouth. Period. But there are a lot of “get-off-my-lawn” type older people who really do need to chill out a little. And that wasn’t even brought up in this article. So how, exactly, would it hurt me if they got a little help with achieving that?

CPAC Exhaustion – Oops! So what if she said she met him but was mistaken. It’s not that big a deal. I’ll give some linkages just to say that. 🙂

10 fake Simpsons words that belong in the dictionary – Doh!

George Washington: Simplicity seeker – The Father of our desire for simplicity.

The finest Facebook groups ever conceived by man – Heh…Facebook may be good for something after all.

Amazon Wants To Give A Free Kindle To All Amazon Prime Subscribers – Please be true. Thank you.

9 Studies That the Anti-Vaccination Movement Says Show Links or Bury the Truth – And a few notes on them. I don’t understand the Latin parts, but I think the idea here is that these things keep a lot of people from getting really bad diseases, err, alive.

Delicious Link Dump– November 1st through November 4th

November 4, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Twitter Shenanigans in Brevard County – I suspect someone may be overestimating their relevancy. I just haven't been here long enough to determine who that is in this case.

Welcome to Marikafka County, Arizona – Where the only way you can protect your attorney/client privilege is to waive your attorney/client privilege. This video of a court official stealing documents from a defense attorney's desk is unbelievable. Even more insane is what followed.

Amazon Turns On The Twitter Pump To Fuel Referral Fees – This is a good thing! People who are using their Twitter feeds just to sell will be ignored anyway. But if you're using it to genuinely recommend/refer people to cool products, they should recognize that. Nothing wrong with getting a little juice for helping them out.

Gore’s Dual Role in Spotlight – Back in college they called him "Double Down"–he was known for replacing most of the cards in the deck with aces.

Fire Your Clients! – Maybe good advice for people outside of real estate as well.

Dismantling America: Part II – Thomas Sowell's got smarts real good. If you don't subscribe to his RSS feed, well…you don't got them kinda smarts.

iPhone vs. I Phone – Is it a coincidence I went with an Android phone? Probably, but still…

Google Wave User’s Guide – Alternate title: Sudoku For Optimists

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