Round up #169: “unlimited” Scribd, Bezos’ quest
The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
Amazon gets into health
This is something I need to report, but I also have to say something first. In my “day job”, I am in the healthcare industry (as a trainer and performance improvement expert). That means that it isn’t appropriate for me to evaluate this move in social media. In other words, I’ll give you the facts (or link to them), but I’m not going to give you my own opinion on it.
Amazon (and its Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Bezos), Berkshire Hathaway (and CEO Warren Buffett), and JP Morgan Chase (and CEO Jeff Dimon) have announced that they are teaming up on a healthcare initiative.
Google news search
Amazon has a great financial report
It feels like Amazon has just decided to make a profit…like it was always an option, but they were just waiting for the right moment. 🙂 Some wonderful performers are like that. This is obscure, but I felt that way about Harlemm Lee when the singer was on a reality competition version of Fame. Anything Harlemm chose to do in terms of performance, it seemed Harlemm could do. Didn’t help build much of a career, though. 😉
Anthony Hopkins is another one of those people. In
Amazon’s Alexa Superbowl ad
which was voted the #1 ad, by the way, Anthony Hopkins is just super dynamic and riveting. I think they must have simply said, “Um…can you just, I don’t know, ‘Anthony Hopkins’ this for us?” 😉
The investors now seem convinced, and people have been bullish on Amazon since the report.
Seems reasonable to me.
It’s also interesting: if Amazon even hints they are getting into any industry, the competitors’ stocks seem to drop now. Happened today with FedEx and UPS with the announcement that Amazon is getting into the delivery business…and eventually, that looks like it will be even for things not sold through Amazon:
USA Today story by Mike Snider
My flu
Wow, that was a bad flu! I’m still not 100% (after more than two weeks), but I started getting my old energy level back a couple of days ago. Just thought you might want to know…
A tale of two apps
You know, it’s weird. Apps are super high tech, and I watch them on our
Fire TV family (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
However, they can be very unreliable. One of the apps I watch is CNNGO (I watch a number of new sources, but CNN will give me 24 hour news…that was good when I was sick, as I would drift in and out). Every time I go to watch it, though, I have to start it twice. I start it, it crashes. I start it again, and then it’s fine. Since Amazon started doing “single sign on”, it also hasn’t worked on our Fire TV Stick. It just won’t complete the sign-in process, and that’s frustrating. It is a first gen Fire TV Stick, and maybe that’s the issue.
On the other hand, Amazon recommended that I watch a TV series on the
Tubi TV app (at AmazonSmile*)
This is ad-supported TV (and movies). When I start an episode, there are usually three commercials first.
The choices, though, are interesting!
I’ve watched episodes of Fireball Xl5, a “Supermarionation” show (which I did remember, but not specific plot points). I’ve watched Ultraman Max, a re-boot series of an old Japanese show I used to watch. We binged The Dead Zone TV series, based on Stephen King’s book.
While commercials can come on in the middle of the episode, I would say the app is made by people who respect the shows. These are not public domain shows, which some apps really butcher. There are some pretty obscure videos, and the slant is geek-friendly…but the interface is pretty good. As we moved from one device to another, it did know where we were in the series. It wasn’t hard to find the watch list (which isn’t always the case).
Free app, ad-supported…worth checking out. 🙂
Scribd goes back to unlimited
Scribd
was a pioneering subser (subscription service), before Amazon had
Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
While it started out as “unlimited”, they throttled it way back for a while, especially with audiobooks. Now, they’ve gone back to unlimited e-books, audiobooks, and magazines…although there is an asterisk on it. I don’t think that’s going to affect most people…I think it’s intended for what they said caused them to cut back before, the true outliers. My guess is that you could listen to ten audiobooks in a month and be okay. It’s $8.99 a month, and there are other options.
I think it will make sense for some people. We are quite happy with Kindle Unlimited, and if you are a Prime member, you also automatically get
Prime Reading (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
If you already have those, I don’t think there’s an urgency to go to Scribd. I do have to admit, though, that we do pay for Netflix, Hulu, and Prime. 😉
Any other rose by name a
These were carefully written headlines by many people, but they ended up being…well, somewhat misleading. This is one example (not incorrect):
Geo
New York Times article by Michael Blanding: “Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays
That’s all true, but the software doesn’t indicate that those plays were plagiarized. The software, WCopyFind, can be used by professors to identify papers which copy other sources. In this case, what it did was find that many of Shakespeare’s plays used words used in A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels by George North. It’s not that there are whole sentences which are the same, but that Shakespeare probably read the book, and was influenced by that book to use similar language. That’s certainly significant, if true, but it’s not nefarious.
“Jeff Bezos’ Quest To Find America’s Stupidest Mayor”
While some people really, really want Amazon to select their city for their second HQ, and lots of cities are offering a lot, not everybody is down with the idea.
Here’s one example:
Huffington Post article by Dean Baker
No question, there is some risk in a giant company coming to town…although I’d personally love to live near an Amazon HQ!
If it’s not required, is that okay?
This one is…complicated for me.
Twin Cities Pioneer Press article by Lisa Kaczke
The Duluth school district has removed To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the required reading, because of their uses of an ethnic slur.
The story makes the point that the books will still be available in the school libraries, and can be used for optional reading.
My tendency is always that books should be available to students, and these will be. I get the concern about language in required reading. It does feel like the books aren’t being as respected, and both of these books comment on racism…they don’t indicate approval of it.
I wrote about this issue…wow, about eight years ago:
Do you have opinions on any of these stories? Feel free to share them with me and my readers by commenting on this post.
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