mitch ratcliffe

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Headline 2010: e-Reader device failure

The market knows best, right? Markets are bloody paths to progress. At this writing there are approximately 52 e-reader devices coming to market in the next 12 months. Fifty-two different devices coming to market (Here's what I wrote about Steve Jobs' approach to reader devices when there were just 45...

Tags: E-reader, Sales, Hardware, Markets, E-books, Personal Technology, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-11-02

Updating Kindles-sold estimates: 1.072 million

Based on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' comments on the third quarter results for the company, Kindle sales are accelerating. Bezos is quoted: “Kindle has become the #1 bestselling item by both unit sales and dollars â€" not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon.com. It’s...

Tags: Jeff Bezos, Electronics, Amazon.com Inc., Sales Strategy, Sales Force Management, Sales, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-10-23

Kindle books come to the PC -- a Nook counterpunch

Platform expansion is the logical counter to new competition at the device level. Amazon, facing the introduction of BN.com's Nook and other e-readers this week, has announced it will support reading of Kindle books on Windows 7, Vista and XP Service Pack 2 PCs in November. The...

Tags: PC, Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc., Platform Expansion, Microsoft Windows 7, Desktops, Microsoft Windows, Hardware, Operating Systems, Software, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-10-22

Nook Clarified: Really solid progress for e-readers

Yesterday, I posted a long analysis of what I thought was right and strangely wrong about the Barnes & Noble Nook. Matt Miller today got a clarification about my main concern, which was that Barnes & Noble seemed to have said, according to several published reports, that Wi-Fi would work...

Tags: E-reader, Barnes & Noble Inc., Wireless LANs, Wireless And Mobility, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-10-21

B&N's Nook e-reader: Weirdly unrevolutionary

In addition to this posting, please visit this clarifications posting to get the whole picture. It would be nice to say, as Matt Miller has, that the e-book and e-reader market was revolutionized today. It simply got more interesting. A careful reading of the $259 Nook's...

Tags: E-reader, Device, E-book, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Inc., Wireless, B&N, Nook, Cover-flow, Wireless LANs, Wi-Fi, Wireless And Mobility, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-10-20

AT&T's "problem" customers get the blame

Fortune Magazine swallows the AT&T pitch hook, line and sinker in a story titled "Bandwidth hogs â€" iPhones and other smartphones." Writer Jon Fortt dishes up a steaming dish of bull shoveled straight out of AT&T PR: Now the wireless providers hawking those Internet-enabled mobile devices...

Tags: AT&T Corp., 3G, Cellular Phones, Wireless And Mobility, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-09-02

Don't take my Moleskine notebook and Rotring pen

What's the technology I'd least like to lose, the thing you'd have to pry from my cold dead fingers? Well, you will have to pry a Moleskine notebook and pen from my hands when I am dead. The Moleskine, a venerable notebook made by Moda &...

Tags: Moleskine, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-07-24

Why is Facebook whoring me out?

I've been pondering this note, sent to me by a friend on Facebook last week: Facebook needs to recode their ads... It's one thing when the ad for singles waiting for me is accompanied by a picture of my lovely wife... Its another when the pic is...

Tags: Facebook, Advertisement, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-07-14

Amazon on the record: Device limits set by publishers

I queried Russ Grandinetti, vice president, Books, at Amazon about the lack of clarity about how many devices can access a Kindle book or how many times a buyer can expect to download a title from the Kindle Store. He referred me to Drew Herdener, director of communication at Amazon,...

Tags: Device, Amazon.com Inc., Title, Digital Rights Management (DRM), Digital Media, Security, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-06-24

The future of the book, expanding

I've posted a couple excerpts from the book I am working on, about the future of books and reading. It's a different topic than Rational Rants' mandate, and with so much news and opinion every day to comment on, deserving of its own place and community. So, without further adieu,...

Tags: E-reader, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-06-15

Bad Idea Dept.: AT&T's Ed Whitacre to run General Motors

Ed Whitacre, who built SBC, one of the babies Bell, back into "The New AT&T" has been tapped by the Obama Administration's auto task force to be chairman of the "reinvented General Motors." Seriously. Think about that. AT&T is the template for...

Tags: Board, AT&T Corp., General Motors Corp., Whitacre, Whiteacre, Corporate Governance, Telecom & Utilities, Strategy, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Management, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-06-09

Google begins its rumble with Amazon

Amazon has some new competition for the hearts and minds of book publishers and readers, which is a very good thing. But the news that Google is poised to enter the downloadable bookselling market is of mixed value to readers and publishers, because we're headed into a format/delivery model war...

Tags: Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., E-books, Personal Technology, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-06-02

Books: Entering the Age of Glosses

Here's the key to thinking about the future of writing, something straight out of the manuscript era: the humble gloss or "scholia," for those who prefer the Latin. They are the notes, in margins, footnotes at the bottom of a page (the standard starting around 1700) and later in the...

Tags: Movie, Audible Inc., Cryptography, Books, Copy, Kindle, Master File, Page Number, E-books, Digital Security, Security, Personal Technology, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-04-27

It's all downhill for Twitter, politics from here

This week, "tax protesters" gathered across America to dump bagged tea into symbolic bodies of non-potable water and Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a Twitter follower showdown. I admire anyone who takes to the streets for their ideas and recognize the power of media, even when it is lowered to...

Tags: Oprah Winfrey, Twitter, Taxes, Free Trade, Personal Finance, Financial Planning, Finance, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-04-17

Guttenberg's wake

Doc Searls points to what strikes me as a shallow exercise in self-congratulation by Vanity Fair, How the Web was Won, an "oral history" of the Web told by a select few, whom VF considers winners or power brokers. As Doc says, its "far from Compleat History," but the real...

Tags: Web, Printing, Blogger, Guttenberg, Compleat History, Document Management, Printers, Blogging, Channel Management, Enterprise Software, Software, Finance, Managerial Accounting, Hardware, Peripherals, Internet, Marketing, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-04-13

Readers share some advice for Starbucks

After I wrote about Starbucks' internal announcement that it is launching a Digital Ventures business, I received a good deal of mail from readers about the company. Amazingly, even though Starbucks is a high-profile company, only a couple business publications picked up on the story of a new division being...

Tags: Customer, Starbucks Corp., Store, Gold Card, Food & Beverage, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Wireless LANs, Manufacturing, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Wireless And Mobility, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-04-05

Starbucks launching Digital Ventures business

Starbucks is turning its eye to the digital world for part of its recovery strategy, according to an email Howard Schultz sent to partners on Friday. Shultz wrote that Stephen Gillett, who has been the company's CIO, will take on a new line of business, Digital Ventures, to "expand Starbucks...

Tags: Starbucks Corp., Business Structures, Finance, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-03-15

Let’s talk about the economics of great journalism

Responding to various recent postings about journalism, including Ethan Zuckerman, Seth Godin, Dan Gillmor, Amy Gahran and Lisa Williams. I think the economics of journalism and ethics are deeply related and we tend to talk about them separately, emphasizing the dying channels for distribution at the expense of understanding the...

Tags: Journalism, Coverage, Reporter, News, ON24, Team Management, Benefits, Advertising & Promotion, Management, Human Resources, Marketing, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-01-19

Jobs' health, Google cuts, PC sales: Be careful of seeing too much in coincidence

I have nothing to add to the discussion of Steve Jobs. Will come back? Won't he come back? I only wish Steve and his family the best. We, as investors and participants in the tech industry, must not read more into this than there is. The simple...

Tags: Job, Google Inc., PC, Health Care, Online-ad Sales Growth, Sales Strategy, Sales Force Management, Sales, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-01-14

Twitter authority frenzy led to Twitter phishing meltdown

Folks like to know where they stand, and in recent weeks people on Twitter have been, well, all a-twitter about the idea of Twitter Authority. They want to know who is most influentialâ€"a repeat of the phenomenon that swept the blogosphere a while back. It's a human thing, but it...

Tags: Twitter, Twitterverse, Phishing, Cyberthreats, Spam, Viruses And Worms, Security, Spam And Phishing, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-01-05