The Kindle Chronicles

Co-founder of Tor Labs Interview starts at 16:53 and ends at 40:00 “This story is 14 episodes, and it is about security chief Dakota Prentiss and Matt Salem, who are both ex-military, working at a secret military base that happens to have a flying saucer, an alien, and a mysterious thing called the harp. No one really knows quite what it does. They instantly fall in love with one another, but the hitch is that when you sign up for this gig there is an absolute, ironclad no-fraternization policy. ” News “Amazon Echo Silver” on Saturday Night Live (YouTube video) - May 13, 2017 “8 People Test Their Accents on Siri, Echo and Google Home | Wired” (YouTube video) - May 16, 2017 Seattle Times editorial on Amazon’s donation of space to Mary’s Place homeless shelter - May 14, 2017 “Why Silicon Valley is All Wrong about Amazon’s Echo Show” by Chris Messina at Medium - May 11, 2017 Tech Tips “Alexa Calling Has a Major Privacy Flaw” by elise oras at Medium - May 12, 2017 “Amazon says caller blocking for Alexa/Echo is coming, amid customer complaints” by Todd Bishop at GeekWire - May 13, 2017 eReaderIQ Interview with Jennifer Gunnels “Tor Books Launching ‘Tor Labs’, a New Serialized Fiction Podcast Imprint” - Tor Books press release on May 1, 2017. Mac Rogers Gideon Productions Arrival and Ocean’s Eleven Arrival (Stories of Your Life MTI) by Ted Chiang LifeAfter (iTunes) Felix & Paul Studios (VR) Steal the Stars by Nat Cassidy - available for pre-order with delivery on November 7, 2017 Content “Amazon Prime Reading Launches in the UK” by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader - May 18, 2017 “Amazon Starts Weekly Bestseller Lists” by Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly - May 18, 2017 Next Week’s Guest Mark Sullivan, author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Digital and Archival Publishing Manager for The Associated Press Interview starts at 12:51 and ends at 40:01 “I really try to get people to understand that every little basic functionality within e-books that Amazon keeps introducing--whether it’s their X-ray feature or Kindle Lending Library or whatever it might be within the e-book world or within the connection with the social-media platform Goodreads--these are all enhancements to your reading experience.” News Introducing Echo Show “Amazon’s ‘Echo Show’ gives Alexa the Touchscreen it Needed” by David Pierce at Wired - May 9, 2017 Alexa Calling and Message (Amazon help page) April Hamilton on Alexa’s new calling and messaging Jeff Bezos at the Internet Association gala (video) Tech Tips Apple AirPods Interview with Peter Costanzo The Associated Press Content Dwight D. Eisenhower: An Associated Press Biography by Relman Morin Saigon Has Fallen by Peter Arnett My Time with the Kings: A Reporter’s Recollections of Martin, Coretta and the Civil Rights Movement by Kathryn Johnson Divided America: An AP Guide to the Fracturing of a Nation edited by Jerry Schwartz Click here for a full list of books published by The Associated Press Under the Scarlet Sky: A Novel by Mark Sullivan Next Week’s Guest Jennifer Gunnels, a co-creator of Tor Labs, a new, experimental imprint of Tor Books. Tor Labs’s first project will be Steal the Stars, directed by Mac Rogers, whose podcast serial LifeAfter is an amazingly powerful audio drama. Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Interview starts at 11:17 and ends at 36:16 “I don’t think they [Amazon] really expect the fashion angle to be a big driver of these [Echo Look] devices. They needed a pretext. They needed a reason to put a camera in your home, to see how comfortable you are with that idea, to test whether or not there’s a big social outcry about putting cameras in people’s homes, whether they can start connecting what they see with what they know... Eventually that kind of visual intelligence will be a very crucial part of how Amazon builds a deeper relationship with you. But they had to start somewhere, and the closet, I think, was a pretty safe place to start.” News “Exclusive: This is Amazon’s new Echo with a built-in touchscreen” at AFTVnews - May 5, 2017. “The first photo of Amazon’s Echo with a touchscreen may have just leaked” by Antonio Villas-Boas at Business Insider - May 5, 2017 “Amazon’s touchscreen Echo leaks again, in two colors” by Ashley Carman at The Verge - May 5, 2017 “Amazon Echo with a built-in screen may be on deck next month” by Ben Fox Rubin at CNET - April 27, 2017 “How eBooks lost their shine: ‘Kindles now look clunky and unhip’” by Paula Cocozza at The Guardian - April 27, 2017 Book Riot Podcast episode 207 with Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Joines Schinsky “Get Ready for Amazon Phone Take 2” by Daniel B. Kline at The Motley Fool - May 4, 2017 “Amazon patent shows how Alexa-powered devices could turn into extension phones” by Alan Boyle at GeekWire - May 2, 2017 Small Business Phone Systems - Voice and Data Cabling patent at Free Patents Online Tech Tip “Kindle iOS app gets all-text bold: Can help iPad and iPhone owners, even those with good eyes” by David Rothman at TeleRead - May 2, 2017 Amazon Advertising Preferences page Interview with James McQuivey Echo Look Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation by James McQuivey The Principles of Neural Science, Fifth Edition by Eric Kandel, James Schwartz, Thomas Jessell et al Nuance Communications Comments “This is what fraud looks like in the age of Artificial Intelligence” by Ben Dickson at The Next Web - May 3, 2017 Next Week’s Guest Peter Costanzo, digital & archival publishing manager at The Associated Press Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

Author of The Doctor Is In: Dr. Ruth on Love, Life and Joie de Vivre Interview starts at 13:00 and ends at 41:17 “This is also my philosophy of life: I talk about a turtle. A turtle stays in one place--it’s safe. Nothing can happen. It carries its house on its back. If that turtle wants to move, it has to take a risk. It has to stick its neck out. And I like that image of the turtle.” Intro Echo Dot (2nd Generation) Ask My Buddy skill for Alexa News Amazon’s first-quarter earnings release - April 27, 2017 “Amazon just turned a profit for the eighth straight quarter” by Jason Del Rey at Recode = April 27, 2017 Introducing Echo Look This Week in Google episode 402 with Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Stacey Higginbotham (via Overcast, cued up to begin playing at discussion of Echo Look) Tech Tips “Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Says ‘Star Trek’ Inspired Alexa and Echo” by Mike Brown at Inverse - May 18, 2016 Vital Signs: Discovering and Sustaining Your Passion for Life by Gregg Levoy, who was my guest on TKC 335 A Book of American Martyrs: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates Interview with Dr. Ruth Westheimer DrRuth.com “At Home with Dr. Ruth” - 2013 New York Times video Dr. Ruth’s Twitter feed and YouTube Channel The Doctor is In: Dr. Ruth on Love, Life, and Joie de Vivre by Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer Leopold by Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer (and in paperback) Sex for Dummies Dr. Ruth’s Sex After 50: Revving Up the Romance, Passion & Excitement! “The Biggest Names in Sex” by Daniel Radosh at The Daily Beast - January 12, 2009 Helen Singer Kaplan (Wikipedia) and New York Times obituary August 19, 1995 Content Subscribe with Amazon Half-price deal on Texture Premium for Prime members Magazines included in Texture Premium subscription Next Week’s Guest James McQuivey, vice president and principal analyst at of Forrester Research. Click here for McQuivey’s post, “Alexa Will See You Now: Why Echo Has a Camera” Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World Interview starts at 10:33 and ends at 41:35 “Education increasingly wants to measure finite, little bites of stuff, and the digital technology that we are using in our education--and we do have print--is tailored to these quick wins as opposed to a deeper level of learning.” Intro My new VR setup: Samsung Galaxy Edge S8 with new Samsung Gear VR + controller News “Amazon continues to grow lead over Google as starting point for online shoppers” by Taylor Soper at GeekWire - January 13, 2017 Scott Galloway bio “How Amazon is Dismantling Retail” - Scott Galloway video - April 17, 2017 Tech Tip How I improved performance on my Amazon Fire HD 8 6th Generation tablet Interview with Naomi S. Baron Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri The Namesake: A Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax Wonder by R. J. Palacio Content Amazon Publishing’s summer-fall 2017 catalog (PDF) Next Week’s Guest Dr. Ruth Westheimer, author of The Doctor is In: Dr. Ruth on Love, Life, and Joie de Vivre Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Painter, art critic and historian Interview starts at 15:00 and ends at 41:14 “I remember your talking on one of your programs about Jeff Bezos’s insisting on a one-second [Alexa] response when his staff said, “We can get this down to three seconds,” and he said, “That’s not good enough.” That makes a huge difference. It shouldn’t--we’re so impatient, I’m so impatient. But the fact that it is more more conversational and that I don’t have to wait and think about the fact that this is a machine processing it, makes it much more real to me.” News Jeff Bezos’s 2016 Letter to Shareholders - and the 1997 letter (PDF) “Over 550 Amazon Employees Are Pressuring Leadership to Cut Advertising Ties With Breitbart” by Charlie Warzel at BuzzFeed - April 13, 2017 Tech Tips How to connect Amazon Tap to a new wifi network (Amazon help page) Ask My Buddy skill for Alexa Interview with Kesler Woodward Painting in the North, Kes’s web site Western States Arts Federation Kes Woodward on TKC 50 - July 1, 2009 iPad Mini 4 Bufo Calvin in VR on TKC 453 - April 7, 2017 Content Audible Range “About” page with email signup Next Week’s Guest Naomi S. Baron, author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Creator of I Love My Kindle and The Measured Circle Interview starts at 6:14 and ends at 43:10 “It would also be able to know what your preferences are--that’s one of the biggest things about what we’ll see eventually with Virtual Reality. So for myself as a vegetarian, I could walk down that virtual aisle and have things that were for vegetarians maybe have a green outline on them, so that I could tell what was what.”   News “Amazon exec steps in as CEO Jeff Bezos’s new ‘shadow’” by Rachel Lerman at The Seattle Times - March 14, 2017 Jeffrey Helbling on LinkedIn “Amazon will start collecting sales tax nationwide starting April 1st” by Nick Statt at The Verge - March 24, 2017 “Amazon to hire 5,000 remote customer-service reps, part of drive to add 30,000 part-timers” by Angel Gonzales at The Seattle Times - April 6, 2017 Info on Nights & Weekends part-time Customer Service Associate jobs at Amazon Amazon info page for AmazonCash “Amazon allows customers to add cash to their accounts at brick-and-mortar retailers” by Angel Gonzalez at The Seattle Times - April 3, 2017 Tech Tip “Pogue’s Basics: Make Amazon Echo tell you when it’s transmitting” by David Pogue Interview with Bufo Calvin Bufo’s I Love My Kindle blog Bufo’s The Measured Circle blog “Videos in VR: Hulu vs. Netflix” By Bufo Calvin at The Measured Circle Samsung Gear VR headset vTime Chimera Reader VR app Oculus Rift VR headset HTC Vive headset The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality & Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel “Virtually Mike & Nora on Hulu” (YouTube) Play Cardboard apps on Gear VR (Google Play store) SideloadVR for GearVR (Google Play) Content Readly app at Amazon Readly AT&T terms “Readly Launches Exclusive Program with AT&T Thanks” at Crossroads Today - March 28, 2017 Outro “Will Virtual Reality Replace Skype” - April 6, 2017. This is my Medium essay about the interview with Bufo Calvin in vTime. Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Author of “Jerry (from accounting)” Interview starts at 14:56 and ends at 45:09 "I love what Amazon is doing in terms of giving access to a platform in a kind of populist way. I think that is incredibly helpful. I think the distribution is amazing. It creates new readers. I love the $2 price point for a novella. I think that’s definitely expanding who can have access to the writing and quality writing. Historically speaking the Big Five were very focused on content and less on how the distribution was happening, and that was what they were pretty good at. Amazon’s strength was in more distribution and being ahead of the curve on the eBooks. I think Amazon now is catching up and really focusing on content across the board." News “Amazon’s Ambitions Unboxed: Stores for Furniture, Appliances and More” by Nick Wingfield at The New York Times - March 25, 2017 “Amazon, the world’s most remarkable firm, is just getting started” at The Economist - March 25, 2017 “Amazon could become our leading physical retailer before very long” by Mike Shatzkin - March 21, 2017 “Busy Week for Amazon Ends with Stock Surge to Record Close” by Angel Gonzalez at The Seattle Times - March 31, 2017 Tech Tip Is your Amazon Fire HD 8 sluggish? Try shutting off some apps. Interview with Timothy DeLizza Day One Magazine (send submissions to dayone-submissions@amazon.com) Jerry (from accounting) by Timothy DeLizza Goodreads page for Jerry (from accounting) My Medium post which mentions Jerry (from accounting) - March 8, 2016 The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens “Spiritual and Menial Housework” by Dorothy Roberts at Yale Journal of Law & Feminism - 1997 Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society by Paul Goodman Latham & Watkins Amazon Publishing’s Little a imprint for literary fiction and nonfiction Books Timothy DeLizza is currently reading: There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyonce by Morgan Parker, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones, Human Acts: A Novel by Han Kang Outro “Dr. Ruth Readies for Blast Off!” (video released by Amazon Publishing for April 1, 2017) Next Week’s Guest Bufo Calvin of the I Love My Kindle blog and I will rendezvous in Virtual Reality via an app named vTime to discuss how Amazon may get involved in VR this year. Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! You can follow my essays on travel, authors, technology, politics, and daily life at Medium. Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

Co-founder of Ask My Buddy Interview starts at 18:45 and ends at 41:25 "In terms of users or penetration, I would say that Google Home probably represents about less than 10 percent on our network. [Alexa has the rest.] That’s just time out there, the commercials. They’re just more widely known. Also, I would say the reduction in price, coming out with the Dot for 49 bucks--that was an end all. There were millions that went out. I would say that the price point developed a stronger user base for Amazon." Audio and links from South By Southwest PARCO shopping mall in Japan “Facebook debuts its first dedicated virtual reality app, Facebook 360” by Lucas Matney at Techcrunch - March 8, 2016 Ana Benitez, President, Storyrocket Khushi Baby health monitor in India Felix & Paul Studios (interview with Robin Lippman, content coordinator) “Is this the future of movies?’ by Len Edgerly at Medium - March 14, 2016 “At 40 minutes, Miyubi is the first VR movie to feel like a real film” by Adi Robertson at The Verge - January 24, 2017 Deen Wright, founder of BASE, Buy and Sell Everything Tech Tip My Medium post which explains how to set up and use Ask My Buddy on Alexa Interview with Patrick Coggins Ask My Buddy website Ask My Buddy smartphone/tablet apps for iPhone (iOS) and Android Alexa devices from Amazon: Echo, Tap, and Dot (2nd Generation) Google Home Mycroft open-source platform 4AFart Alexa skill Google’s api.ai tool Alexa web portal “Amazon plans to release new Alexa devices that can make phone calls and work as intercoms” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - March 3, 2017 Next Week’s Guest Timothy DeLizza, author of “Jerry (from accounting)” Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

David Measer of RPA Advertising and Lisa Pecot-Hebert of USC Interview starts at 25:08 and ends at 49:15 I expected the smaller cities in the U.S. to be places where eventually trends made their way there and that they’d be listening to music that I listened to 10 years ago, or wearing fashion that was old. And it wasn’t like that at all. These places, cities that I couldn’t even identify on a map before I went--Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Fargo, North Dakota; Moorehead, Minnesota; Omaha, Nebraska--were actually places that were thriving in their own way. They really had an identity of their own, and they felt like they were leading the charge. They weren’t drafting off of the big coastal cities. (David Measer) Shorter Interviews at SXSW (with times at which they start) Steph Hay, head of conversation design at Capital One. (5:32) Scott Totman, head of mobile technology, payments and innovation at Capital One (10:40) “The Urgency of Now: Launching the Biden Cancer Initiative” - Joe Biden’s talk at SXSW (13:03) Omar Siddiqui, CEO of Kiwi Inc., creators of Sequel, a bot-creation platform. He was a presenter at “Best Bot Practices” session. (17:31) Facebook Messenger Romance Now, a bot available on Kik Interview with David Measer and Lisa Pecot-Hebert “One Hundred Million People You Don’t Know But Should” - event description at SXSW. Click here for my liveblog of the session. You will need to click again on the post headline to see the individual liveblog entries. David Measer Lisa Pecot-Hebert Vice Next Week’s Show: More from South By Southwest Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!