(Photo: NASA)

Microsoft recently updated its YouTube app for Windows Phones, but Google isn't too pleased with the results--going so far as to send a cease and desist. That's because Microsoft built in features allowing users to block ads. [The Verge]

A spokesman said they'd be "more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs." [The Verge]

"Reading is an activity more likely to be on screen than on the printed page." So there's that. [BBC]

Car-sharing service Relay Rides has gotten the ax (locally at least) from the New York State’s Department of Financial Services, who said their insurance is “illegal and inadequate.” [PandoDaily]

Looks like, after technical problems, NASA's other-Earth-seeking Kepler Telescope is powering down. [Popular Science]

“Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.” That's the kind of email that, even if you are Steve Jobs, lands you in hot water with antitrust enforcers. [AllThingsD]

Macmillan's HQ. (Photo: flickr.com/-jvl-)

When four of the biggest publishers in the U.S. worked with Apple to create a new model of book sales, one that allowed them to set a minimum price on ebook sales, it was clearly meant to buck Amazon's stubbon insistence on charging $9.99 even for the newest releases. What wasn't so clear was the legality of the move. Matters settled into an uneasy truce until April, when the Justice Department accused them all of colluding to fix prices.

Now Macmillan, the last of the book businesses still fighting, has finally caved. As part of the settlement, the company has agreed to let booksellers (i.e. Amazon) resume their previous cost-cutting.

But just because you settle doesn't mean you have to say you're sorry.

The company has released a letter from CEO John Sargent explaining the decision to settle and why it took so long. Rather than sounding contrite, the ever-feisty Mr. Sargent takes the opportunity to throw a few punches on the way out: "I had an old fashioned belief that you should not settle if you have done no wrong. As it turns out, that is indeed old fashioned."

It's not that Mr. Sargent and his fellow execs saw the light. They just realized the risk of losing was simply too high: "Our company is not large enough to risk a worst case judgment," Mr. Sargent wrote. That's not humility talking, but math:

A few weeks ago I got an estimate of the maximum possible damage figure. I cannot share the breathtaking amount with you, but it was much more than the entire equity of our company.

He closes the whole thing with what sounds suspiciously like a call to arms: "I’m disappointed it ended this way. But this round will shortly be over, and it is time for us to move on to the next." Remember the Alamo!

Apple still refuses to settle, but then Apple basically has all of the money in the world.

(Photo: flickr.com/justbecause)

Oh boy, the big six are just going to love this: Geekwire reports that Amazon has secured a patent for a "secondary market for digital objects," meaning anything from ebooks to mp3s.

That means Amazon has hammered out the basics of a system that would, according to the abstract from the patent application, let you transfer the ebooks you don't want anyone into someone else's Kindle library. In short, you can sell 'em.

Well, at least you'd never have to wonder about the origins of that mysterious brown stain anymore.

Of course, God and Bezos only know whether this will ever translate into an actual Amazon feature; it could be simply a strategic gambit of some sort. (PaidContent points out that the patent could conceivably be used as a cudgel against other marketplaces for reselling digital content, like ReDigi.) But it's not quite as bonkers an idea as it seems, either. Think of what you get for your $9.99 as a license to access a piece of content, as opposed to a book per se. Theoretically, you'd be selling the license.

Romantic, it's not.

The patent application also suggests there'd be a limit on the number of times you could transfer or download an object before the proverbial music stops, which presumably would help prevent the market for new digital books from collapsing like a over-cooked souffle. So it's not like the nation's entire population of teenaged girls could simply pass around a single digital copy of The Hunger Games, gutting blockbuster sales.

But the copyright implications are positively migraine-inducing, and it's hard to imagine publishers, music companies or movie studios letting this stand without throwing the kind of shit fit that actually makes a pretty crackerjack read.

(h/t Gizmodo)

Cool spaceship, dawg. (Photo: Bexar County Commissioners Court, via ABC News)

Well, futurists, are you happy now? ABC News reports that there will soon be an American public library that, in fact, has no physical books. Replacing them: a combination of ebooks, ereaders and computer terminals.

Christ, nobody tell everyone already freaking out about the renovation of the New York Public Library.  

This fall, Bexar County (home to San Antonio) plans to open the BiblioTech, a new public library focused on providing access to the Internet and to digital titles. It'll launch with 100 e-readers available for circulation. We can't even fathom what the late fees look like for a Kindle.

The project is the brainchild of one Judge Nelson Wolff. It's not that he's out to overthrow the tyranny of dead-tree media, exactly; he just read the Steve Jobs biography and had a road to Damascus moment:

"We all know the world is changing. I am an avid book reader. I read hardcover books, I have a collection of 1,000 first editions. Books are important to me," Wolff told ABC News. "But the world is changing and this is the best, most effective way to bring services to our community."

We are duly impressed by your extensive library of first editions, sir.

However, there's a big problem with this project--besides the fact that $100 goes a lot farther for books than gadgets. Ebooks have long been a bit of a headache for libraries. That's because only Random House and HarperCollins offer ebooks for widespread sale to libraries, and even then the licensing and restrictions on use are a headache. 

Back in September, the head of the American Library Association released an open letter to the publishing business, translating all these wheeling and dealings into the patron's experience:  

If our libraries’ digital bookshelves mirrored the New York Times fiction bestseller list, we would be missing half of our collection any given week due to these publishers’ policies.... Today’s teens also will not find the digital copy of Judy Blume’s seminal Forever,nor today’s blockbuster Hunger Games series.

Frankly, the thought of a future where teens are denied access to Judy Blume is appalling.

The cofounders. (Photo: Oyster)

An under-the-radar local startup named Oyster has raised a $3 million seed round, GigaOm reports, led by Founders Fund. Other backers include SV Angel, Founder Collective, Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital, Chris Dixon, Sam Altman and others. But despite the foodie-friendly name, the company has other designs--namely, to feed you books to read on your iPhone.

As cofounder Eric Stromberg explained to Betabeat via email, "Simply put, we are building the best way to read books on your phone, and we think we accomplish that through the subscription model," he added.

The product is still in the testing phase; if you visit the company's site, you can sign up for an invitation, but there's not much digging around you can do. Eventually, however, the company will launch an iPhone app through which--after paying a monthly fee--subscribers get all-you-can-read access to the Oyster library.

On that most pesky of reader problems, discovery, Mr. Stromberg said, "we think about it in three ways - social, algorithmic, and curated. All will be an important part of finding the book that is right for you." We suppose that almost anything would be better than merely browsing the "recommended reads" (i.e. paid-for placement) in the front of Barnes and Noble.

And yes, there's something similar but free in the form of the IRL public library. However, it's worth noting that Oyster probably won't require signing onto a waiting list of 15o people for one of three copies of Bossypants, nor will they turn your unpaid library fines over to a collections agency, as the Queens Public Library has been known to do.

As for Oyster's business model, Mr. Stromberg somewhat pointedly added that, "Spotify and Netflix are interesting access-based models for other forms of media, but just like those two are different from one another, our product will be different from each of them."

Oyster's introductory blog post elaborates a little more on this theme:

Currently, people buy books online in the exact same way that they buy lamps, blenders, and kitchen knives. The process of finding your next book is very different from purchasing a knife, and it should be treated that way.

By moving from individual transactions to an access-based model, readers can explore and enjoy books freely; more like your corner bookstore than a big box retailer. This leads to a more fulfilling experience built exclusively on taste and relaxed reading.

The founders are a pack of tech-world vets. Mr. Stromberg previously did biz dev at Hunch, Andrew Brown worked at Google and Willem Van Lancker was formerly a UX designer for Google Maps. (Of course, the question is how far that'll get them in the publishing world.)

Asked why books--it's a tough business and the competition is Amazon, the ultimate goliath--Mr. Stromberg tried to strike a balance between dreamy-eyed ambition and practicalities: "We love reading and wanted to see this product exist," he told Betabeat, adding, "At the same time, we were very thoughtful about what makes sense for both publishers and authors, and have crafted our product and model to align with that."

Mr. Stromberg couldn't share a timeline for when the the service will open fully to the public, as the team plans on "slowly and carefully building the community and adding new users over a period of time." Nor could he provide any specifics in terms of what's in the library, but he did promise that "we do have agreements in place with several publishers and are expanding our catalogue every week."  

(Photo: Penguin)

In the old days, back before single-serving Tumblrs and pithy Twitter accounts, you had to be talented or rich or well-connected to nab a book deal. Now, with the democratization power of the Internet, you need a wifi connection and a slightly unhinged obsession with raunchy BDSM sex or a boy band. Welcome to 2012, you guys. Aren't you just so proud of how far we've come?

The Daily Mail reports that a 16-year-old fan of the British boy band One Direction has landed a publishing deal with Penguin after a piece of her fan fiction went viral. Emily Baker penned the story "Loving the Band" on Movellas, and a Penguin editor--who apparently was so desperate for new clients that she just decided to trawl a teen fiction site?--spotted the piece. The book will be published as an ebook on November 1st, and Penguin can tap into the massive amount of fans Ms. Baker already accrued on Movellas.

Since Penguin now owns the rights to "Loving the Band," you can no longer read it online as it's been removed from Movellas. But if you're desperate for your boy band fan fiction fix, there are still plenty of One Direction-themed fan fiction stories to sate your desires. "Only You" is about a girl with a dead mother and mysterious scar on her shoulder who two band members fall in love with. "Stole My Heart" is about One Direction taking a break from touring when Harry, the curly-haired one, finds love in the least expected of places.

Go ahead, bookmark them--we won't tell. Can't be any worse than the latest book Sophie Kinsella crapped out.

Killer Diller. (Photo: flickr.com/techcrunch, by Dave Getzschman)

Apparently not content to disrupt the television business, Barry Diller is up to yet another new project. The New York Times reports that Mr. Diller is partnering with producer Scott Rubin and publishing vet Frances Coady to launch Brightline, a new venture--in the publishing business.

So more more like an adventure, really. 

The Times reports that the fledging imprint will focus first on ebooks, then expand (at some point, somehow; the details are scant) into print distribution. But rather than starting from square one, Brightline will be partnering with Brooklyn-baked ebook startup The Atavist, which has already worked through headache-inducing details like the content management system and the marketing basics.

The Atavist, meanwhile, gets the benefit of proximity to Misters Diller and Rubin, and heaven knows such a halo effect is not to be underestimated when recruiting big-name authors.

The partnership is a savvy move for both parties, as it's pretty much going to take an armored convoy to get through the Amazon-controlled waters of the ebook market. The ecommerce juggernaut boasts, according to the Times' numbers, around 65 percent of ebook sales.

Besides the partnership, though, there's still a lot of unknowns on the matter of Brightline. The company is open to hefty advances, but how the revenue share afterward works is unclear. The Times doesn't reveal any hints about editorial direction, either.

However, Mr. Rubin wanted to make one thing clear, namely that this is not an expensive way to secretly source new movie ideas so don't expect an automatic lucrative movie deal:

No author has yet been signed by Brightline, and Mr. Rudin asserted that the new enterprise was not an attempt to get an early look at books he might make into films.

“I already have access to all the books I need."

Can we hold out hope for a line of Diller Thrillers?

(Photo: Wikimedia)

If you tend to spend a fair amount of your time online submerged in a Wikipedia K-hole, mindlessly clicking the "Random Article" link until you snap out of it two hours later deeply engrossed in the entry for Kanye West's song "Power," then we have some good news for you. Wikipedia has enabled a new feature that allows you to seamlessly curate your own eBook out of Wikipedia articles, all for free.

The advantage to creating an eBook is manifold: first, you can access it on a number of devices, including e-readers, tablets and mobile phones. It's also perfect for subway commute entertainment, because you can read it while you don't have Internet access. Plus, you'll never again lose an interesting article to the hellish, hoarder-like conditions of your bookmarks folder.

Creating a Wikipedia ebook is also pretty simple. According to the Wikimedia foundation:

To create your personal e-book you have to activate the ‘Create a book’ link located in the left sidebar of Wikipedia in the ‘print/export’ section. Once activated, you can compile articles or complete categories into a personal collection and export them. Collections can be exported in a variety of formats like PDF, EPUB, or OpenOffice. You can also order a printed book via PediaPress, the official print-on-demand partner of Wikipedia.

Now, who wants to curate an eBook based on all Wikipedia entries about Beyonce? We'd be ever so grateful.

Little Nell, the Bella Swan of her day. (Public domain image via flickr.com/circasassy)

When Amazon flipped the switch on its Serials program last Thursday, it also served as the debut of a new startup: Plympton, founded by journalist Jennifer 8 Lee and novelist Yael Goldstein Love. The company is contributing three of the eight titles inaugurating the initiative: The Many Lives of Lilith Lane, a paranormal YA mystery; Hacker Mom, dubbed a "mom thriller"; and Love Is Strong as Death, a mystery.

Plympton's founders describe the company as a "literary studio," functioning a little like a publishing house and a little like a movie studio. Their mission? Nothing less than using new technology to  reinvigorate a storytelling form that publishing left for dead decades ago. (Naturally, there's a Kickstarter campaign.)

"What we care about is actually just bringing back this format, because we do think it would be good for literature," Ms. Love told Betabeat. "It's good for writers, it's good for readers, it's good for the state of American literature."

Ms. Love believes that the market has shifted in such a way to open up a space for the form. It's not that the cost of producing a book has suddenly skyrocketed, but publishers are under cost constraints that lead to pruning of their fiction lists. "They'll take risks every now and then on a newbie novelist," but most of the deals go to established writers or sure-thing concepts like vampire romances. "The startup cost of actually publishing a book, for whatever reason--it's more expensive in terms of the risk and what publishers are willing to do," she said.

Back in the 19th century, serial fiction was pretty much the hottest game in town. The story always used to illustrate this fact is that, during the serialization of Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, an unruly crowd of Americans once met a British ship at the docks, demanding to know whether the heroine Nell was alive. Think the Victorian version of Twihards lining up for Breaking Dawn screenings days in advance, and you've got the picture.

The form's ubiquity was due to the economics of publishing in a day and age where manufacturing was far from streamlined. "The reason that serialized fiction was so popular back when it was, in the nineteenth century, was that it made really good economic sense for publishers and for writers," explained Ms. Love. "Books were incredibly expensive to print, and so this was this wonderful way to test the commercial viability of a story and, hopefully, to build an audience before you laid out that expenditure."

Nor did the form fall out of fashion simply because people lost interest, she insisted. Rather, newspapers and magazines shifted so the content simply had no place. "They started gearing more toward reporting the news," de-emphasizing entertainment. She cited the enthusiasm over densely plotted television shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men as evidence of the enduring appeal of the serialized narrative.

"It's actually that space between the episodes, where you're sort of waiting and anticipating and you're speculating, that makes it all feel so much more alive and vivid," she said, adding, "It makes the experience a lot more similar to everyday gossip, which I think is sort of the instinct that makes us love fiction in the first place."

"Serialization becomes this really great way to get writers experimenting again and to be able to work on things that aren't that sure thing," she added.

And the beauty of the modern serialized novel is that, these days, the technology is far more streamlined and convenient. (Frankly, the process sounds simpler than getting the latest episode of Game of Thrones.)Kindle Serials will automatically update with new content, meaning there's no need to meet the boat for the latest installment in The Pickwick Papers.

There's also the matter of monetization, and the simple fact that recurring billing is an attractive proposition for a publisher. As Ms. Lee, Ms. Love's cofounder, told us via email: "The economics for this works because even though it's a modest price point for one episode, you have an audience that comes back again and again because they love the story."

She also pointed out, "Note that all the great powerhouse franchises have been series: Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight. There is something compelling about going back into the same universe."

As for what the future looks like, Ms. Love isn't interested in laying out a formula they'll be adhering to--two parts mystery, three parts romance, one part YA, season to taste. She hopes to publish ambitious literary fiction and thinks Plympton's lean business model means they can afford to give it a try: "We can actually take the risks that the big publishing houses can't take right now" she said, offering the example of "very heady books, very complicated novels where you have to remember a list of dozens of characters."

"At the end of the day it always comes down to the same thing--does this piece of fiction feel alive? Does it feel exciting? Do you want to keep reading?"

Installments range in length from 8,000 to 25,000 words. Some will arrive every two weeks, others once a month. At the moment, most of their series run five installments, but Ms. Love expects that to change. "I'm very open to publishing much longer pieces," she said.

This Jane Eyre obsessive will keep her fingers crossed for a sprawling historical novel--perhaps The Secret Diary of Nikola Tesla?

Now is the part where I throw my head back and laugh. (Photo: flickr.com/oreilly)

Good news for cheapskates, bad news for traditional publishing: "Agency pricing," which many in the book business had hoped would prove a defense against Amazon's discounting every new book to $9.99, is pretty much finito as of today.

A bit of background: At issue is the agency model, which first came into play when Apple debuted the iPad and began talking to publishers about ebooks. Apple liked the sound of an agency model, where publishers would set the price and and Apple would merely act as agent, taking a cut of the transaction. This looked like a way of finally breaking Amazon's iron-fisted insistence on charging $9.99 for a standard new release, which would otherwise go for $25.00 in print.

Back in April, the Department of Justice, however, took exception to this, filing an anti-trust suit against Apple and five of the big six book publishers, namely Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. (Only Random House escaped unscathed.) The lot of 'em were accused of colluding to fix prices. Three of the accused--Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins--immediately agreed to settle, terminating the offending deals with Apple and pinky swearing not to control retailers' prices for at least two years.

Macmillan and Penguin are fighting on, as is Apple.

However, it wasn't as simply as signing some papers and cutting a check. Apple wanted them to wait until a trial determined the final outcome. It didn't work out, though: The Wall Street Journal reports that a judge has signed off on the agreement, meaning Amazon can begin sharpening the discounting knives... well, depending on whether Apple decides to appeal.

One industry analyst told the New York Times:

“I think that everybody competing with Amazon in the e-book market had better fasten their seat belts,” Mike Shatzkin, the founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, a consultant to publishers, said in an interview. “I would expect Amazon to be leading the charge to cut prices on the most high-profile e-books as soon as the decision allows them to do so.”

That means anyone who wants to compete is going to have to start the price chopping, too.

Meanwhile, in the wider tech world, Amazon just took a flying leap, claws extended and teeth bared, at Apple's face. The press release issued for the Kindle Fire HD? "Amazon Takes on the High End."

And to think, this whole thing started as a way for Apple to get the content offerings to compete with Amazon.