(Photo: AlanLevenson.com)

In a stunning gesture of support for EXCLUSIVE airplane journalism, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is leading a $5 million round in Business Insider, the web property helmed by Henry Blodget. The news comes following a detailed New Yorker profile of Mr. Blodget, who launched Business Insider after being banned from the securities industry for civil securities fraud.

An internal memo published on Business Insider (natch) written by Mr. Blodget says that the company is raising $5 million, with Mr. Bezos chipping in "a significant investment." The fresh capital brings Business Insider's total amount raised to $18.3 million.

"This capital will allow us to continue to invest aggressively in many areas of the business, including editorial, tech/product, sales and marketing, subscriptions, and events," Mr. Blodget wrote. "As we mentioned last night, it will also allow us to expand our office."

The raise comes at a time when the company is reportedly losing money, though Mr. Blodget has pegged its $3 million loss in 2012 as an "investment." According to Paid Content:

TBI chairman Kevin Ryan says the company will do $11 million this year (last summer someone told the WSJ the company would do $12 million in 2012); he says the site has only spent $7 million of the $13 million it has raised.

Though Comscore pegs the site’s traffic at 9 million, Blodget tells Auletta that his Google Analytics numbers are at 24 million unique monthly users, many of whom come from outside the U.S.

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka notes that since the New Yorker profile was published on Monday, BI’s revenue projections jumped--sorry, JUMPED--from $11 million to $15 million.

Mr. Blodget has a history with Amazon. He originally rose to fame in 1998 by accurately predicting a price target of $400 in Amazon stock, which eventually led to his hiring at Merrill Lynch.

The investment will likely increase the number of stated disclosures for BI writers covering Amazon products or services, as well as Mr. Bezos' other investments. But the editorial side must be accustomed to negotiating that ethical line, as it already counts powerhouses like Marc Andreessen and Allen & Company as investors. And the writers there don't seem to mind adding another one to the list. "Do you really think I'm going to care what some billionaire thinks about my Kindle whatever review?" tweeted Silicon Alley Insider editor Steve Kovach.

(Photo: bezosexpeditions.com)

Not that long ago at a piano bar in Davos, America's preeminent billionaires got together to divvy up dominion over the land, sea, and stars. The minutes of the meeting have been kept secret--so as not to offend the world's governments quaint perception of "sovereignty."

Elon Musk being Elon couldn't help revealing his ascendancy to Mars. Quietly, it emerged that Yuri Milner was given the Earth's molten core, Sean Parker got Coachella and Warren Buffet rules the Middle West. Now, thanks to AllThingsD, we know about Jeff Bezos' slice of the galatic pie.

"Right now, he’s on a ship outside Cape Canaveral, along with some giant engines that used to power the Apollo 11 aircraft. He financed the team that just dug them out from the bottom of the Atlantic."

In a letter thanking NASA on BezosExpeditions.com, Mr. Bezos offers an inside glimpse into his Neptune-like journey:

"What an incredible adventure. We are right now onboard the Seabed Worker headed back to Cape Canaveral after finishing three weeks at sea, working almost 3 miles below the surface. We found so much. We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program. We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible."

To be clear, however, Mr. Bezos' kingdom is strictly under the sea. Peter Thiel still controls the colonies floating atop the ocean and Captain Larry Ellison its yachts.

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

No, Facebook is not outing the links you share in private messages by adding them to your list of likes--though those pages do get an additional, unattributed thumbs-up. But what if you hate-shared the link? What then, Zuck? [Business Insider]

Speaking of: Here come the Facebook IPO lawsuits! [Reuters]

Jeff Bezos and the CIA believe this startup can pull off a quantum computer, to the tune of a $30 million investment in the company. Many others are skeptical. [Technology Review]

This morning, the entire Apple homepage is devoted to a remembrance of Steve Jobs, who died a year ago today. [Apple]

New York City teens can now pay a dollar to have their smartphones stored in a truck just off campus during school hours. Just another chapter in our town's long, proud history of hustling.  [USA Today]

"But I really like the wall scrolls feel in my hands." -- Cicero. Not you. (Photo: flickr.com/irishwelcometours)

Were you watching closely during Amazon's Kindle press conference? Because if you were, you just saw Jeff Bezos make one of those centuries-long bets his friends are always talking about. Behold, the literary equivalent of the Clock of the Long Now--a bet on a future where ereaders are about as out-of-the-ordinary as a tea kettle or a wristwatch.

There were several interesting details in the publishing portion of the announcements. The good, old-fashioned Kindle ereader got several updates, including a paperwhite background, more fonts, and a backlight that'll go eight weeks without a charge. All that'll now set you back a mere $69. The company's publishing arm also debuted a brand new form, between the single and the full-length book: Kindle Serials, at $1.99 a pop and seamlessly, automatically updated with each new installment.

Charles Dickens would be so proud. (He'd also probably write a great serialized novel about people who work in Amazon fulfillment centers.)

But it's worth taking a step back and looking at how, amid the @Horse_Ebooks-like babble, Mr. Bezos framed the whole concept of the Kindle (via The Verge's excellent liveblog):

“Kindle Fire is a service. Why? Because they're gadgets, and people don't want gadgets anymore. They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month."

Of course, it's no great shocker that Amazon's betting on content, nor is the reasoning particularly mysterious. Even those of us who own and love a Kindle Fire can admit it's not the marvelous techno-futuristic, I-raided-this-from-an-alien-spacecraft experience that an iPad is. Amazon’s specialty is content. Between all the content from traditional publishers, the self-published works, and a new line-up of in-house productions, Amazon has quite an inventory up in the cloud. And after a decade-plus of doing what they do, the company has more data points than stars in the night sky, all the better to put optimal selections in front of your face.

But when Bezos clicked to that big "NOT A GADGET" slide, here's what we saw: The CEO of Amazon, taking one big, final swing at the idea that there's any distinction between "book" and "ebook." Pay no attention to the delivery device, other than to note that the Kindle provides you the best access to the most content.

Without straying too deeply into the thickets of literary history: When you hear the term "book," there's a good chance you still think of a physical book--paper pages between two pieces of rigid material. But for all the passionate defenses mounted of that specific technology, it's still just that--a technology that had to be invented. That technology is really something called a codex, from the Latin for "block of wood." Romans used scrolls, but sometime in the Middle Ages Western civilization made the transition to the form we now take for granted.

It honestly sounds like Jeff Bezos is betting on a future where the vestigial "e" drops off "ebook" and the Kindle is just another book platform, one you'll gravitate to because it's the best way to access a great, whopping library.

Normally we wouldn't ascribe this level of far-sighted ambition to anyone but a mad scientist or a megalomaniac. It's certainly not what one expects from the CEO of a publicly traded company, subject to quarterly earnings calls like any other mere mortal. But then again, this is a man who's devoting a substantial chunk of change to building a clock in the desert, meant to keep time on the scale of tens of thousands of years.

The question is whether all that geologic scale planning really makes sense in a business where the ground's about as stable as Yellowstone National Park.

We never leave home without our mask and newsboy cap. (Photo: TechCrunch

This is just silly.

Amazon would never invent a time machine because rogue book publishers would just use it to kill Amazon.

Duh.

Never going awaaaay. (Photo: flickr.com/oreilly)

Digital data sure might feel ephemeral, but two big are companies doing their part to make sure everything gets backed up, forever. Last week, Facebook let slip some details about "Sub-Zero," the company's planned facility for long-term data storage. And today, Amazon debuted its "Glacier" service, which Ars Technica describes as "a data archival service that will store data for one penny per gigabyte per month."

That sounds like a pretty good deal, but before you open an account and start backing up your iTunes library, you should probably know that this isn't exactly normal cloud computing. It'll take hours to retrive any data stored with the service. This is only for truly long-term archiving. Think data meant to last for centuries. 

Ars Technica explains:

Glacier is designed to last for a long time, but is slow: accessing data will take three to five hours. Amazon hasn't detailed exactly what technology is storing the data, but massive tape libraries are a good bet given the lengthy retrieval windows.... An Amazon statement sent to Ars says only that "Glacier is built from inexpensive commodity hardware components," and is "designed to be hardware-agnostic, so that savings can be captured as Amazon continues to drive down infrastructure costs."

Use cases outlined include archiving media assets (no more lost-and-found masterpieces like Metropolis!) and archiving research and scientific data (never lose your notes in a fire like tragic science hero Nikola Tesla!).

It's hard not to imagine a massive bunker forgotten in the wake of some Hunger Games-style catastrophe, lying silent except for the whirring of the cooling systems and the shuffling footsteps of a slightly wild-eyed caretaker.

Actually, that sounds familiar. It sounds like Amazon CEO's $42 million Clock of the Long Now project, designed to keep time on a thousand-year scale. In a recent Wall Street Journal piece on the timepiece, a former Amazon exec told the paper that Mr. Bezos "thinks in decades and centuries…Unlike most of us, Jeff is hard-wired for the very long term."

Dude must be a torturously slow chess player.

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

Living in New York has convinced us it's perfectly acceptable to order almost anything for delivery. The other day, we seriously considered a Seamless order from Coldstone Creamery, until the spectre of gout forced us to reconsider. But there's still plenty of time-sensitive things that require us to leave our apartments, like a beach umbrella for tomorrow's trip to the Rockaways or an emergency bag of cat litter.

Well, good news, shut-ins! The Financial Times reports that Amazon is working on a plan to get you that carton of Fancy Feast just as fast as possible. Think same-day delivery. Fluffy will be ecstatic. 

After years of fighting tooth and claw against collecting sales tax, in the spring Amazon finally caved and settled with several states. That means they'll either have to bump prices 4 to 9 percent or somehow get creative with the margins. But, the Financial Times adds, Amazon is making lemonade out of the situation:

"Amid the tax furore, Amazon is seizing the opportunity to expand its network of US warehouses – it had 34 at the end of last year – so it can place its merchandise nearer to big markets and offer same-day delivery to more consumers.

"That will erode one of the last advantages of the physical store: instant gratification."

Nor is this Amazon's only urban delivery experiment. Perhaps you've noticed that you now have the option of picking up your package at a local 7-Eleven? Very useful for those of us with sticky-fingered neighbors. But if we're already going outside to pick up that shipment, we might as well at least try to find what we need somewhere else first. Same-delivery changes all that.

Former indie booksellers are really going to relish the schadenfreude when there's finally a 3D printer that can fabricate almost anything, rendering even Amazon's distribution network unnecessary.

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

Do we detect a little extra joy in Jeff Bezos's supervillain laugh lately? Well, a spot of plotting does warm the heart, and it sounds like he's cooking up something big. Judging from a Bloomberg report this morning, it's looking like that Amazon smartphone may very well be more than mere rumor.

Anyone from Microsoft might just want to go ahead and leave the room; coming on the heels of that Vanity Fair article, this'll just upset you.

Bloomberg cites two people "with knowledge of the matter," who claim an Amazon smartphone designed to compete with iPhone and Android is on its way. According to one of those sources, the company is already working with Foxconn on the device.

But the bulk of the article rests on a recent patent-buying spree by Amazon:

Seattle-based Amazon considered buying wireless patents from InterDigital Inc. before the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania- based company said in June that it will sell the assets to Intel Corp. for $375 million, two people said. Amazon is taking pitches and setting up briefings with other sellers, the people said.

Amazon isn't confirming jack, and the company's spokesman refused to comment for the piece. But given the increasingly ugly tone of the patent wars--for example, good luck getting hold of a Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the U.S.--Amazon may very well just be taking steps to protect its existing hardware business. After all, Google coughed up billions for Motorola and its patent portfolio.

Nonetheless, someone should probably check on Steve Ballmer's office furniture.

Mr. Stephenson, Neal Stephenson. (Photo: Kickstarter)

Over the weekend, best-selling scifi writer Neal Stephenson launched his own Kickstarter called CLANG. They say every great business idea solves a problem. In this case, it's unrealistic swordplay in video games--an issue, we imagine, that's close to the heart of a whole legion of LARPers.

The project, which is being run by Mr. Stephenson's media franchise company Subutai, quickly raised $160,000 towards its goal of $500,000. The early hype comes courtesy Mr. Stephenson's popularity (some of his early editions sell for "precious-metal asking prices") and the project's amusing video, featuring the writer in formal robes yelling at gamers for their unworthy consoles. There's also a cameo from the meme-tastic Gabe Newell, the outspoken founder of the video game corporation Valve.But as AllThingsD notes, it's a little premature to call the campaign viral. "It could reflect some skepticism that someone like Stephenson really needs donations from Kickstarter to fund his pet projects," says ATD's Liz Gannes, pointing out that Subutai's existing investors include Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), film producers Kennedy/Marshall Company, and Mr. Newell.

The Canyons, a Kickstarter campaign from Bret Easton Ellis and film icon Paul Schrader closed successfully last week, but also got a surprisingly modest response. Perhaps crowd-funding really is the new populism?

CLANG is not only raising money for an arena-style video game, but also an API and software kit to make video-game sword-fighting more realistic for other developers. So if the notion of "Guitar Hero with swords," gets you hot under the armor, there are still 28 days to go.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/widget/video.html

But a select few think a little bigger and get a little crazier. In fact, we're starting to wonder whether they're executing on plans they've had since they were 13, because their current lives are exactly what a 13-year-old boy would dream up if he were asked to imagine being a billionaire.

There are seven guys (yes, they're all dudes) that we've got in mind.