AllThingsD » gadfly

Amazon Gives the Kindle a Price Cut, Takes It Overseas

Peter Kafka — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:33:20 +0000

Had to see this one coming: Amazon is chopping the price on its plain-vanilla Kindle e-book reader and is introducing a new version that will allow users to download books when they’re outside the U.S.

Amazon’s (AMZN) basic Kindle will now sell for $259, down from $299–and down from $359 earlier in the year. And the new version, which will allow users to download books in 100 countries besides the U.S., will sell for $279. It will be powered by a wireless connection provided by AT&T (T); the U.S.-only Kindle will continue to use Sprint (S) for a wireless connection.

Is there a catch? Maybe. Anti-Amazon gadfly Tom [Redacted!] (Tom, what do you do when you’re not emailing us this stuff?) points out a bit of fine print on Amazon’s order page: If you take your new Kindle outside the U.S. and try to actually buy something–or simply redownload something you’ve already bought–Amazon will charge you two bucks.

Here’s the fine print, which didn’t seem to make it into the press release–or (cough) the embargoed stories: “When traveling abroad, you can download books wirelessly from the Kindle Store or your Archived Items for a fee of $1.99.”

Still, it’s hard to see how Sony (SNE), whose comparable e-reader only offers a U.S. wireless connection (also from AT&T) and is scheduled to go on sale in December for $399, will be able to stay at that price point. And dark-horse Kindle competitors like iRex and Plastic Logic are going to have match or beat Amazon just to get into the race.

HDNet Chairman Mark Cuban: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:30:50 +0000

What can one say about Mark Cuban that he can’t say himself?

Not much, as you will see from this sassy onstage interview he did with Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, where he talked about everything from the idiots of the Internet to the subsidization of Web video by Google (GOOG) to the next big innovation.

Cuban hardly needs an introduction–he’s been a Web mogul, an entrepreneur, a sports team owner, a blogger, a theater owner, a high-definition evangelist and most of all, a digital gadfly.

Here’s the full D7 video session:

[ See post to watch video ]

HDNet Chairman Mark Cuban: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:19:44 +0000

What can one say about Mark Cuban that he can’t say himself?

Cuban hardly needs an introduction–he’s been a Web mogul, an entrepreneur, a sports team owner, a blogger, a theater owner, a high-definition evangelist and most of all, a digital gadfly.

Here’s the full D7 video session:

[ See post to watch video ]

More Mark Cuban (Trapped in the Green Room at D7 with BoomTown and the Flip Video Camera)!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:05:24 +0000

Last week, Walt Mossberg and I interviewed entrepreneur, high-definition television fanboy, dancing fool and reliable gadfly Mark Cuban at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Cuban, who sold his start-up Broadcast.com to Yahoo (YHOO) at the peak of the Web 1.0 bubble for billions, has been using that haul to do a lot of stuff.

In September 2001, the innovative Cuban launched HDNet, a provider of high-definition news, entertainment and sports programming. In January of 2000, he also used all those bucks to buy the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise. He’s also co-owner of Landmark Theaters, Magnolia Pictures, and Rysher Entertainment, and holds a stake in Lions Gate Entertainment.

Cuban also made a laudable effort on the television dance competition, “Dancing With the Stars.”

After our onstage interview (highlights of that video are also below), BoomTown also got him to be more specific about his thoughts on a variety of things he discussed, including Google (GOOG) and its underwriting of its YouTube video subsidiary, HD TV, the problems with broadband and the Internet as a “utility.”

(And don’t miss his cheeky new post on his Blog Maverick site–“Who Cares What People Write?”–about ignoring, well, what some “amateur outtie” bloggers say most of the time.)

Cuban in the Green Room at D7:

[ See post to watch video ]

Cuban Onstage:

[ See post to watch video ]

Silicon Valley Start-Up Whisperer (And Twitter Investor, Natch) Sacca Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:28:49 +0000

Since leaving Google (GOOG) several years ago, where he last worked on wireless spectrum issues, it’s hard to say exactly what role the digital jumping bean who is Chris Sacca plays.

He’s not an entrepreneur, although he seems to know all of them in Web 2.0 world and advises 18 start-ups. He’s no longer a big-company exec, although he was one and knows a lot of them too. He’s not a venture capitalist, although he is involved in a private equity firm and invests in a lot of the start-ups he advises, like the red-hot Twitter, and knows those guys too.

Of course, Sacca blogs and tweets a LOT, even as he travels incessantly to Ethiopia, Dubai, and various places where Bono might be hanging.

(Thus, don’t miss this very funny mocking of Sacca’s tweets under the name fakesacca, reportedly done by Googler Dick Costolo, with pitch-perfect tweets like: “Wow, not sure what city i’m in. The food says London, the prices say Tokyo, and the women say Los Angeles. I’m going w/ Hong Kong,” “Going over my SXSW talk on ‘why I should have equity in your startup.’ Getting inspired just proofreading it” and, my personal favorite, “If you’re pole-dancing & heli-skiing & in the ny times w/in 12hr of each other, something has either gone horribly wrong or horribly RIGHT!”)

With all this dabbling Sacca does, BoomTown has decided to dub the Silicon Valley gadfly: The Start-Up Whisperer.

Here is my video interview with him, about those start-ups like Twitter and about what’s next in tech innovation, all while a lovely piano player at San Francisco’s Zuni restaurant tinkled in the background:

[ See post to watch video ]