Tell Me How The Web Feels

Since we have the Web, people have become lazier. People spend increasing number of hours ordering things online, searching for things online, and meeting friends online. Now the Web is using a technology called sentiment analysis to tell us how the Web feels.

What it does is it gathers the feedback from people and let you know what the mass thinks of a piece of news item, a restaurant, a dish, etc. For example, if you search for a restaurant when you are out with friends, it doesn't just tell you the list of restaurants nearby and what types of food they serve, it also tells you what the overall sentiment people have about this restaurant.

So the Web has become smart enough to decides for us.

Another Web site that uses this technology is Newstin.com, a news aggregator that measures the sentiment for each piece of news it has on the site. When a news article shows up on the site, it also shows a vertical bar that colors either green or red, with green meaning positive sentiment and red meaning negative.

For instance, if you search for Obama on Newstin, thousands of news items will show up in the search result, each with a different color bar beside it. With a quick glance, readers can get a rough idea of whether the majority of the news about Obama recently is complimentary or derogatory.

One sentiment analysis provider in San Francisco Scout Lab said the technology has become advanced enough for it to not just decoding numbers, but also decoding feelings on the Web.

Inside eReader: Paper-Like Display Technology

We have to talk about E Ink Corporation to fully understand today's eReader market and technology.

Scan through all the competing eReaders in the market, Kindle, Sony's eReader, Nook, eSlick, Cybook Opus. They all share one thing: the same display technology.

The technology is called Paper-like display. The developer is E Ink Corporation, which has been mentioned in this blog a couple of times.

Who is E Ink?

E Ink was founded in 1997 based on research started at the MIT Media Lab. It is the leading supplier of low-power electronic display technologies. The technology is indispensable for a digital book reading device that requires extremely low power consumption, allows long hours of reading without repeated charging, and protects the eyes from backlight blast.

The Lab is on the frontline of display technologies. Recently, it talked about future ePaper:

“I believe that the killer application will be eTextbooks for students. This trend has already started and with the arrival of flexible displays and color ePaper in 2010, that market is likely to ramp quickly. Flexible Active Matrix (because the segmented SURF displays are already flexible) and Color ePaper are the future trends.”

Translation Is The Bottleneck For News Aggregators

Started with six staff in Prague, capital city of Czech Republic, in 1998, Newstin.com was initially funded privately by its CEO and founder, Frank Vrabel, and a group of angel investors, affluent individuals who provide capital for business startups. Right now, it is in the process of a new round of fund raising, according to Lopez. And it is also in talks with advertising agency Double Click (http://www.doubleclick.com) for partnership.

The site provides English translation from ten languages such as Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic. For many Web sites, language is the barrier in creating a global online community. Even Facebook has language limitations. Its members have to speak the same language to be able to communicate. "We are jumping across these differences to lay a foundation to interconnect all the editions," Lopez said.

But media experts say the site still faces challenges. Besides being able to further verify its sources, the other challenge is its translation quality, a universal bottleneck for translation services.

The site uses Lingual World (http://www.lingual-world.com/), a third party translation services. Based on a recent poll, readers are generally happy with the translation, Lopez said. But translations between certain languages are tougher. "It's much harder to use machines to translate from Chinese into English," Lopez said. "But you get the gist of the story."

Critics doubt whether readers are getting the accurate gist because even Google's translation tool is said to be distorting the meanings of the original languages.

The next big thing for the team of 30 in central Europe is to build an interactive platform for readers to leave comments on the site. Translation to English will also be available to enable readers around the world to read comments in different languages and communicate with each other.

In the past two years, Newstin staff grew from six to 30. It also opened its first international office in Silicon Valley of San Francisco.

Industry watchers think the site has its fingers on the problem. But it will take a long time to solve it. Whoever figures out how to build a fast, convenient, and reliable way to find what readers want will have a successful business.

eReader: B&N Nook Has A Huge Book Database

Few can compete with the number of books that owned by Barnes & Nobles. This is a very reason why it makes sense for the bookstore to produce its own eReader --- the Nook.

With over a million titles ready to be downloaded, Nook was born with an advantage.

B&N's boasts on its Web site: The #1 feature of Nook: Over One Million Titles. "Readers can easily get bestsellers and new releases, your favorite eNewspapers, and eMagazines all delivered fast and free via 3G wireless or Wi-Fi. Browse the vast Barnes and Noble eBookstore and sample any eBook for free," the site wrote.

Okay, so you have a million titles, the next question is how many Nook can store. B&N has the answer. Feature #2: Endless Shelf Space!

“Store as many as 1,500 eBooks, eNewspapers, and eMagazines on your nook’s 2 GB of internal storage, so you'll never be without your favorites. Need more space? Just add a Micro SD card,” the site says.

Except that Kindle has 360,000 titles, which are still far fewer than what Nook has, other eReaders in the market either have deals with Barnes and Nobles, or they have very limited number of resources.

Think about it. If B&N owns the copyrights of so many books, it will become the market maker of the eReader market. As a result, the best technology is likely to follow the most powerful player in the market. So Nook is going to advance much faster than the rest of the eReaders. As a customer, you want to own the company and its product that has much room for growth.

Still not convinced? Let's throw some icing on your cake. Nook has a set of designer cases that will make you look so cool.

See some designs:

The Lightest eReader On the Market

The Cybook Opus weighs 5.3 ounces, almost half of the weight of the smaller Kindle that weighs 10.2 ounces.

But its slim figure holds a big memory. Its standard 32 MB memory can be expanded to 1 GB. Although Kindle has a larger memory, 1 GB which can store over 1,000 books might be much larger a collection than the books on most people's book shelves.

Cybook Opus, not as well marketed as the Kindle Reader, has an owner that pioneered the ebook reading device market since 1998 - Bookeen.

The gadget which greatly resembles Kindle also uses the same display technology that Kindle uses --- Paper-like display made by E Ink Corporation.

It comes a little bit smaller in size 6” x 4.2” x 0.4” than Kindle's 7.5" x 5.3" x 0.7". Its screen size is 5”, one inch shy of that of Kindle's.

Surprisingly, there wasn't much market excitement at the introduction of the stylish Cybook Reader earlier this year. Blog Obsessable mentioned that the product has only “teased the eReader market, few other details are available.”

Selling at $249, the nicely-designed Cybook seems to have a strong competitive edge in the eReader market if it promotes itself a little more aggressively.

Users of the gadget seems to be happy, too. One customer left a review saying:

“I'm soooo glad I found this device. Its light and stylish, perfect for my commutes and travel. I find the booksonboard.com for downloading books a very good source for my ebooks, so thank you Bookeen for getting me going in such a positive direction with my new reading experience. I struggled with deciding on a Kindle but hated, hated - the design - this is soooo much more stylish. I recommend any women who needs her electronics to match her stylish lifestyle to get the opus.”

Well, just by the number of “o”s that the reviewer put behind “so”, we know Bookeen's Cybook makes at least one customer very content. And there, “sooo much more stylish” is definitely a big selling point among women readers.

eReader Battle: eSlick vs. Kindle

eSlick is a digital book reader developed by Foxit Software late last year and has been on the market since this year. When it was first introduced, it had a significant advantage over Amazon's Kindle which at that time was sold at $359. eSlick undercut the price by introducing it to the market at a promotional price of $229 and then $259 later on.

The eReader uses an electronic-paper display designed by E Ink Corporation, the same company that makes the Kindle's. The light reflects off the images and words on the screen instead of lighting the screen up with a backlight. That makes it a lot less strained on the eyes and provides a sharp, black-and-white screen that reads just like it would on real paper.

So now you can read text just as easily in bright sunlight as you would in your own living room, says on its Web site.

Based on the E-ink technology, the eSlick does not use any power to maintain a page display while only using power when an image is changed, says its Web site. This means that no matter how long the page is displayed, it uses no additional power.

eSlick and Kindle come close in size, eSlick Reader has a dimension of 7.4" x 4.7" x 0.4" which Kindle is 8" x 5.3" x 0.36". So Kindle is a slightly larger but a tiny bit thinner. Both have 6-inch screens. But eSlick weighs a lot less than Kindle, 6.4 ounces versus 10.2 ounces.

The big drawback of eSlick is it doesn't have wireless connectivity like Kindle does. So readers will not be able to think of a book and download it on the go. That requires more planning and to be less spontaneous.

But "at least that process is free," according to a gadget blog. "Automatic newspaper delivery to a Kindle costs at least $10 per month--each. Blogs cost $1 to $2 per month--each. At least with the eSlick, you don't have to email your own documents to yourself, as you must with the Kindle," it says.

Over 64,000 eBooks are now available for eSlick, including new releases, best sellers and classics, with new ebooks added weekly to the eSlick eBooks store. It is only a small fraction comparing to Kindle's access to more than 360,000 books. This is an area Kindle is likely to have an absolute advantage in the market for a period of time, thanks to its owner Amazon.com.

So far, the eSlick device menus are only available in English. But it allows you to read any document or eBook written in any language.

Now the price of Kindle has now gone down to $259 since, which one would you go for?

(All the comparison in this article is to Amazon's Kindle, not Kindle DX)

To see a video about eSlick, click here.

eReader Battle: Sony vs. Kindle

Sony's eReader marketer seems to have a clear idea in mind: Target different group of customers with its 3-tier price level from $199 to $399.

Compared to the prices of Kindle $259 and Kindle DX at $489, it's clear that Sony is targeting a much wider group. The lowest range of the product line Sony PRS-300 Pocket Edition, which sells at $199, is sold at ToysRUs, a kid's market that Kindle might not be interested in yet.

Sizes of the two eReaders come in very close to each other. Sony's PRS-600 Reader Touch measures 0.4” thin and weighs 10.1 ounces. Kindle is 0.36" think and weighs 10.2 ounces.

The display technologies are identical. They both use paper-like display system made by E Ink Corporation. The technology doesn't light the screen using a backlight, instead, the light reflects off the words and images on the screen. This causes a lot less strained on the eyes, according to the Web site.

But one customer complained in the Sony's Reader site:

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"I've had this product for less than a month. The reader is nice but as a traveler like I am it is a waste of money since most of my reading time is in areas with low light. I travel on planes at night time hours and do not like to use the lights on the air craft. The reflection it gets in brighter areas makes it hard to read. I think it is a waste of money for continuously traveling person like myself and will not recommend it to anyone."

Well, that said, Sony's eReader does give a chic look. It also offers in three colors, white, red, and black. Again, a design that goes along with its market, a younger and less tech-savvy group.

I think Sony at least has an advantage in its price compared to Kindle.

Slideshow: The Creation of a Poster

Like everyone else in recession, Jordan Seiler, a young artist in New York, cuts cost with his new project - the Recession Special. He makes posters from second-hand bestsellers bought from Scrap Bookstore for 48 cents each. And that is all the cost.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Podcast: When Michael Milken Doubts Ratings

Michael Milken built his investment theory, junk bond, on American credit ratings thirty years ago. Today, however, at the wake of the financial crisis, Milken told investors that ratings are so unreliable that it is, in fact, one big reason that has caused this crisis. Should we still believe in his theory then? Listen to my podcast:


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Beijing Pulls Obama T-shirts From Shelves

Less than a week before Obama’s first visit to China, South China Morning Post wrote yesterday about Beijing's new urgent target: T-shirts featuring US President Barack Obama dressed as a red guard." The story is behind the firewall, here is the full text:

Forget bootleg DVDs and counterfeit watches, authorities in Beijing have identified an urgent target to clamp down on: T-shirts featuring US President Barack Obama dressed as a red guard.

Tongue-in-cheek T-shirts showing Obama wearing a red-star revolutionary cap - the type favoured by Mao Zedong and state leaders during the early Communist rule - have been on sale since last year's presidential election.

Another design shows Obama dressed in Chairman Mao's trademark zhongshan suit and clutching the Statue of Liberty under one arm.

"They sell very well, and seem to be popular with both foreigners and Chinese visitors," said the owner of one souvenir stall near Houhai Lake, in the heart of the capital. "But I don't have any for sale at the moment and I doubt you'll be able to find one anywhere in the city this week."

The owner, who asked not to be named, declined to give reasons for the lack of stock.

But it appears the authorities are keen to prevent any form of embarrassment during Obama's first state visit.

One stall owner on Nanluoguxiang Street, a popular bar street north of the Forbidden City, said the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce was behind the clampdown.

"I got a call from the department this morning," he said. "They said they had heard that some people were selling Obama T-shirts near here and they me told not to sell any more. Later on, three officers came to my shop to check, and they told me not to sell any this week."

A sales assistant in a neighbouring souvenir shop, who also asked not to be named, said officials became even more zealous when she had said the shop had no Obama shirts on sale. "They took away all our Mao Zedong T-shirts instead," she said.

One shopper, who gave her name as Liu, said she was disappointed that the T-shirts were no longer available.

"I bought one last week to give to a colleague," she said. "But when I came back on Sunday with another colleague to get some more, there were none."

Obama is due to arrive in Shanghai on Sunday, then visit Beijing from Monday to Wednesday.

(Kristine Kwok in Beijing and Will Clem)

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