Click here to view the embedded video.

In the final passage, Jobs is reflecting on mortality and concedes that he’d like to believe in an afterlife.

“But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like an on-off switch,” he said. “Click! And you’re gone.” He fell silent for a very long time.

Then he paused again and smiled slightly. “Maybe that’s why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.”

Much can be observed about the late Steve Jobs from this statement: his obsession with simplicity as he oversaw the design of Apple’s remarkable devices, his lifelong connection to digital technology (from pioneering personal computing to creating a market for the “fourth screen” of tablet computing), and how he integrated his soul with the devices that he created. He wanted to make a “dent in the universe” and at least in our gadget-infused, content rich world, he did.

Jobs’ products made a huge dent in my world as a visual storyteller: when I acquired a Powerbook in 2003 with its integrated content creation tools (Final Cut Pro, DVD burning, soundtrack production) I suddenly believed that I could become a filmmaker. Perhaps, I had entered Steve Jobs’ so-called “reality distortion field,” because against all odds, his technology did transform my creativity into a viable content that made its way to the masses.

He’s said to be our generation’s rendition of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, or even John Lennon — a “magician genius” who built our era’s “most creative company.” That reality distortion field allowed him to will a world that he wanted to see, into existence. But as the narrative arc of this biography reveals, that same sense of self-belief that brought Jobs his awe-inspiring success, may well have also contributed to his demise.

“Cancer does not work that way,” Isaacson writes. Jobs decided he didn’t want surgeons to cut him open. So with the hope that he could maintain the integrity of his body, he opted for dietary and homeopathic remedies which did nothing to stem the advance of his pancreatic cancer. “Had they operated nine months earlier, they might have caught it before it spread.”

So now that he’s gone, and I’ve finally finished the book, I’ve asked myself whether Jobs’ reality distortion field will endure. In other words, was he as “insanely great” as he wanted to be, and as many of us are proclaiming, even as we continue to grieve his demise, an irreplaceable genius? Or are we somewhat blinded by that distortion field, unable to see that giants as big as Jobs, still walk the earth?

Click here to view the embedded video.

I couldn’t help but consider this, even as I plowed through the book. Jobs’ complicated relationship with Microsoft’s Bill Gates is somewhat testimony to this issue.

Gates was good at computer coding, unlike Jobs, and his mind was more practical, disciplined, and abundant in analytical processing power. Jobs was more intuitive and romantic and had a greater instinct for making technology usable, design delightful, and interfaces friendly.

One of my favorite eulogies to Jobs is Malcolm Gladwell’s Steve Jobs’ Real Genius. Gladwell concludes from Isaacson’s biography that Jobs “was a bully:” a man abandoned by his father who denies paternity, parks in handicapped spaces, screams and cries at subordinates, and even fires 67 nurses before he finds the three he can settle upon to care for him until he dies.

But even more damningly (and perhaps more honestly), Gladwell concludes that Jobs was less of an inventor, and more of a “tweaker.” That his obsession with perfection inspired him to take already existing creations and “ruthlessly refine” them. In other words, he was a tremendous editor: from the Macintosh to the iPod, iPhone and iPad. There were other graphically-based operating systems, other MP3 players, smartphones and tablet computers, but Jobs’ tweaking of these systems is what really made them massively popular, thereby changing our worlds.

Bill Gates, by contrast, “resisted the romance of perfectionism.” Indeed, Jobs even belittles him by telling Isaacson, “Bill is basically unimaginative, and has never invented anything, which I think is why he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

Well if you agree with Gladwell’s premise, Jobs himself wasn’t an inventor either, and was prone to ripping off others’ ideas as well. Indeed, my sympathy (and appreciation) for Gates deepened as I contrasted him to Jobs even as I read Jobs’ biography. Perhaps I have entered Gates’ own “distortion field” having recently met the man, and spent some time at the new temple to philanthropy that he and his wife Melinda have constructed in the heart of Seattle. But I would have to agree with Gladwell when he writes:

It’s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices represents imagination at its grandest.

Then I reflect upon Seattle’s other titan as I continue to consider Jobs’ legacy: Jeff Bezos. After all, I read Steve Jobs’ biography largely on the iPad’s Kindle app. Fortuitously, Wired magazine published its profile of the Amazon founder this week, contrasting Jobs’ vision with Bezos, especially as the new Kindle Fire device is set to do battle with the iPad this holiday season.

The release of the Fire showcases how forward-thinking Bezos has been. After 15 years near the top of the tech heap, he doesn’t have the same outsized profile of other Internet innovators. But that may be changing. People are slowly beginning to realize just how much of the Web is powered by Amazon’s cloud services. And industry observers see Amazon’s entry into the tablet sweepstakes as further evidence that Bezos may well be the premier technologist in America, a figure who casts as big a shadow as legends like Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs.

In fact, Wired’s Stephen Levy goes as far as to pit Apple against Amazon, dueling visions of Job’s “post-PC” world and Amazon’s “post-Web” one (streamed content in a cloud-centric world is king, the OS and the device themselves are insignificant).

Bezos comes off as a man who delights in disrupting industries — publishing, music, movies. Indeed, if Steve Jobs’ devices facilitated my becoming a professional multimedia storyteller, Jeff Bezos’ platforms and retail channels enabled my media entrepreneurship. You can buy my Independent America DVD on Amazon, I published Storyteller Uprising to Kindle in February when it was a mere two chapters; now it’s a larger book-in-progress that you can find both on Kindle and is a “made-to-order” softcover thanks to Amazon’s CreateSpace service. My other Rising from Ruins film is not on Amazon, but you can watch it on Netflix.  The connection to Amazon?  The media streaming giant hosts all of its content on Amazon Web Services.

While Bezos is as obsessive as Jobs was and believes in simplifying Amazon’s products for the customer, he admits that his business focus is different: low margins versus Apple’s exceptionally high margins.

We were determined to build the best services but to price them at a level that customers couldn’t match, even if they were willing to use inferior products….We really obsess over small defects. That’s what drives up costs…Our version of a perfect customer experience is one in which our customer doesn’t want to talk to us. Every time a customer contacts us, we see it as a defect.

Bezos declared that Steve Jobs “was a teacher to anyone paying attention, and he’s gone way too soon.” But when Levy points out that other big tech CEO’s from his generation are disappearing, Amazon’s founder inadvertently brings us comfort, even as we worry about who’ll be the next Steve Jobs.

“Don’t worry, they’ll make more,” Bezos said.

UPDATE:

Thanks for your comments. I recommend folks check out this excellent rebuttal of Gladwell’s piece by John Gruber at Daring Fireball.  Gruber’s position:

Bringing the concepts of a $100,000 networked workstation to a $2500 standalone mass market personal computer is, I say, radically innovative. The Macintosh was no “tweak”. Pixar was no “tweak”. The iPod is maybe the closest thing among Jobs’s career highlights that one could call a “tweak” of that which preceded it — but it’s hard to separate the iPod, the device, from the entire iTunes ecosystem in terms of measuring its effect on our culture and the way everyone today listens to music. Does anyone really think Apple’s entry into the music industry was a “tweak”? A “large-scale visionary” is precisely what Steve Jobs was.

Originally posted to Storyteller Uprising.

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Confusion and mishaps aside, Netflix did succeed in carrying out a couple of major tasks: it separated its DVD by mail service financially from its streaming service, and it raised the price of both its services significantly.

Recently, there have been rumors of a failed courtship between Netflix’s and Amazon. Wall Street speculates that Netflix split up in order to sell, and reversed that decision when the merger fell through. While nothing can be confirmed, the sudden announcement of Qwikster and the subsequent hasty change of heart certainly suggests there was perhaps more drama behind the scenes than what the audience saw.

While many view Amazon as one of Netflix’s strongest competitors,  very few in the media have paid much attention to the technology side of the story; namely, that Netflix runs much of its customer facing infrastructure on Amazon’s cloud.

In late 2010, Netflix listed reasons why it decided to put its infrastructure on Amazon’s cloud in its blog: “We could have chosen to build out new data centers, build our own redundancy and failover, data synchronization systems, etc. Or, we could opt to write a check to someone else to do that instead.”

That someone is Amazon, the leader in enterprise cloud services. Netflix does not own content, nor does it own much infrastructure. Netflix’s greatest asset is its brand and subscription base. It has been facing increasing pricing pressure from its content providers.  Its recent price increase may have retained its content acquisition power, but it may have paid a high price for that.

On the flip side, Netflix is one of Amazon’s largest “cloud” customers. For the time being, the two still need each other. But no matter how things unfold, Amazon seems to be in the driver’s seat. Quietly, the king of online retail has also become a formidable force in media.

This puts Netflix in an awkward position, as it has danced closely with its main rival. The recent turn of events at Netflix, together with Amazon’s increasingly more attractive subscription-based streaming  service and recent Kindle Fire introduction, makes the future between the two anything but predictable.

Netflix may be down, but it is still at the very center of a media revolution. Netflix’s future will almost inevitably involve some form of partnership or merger. To get out of the uncomfortable liaison with its chief rival, would Netflix be looking into another cloud, or even get much closer to another powerhouse, such as Microsoft or Google? Time will tell, but at least for the foreseeable future, the name on those familiar red envelopes will be Netflix not Quickster or even Amazon.

Netflix photo by Andre Alforque.

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There was a lot of clamor in digital music world last week as Amazon unveiled their new Cloud Player. Industry experts labeled it as a move to increase pressure on competitors such as Apple and Google, which are rumored to be releasing similar digital locker products later on this year.

Launched last Tuesday, Amazon’s Cloud Player gives users the ability to listen to their music collection anywhere they have an Internet connection, either via a Web app that’s compatible with all major browsers or an Android app. Amazon trumped Google by creating the first digital locker of it’s kind on Google’s own Android operating system. That’s no small accomplishment, although that makes you think Google is likely planning something even better.

Naturally, all of this is drawing staunch criticism from major record companies who aren’t happy with the Seattle company’s decision not to secure music licenses from labels and publishers before releasing its service.

Sony Music Entertainment already released a statement saying, “We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music, and we hope that Amazon will resolve the situation quickly by agreeing to a license with us. We are keeping all our legal options open.” Amazon is now attempting to work with major record companies to reach licensing deal agreements, but until that happens (if that happens) Amazon’s stance is that they essentially do not need licenses to launch their Cloud Player. That’s an issue that major record companies are not prepared to accept, and here’s why.

Major most major record companies have been losing money since ’98/’99 and are clutching at any revenue opportunity they can find to help get them back in the black. What they want is more money and the opportunity to get two points of sale for one item of music. Dume Forwan, owner of Seattle independent music label Fresh Chopped Beats put things in perspective in an email interview:

“This griping is a case of large companies trying to dip their beaks in the pool once and come up with two catches. They want you, the consumer to buy the product up front, and then they want Amazon to pay them again for your right to play it on a different device. Instead of being concerned with what users do with the music they legally own, these companies ought to reconsider their revenue model, take advantage of ‘the long tail’ and prosper.”

He said that most indie labels don’t take umbrage with Amazons Cloud Service at all.  It’s mostly the greedy majors that are complaining, but they’re focusing on the wrong angle to make money.

It’s important to note that Amazon’s Cloud Player is not the only digital music locker that’s available. Rdio currently offers similar services and does have a licensing agreement with major record companies, but one has to wonder if that was even necessary. Amazon’s position is this that because the files belong to users, Amazon isn’t required to obtain licenses to be able to store them on its servers and make them accessible to users. From a legal perspective, that seems true.

Let’s not forget that Amazon has a larger war chest than Rdio and is able to go toe to toe in a courtroom over this issue with Sony if that day ever comes.

“Matt Sullivan, head of Seattle indie label Light in the Attic which focuses mostly on licensing retro compilations, also shared his thoughts on the new Cloud Player.”
He admitted not really seeing this as a big issue either and said it was a problem of major record labels trying to “find income from any source possible.”

But he does have concerns about artists being paid properly as their music continues to proliferate via the Web.

“I hope that artists and copyright holders are fairly compensated. Sadly though, that seems to be getting harder and harder with the technology moving at the speed of sound,” he said via email.

Sullivan is right. The onus is on labels like Light in the Attic and others to create record contracts that are favorable to both the music artist and the label itself. Still, expecting music service providers such as Amazon to be strong-armed into paying big record companies doesn’t make sense. If cloud services live up to their potential, this issue will have huge implications for the future of digital music. Let’s all stay tuned.

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Amazon made an announcement last week about the Kindle e-reader and changes to their royalty scheme for authors that may have caught your eye. I will do a quick recap:

Amazon announced it is providing authors and publishers with a “70% royalty option” for books sold on the Kindle. The new royalty regimen seems to be squarely aimed at keeping Amazon as the’ top of mind’ publisher for e-books, especially in light of the enormous number of new readers that were unveiled at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the breathlessly awaited arrival of an Apple tablet device. The new percentage of 70%, from the current royalty of 35% per title, comes with a number of restrictions. These include:

• The actual price of the book must fall between $2.99 and $9.99 and be at least 20% below the lowest price of a physical edition of the same book.
• It has to sell for the same price, or less, as it does with competing booksellers.
• It has to be available everywhere the author or publisher has intellectual property rights.

According to Amazon’s announcement, “the 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books). At launch, the 70 percent royalty option will only be available for books sold in the United States.” To see the entire announcement, go here.

My take: The royalties question is very important to authors, obviously, as that’s how they eat.  Amazon’s announcement has a sobering effect on competitors and publishing houses, as many authors may opt to move their works to direct publishing by Amazon, foregoing the services (and fees) associated with working with a publishing house.

There are a couple of other considerations to keep in mind. First, with this announcement, Amazon is giving authors the ammunition to go to publishing houses and ask the royalty question, “With Amazon willing to give 70% royalties on my work, what are you willing to do for me?” This will not be an easy discussion and will require publishers to explain in very clear and specific ways what the value proposition is of working with them instead of going direct to Amazon. I foresee a publishing industry shakeout over the next two years that is partially driven by this question.

There is also another piece of data to note. According to a New York Times article of January 22, 2010 entitled “With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell”, one of the hottest ways to boost your visibility as a struggling author is to give your work away (or, more specifically, some of it). Several authors and publishers, apparently having read and considered Chris Anderson’s “Free” polemic, have decided to test it out on up-and-coming authors. Apparently it works. According to the article, free versions of an authors work can show up somewhere in the top 5 of the Amazon Kindle’s top-seller list, and has shown to drive sale of the authors other works. In one example:

“In October, the most recent month for which she has statistics, Ms. Brashear (a publisher) said Samhain offered free digital versions of “Giving Chase,” a romance novel by Lauren Dane, leading to 26,897 downloads. But paid purchases of some of Ms. Dane’s other novels jumped exponentially. Her earlier novel “Chased,” which sold 97 copies in September, sold 2,666 digital units in October, and another of her previous books, “Taking Chase,” which sold 119 copies in September, sold 3,279 in the month in which a free download was available.” (New York Times, January 22, 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/books/23kindle.html?pagewanted=2&sq=amazon kindle&st=cse&scp=2)

With Amazon offering great royalties to authors, plus growing data around the effectiveness of distributing and author’s works for free and for fee on the Amazon platform, how do the competitors respond? What will publishers do to provide the kind of valuable service they have available to authors to keep them from going direct? If Authors do stay with their publishers, how do they compete for visibility and attention in a burgeoning sea of authors for an audience willing to pay for their work?

I believe there is a sea change in the works, much like what newspaper journalism has experienced in the past few years. Authors and publishers are going to have to rework and rethink their relationships with each other and how to gain the kind of foothold that will allow them to remain in business….even if the business doesn’t quite look like what it did ten years ago.

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I bring this to your attention for three reasons:

(1) It’s a good entrepreneurial model.  In February 2007, Author Jill Keto and her husband Dan, saw the writing on the wall for the global economy. But they knew it could take up to two years before any book saw the light of day via old media publishing timelines (gatekeepers, agents, etc.).

So they self-published on Amazon for $40 and watched the title climb to #3 under “Recession” books.  Jill says that they now have a six-figure deal with Simon & Schuster, as well as some prime bookshelf real estate with Barnes & Noble and Target. (backstory on S&S: Jill cold-called the company’s president on the day that her assistant just happened to be out — so the publishing mogul picked up the phone herself.  Jill gave her elevator speech and she  Fedexed out her finished product that same day).

(2) I was personally introduced via “Linked-In” to Seattle-based Jill from future MCDM’er, Chris Hare:

Hi Hanson,

I recently met Jill Keto at the local coffee shop and would like to introduce you to her and her work. Jill is dynamic to say the least and has tapped into the groundswell of social media to get the word out and land her first book contract with Simon & Schuster. Her content is timely as she focuses on helping women and their families survive and thrive in the recession.

(3) I’m going to propose an MCDM partnership to my Multimedia Storytelling students, as she begins her marketing campaign in earnest (which she describes as “placement, word-of-mouth and television”) in the next few weeks.  She’ll be a guest in our third class, and one of our assignments could be to figure out how to produce some short, MCDM-branded online videos that capture the book’s practical, humorous essence.  Jill is supposed to be leveraging traditional media with possible TV appearances on Good Morning America and Today, so it’d be interesting to see what we can do on the social media storytelling side (and how much attention we can garner for our program).

And of course, what I like most about Jill, given my own leanings, is her provocative, independent style, as evidenced in her introduction:

Discovered within one week that having a corporate job is about as much fun as jamming an ice pick into your leg.  My disdain for authority got me branded as a boat rocker and general troublemaker.

Check out Jill’s blog at www.practicalchic.org.

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This will certainly be noticed by many other retailers. It’s interesting to note that without limited privacy features, anybody with a Twitter account can see who is following amazondeals; this is like giving away valuable user information.

Is it going to change the way Twitter was originally intended for? Will Twitter be exposed to commercial spamming and ultimately turn off its users? Note currently there is no restriction for sending reply tweets to anybody on Twitter.

Twitter’s election day pin has no direct relationship with Amazon, but I thought Twitter is being very smart about marketing and getting more momentum by the day.

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