I’ve just been given the most amazing tip about Amazon’s new gadgets. It looks like Amazon may have quietly put 3 devices through the FCC over the past few months, not just the one we expect to see tomorrow.

Update: I just flipped my prediction around. It used to be 2 tablets and an ebook reader. I changed because only the 1400 is referred to as a tablet. The other 2 are "electronic display devices".

Something you need to know about Amazon is that they are incredibly secretive when they can get away with it. They’ve sent several Kindles through the FCC, and they concealed the Kindle the exact same way each time. Amazon created a dummy corporation for each Kindle and then had the FCC hide all the identifying documents (photos diagrams, user manual, etc).

Today I have for you 3 FCC listings for 3 devices from 3 companies from 3 different parts of the USA. The listings have nothing in common aside from the fact that they have everything hidden, they’re using similar model numbers, and they have pretty much the same FCC label design as on the current Kindles.

Two of the devices have Wifi and the other has 3G. I disagree with my source about which is which, but we agree that these belong to Amazon. The similar model numbers and virtually identical labels are too much of a coincidence.

The image above is from one of the listings. That is the backside of a Wifi equipped D01400. I’d estimate, based on the diagonal, that it has a 7″ screen. I expect that to be the device that Amazon will show off tomorrow. BTW, the D01400 is from a dummy company by the name of Okakopa. The name is a Hawaiian word that means October. Some one at Amazon clearly has my sense of humor.

I don’t have time today to trace the dummy companies back to Amazon; that would have to wait for business hours, anyway. But I will be taking a deeper look into this later in the week.

D01200 (FCC)

D01400 (FCC)

D01100 (FCC)

That’s what the gdgt blog are reporting, but I’m going to take this one with a grain of salt. Ryan Block posted this morning that his sources at Amazon told him that on Wednesday Amazon will be launching the tablet they have, not the tablet they want.

According to Ryan, Amazon had to make a number of compromises in order to get the Kindle out the door in time for this holiday season. They decided to go outside their own team at Lab126 and signed a deal with Quanta. The kTab is reportedly going to look a lot like the Playbook, and that’s because the Playbook was the starting point (according to Ryan). This shortcut was used because of time. If Amazon want to ship by the end of October this was their only option.

It sounds like Amazon and Quanta made a number of changes to the design, but we won’t know what they are until Wednesday. The tablet is "supposed to be pretty poor" and is a "stopgap" measure. It sounds like Amazon are afraid of what Barnes & Noble might launch next month, and that they’re pretty anxious to get something out the door – anything, just so long as it ships.

TBH I never took the "kTab as an iPad Killer" idea very seriously, and now I clearly had a good reason. The kTab is clearly going to be about as well designed as the original Kindle. The software features will be good, but the general performance and appearance might turn stomachs.

At least that’s what the latest rumors say. I’m not taking a side until I see it on Wednesday.

Update: I’ve just finished reading and thinking about the TechCrunch rumor that Wednesday’s announcement will be the Kindle Fire. MG Siegler also reports thatthe kTab will be based on a Texas Instruments OMAPs CPU, same as on a number of newer Android gadgets (and the Playbook). The kTab is also believed to be running Android v2.1, which is not a good thing. That is last year’s OS and it feels like it.

I’m not so sure I beleive it. First of all, there’s no trademark for the term. Amazon have not registered Kindle Fire or Fire. That tends to make me doubt that they will use it. More importantly, Kindle Fire doesn’t sound quite right. It’s a verb- noun pairing, and while it does roll off the tongue it doesn’t quite have the same alliteration of just Kindle.

On the other hand, this is the guy who got the first look at the kTab. He clearly has inside sources so this report is probably true.

Amazon will be holding a press event on Wednesday, and everyone pretty much expects them to announce the Kindle Tablet. But have you considered what else they might announce?

I came across some code last night that might give us a clue.

Yesterday I posted about some new code that was found on one of Amazon’s webpages. An industrious Kindle fan had noticed that there were references to "prime ebooks", and that there were menu options for returning and deleting them (just like library books).

There was also a detail in the revealed code that I had noticed but didn’t mention in the post. I was planning to save it for Monday or Tuesday and then get the attention of the major tech blogs. (But then one of my readers pointed it out and I kinda have to post now.)

There’s unused code on the "Manage Your Kindle" page that (when enabled) is going to let you manage your uploaded ebooks in the exact same way as you manage any of the ebooks, periodicals, or audiobooks that you’ve purchased from Amazon.

And I’m not just talking about a fragment here or there; the code appears to be completely written and is waiting to be turned on. You can see a sample above.

The image above shows some of the possible attributes for a Kindle (has Wifi, Prime_ebooks, Pdocs_Archival_Support, etc). One of the attributes will track whether a given Kindle can have the personal documents backed up onto Amazon’s servers.

Now, we don’t know that current Kindles will get the personal document support, but it’s clear that some piece of Kindle hardware will  be getting that support. That’s the whole point of "Pdocs_Archival_Support".

This means that there might be a Kindle that will have the equivalent of the Cloud Drive that Amazon launched a few months back. You’ve always been able to upload docs to  the Cloud Drive but you couldn’t access them from any current Kindle. That is probably going to change.

Needless to say, that is a big deal and it’s arguably more important than the "prime ebook" hints. Of course, what could be even more important is that this new support might also archive your annotations as well as the ebooks. Now that would be a nice additional feature.

Everyone assumes that the Kindle Tablet will be launched on Wednesday, and it is safe to assume that the kTab will have the Cloud Drive integrated into the software. Amazon will already let you upload all sorts of files to the CD, so it would be a little silly if their own tablet couldn’t read the personal Kindle ebooks that the kTab can get from the CD.

I suspect that the personal Kindle ebooks will actually be stored in your Cloud Drive and that would mean that the Kindles themselves might get better integration with the CD. I don’t know for sure that this is a sign of better Cloud Drive integration, but you have to admit that it is the most likely possibility.

I was handed some juicy insider info the other day and oh my, is it a surprise.

Barnes & Noble is rumored to be releasing a replacement NookColor some time in October. All the unsubstantiated rumors had come out of Asia, so I wasn’t sure that I  should take them seriously. I did, but that was only because B&N have been clearing out the refurbished units at a decent discount. And until today the unsubstantiated rumors were all I had.

According to my source, Barnes & Noble held a planning meeting last week. One of the topics discussed in the meeting was B&N’s marketing plans for their ebook readers and how they would be promoted next quarter.

I have, in my hot little hands, a slide that may have been used in that planning  meeting. It mentions that B&N will have 3 ebook readers next quarter, not 2. According to the slide, the NookColor will be getting a brother tablet. Now, I’ve been asked not to post the slide, unfortunately; it might be possible to trace it back to my source. Here’s what it says:

• Nook EPD

• Smart Touch $139

• Nook Color

• Encore $249
• Acclaim $349

There’s also a notation that it has been approved by WL/JI, and I believe those are the initials of William Lynch (CEO of B&N) and James Iannone (head of B&N Digital Products). (Before I go further, let me confirm that Encore and Smart Touch are valid product names for the current 6″ Nook Touch and 7″ NookColor.) That part is legit.

All I have right now are the names and prices of the tablets, but that alone tells me several details. First and foremost, B&N will keep the NookTouch at $139, and they will have the 2 NookColors at higher price points. The Encore and Acclaim tablets will be priced at  $249 and $349.

The Acclaim name is new.

Given that B&N kept the name Encore, it seems likely that the Encore tablet will keep the 7″ screen from the current model. I would also guess that the new tablet will be a hardware upgrade from the current one – that’s why the price is the same.

On the other hand, the Acclaim tablet could be anything. And that makes it so much more fun – I can speculate to my heart’s content. Here’s my idea.

I think the Acclaim name was chosen becuase of the connotations. It’s the name of a defunct gaming company, so just saying the name in certain circles will be enough to identify the tablet as a gaming device.

Now, the trademark for that name is owned by Playdom (a Disney sub). We already know that the current NookColor has apps from Disney, so clearly they have a working relationship with B&N and that tells us that Disney would be in a position to know about the new NookColor. This would suggest that Disney already know about the name and they are okay with it.

Aside from the name connection, there’s little to suggest that this is a gaming device. But I think it is, and that would mean that the Acclaim tablet is the Android tablet that GameStop are currently beta-testing. No one knows any details yet about the Gamestop tablet, aside from the fact it’s based on the hardware of an existing tablet. But ever since a reader pointed out the relationship between B&N and Gamestop, I have believed that they were using the hardware.

Gamestop have a connection to B&N. Disney have a connection to B&N. Wouldn’t it make a lot of sense for the NookColor Acclaim to be sold by both retailers and use content from Disney (and other developers, of course)? The 2 retailers could share the ecosystem and the development cost while using the tablet for non-competing purposes. The guy who tipped me to the idea that B&N and Gamestop might share a tablet is expecting them to do just that.

Of course, all I have are the names and prices, so this could be completely off the wall.

Wistron, one of Kobo’s hardware partners, sent a new gadget through the FCC today. It’s called the Kobo Vox and that’s all I know.

Now, I would normally speculate about the gadget but I’m not sure what it is. The screen shape is rather odd for a tablet or ebook reader; the (screen) corners are far too rounded for most screens that I know of. No large screen tablet has corners that rounded. You can sometimes see that on small devices but not often.

Note that I’m talking about the inside corners, not the shell.

Wistron is calling it an "eReader Tablet", and it was test for Wifi(n). We also know that it has a microSD card slot and the model number is K080.

It’s my guess that this is a device that Kobo worked on and then decided not to release. I suspect that Wistron sent it through the FCC becuase they have a business partner that is interested.

Update: I’ve gotten a hint that Kobo will release this tablet. Whoops. Also, this is now a 7″ tablet.

We’ll know more in early November; that’s when the embargo lifts.

FCC

Do you recall how last month a rumor went around that the Kindle was supposed to get library ebook support some time in September? Guess what: it wasn’t a rumor.

It’s been just over 5 months since Amazon announced that the Kindle would get library ebooks, and it is just about to happen. Unfortunately for us, the system isn’t actually live just yet. It’s in beta at a couple libraries in the Seattle area. It’s not available elsewhere just yet

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Update: Amazon have expanded the beta to include all OverDrive partners in the US. The new service is slowly being rolled out to the 11 thousand participating libraries. I can now see that something like 50 or so libraries support the new service (as of Wednesday at Noon).

Note that not all will be getting the service right away. Also, not all of the 11 thousand libraries mentioned in the press release actually support ebooks; some are like my local library (which only has audiobooks). But whne they do, it will be offered as an additional service at no charge to the libraries.

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I found an ongoing discussion over on MobileRead this evening where several Kindle owners are trying (and succeeding) to download ebooks from their libraries. Several have reported seeing Kindle ebooks listed and I have one report of someone actually downloading an ebook to their Kindle.

The Kindle hasn’t gotten a firmware update recently, so this would suggest that there might be some unseen conversion going on to change the Epub/PDF to Kindle, and then wrap the ebook in the expiring DRM. Edit: On the other hand, one commenter pointed out that he doesn’t think the conversion is happening, and he could be right. Amazon might be serving up the relevant Kindle file from their own catalog.

Update: The commenter also made me catch something I had missed. There are thousands of Kindle ebooks in each library system. I seriously doubt that they had the funds to buy all those new ebooks, so they must be using the existing license to cover for the Kindle copy when it is loaned. That was one of the details hinted at back in April and it’s good to see it confirmed.

Update: The Kindle is also spuuposed to have a new firmware update, v3.3, which enables the new service. It’s not avaialble yet but some people in the Seattle area report that they got it as an over-the-air update.

Neither Amazon nor OverDrive have announced anything, and in fact I’m still waiting to hear back from my contacts at Overdrive. But I do know that Amazon’s help pages now refer to the library ebooks as a current feature, and OverDrive already list the Kindle as having beta support. The service is indeed live.

You can see proof of the new support on the website for the King County Library System. Their website promises that the new support is up and running right now. The other library is the Seattle Public Library.

So this news isn’t as great as you being able to download the library ebooks today, but it’s still a big deal. It means that fairly soon you will be able to download ebooks from any of OverDrive’s 11 thousand plus partner libraries in the US and read them on your Kindle. According to Overdrive, all 3 generations of the Kindle are supported (see the screen shot above). Unfortunately, you’ll need a wifi equipped model for direct downloads; you cannot download a Kindle library ebook over 3G (no one wants to pay the data cost).  Go dig out that USB cable; you’ll need it. BTW, if you check with Amazon, all the apps are supported too.

If you really want library ebooks on your Kindle, I would suggest that you go ask your local OverDrive  library partner. They can then bug Overdrive about the new features.

P.S. I will add an update here when I hear back from Overdrive.

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Earlier today I showed you a couple of product pages for Kindle ebooks on Amazon.fr. Now I can show you something even better.

Merrill Goussot, the editor of Le Journal du Kindle, sent me a screen shot (at right) and a link. Part of the Kindle Store is up and running right now. Well, it’s up at the moment. You can’t actually do anything because none of the product pages are available.

To be honest, the screen shot doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know. The French Kindle Store is going to look like the US, UK, and German Kindle Stores. But if this page reflects the prices accurately, the French Kindle Store will have higher prices than the German one.

And it does give us one more piece of info that confirms the rumor I posted a couple weeks back. The CEO of Hachette Livre is rumored to have dropped a few hints in following a radio interview. I’m told that he said a new Kindle was coming to France on 8 October, but it’s clear now that he was referring to the Kindle Store.

Should the new Kindle Store open 18 days from now,  it will be Amazon’s 3rd local Kindle Store, following Germany and the UK.

Thanks, Merrill.

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Early yesterday morning I brought you the news that Amazon appeared to have opened the Android Appstore to international customers. I quickly got confirmation from a friend in the Netherlands and from a tech blog in India.

Reports then followed which confirmed access from UK, Canada, South Africa, Venezuela, Finland, Australia,  Romania, and a dozen more countries.

Well, I’ve gotten a bunch of complaints in the past 12 hours that Amazon have cut off the international access, closed the loophole, or whatever it is they did. I’ve been told that it is cut off in the UK, Greece, India, and Canada. Sorry folks, it looks like I was right yesterday when I guess that this might have been a technical error.

As much as we may regret it, this really shouldn’t come as a surprise. the normal pattern for Amazon would be to announce a big and noise public launch. At the very least there should have been a press release, not not just a quiet realization that the Appstore was open to the world.

This would have been an obvious move for Amazon, and while I thought it might be an accident I also hoped that Amazon would let it continue. Making the Appstore available outside the U.S. would have been the obvious next move for Amazon. This wouldn’t just be to drive more traffic to the Appstore but also because of the upcoming Kindle tablet. More users would attract more developers and the more content that Amazon can offer users of such devices, the better to keep them using and buying the products.

P.S. I’m still waiting to hear back from Amazon on this. I will amend this post when I get a response.

Liz Castro has tipped me to this great new way to download and convert webpages. It’s called GrabMyBooks.

It’s a Firefox plug-in that functions kinda like dotEpub, only it’s better. GrabMyBooks will not only get the content from a webpage, it will also let you combine several pages into one. And it gets better. You can also pause the conversion midstream and edit the content to fix the more annoying formatting errors and generally clean up the files. it will also accept RSS feeds as a source.

Now, dotEpub does have one advantage in that it is not tied to Firefox; GrabMyBooks is  currently only available as a Firefox plug-in, which is fine by me.

P.S. Mike Cane ranted and raved about it, which should tell you how good it is.

I’ve just gotten word from an Australian gadget blog I follow that Amazon have quietly expanded their Android Appstore to include Australia. It’s not mentioned on their support pages, so I’m still waiting for confirmation.

My source reports that they successfully installed the Appstore client and registered it with their existing (Australian) Amazon account. This is great, but does it work anywhere else? I ask because I would expect that Amazon enabled Canada, UK, NZ, as well as Australia, only they haven’t announced it yet.

Final Update: Amazon appear to have closed off the loophole. The Appstore is back to being US-only again.

Update: I just got word on Twitter that the Amazon Appstore now works in the Netherlands. That’s confirmation enough for me.

Second Update: I got a pingback from an Android blog in India. They just used the Appstore.

Third Update: The Appstore has been confirmed for  UK, Canada, South Africa, Venezuela, Finland, Ireland, Austria, Estonia, Romania, Poland, and more. <- I’m going to cut it off there and call it good.

I’d love to have everyone try this and report back.

If you want to install the app store client (and you already have an Amazon account), open the browser on your Android gadget and go here: http://www.amazon.com/app-email. That is the direct download link for the install file.

Amazon launched the Appstore back in March, and it has been slowly growing since then. With around 15 thousand apps, it’s still not nearly as large as Android Market, which is the largest app store in the world with nearly half a million apps available. But there’s also something to be said about smaller is better. Take the NookColor App Store, for example, with its curated experience. It might only have a few hundred apps but they’re the good ones.

You know, this expansion could be a technical snafu. It might be due to someone changing the wrong setting on a server. TBH, the fact that Amazon have not announced the expansion makes me believe that  this was an accident, and not part of the planned expansion.

But if it’s not a snafu then it’s a sign of Amazon finally pushing their non-Kindle content sales beyond the US. Who knows, we might see the Kindle games, mp3 store, and streaming video follow suit.

And possibly even the Kindle Tablet.

The IA announced Friday night that they had achieved a new milestone. It’s 6 years now that they’ve been scanning and uploading public domain titles and this is the week that they released their 3,ooo,oooth title.

The 3 millionth upload is from the rare book collection of the University of Toronto:

The Internet Archive launched in 2005, and since that day they have scanned and uploaded over 2 million documents.They also host another million documents that have been scanned by other groups and individuals, including around 37 thousand titles from Project Gutenberg.

The growing collection is due in large part to the one hundred+ people who work in IA scanning centers in 27 libraries in 6 countries.   The IA are also making an effort to archive hard disks, film, , and other modern storage mediums, as well as preserving the books that have been scanned. (While you might think that a hard disk is more durable than a paper book, the latter can actually have a longer lifespan.) If you look through their collection carefully, you can also find the occasional odd item like the hard disk from a 1970s Cray supercomputer, or a braille Playboy.

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Last Friday night The Economist published an anecdote about how Ikea had planned for the death of the book. They were supposedly about to release a new deeper bookcase and were also now pushing doors for their bookcases. (I covered it here.)

TO SEE how profoundly the book business is changing, watch the shelves. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous “BILLY” bookcase. The flat-pack furniture giant is already promoting glass doors for its bookshelves. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome—anything, that is, except books that are actually read.

My problem with the anecdote was that it sounded too much like an urban legend to be plausible. I didn’t believe the story, and guess what?

I was right, and the many sites who posted this story, including The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The Daily Mail, Gizmodo, The Los Angeles Times, TechCrunch, TeleRead, NeatoRama, Acualitte, eBouquin were all wrong.

My counter argument could be summed up as:

• Ikea always had doors for the bookcases,
• they already had deeper bookcases, and
• it was the wrong time of year for a new model.

I was right on 2 out of 3, which isn’t bad.

Edward Champion of the Reluctant Habits blog contacted Ikea and he was told that the death of books had nothing to do with the new deeper Billy bookcase. It did exist, but it had also been under development for a couple years now. Also, the existing 11″ model isn’t going anywhere; the new 15″ Billy will simply supplement it.

BTW, this new deeper Billy model is the same depth as the existing Bergsbo bookcase, and that one isn’t going away either. I’ve also heard via another source that Ikea have had doors for the Billy pretty much since it launched in 1979. Ebooks had nothing to do with the doors, either.

My rule of thumb is that when a story sounds to good to be true, it probably is. And this one sounded too pat and too much like an urban legend. It’s right up there with not eating PopRock and Coke (because your stomach will rupture and you will die).

via Reluctant Habits

images by jepoirrier, mobilyazilar

Earlier today the Philadelphia Media Network beat out Hearst to become the first newspaper publisher to bundle a tablet along with the digital subscription.

I first reported on this story back when PMN first announced the bundle in July (here, here). They didn’t mention at the time which tablets they would use for the bundle, but they did discuss the general idea.  The deal they planned to offer was going to work pretty much the same as any cellphone plan. You would get the tablet for a reduced price in exchange for a long term subscription commitment.

Today they unveiled the tablet for bundle. It’s the Archos Arnova 10 G2. For a budget tablet, it’s not bad, but it’s nothing compared to the iPad. It’s running Android v2.3 Gingerbread on a 1GHz RockChip 2918 CPU with a 10″ capacitive touchscreen. It has Wifi, 4GB Flash storage, a microSD card slot, VGA webcam, and USB Host.

Curiously enough, this tablet doesn’t appear to be available yet in the US, which makes me wonder how the Philadelphia Media Network got their hands on them. In any case, it’s a decent tablet.

They’re offering the Arnova 10 G2 with 1 year and 2 year subscriptions, and the initial supply is limited to just 5 thousand units. The bundle originally was going to include just one subscription, but apparently they decided to throw in both publications (Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News) in for the one price. The 2 year subscription comes out to $340, and the one year subscription works out to cost you around $286.

• 2 year plan: $100 for the tablet and $10 a month for a digital subscription for both publications
• 1 year plan: $130 for the tablet and $13 a month for a digital subscription

Curiously enough, you’re actually getting 3 subscriptions, not 2. It’s not completely clear, but it looks like you get the digital editions of the 2 newspapers and you also get a subscription for the Philadelphia Inquirer Android app, which appears to be a different publication. The app boasts interactive content and looks to have content not offered in the regular digital edition.

All in all, I think it’s a great idea. Now that they know they’ll have this installed base of 10″ tablets, the Philadelphia Media Network might start customizing a digital edition for this tablet size.  I’ve never seen the electronic version of their newspapers, but I’m hoping this move will make them more readable.

While there is no evidence to prove it, that is what Arnaud Nourry, the CEO of Hachette Livre, said in an interview last week.

The other Nathan at the other ebook blog has turned up a radio interview that M. Nourry gave to Soft Power, a French radio show. I don’t speak French, but I’ve double checked with a second source and the guy does indeed say that the new Kindle is coming the second Saturday in October.

Update: I’m now told that my confirming source was wrong. There is no mention of a Kindle in the radio interview. The only evidence comes from  tweets posted by the journalist who interviewed Noury. Sorry, folks. This correction comes from Merrill Goussot, the editor of Le Journal du Kindle. Thanks, Merrill.

So it’s coming on a Saturday. Since when do Amazon release product on a Saturday?

Now, you’d think that the CEO of one of the world’s largest publishers would have some idea when the next Kindle is due, and this isn’t the first time that a CEO leaked details. So I think that he was right about the Kindle coming soon but wrong on the date.

I wonder if he had the month right but the day wrong? What if the correct date is actually 18 October? That is a Tuesday, and Amazon like to launch products on Tuesdays. But there’s a second possibility. November 8 is also a Tuesday, so what if it’s not coming out until November?

On the other hand, what if this is actually a reference to the local Kindle Store? Perhaps it might launch on 8 October.

In any case, this is just one rumor piled upon a bunch of others. Let’s see what turns up next week.

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There’s an interesting sound bite from an article that everyone is repeating today, and it is nonsense. The original source is an anecdote used to start a day old article on the Econ0mist website, and it truly is a sound bite:

TO SEE how profoundly the book business is changing, watch the shelves. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous “BILLY” bookcase. The flat-pack furniture giant is already promoting glass doors for its bookshelves. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome—anything, that is, except books that are actually read.

Lots of people, including The Daily Mail, Time, Gizmodo, LATimes, TechCrunch, TeleRead, NeatoRama, Acualitte, and eBouquin, are repeating the story because it is a great sound bite.

Unfortunately, no one took a moment to stop and think it through. The story is anecdotal and it is nonsense.

The problem with this is rather simple: one detail is out of context and the other is probably wrong. Ikea have always had doors for their bookshelves, including glass. They have the doors, yes, but to derive some meaning from the claim that they are already promoting doors is disingenuous; Ikea have never made any effort to sell me anything, much less doors for the bookshelves.

Also, I’m fairly sure that Ikea will not be releasing a new Billy model. It’s my understanding that they introduce new models with each new catalog. They already sent out a catalog for this year; it came out in June. That would suggest that they will not release a new model until next year.

BTW, the Billy line might be getting a new deeper model (though I cannot find any evidence), but it will simply replace/compete with one of Ikea’s existing deep bookshelves.  They already have a couple, including some shelving units that are so deep they are closer to being cabinets.

Update: It turns out that I am half right. Scroll down and you will see a pingback from a Swedish (?) blog. The blogger was told by Ikea that they would soon have a deeper Billy bookcase. The new Billy is one that Ikea already sell; it’s just going to get a different brand name.

I hate stories like this. It’s one of those stories that sounds so good that few bother to double check the details (sometimes I fall for them too). What’s worse is that this little anecdote is overshadowing the rest of a highly detailed, well written Econ0mist article.

images by jepoirrier, mobilyazilar