A number of smart libraries in the UK have started to lend ebooks in addition to their normal circulation.

George Parker is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com. Every week he shares his opinions on the advertising world with PSFK.

Google
Experiment rapidly, embrace failure.
Apple
Every aspect of your brand should be as good as the product.
Zipcar
Stop selling products, start selling services.
GOOD Magazine
Set the agenda and let your customers spread the conversation.
Amazon
Identify parts of our business that could be offered as additional services.
Facebook
Create the playground and let your customers define your offering.
Virgin
Think big , think small. Amaze customers with your audacity, please them with your attention to detail and customer service.
Twitter
Stay flexible, allow your audience to dictate how your services or products are used.
IKEA
Take a wider view of the shopping experience, making each step along the path to purchase simpler and, more [...]

Whether reinventing how we read books via the Kindle, offering businesses digital and logistical infrastructure solutions, or introducing environmentally friendly packaging, the tech giant seems to constantly be trying to improve and extend its offering.
The company continues to re-evaluate its business, innovating based off its strengths, and finding new ways to generate revenue from every part of the business – all while providing its users with an enhanced experience.
The company’s success is due in large part to an excellent understanding of its customers, a strong sense of community, and a successful push towards serving an “eco-system of needs.”
Lesson for Business:
Identify [...]

In light of yesterday’s stunning announcement that Amazon had acquired Zappos for the sum of $807 million (plus), Seth Godin wonders what that deal actually means for Amazon, particularly when it’s clear that they already has plenty of shoes.
And while it’s hard to argue that eliminating the competition in one bold move is reason enough for the deal, Godin views things a bit differently, pointing to a number of valuable assets, many of which you can rarely buy for any price:
What you buy when you spend that kind of money is what matters now. And what matters is:

A corporate culture [...]

Less than two weeks after the release of the Greenpeace report “Slaughtering the Amazon”, which analyzes the Amazon cattle industry, Brazil’s three largest supermarket chains, Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar, decided to suspend contracts with suppliers found to be involved with deforestation in the region.
Furthermore, the Brazilian Association of Supermarkets (Abras) stated that guidelines will be developed to prevent that from happening again, and independent auditing will be allowed to ensure that cattle products are sourced only from legally explored Amazon lands.
Following this trend, Adidas and Timberland stated that they too [...]

PSFK has finally received the first two weeks sales figures of their version of PSFK.com on Kindle. We’ve discovered that a whole one person subscribed to the ‘trial version’ of PSFK. Amazon recently opened up their Kindle platform to allow bloggers to publish and sell their content through the e-retailers site.
During the first two week period of sales we added a button advertising the service to all our newsletters, website pages and RSS feeds – approximately 250,000 impressions. As some of you may remember, I penned the opinion piece ‘Kindle’s Not Working‘ last week and these sales figures surely prove [...]

Two recent cover-stories in the weekly news magazines have counter arguments about innovation in the US. Business Week suggests that innovation is declining while Time says it’s booming…

I originally drafted a post about the Kindle about a month ago but I thought I was being mean – so I let it sit and stew for a while. The release of the Apple 3.0 and some recent comments by Jeff Jarvis has made me dust it off with a quick update:
So there it is sat on my desk with a dead battery – 8 weeks after I bought the second generation ebook reader direct from Amazon. Unused, unloved, unnecessary. I feel like I’ve wasted my money.
My reaction to the whole genre: surely ebooks need a cigarette moment? Ebook [...]

This is probably a first as far as advertising with the Kindle is concerned. Showtime is offering users the chance to download the pilot script of its new series ‘Nurse Jackie‘ for free – the show will premiere on June 8th. The download, which will be available till August 31st of this year, will be advertised via banner ads on Amazon.com and Kindle storefronts and will include cover art, the title page and the show’s scheduling information. Media agency OMD, which is working with Showtime on this initiative, says that the lack of a proper advertising model for the Kindle [...]

Get trends and ideas inspiration anyway you want. PSFK can now be read through Amazon’s ebook reader Kindle. The powers-that-be over at the book retail company have decided we’re worth $1.99 for a monthly subscription – but you can test it out for 14 days for free too.
It will be interesting to see if anyone subscribes to content which is free elsewhere and if they do at what volume. Check it out here – and if you do subscribe, do leave one of those Customer Reviews.
PSFK On Kindle

US Chat show host Charlie Rose has released the video of his conversation with Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. The talk focuses on the launch of Kindle2

Some interesting stuff here. This quote on use of the Kindle and Kindle content on other devices:
This is not for people who want to snack on digital content. If you have a camera you also have a camera on the cell phone – and we learn from that. People want to have Kindle on your cellphone when you’re in the line at the store but when you get home you can pick up your Kindle [...]

Writing in the Guardian Technology blog, Bobbie Johnson reacts to yesterday’s product update announcement by Amazon with an interesting point. The tech columnist wonders if the Kindle can’t be successful while there are no pirates or “criminally-minded” users who are trying to hack the system to get and share free content:
Everyone’s looking at the pattern they’ve seen in music and video – an old medium changed radically by technology – and waiting for it to hit the book world. But the chances of that happening right now are very small indeed. Why? It’s fairly straightforward.
The real reason that the music [...]

After much anticipation, Amazon unveiled their second go at the Kindle this morning, updating their divisive e-book reader with more memory, a new 5-way navigation controller, a better battery life and an upgraded screen (offering 16 shades of gray rather than the previous 4).
The new device is thinner (thinner than a no. 2 pencil in fact – see pic) and arguably less of an eyesore, but it’s still a few steps away from being a serious game changer. Amazon said the device will have the capacity for mobile device-to-Kindle syncing sometime in the future, but no word on when (it [...]

A couple of weeks ago we asked the question is this a time of recession or a moment of reorder? With 6.3 million items ordered on its peak day of December 15, Amazon has announced that the 2008 holiday season. While traditional retail slumped by 4% during the period, the online retailer managed to be able to sell products of all sizes and varieties with no problem.
Top sellers in consumer electronics included Samsung’s 52-inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV, the Apple iPod touch 8 GB and the Acer Aspire One 8.9-inch netbook.
Top video game console was the Nintendo Wii which “dominated” [...]