A slow-moving disaster is making its way down the Mississippi River. Authorities fear that floodwaters will exceed records set during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, one of the greatest natural disasters in American history. Tributaries that flow into the Mississippi are already backing up, and disaster areas have been…
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Activist group denies link with theft of up to 100m personal and credit card details, saying its aims are political The online activism group Anonymous has denied insinuations by Sony that it was involved in the hacker breaches of the PlayStation Network (PSN) and Online Entertainment (SOE) systems in which between 77m and 100m personal details were stolen, and potentially as many credit card details. The riposte was delivered in a letter published online soon after the corporation delivered a letter to US politicians in which it claimed that private investigators called in to examine the break-in had discovered a file entitled “Anonymous” and containing the words “We are Legion” – part of Anonymous’s slogan. The group issued a 900-word statement in which it insisted that it does not steal credit card data and that its aims are purely political – in marked contrast, it said, to its adversaries, who include Sony because of the action the company took against a number of users who had found ways around some protections built into the PlayStation 3 console. “Anonymous has never been known to have engaged in credit card theft,” the statement said. “Many of our corporate and governmental adversaries, on the other hand. have been known to have lied to the public about Anonymous and about their own activities.” It said that the credit card theft – which Sony said came about after four servers on its network spontaneously rebooted and began behaving “oddly” – did not fit Anonymous’s “modus operandi”: “Whoever did perform the credit card theft did so contrary to the ‘modus operandi’ and intentions of Anonymous. Public support is not gained by stealing credit card info and personal identities, we are trying to fight criminal activities by corporations and governments, not steal credit cards.” Anonymous is a loosely organised group of hackers of various levels of expertise with an onion-like structure, where the most experienced and skilled hackers work in the centre, widening to the less experienced but sympathetic “members” at the fringes. They organise themselves through online chatrooms; few members know each others’ real-life identities. Membership is international and probably includes a couple of thousand people at any time. In the past the group has targeted the Church of Scientology, Visa and Mastercard, and various middle Eastern governments in the pursuit of what it sees as transparency and individual liberty. Sony has also blamed Anonymous for carrying out a denial-of-service attack which made it difficult or impossible to spot the break-in because Sony’s engineers were trying to cope with the online attack that was knocking out their servers. The statement from Anonymous – which appears to have been authored by a number of people, but uses American spelling and grammar throughout – does not deal with the ramifications of the attack, and Sony’s assertion that it enabled the theft by distracting the security team. The timing of the break-in to Sony’s systems is unlikely to have been an accident; a malicious hacker could have used the attack by Anonymous as cover when the first break-in on 17 April was made. Anonymous had announced on 4 APril that it would attack Sony because the Japanese corporation decided to pursue legal action against George Hotz, who had discovered and then shared the “root key” of the PS3, which would mean that anyone could potentially play any game on it – including pirated ones. Anonymous insisted: “If a legitimate and honest investigation into the credit card is conducted, Anonymous will not be found liable. While we are a distributed and decentralized group, our ‘leadership’ does not condone credit card theft. We are concerned with erosion of privacy and fair use, the spread of corporate feudalism, the abuse of power and the justifications of executives and leaders who believe themselves immune personally and financially for the actions they undertake in the name of corporations and public office.” The fact that Sony has said that the people who hacked its servers erased log files to cover their steps makes it look extremely unlikely that they would also have left a text file linking them back to Anonymous if that were their origin. Anonymous Sony Hacking Data and computer security Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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Rolling coverage as voters go to the polls in elections for local government, the devolved administrations and the AV referendum 1.56pm: Time for a lunchtime summary , which is going to be short because it has been a quiet morning: • The former home secretary David Blunkett, who is opposed to AV, has said that the £250m figure cited by the the no camp as the cost of replacing first past the post with the alternative vote has been “made up” . (see 10.35am ). Blunkett said he believed it would “undoubtedly cost more”, but put the figure at £90m. • A Guardian/ICM poll predicts a resounding victory for first past the post in the referendum . The survey, conducted before the referendum, on whether to introduce the alternative vote for elections to the Commons predicts a 68% no vote with only 32% for yes. A YouGov poll for the Sun suggests 60% support for the no campaign, a 20-point lead over those in favour. But a poll by Metro shows a swing the other way, with those polled backing AV by 47% to 43%. (see 8.55am ) • The three main party leaders have all cast their votes (see 11.50am ), ( 9.59am ) and ( 9.37am ). On other fronts: • The foreign secretary, William Hague, has ordered the expulsion of a further two Libyan diplomats from the Libyan embassy in London “on the basis that their activities were contrary to the interests of the UK” . Foreign ministers are meeting in Rome to discuss plans to fund the Libyan rebels. The US has pledged to provide $25m for “non-lethal” aid. • On Syria, Alistair Burt, the foreign office minister, told Sky news sanctions against senior individuals in the Syrian regime were being considered, but added that “it’s still not too late for Syria to turn back” . Hillary Clinton has given her backing to EU sanctions against Syria. Matt Weaver is liveblogging all the latest on Libya, Syria and the Middle East unrest. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/may/05/libya-syria-middle-east-unrest-live The liveblog will resume shortly. 1.06pm: Dear Salopred – yes, London is the only region without elections other than the AV referendum (the London borough elections were last year and the mayoral and London assembly elections will be in 2012). The Lane ward poll in Peckham mentioned by supermole is a byelection for a councillor who recently stood down . 12.39pm: The Political and Constitutional Reform committee has called Nick Clegg to give evidence next Thursday on political and constitutional reform in the aftermath of AV referendum result. Clegg leads on constitutional reform in his role as deputy prime minister, and the session is part of the general scrutiny of the government’s reform programme. A press notice from the select committee, chaired by the Labour MP Graham Allen (who, incidentally, is in the yes camp for a switch to AV) states: The session is likely to focus in particular on the government’s immediate priorities, including the aftermath of the result of the referendum on the alternative vote and reform of the House of Lords, as well as the workings of coalition government. Should be interesting. 12.29pm: The FT’s Jim Pickard blogs that, contrary to some people’s expectations, a number of senior Lib Dems will be at the referendum count on Friday. They will include the former party leaders Lord Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, and the deputy leader, Simon Hughes. The UK results will be announced at the Excel Centre, in Docklands, London. Counting officers in 440 local voting areas will begin counting votes at 4pm on Friday. They will feed their local totals into one of 12 regional hubs across the UK, and the chief counting officer (Jenny Watson, from the electoral commission) will announce the regional totals as and when they come in before the final UK-wide result is declared. 11.53am: Our Ireland correspondent, Henry McDonald, has sent us this: Voters in Northern Ireland will have three ballot papers to fill in today as the province goes to the polls for elections to the assembly and local district councils. They will get a white paper for their choice of assembly candidates and a brown one for the council elections. On both of these, Northern Irish voters will vote by proportional representation with 1 as their first preference candidate, 2 their second preferred choice and so on. A third, light grey paper will be handed to each voter for the UK-wide AV referendum on electoral reform, where the vote will be cast with a simple X beside yes or no. The assembly poll will elect 108 new members to Stormont, while 582 council seats are being contested. More than 1,200,000 people are registered to vote in Northern Ireland. Polling stations opened at 7am and close at 10pm. Meanwhile, a senior police officer in the province said there will be an increased security presence due to the continued threat from republican dissidents. Deputy Chief Constable Judith Gillespie said this was to ensure there was no interference in the electoral process. 11.50am: David Cameron arrived in the rain (it’s more like drizzle) earlier to cast his referendum vote at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster before strolling off towards Downing Street, according to PA. The media tried to ask him about the impact the result may have on the coalition, but they did so in vain. 11.32am: My colleague Jon Dennis noticed the warning on his polling card, which said: “You cannot be issued with a ballot paper after 10pm, even if you are at the polling station before then.” You may remember the outcry at last year’s general election when many people were disenfranchised because they had still been in queues at 10pm. The Electoral Commission says it unsuccessfully lobbied the government to put a clause in the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill, now an Act, to ensure those still in a queue by 10pm could still vote if they had a ballot paper in their hand at the deadline point (for example, polling staff could hand out the ballot papers down the queue). So they issued guidance to chief returning officers to print the advice that Jon noticed on his polling card. The Electoral Commission has power of direction over the referendum, as opposed to the local elections. So to ensure everyone gets their say in the national poll, they instructed chief counting officers to have more polling stations (with 2,500 voters allocated to each), which should reduce the queues. (The Electoral Commission recommends this quota of voters for each station as good practice for other elections too). The cost of the referendum has been put at £81m, similar to the cost of a general election. The electorate for the referendum is around 46 million, according to the electoral watchdog. This is based on the latest available figures for registered and eligible voters in Britain (December 2010). 10.35am: Back to one of the central claims made by the no campaign about what having AV would cost. (see 9.37am ) David Blunkett, a vocal proponent of retaining first past the post, has claimed that the £250m figure cited by the no camp has been made up, according to the Times (paywall) Blunkett is quoted as saying: We are in the middle of an election campaign. People in elections use made-up figures. I have never used the £250m figure. It [AV] would undoubtedly cost more, but I have used an extra £90m. 10.27am: I seem to have confused readers in my opening post (I have amended it so that readers don’t have to get to this post to get clarity). But for those who have already read this far, I referred to STV for Scotland elections, which is actually used for the locals, not the devolved elections. Thanks, babytiger , for pointing it out. The devolved elections in Scotland are based on the mixed-member proportional representation system, ie first past the post system by constituency, with an additional member top-up by region. 9.59am: Nick Clegg voted in the Stannington area of Sheffield just after 9am. He wished the “best of luck” to Liberal Democrat candidates standing for town hall election, and urged people to come out and vote yes in the referendum to to make politics “a bit better and a bit fairer”. Here are some lines, courtesy of Press Association: Asked about the reaction on the doorstep, he said: ‘Good. Lots of people have got, obviously, questions and some people have got objections to what the government is having to do. ‘But I think most people – the vast majority of people – accept that we’re having to do a difficult job in difficult circumstances and that we’re trying do it as fairly and compassionately and responsibly as possible.’ Ed Miliband has already voted in both the Doncaster council election and the AV referendum via a postal vote. But he accompanied his fiancee, Justine Thornton, to a polling station in north London to cast her vote. The couple spent about 10 minutes at Parliament Hill school, not far from their London home, where they greeted supporters before leaving on foot. 9.37am: David Cameron has taken a slot in the Conservative-supporting Sun to focus on the AV referendum . Three-quarters of the page is devoted to a graphic with Cameron on the left, and a sombre looking Winston Churchill on the right, with “vote no to save our democracy” emblazoned above and a standfirst that reads: “Do your duty today.” Cameron urges everyone to come out and vote to avoid Britain being landed with AV: Today is a big day for our country. The AV referendum is on and our democracy is on the line. Unless enough people get out and vote today, Britain is going to end up tomorrow with a new voting system that is unfair, unclear and unpopular around the world. I’ll let the last word go to Winston Churchill. Many years ago, he described AV as ‘the stupidest, the least scientific and the most unreal’ voting system. Among the five “important reasons” cited by Cameron for voting no is the oft-repeated claim by the no camp that AV would cost a fortune, wasting money that the prime minister said could be “far better spent in our schools and hospitals”. The referendum, agreed by both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, is costing an estimated £80m, whatever happens. But the rest of the £247m quoted by the no camp is based on the predicted need to buy counting machines and/or pay the fees of vote counters with more work to do. The energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has threatened legal action over this argument, saying Australia – which uses the system – didn’t need to bring in new machines. The former Labour home secretary David Blunkett chips in his support for retaining first past the post. He lays out his arguments before concluding: I don’t think people should vote on personalities to defeat a particular party or a particular leader. I think people should vote because they want to retain one person one equal vote. Ed Miliband has urged voters not to use their referendum vote to give Nick Clegg “a kicking” because of his role in coalition government, but Blunkett’s comment makes one wonder whether the Conservatives are worried that those disgruntled with them will be voting yes for the same reasons. We shall soon see. 9.36am: Still in the Mirror, the paper has seized on a comment made by the Labour leader’s older brother, David, who has apparently described David Cameron as the “Basil Fawlty” of British politics. The Labour-supporting Mirror has obliged with a mock-up of Cameron with Manuel, Fawlty’s unappreciated waiter in the vintage British comedy. 9.21am: Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, tells the Daily Mirror that the local and devolved elections are voters’ opportunity to put “maximum pressure” on the government. His campaigning pitch has been to urge voters to send a message to the coalition about their anger at introducing policies for it has “no mandate”, such as NHS reorganisation. Miliband, who has been out campaigning in favour of the alternative vote, has tried to put the focus on significant Labour gains at the local elections. The Labour leader, who is on the same side of the fence as the Lib Dems on the referendum, has nevertheless seized on tensions within cabinet on the issue. What I’m interested in is what people want, and top of the list of voters’ concerns are the NHS, tuition fees and the cuts. And they will be asking why the Lib Dems are so hot under the collar about AV but don’t seem so hot under the collar about all these other issues. I think there is coalition land, a parallel universe where they are having this argument. And then there is the public, who are in a different place who are saying they don’t like these unseemly rows, it’s a bad way to run a government, and what we like even less is some of the policies they are pursuing, and that’s what Thursday is all about. Miliband, who took a question-and-answer session at Northfleet School for Girls in Kent yesterday as well as rallying his party, added: There’s a real sense this government doesn’t understand people and doesn’t understand people’s lives. They don’t understand the impacts they are having. They are profoundly out of touch with families struggling to get by and who are losing their tax credits, with the people losing their jobs, and who aren’t seeing the private sector jobs being created and youth unemployment with one in five people out of work. And what are they doing about it? Very little. 8.55am: Good morning. Have you been out to vote yet? (assuming you’re eligible and registered). Polls opened at 7am and close at 10pm, for those of you who didn’t opt for postal voting. Elections for the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and the Northern Ireland assembly are being held, as are polls for 279 English councils. There are also local authority elections in Northern Ireland, a UK parliamentary byelection in Leicester South and mayoral elections in Leicester, Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Torbay and Bedford. The fact that so many of the British electorate have polls going on in their backyard was the reason the Liberal Democrats wanted the referendum on whether to switch the electoral system for electing MPs to Westminster from first past the post to the alternative vote to be held today. The only region without local polls is London, raising fears that turnout in the capital for the referendum could be as low as 15%. The BBC has produced a useful timeline of events once polls close . In sum, while we can expect a few local election results before midnight (Sunderland always prides itself on being first to declare, whether it’s a general or local election), the counting process for elections is going to stretch beyond Friday because not everyone is going to start counting tonight and also because some counts take more time than others. The final Northern Ireland assembly election results are not expected to be known until late Saturday afternoon. But we will know the result of the poll everyone’s been talking about – the national referendum – by around 9-10pm tomorrow. The count, everywhere, will begin at 4pm tomorrow, thought turnout should be known by lunchtime. The issue that has caused so much tension in the coalition government and seen the Labour party split between the yes and no camps looks likely to be resolved in favour of the status quo, according to a Guardian/ICM poll . The survey predicts a 68% no vote, with just 32% for yes. A YouGov poll for the Sun suggests 60% support for the no campaign, a 20-point lead over those in favour. But a poll by Metro shows a swing the other way, with those polled backing AV by 47% to 43%. Alternative vote AV referendum Scottish elections 2011 Welsh elections 2011 Welsh Assembly Government Welsh politics Scottish politics Local elections Local elections 2011 Northern Ireland elections 2011 Northern Irish politics Elections 2011 Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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More science? More on emissions or energy or economics? Tell us where we should we take the FAQs next • FAQ homepage • Read about the project Five months ago, we launched The ultimate climate change FAQ with an aim to build up an archive of answers to lessen the confusion surrounding global warming. Unlike most of the other background guides out there, we wanted the answers to be both accurate and lay-friendly, and to cover not just science but the whole topic, including impacts, economics, emissions sources, energy technologies and international negotiations. More than 750 of you have already submitted the questions that you’d like to see answered and although we’ve got a very long way to go, we have now dealt with many of the most frequently requested topics. The resulting collection of Q&As is, I hope, starting to grow into a genuinely useful resource. The answers so far have covered subjects ranging from big-picture background ( What exactly is the climate? , Are humans definitely causing global warming? ) and scientific context ( What is the carbon cycle? , How do volcanoes affect the climate? ) through to possible impacts ( Will rising seas put cities such as New York and London under water? , Will climate change cause wars? ), societal responses ( What is the economic cost of climate change? , What is the Kyoto protocol and has it made any difference? ) and proposed solutions ( What is carbon capture and storage? , What is geo-engineering? ). You can see a full list of questions and answers, arranged by topic, here . We feel the project is going well – and plenty of you are reading and sharing each article – but we’d love to get your feedback. And we want to know where you think we should be putting our energy going forward. More science? More impacts? More on emissions or energy or economics? Give us your thoughts in the comments thread below or – if you have a specific question that you’d like to see answered – submit it using the form under this post. The FAQ was designed to be a collaborative project, not just between Guardian readers and journalists, but also partners such as the Met Office (whose experts have been fact-checking our science questions) and the members of the Guardian Environment Network , who have been providing some of the content. We’ve also partnered with Rough Guides to reproduce some content from Bob Henson’s Rough Guide to Climate Change . If you think there’s a brilliant potential partner that we should be hooking up with – or indeed a way that the growing body of content could be more widely distributed – then let us know about that, too. We hope in the end that this resource will be useful far beyond the Guardian’s own site. Climate change Duncan Clark guardian.co.uk
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Digital Outreach is helping marginalised communities to get online. Chief executive Ian Agnew explains why it matters At a sheltered housing complex in Skelmersdale, residents are enjoying their daily coffee morning in the communal lounge. Normally this is a chance for people to catch up with each other’s news but today is different. Today the conversation turns to dongles. Eleven elderly residents crowd around a laptop with their cups of coffee while a local volunteer plugs in a dongle. They learn how to use price comparison websites and send emails. Soon they are using Google Earth to look at a relative’s home in Australia. Most of the residents at this sheltered housing scheme would never have tried the web if this session hadn’t been brought to their coffee morning. The majority are over 75 and many have mobility problems. Seeking out opportunities to get online, be that at the local computer centre or library, just isn’t an option. Some are fearful as they lack computer skills and have worries about online security. Others just don’t see the internet as relevant to them. Over in Manchester, Anne who is 64, lives in Tameside Court, a sheltered housing complex for people over 50. She attends the Ladies Friendship Group and twice a week they meet for bingo. Anne went online for the first time at her bingo night – in between games. She admits she wouldn’t have tried the internet had the taster session not been brought to her group. Having the class take place in the building where she lives made her feel more comfortable as she was learning alongside people she knows. Like most of her fellow bingo players, Anne didn’t think the internet could offer her anything. But Clare Planter, who delivered the web session to residents, knows the Ladies Friendship Group well and the class focused on things they like such as online brain games and staying in touch with family. Clare works for Hattersley and Mottram Community Media . Like hundreds of voluntary sector organisations around the country, HMCM was engaged by social enterprise Digital Outreach to get local older people online. This model of mobilising the trusted voluntary sector to communicate messages is one that Digital Outreach had already used effectively to raise awareness of digital TV switchover amongst 600,000 older and disabled people. With 9 million people in the UK still offline, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills asked Digital Outreach to test whether this model could be used to boost web use. During the Get Connected, Get Online project, web taster sessions were delivered to more than 1,142 people at existing community events. Many of these sessions took place at social housing schemes – from residents’ meetings to domino clubs and keep fit groups. The results speak for themselves. Over 77% of participants reacted positively to the session when it was delivered by someone they already knew. Some 62% reported that having the session take place as part of their group meeting encouraged them to find out more about the web, while 64% said that taking part in the Get Connected, Get Online session helped them to see the personal benefits of the internet. Six months on and Digital Outreach revisited the project to test its longevity. Researchers found that even after the programme had finished, session leaders who had been trained to give people information about the web were continuing to encourage a wide range of groups to get online. This was particularly prevalent in social housing schemes, where there is often a strong network of community organisations working with residents. By training voluntary sector staff who regularly visit sheltered housing complexes and other local groups, support to get online remained in the community for many months after the project had finished. This ability to embed knowledge and support within trusted voluntary sector networks holds the key to changing people’s attitudes to the internet and getting the final third of the population online. Ian Agnew is chief executive of Digital Outreach This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Join the housing network for more like this direct to your inbox. Housing network blog Tenants guardian.co.uk
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There is no more personal, and flexible, literary form – and we need more of them What is an essay? For most people the word conjures up memories of the things you were forced to write at school by people like Miss Peecher the teacher , in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, whose essays were “always according to rule”. Yet in fact the essay is one of the least rule-bound forms in literary history, a genre that can encompass everything from the 600 pages of systematic philosophy in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding to the handful of paragraphs which make up GK Chesterton’s freewheeling mini-masterpiece, A Piece of Chalk . Ben Jonson may have dismissed the essay as “a few loose paragraphs and that’s all”, but its history shows it to have been the most elastic of forms, able to incorporate all sorts of prose – and indeed, in the case of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, poetry. For the Viennese modernist Robert Musil , Essayismus was much more than a literary form: it was both a philosophy of life and an epistemology; a way of making provisional sense of experience in a fragmentary world. Zadie Smith pointed to something similar when – in a Guardian article in 2009 – she called the essay the prose form which can best reflect ” messy reality “. Though the essay constantly resists definition – and has never accrued a corpus of academic critical commentary like that given to, say, the novel – it is unusual among literary forms in that its birth can be traced to a single moment and a single man: Montaigne , whose Essaies first appeared in 1580, arguably heralding the birth of the modern idea of the author as subject (in both senses). The word meant, literally, an “assay”, a trail or test or even “experiment”. Whatever Miss Peecher may have thought, the essay has, over its history, remained a defiantly individual form, a space outside institutional authority or generic constraints. Montaigne used the essay as an arena in which to observe his own mind at work. The great Romantic essayists – Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, Carlyle – used it to assert the value of the individual human voice in a world increasingly felt to be dominated by “abstraction”. For Emerson the essay was “man thinking” . Wilde and Beerbohm used it to subvert conventional values, while for Orwell – whose essays in Tribune appeared under the banner ” As I Please ” – it embodied his own rigorous anti-authoritarianism. The essay is the ultimate outsider genre. If it is making a comeback, it may be that, in our age of information overload, there is a hunger among readers for the individual voice. Michel de Montaigne guardian.co.uk
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Venture is latest stage in online retailer’s growing expansion into publishing its own titles Amazon.com has announced plans to move further into publishing with the launch of a new romance imprint, Montlake Romance, “bringing readers the freshest, most innovative and compelling love stories possible”. Montlake, named after a neighbourhood in central Seattle, is the online retailer’s fourth imprint, following its flagship venture Amazon Encore, literature in translation imprint Amazon Crossing and bestselling author Seth Godin’s The Domino Project, “a series of manifestos by thought leaders”. Launching in November with the award-winning writer Connie Brockway’s The Other Guy’s Bride – in which a budding archaeologist in turn-of-the-century Egypt poses as another man’s fiancée – Montlake will publish across the romantic fiction spectrum, from romantic suspense to paranormal romance and fantasy. The “broad range” of new titles will be available to readers in North America in print, Kindle and audio formats from Amazon’s website and from bookshops in the US. “Romance is one of our biggest and fastest-growing categories, particularly among Kindle customers, so we can’t wait to make The Other Guy’s Bride and other compelling titles available to romance fans around the world,” said Amazon Publishing vice president Jeff Belle, announcing the news. Brockway said the new imprint was giving her “the opportunity to write romances that capture the imagination as well as the heart and I’m thrilled to invite readers to join me on this exhilarating journey. There are so many stories I’ve been dying to tell you, and people you simply have to meet.” Amazon.com is also looking into launching imprints focusing on other fiction genres, including mystery, science fiction and thrillers, according to US books magazine Publishers Weekly , and is recruiting staff to increase its publishing presence. “We also know our customers enjoy genre fiction of all kinds, so we are busy building publishing businesses that will focus on additional genres as well,” said Belle. The Bookseller’s news editor Graeme Neill said that Amazon was “definitely becoming more aggressive in its publishing business”, pointing to the news last month that the online retailer “came close to winning a multi-million dollar auction for self-published author Amanda Hocking , the first time it has bid on a frontlist title”, and to its new hiring strategy. “If you go onto Amazon’s website, they are currently hiring acquisition editors, publicists, marketing staff. This is something they weren’t looking at several years ago,” he said. The move into romance is a good one for Amazon, he added, particularly digitally, as “romance and crime readers were the first to really buy into ebooks, so Amazon having its own romance imprint makes a lot of sense as it will only sell its romance ebooks through its own Kindle e-reader”. Publishers, however, will be eyeing the retailer’s increased publishing presence uneasily. “Publishers will be concerned Amazon is increasingly encroaching on what they see as ‘their’ business,” said Neill. Publishing Amazon.com Internet E-commerce Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Venture is latest stage in online retailer’s growing expansion into publishing its own titles Amazon.com has announced plans to move further into publishing with the launch of a new romance imprint, Montlake Romance, “bringing readers the freshest, most innovative and compelling love stories possible”. Montlake, named after a neighbourhood in central Seattle, is the online retailer’s fourth imprint, following its flagship venture Amazon Encore, literature in translation imprint Amazon Crossing and bestselling author Seth Godin’s The Domino Project, “a series of manifestos by thought leaders”. Launching in November with the award-winning writer Connie Brockway’s The Other Guy’s Bride – in which a budding archaeologist in turn-of-the-century Egypt poses as another man’s fiancée – Montlake will publish across the romantic fiction spectrum, from romantic suspense to paranormal romance and fantasy. The “broad range” of new titles will be available to readers in North America in print, Kindle and audio formats from Amazon’s website and from bookshops in the US. “Romance is one of our biggest and fastest-growing categories, particularly among Kindle customers, so we can’t wait to make The Other Guy’s Bride and other compelling titles available to romance fans around the world,” said Amazon Publishing vice president Jeff Belle, announcing the news. Brockway said the new imprint was giving her “the opportunity to write romances that capture the imagination as well as the heart and I’m thrilled to invite readers to join me on this exhilarating journey. There are so many stories I’ve been dying to tell you, and people you simply have to meet.” Amazon.com is also looking into launching imprints focusing on other fiction genres, including mystery, science fiction and thrillers, according to US books magazine Publishers Weekly , and is recruiting staff to increase its publishing presence. “We also know our customers enjoy genre fiction of all kinds, so we are busy building publishing businesses that will focus on additional genres as well,” said Belle. The Bookseller’s news editor Graeme Neill said that Amazon was “definitely becoming more aggressive in its publishing business”, pointing to the news last month that the online retailer “came close to winning a multi-million dollar auction for self-published author Amanda Hocking , the first time it has bid on a frontlist title”, and to its new hiring strategy. “If you go onto Amazon’s website, they are currently hiring acquisition editors, publicists, marketing staff. This is something they weren’t looking at several years ago,” he said. The move into romance is a good one for Amazon, he added, particularly digitally, as “romance and crime readers were the first to really buy into ebooks, so Amazon having its own romance imprint makes a lot of sense as it will only sell its romance ebooks through its own Kindle e-reader”. Publishers, however, will be eyeing the retailer’s increased publishing presence uneasily. “Publishers will be concerned Amazon is increasingly encroaching on what they see as ‘their’ business,” said Neill. Publishing Amazon.com Internet E-commerce Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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Internet phone service in negotiations over link-ups that could delay Wall Street flotation, according to reports The internet phone service Skype is entertaining partnership talks with both Facebook and Google – delaying its $100m (£60m) Wall Street flotation – according to reports . A deal to buy Skype outright is not thought to be in the pipeline, although one source “with direct knowledge of the discussion” told Reuters that billionaire Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had “been involved in internal discussions” about snapping up the video chat service. Such a deal could be worth between $3bn and $4bn, according to the Reuters source – which, if plausible, is illuminating about how much cash the social network has in the bank. More likely is a joint venture between Skype and Facebook/Google. The Luxembourg-based company has longstanding partnerships with TV manufacturers including LG, Panasonic and Samsung to embed Skype into their products. It is not hard to imagine Skype calling integrated into Facebook, for when the likes, wall posts and private messages just won’t do. Both firms, too, have sizeable communities of engaged users: Facebook has more than 600 million registered accounts; Skype has 560 million, of whom about 124 million make calls in the average month. Most troubling for Skype is its low conversion rate – only about 6% of its users actually pay for the service, something the company explicitly vowed to boost in its initial public offering prospectus last year. However, we shouldn’t expect tie-ups with Facebook and Google to involve paid-for premium services – that’s not how those companies operate. A tie-up with Google is slightly less obvious. The Mountain View company already has GChat video-and-voice calling embedded into Gmail, though the feature is a little hidden behind regular instant messaging. Then again, Skype would slot nicely into the so-far-underwhelming Google TV and already has a place on Android smartphones . Skype declared its intention to go public way back in August last year , since when a slew of new generation internet firms – including Facebook, Zynga, and Twitter – have worked up investor appetite for social media firms. China’s answer to Facebook, Renren, yesterday raised $743m with its flotation on the New York Stock Exchange, with shares immediately rocketing in the loss-making social network. Unlike Renren, which has the added allure of a booming Chinese internet market, Skype is hoping to raise $100m with its initial public offering in the second half of this year. The IPO will value the eight-year-old firm at $1bn, according to reports . The Canadian pension fund, Silver Lake and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz own a 56% stake in Skype, with 14% belonging to its original inventors, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Still in Skype’s rear-view mirror is its fruitless $3.1bn acquisition by eBay in 2005 – and sale in 2009 – which will make the internet telephony firm wary of a wholesale buyout. eBay maintains a 30% stake in Skype. Digital media Skype Facebook Google Internet Telecoms Social networking Technology sector Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Internet phone service in negotiations over link-ups that could delay Wall Street flotation, according to reports The internet phone service Skype is entertaining partnership talks with both Facebook and Google – delaying its $100m (£60m) Wall Street flotation – according to reports . A deal to buy Skype outright is not thought to be in the pipeline, although one source “with direct knowledge of the discussion” told Reuters that billionaire Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had “been involved in internal discussions” about snapping up the video chat service. Such a deal could be worth between $3bn and $4bn, according to the Reuters source – which, if plausible, is illuminating about how much cash the social network has in the bank. More likely is a joint venture between Skype and Facebook/Google. The Luxembourg-based company has longstanding partnerships with TV manufacturers including LG, Panasonic and Samsung to embed Skype into their products. It is not hard to imagine Skype calling integrated into Facebook, for when the likes, wall posts and private messages just won’t do. Both firms, too, have sizeable communities of engaged users: Facebook has more than 600 million registered accounts; Skype has 560 million, of whom about 124 million make calls in the average month. Most troubling for Skype is its low conversion rate – only about 6% of its users actually pay for the service, something the company explicitly vowed to boost in its initial public offering prospectus last year. However, we shouldn’t expect tie-ups with Facebook and Google to involve paid-for premium services – that’s not how those companies operate. A tie-up with Google is slightly less obvious. The Mountain View company already has GChat video-and-voice calling embedded into Gmail, though the feature is a little hidden behind regular instant messaging. Then again, Skype would slot nicely into the so-far-underwhelming Google TV and already has a place on Android smartphones . Skype declared its intention to go public way back in August last year , since when a slew of new generation internet firms – including Facebook, Zynga, and Twitter – have worked up investor appetite for social media firms. China’s answer to Facebook, Renren, yesterday raised $743m with its flotation on the New York Stock Exchange, with shares immediately rocketing in the loss-making social network. Unlike Renren, which has the added allure of a booming Chinese internet market, Skype is hoping to raise $100m with its initial public offering in the second half of this year. The IPO will value the eight-year-old firm at $1bn, according to reports . The Canadian pension fund, Silver Lake and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz own a 56% stake in Skype, with 14% belonging to its original inventors, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Still in Skype’s rear-view mirror is its fruitless $3.1bn acquisition by eBay in 2005 – and sale in 2009 – which will make the internet telephony firm wary of a wholesale buyout. eBay maintains a 30% stake in Skype. Digital media Skype Facebook Google Internet Telecoms Social networking Technology sector Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
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