MegaStarMedia.com

E-books have hit the mainstream, and for the first time are consistently outselling their pulp-and-ink brethren, according to Amazon.com.

Amazon hit a symbolic milestone last holiday season, when for one day its sales of e-books exceeded the number of dead-tree books it had sold.

Now the company has hit a more significant milestone, selling 143 e-books for every 100 hardcover books sold over the course of the second quarter. The rate is accelerating: For the past month, Amazon sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers, and it sold three times as many e-books in the first six months of this year as it did in the first half of 2009.

Amazon’s Kindle bookstore now offers more than 630,000 books, Amazon says, plus 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright titles.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/amazon-more-e-books-than-hardcovers/

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/amazon-more-e-books-than-hardcovers/#ixzz0uHQJ9ScG

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Voted best email of the year power pointSocial responsibilities

What is the meaning of life? Be happy? Do what you love? Make our world a better place?


How do we do this while keeping our economy strong?
How do we teach our children the belief of self worth?

Having the latest and the greatest is not the secret to life or the answer to any of the above questions.
a dear friend shared this power point presentation this morning… i want to pass it on to you.
Be greatful and thankful for the love you have in your life and find a way even if small to you…to share that same love with others and remind them what is important.
Real relationships that are loving and fun. not stuff.
love and light
Feel free to share on Facebook, Twitter and any other site…the more the better
spread some good karma love

VOTEDTHEBESTEMAILOFTHISYEAR<



One way i am helping is by donating a percentage to Kiva.org teaching them to start their own businesses and take care of their families.

Kiva Small Business Loans

sandy

The Founders Fund lands $107M
Peter Thiel and crew closed their third fund, according to an SEC filing Wednesday.Financial trends and news by Matt Bowman
May 6, 2010

The Founders Fund is one of the more interesting tech investment funds, and not just because it’s tied up with Peter Thiel and the PayPal mafia, nor just because Thiel is an investor in Vator.tv. Nor because angel partner Dave McClure will be one of our judges at Vator Splash next week.

The fund’s portfolio is full of household names, though it remains pretty small. The $107 million it raised according to SEC filings today is less than some tech companies are raising in a single round.

The company’s portolfio includes Facebook (from way back in 2006, in the company’s B round; Thiel was the company’s first outside investor before that), Slide, Quantcast, Gowalla, Clickable, IronPort, Yammer, Mint, YouNoodle, Worldly Developments (makers of Plancast) and many more.

This is the firm’s third fund. It raised its first $50 million fund in 2005 from select individuals, and then raised another $220 million in December 2007 that included undisclosed institutional investors (the WSJ reported that Stanford’s Endownment was one such–a likely scenario given that it’s Theil’s alma mater). The half-sizing of this fund is par for the course in the VC industry, which is shrinking to about half the size it was in 2007, due to widespread cutbacks in the amount of money big endowments and pension funds are allocating to risky investments.

(image: left to right: Peter Thiel, Ken Lowry, Luke Nosek, Sean Parker)

source:

http://vator.tv/news/show/2010-05-05-founders-fund-lands-107m?utm_content=sandy@megastarmedia.com&utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=The%20Founders%20Fund%20lands%20%24107M&utm_campaign=The%20Founders%20Fund%20lands%20%24107M%20-%20VatorNews%20Newsletter

What Google Ventures wants to fund
Its 11 portfolio companies suggest Google is targetting data analysis and Adsense clones.Financial trends and news by Matt Bowman
May 3, 2010

Google Ventures emerged from stealth mode Monday, officially announcing its team of partners and unveiling a website with detailed info about the fund. While the fund managers insist no specific sector, stage or theme will characterize its investment strategy, a look at the portfolio suggests a few themes.

First, the official line: CEO Eric Schmidt indicated that the company’s brain trust provides a unique value-add to startups. “Google Ventures can tap thousands of [employees] and understand the subtleties” he said at a press conference Monday. “The average venture firm doesn’t have access to that knowledge. That’s probably the nicest way to say that.” The fund wants to find companies they are in a unique position to help. And Google specializes in two things: data analysis and contextual advertising.

Google’s signature specialty from Day 1 has been analyzing huge amounts of data to create smart algorithms, and the portfolio reflects that. English Central, for example, analyzes users’ recorded voices to show them where they’re making pronunciation mistakes. Recorded Future extracts time and event information from the Web and analyzes it to predict future events. Smartgrid startup Silver Spring Networks and human antibody discovery platform Adimab fit this mold as well.

The portfolio also includes several AdSense analogues. Pixazza lets publishers tag products in images on their sites and link those products to retailers via their ad network. The company takes a cut of advertising and affiliate revenues. OpenCandy offers an ad network for consumer applications, where developers can integrate advertising (recommendations) into the install process of their software. VigLink is an ad network for hyperlinks. These models make sense for the fund, given Google’s expertise as a contextual advertising pioneer.

Below is a list of all known investments with the companies’ own boilerplates:

Adimab The first fully integrated, yeast-based antibody discovery platform

Corduro offers a range of payment services for Internet, mobile, and traditional retail transactions.

English Central is a language learning platform, which uses high quality Web content, like speeches from President Obama or clips from popular movies, to teach English. Its unique language learning software allows users to hear themselves speaking, and shows them exactly where they’re making pronunciation mistakes.

OpenCandy exists to solve distribution, monetization and discovery problems in the consumer application space. OpenCandy’s first product is an ad network for consumer applications.

Pixazza converts static images into interactive content by revealing the “products in the picture” across popular Web sites.

Recorded Future extracts time and event information from the Web. Recorded Future offers customers new ways to analyze the past, present and the predicted future.

SCVNGR is a geo-gaming platform that lets anyone (individual or institutional) build location-based mobile games, tours, and interactive experience that can be played by anyone on any mobile device.

Silver Spring Networks is a leading smart grid solutions provider. Its hardware, software, and services help utilities reduce carbon emissions, operate more efficiently, and empower their customers with new ways to monitor and manage their energy consumption.

VigLink is a tool for publishers of all sizes to make monetization of their outbound links effortless, transparent and honest.

V-Vehicle is a new American car company that is introducing a safe, high-quality, fuel-efficient, and well-equipped car for the U.S. market. Designed and built in America, V Car makes green affordable for the masses.

source: http://vator.tv/news/show/2010-05-03-what-google-ventures-wants-to-fund?utm_content=sandy@megastarmedia.com&utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=What%20Google%20Ventures%20wants%20to%20fund&utm_campaign=The%20Founders%20Fund%20lands%20%24107M%20-%20VatorNews%20Newsletter