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Microsoft Building an 'Xbox Reading' App For Windows 8
Nate the greatest writes "Microsoft has already sunk $600 million into Nook Media, the ebook division spun off from Barnes & Noble in 2012, but I guess that's not enough for the Redmond tech giant: news broke today that they have a third ebook effort in the works. A new job listing discovered by the Chinese tech blog LiveSino has revealed that Microsoft is hiring an ebook developer to work on 'a groundbreaking interactive reading app on Windows, which incorporates books, magazines, and comics.' The position was posted by the Xbox Music, Video, and Reading unit, which had already released two apps for Windows 8 (video, music) and is clearly going for a trifecta. This new app shows all the signs of being completely unrelated to the Office Reader app, which leaked last year. That app reportedly focused more on PDFs, textbooks, and office docs, while the 'Xbox Reading' app mentions magazines and digital comics."
Until next week, when they stop supporting it, make you rebuy everything, and move on to the next flavor of the week.
Anyone who has had any experience with Microsoft media knows to stay the fuck away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PlaysForSure
--BitZtream
Let's get one thing straight here, the only reason why Microsoft dropped $300m into the Nook business was to bury a antitrust suit by Barnes and Noble over the patents they were allegedly infringing by using Android. Fearing failure and their Android licensing business drying up, they decided to make the whole lot go away.
http://blogs.reuters.com/aliso...
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
No one uses Windows 8 apps anyway.
Even I am surprised as much as I hate Windows 8 I assumed due to it being installed on every computer at least some app writters would target it. Most of the users just click desktop. You can tell as most Windows 8 users have not upgraded to 8.1 according to statistics which means they do not even know it has a Windows Store?!
Hell even Windows Phone has more apps and a reader I may add too.
http://saveie6.com/
The eInk Nook was able to be rooted into a full fledged android tablet. The version of android was rather old which was unfortunate, but otherwise it was a nice device. Reading GMail, looking at RSS feeds, viewing twitter were all pretty good on an eInk screen. It would have been nice to see a company produce a device that did this.
You know what I did?
I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and clicked "Slashdot Classic Problem solved. I stayed logged in and slashdot has my preference for classic memorized. Did that on my phone.
Now all is good except I get spam on every damn news story going BETA OMG EWWW and I am tired of reading about it or having 1/2 of the comments talking about it. Jeesh
http://saveie6.com/
Is the Windows Mobile store really so bad that it doesn't have a basic e-reader? Why is it so exciting that Microsoft is building one? Doesn't everybody have an e-reader app these days?
I guess it's mildly interesting if they can deliver a bunch of content "for free" to XBLive Gold members or something, but I don't see anything in the article about that.
I read the internet for the articles.
/. has had changes in the past. And in the past, people protested and complained. I would think, let them try something new. /. should like updates.
/. has changed over the years but it has always been about the comments. Lots of people like to monetize things, hence why Dice now owns /. But in the years I've been on /. it was always about the community. This time it's about the audience.
/. The BETA protest will do no more harm than the GNAA, APK or any other troll. It's been a while since there was a good one anyway.
/.
I think differently about this one.
If comments are destroyed, that will ruin
I'm still using Classic as well, but *why* BETA sucks does not bode well for
Since anyone who can read is not the target audience for either the Xbox or Windows 8!
Considering EVERYTHING MS makes is "beta", I am not sure that's true! You should specify, "not enough SLASHDOT beta hate..." :)
When you think about "Xbox" as a brand which comes first into mind:
a) big budget first person shooters
b) reading literature
Anyone remember the Microsoft Reader application? They abandoned the application and all of the folks who purchased DRM protected material for it when they came out with the Windows Phone. Let's hope that they don't make the same mistakes again.
It's not about building the best app - queue jokes that it never was, but it was - it's about buying whoever has something that is doing somewhat well and selling that. This is how you spend $600 million and end up with nothing.
But get a few good programmers together and for orders of magnitude less you could have the very best. And perhaps it would sell itself.
Microsoft announced it will be discontinuing its reader app due to lack of interest. Any books, magazines and comics you bought will no longer be accessible after the closure.
It'll be Games for Windows Live all over again. They'll come late to the market with a crappy product that nobody wants, they'll pay some publishers to link their products to the Microsoft reader service to try and attract users, and when it fails to do so they'll shut down their service and everything you bought will stop working.
hahahaha fuck you and your fucking lame ideas and software
To be more grammatically correct: It Does! (ran out of space in the subject box).
It so happens the Nook app works quite well on my Acer W3 with Win 8.1.
RTFA: The conclusion is VERY inconclusive -
"But there’s a line in Microsoft and Barnes & Noble’s joint announcement of the deal that might give Microsoft challengers pause — and makes it unclear which side will come out on top in the long run. Both Barnes & Noble and Microsoft publicly emphasized the synergies of their new partnership, which gives Microsoft an entry point into a market it believes will be shaped by advanced software add-ons to simple e-books and gives Barnes & Noble a presence on Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released tablets, as well as a much-needed investor. The announcement also included a note that Barnes & Noble and the new digital and textbook subsidiary “will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and tablet products.”
So Barnes & Noble is licensing Microsoft IP after all. If you’re wondering about the terms, keep wondering. Microsoft has jealously guarded any disclosure of its licensing arrangements in the Barnes & Noble litigation, to the extent that the company demanded that B&N patent misuse filings be removed from the ITC record. There are no available specifics on what B&N and the new subsidiary have agreed to pay, so for all we know, Microsoft is getting all it originally wanted in Nook royalties.
It’s a cliche for settling parties to claim they’re both better off for resolving their differences. Maybe this time it’s actually true."
I know that Microsoft still likes to think of itself as the 800lb gorilla that can just walk into any area it chooses and dominate, but in the eBook market, Microsoft is a mouse and Amazon is the 800lb gorilla. For better or worse, Amazon essentially *is* the eBook market. (Source - Amazon has 67% of the market. Next is Barnes & Noble with 11.8% and Apple with 8.2%.)
If Microsoft is going to win over eBook readers, they are going to need to offer something substantial to woo market share away from Amazon. I honestly don't see that happening and it's not like they can use Windows 8 as leverage the way they used to leverage Windows to prop up IE against other browsers. They'll probably launch this, it will languish in the market for a few years, and then it will be killed off.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Actually, looking at it further, the whole $600m was involved in that settlement.
Who cares what the conclusion was? Which way did the money go?
300m from MS to B&N.
How much from B&N to MS? Zero. They did get stock though. Ultimately worth nothing if the business goes bust.
MS wouldn't have paid if they weren't screwed, no matter the terms of the deal. They might get that money back ultimately, but nobody involved would have called that a win if the patents were so strong.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Quote: "we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready"
If you can understand written English, you'll see that they ARE planning to get rid of classic slashdot. THAT'S why we're complaining.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
So basically you have a link that says we wont put the new system in yet as people hate it and it is not ready.
Now if I can understand English that means they are getting rid of it?!
Keep it yourselves. As it is not just 1 spam or 2 in each story. FUCK 50% of the dang comments are I HATE BETA. I feel like I am reading mycleanpc spam each story and I am getting annoyed and as I was modded up I feel I am not alone.
Slashdot editors and owners may not be as conservative as your tastes in GUI's but I believe they do have some intelligence as in hmm people hate it with a passion then maybe just maybe we should not put this style in?
http://saveie6.com/
The only problem I have with Beta is that they're taking Classic away. I'm gone when it is.
I have a link that says they WILL get rid of Classic when THEY THINK the new version is good enough. Which, given what we've seen in the last several months, is NOWHERE NEAR what current users want.
> I believe they do have some intelligence as in
> hmm people hate it with a passion then maybe
> just maybe we should not put this style in?
We shall see. But "beta" has been out since last Fall and it still sucks out loud, and they've gotten tons of feedback in the last 4 months, but here we are -- STILL with a sucky-ass new system. We are just letting them know, in the clearest possible terms, that we don't like what they're doing.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
A-fucking-men. A bunch of crying man-babies are currently the ones ruining this site.
planet texture maps and more
Now all is good except I get spam on every damn news story going BETA OMG EWWW and I am tired of reading about it or having 1/2 of the comments talking about it. Jeesh
The problem you have is that if beta goes ahead, well over 1/2 the comments you come here for will disappear entirely.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
im gonna freaking DEAL WITH IT!
-1 Fact