Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Since anyone who can read is not the target audience for either the Xbox or Windows 8!
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.
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/
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.
-1 Fact