Techmeme: Hey, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Books, Screw You! (Henry Blodget/Silicon Alley Insider)

9:40 PM ET, January 31, 2010

Top Items:

Hey, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Books, Screw You! — John Sargent, CEO of publisher Macmillan, has taken out a full-page ad to explain why he is insisting that Amazon raise prices on its ebooks to $15 in some cases. — So we're going to take out a full-page post to explain to John why …

Discussion: CNET News, AppleInsider, TeleRead, Gravitational Pull, Epicenter, broadstuff and Glass House, Thanks:atul

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Amazon Caves To Macmillan's eBook Pricing Demands — A new development in the Amazon vs. Macmillan fiasco. Amazon just posted an announcement indicating that it will be “capitulating” to Macmillan by selling the publishers' books for their desired prices.

Discussion: Associated Press, Guardian, New York Times, Digits, GigaOM, Silicon Alley Insider, TeleRead, CrunchGear and The Huffington Post

Charlie Stross / Charlie's Diary:

Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider's guide to the fight — (Apologies for the formatting; I'm typing this on a netbook with a tiny keyboard.) — Last Friday, Amazon.com unilaterally pulled most or all of Macmillan's books (edit: including all paper editions, not just electronic) from their online store.

Discussion: MicroISV on a Shoestring, Publishers Marketplace, Tim Anderson's ITWriting, NBC Bay Area, Mashable!, Kindle Review, TeleRead, SlashGear, rc3.org and GalleyCat

John C Abell / Epicenter:

Google's 'Don't Be Evil' Mantra is ‘Bulls**t,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple's Steve Jobs (Update 2) — After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop …

Arn / MacRumors:

Steve Jobs at Apple Town Hall Meeting on Google, Adobe, Next iPhone, 2010 Macs and More — Steve Jobs held a town hall meeting with Apple employees late last week following the iPad launch. Wired reports on what was said at the meeting by Steve Jobs. Two of the biggest topics included Google and Adobe.

Discussion: The iPhone Blog, Gizmodo, Silicon Alley Insider, Daring Fireball, 9 to 5 Mac, EverythingiCafe and Electronista

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Who Can Do Something About Those Blue Boxes? — Robert Scoble has a good analogy: … Regarding those blue boxes that indicate embedded Flash content in MobileSafari, think of it this way: Who can make them go away? — Adobe can't. They can't put Flash Player on iPhone OS on their own.

Discussion: Scripting News, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Gawker and DisplayBlog

Steven Wei / Uncompiled Thoughts:

The best way for Adobe to save Flash is by killing it — Having done several years of Flash development and having worked with many Flash developers, the recent controversy between Apple and Adobe over Flash on the iPad is very amusing to me. First, there are a few arguments that I want to address directly:

Discussion: The iPhone Blog

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: Google +will+ save Flash, a developer who uses it says

Nick Bilton / Bits:

Foursquare Teams With Bravo TV — Bravo TV and Foursquare will announce a new partnership on Monday that will integrate Bravo TV shows with the game aspects of Foursquare, a social networking site that encourages people to interact in the real world. The partnership hopes to engage viewers long …

Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable!, Location Meme and Online Dating Insider

Andrew Lim / Recombu:

iPad board games: Apple has created a ‘Jumanji platform’ — While many people struggle to understand why they would ever buy an iPad, we think we've come up with a pretty exciting reason - digital board games. If you've ever tried to play a board game on a games console …

Discussion: I4U News, Thanks:ogerrard

New York Times:

Are You a C.E.O. of Something? — This interview with Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga, a provider of online social games, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. — Q. What are the most important leadership lessons you've learned? — A. If I was going all the way back …

Discussion: A VC and Silicon Alley Insider

Steven Sande / TUAW:

All about EPUB, the ebook standard for Apple's iBookstore — Overlooked in much of the hype about the iPad announcement earlier in the week was a comment by Steve Jobs in the Keynote presentation where he mentioned that the iBooks app for iPad would take advantage of the popular EPUB format for electronic books.

Chris O'Brien / Mercury News:

Google joins the titans of Silicon Valley lobbying — With great power comes even greater headaches. Just ask Google. — The company's transition from upstart to Goliath has multiplied its legal and policy problems. There may be no better measure of this phenomenon than Google's expansion …

Thanks:atul

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