eBooks outsell real books on Amazon at Christmas?

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From Engadget.

We’re still not about say the e-book reader industry has branched out beyond the infancy stage, but one of its flagship products certainly has reason to celebrate. Amazon has announced it’s hit some pretty big milestones with the Kindle. The two bullet points it’s currently touting loudest is that the reader has become “the most gifted item” in the company’s history — quite an achievement given the size of the online retailer, but what’s missing here is any quantitative sales data to give us even a ballpark of the number of units sold. The other big news is that on Christmas Day (we’re guessing not Christmas Eve, else the press release surely would’ve mentioned it, too), e-book sales actually outsold physical books. Those brand new Kindle owners needed something to read, right? It’ll be interesting to see if that momentum is maintained through next year, especially with some major publishers starting to show some teeth with digital delays.

The Kindle bits were all part of Amazon’s annual post-holiday statistical breakdown, so in case you’re wondering, besides Kindle, the company is claiming its other top-selling electronics were the 8GB iPod Touch and Garmin nuvi260W, and in the wireless department the honor goes to Nokia’s unlocked 5800 XpressMusic, Plantronic’s 510 Bluetooth headset, and AT&T’s edition of the BlackBerry Bold 9700.

In case of uncertainty

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Well, how can you tell otherwise?

LATER: Lovely email from Ben Hammersley:

I know this! You spin them on their side, then lightly put your finger
on the top to stop them spinning. Take your finger off quickly. If it
remains stationary, it’s hard-boiled. If it keeps spinning, it’s raw.
It works because the raw yolk keeps moving inside the egg, so when you
take your finger off, the whole thing starts moving again.

Finally, I have a use for that. Hurrah!

Hurrah! x 2. Isn’t the web wonderful?

Davewatch

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During the recent snowy spell, we took to putting newspaper down in the hall to reduce the amount of snow brought into the house. As luck would have it, the Guardian G2 issue about Dave Cameron was the first periodical that came to hand. We noticed that people stamped their Wellingtons rather enthusiastically upon entering. But at least they were green. Poor Dave became progressively more disfigured over the week, so in the end we put him out of his misery. On the fire.

Nipples, lies and digital images

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There’s a wonderful analysis by Secure Computing of the way an image in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue was tastefully PhotoShopped, probably by a graphic artist as a routine job. There’s nothing really sinister in the story (a missing handbag, eyes and teeth enhanced, a nipple removed). It’s really just a fascinating forensic analysis of how you can detect PhotoShopped alterations if you know how.

There’s good news and bad news here. On the one hand, the case study provides a cautionary tale about how untrustworthy digital images have become; on the other, it shows how someone with the right tools and forensic skills can detect alterations.

Update: To be fair to Victoria’s Secret, they responded well to the critique (unlike Ralph Lauren, which in a similar case resorted to the DMCA takedown tactic).