Jul
2008
Remember books? You know, those things printed on paper… placed between two covers? Yeah, those things! Well, oddly enough, I heard about two today that are worth mentioning.
In the seventh book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,an important part of the plot hinged on a fictional children’s book called Tales of Beedle the Bard. J.K. Rowling, the author of the series, made a handwritten copy of the book and auctioned it off to charity. Amazon.com
ended up buying it and posting copious amounts of information about it on their site, sharing it with the world.
Now it has been announced that a standard edition is being released, and a deluxe version that will be exclusive to Amazon. The standard edition will have a suggested retail price of $12.99 ($7.59 at Amazon) and will have all of the drawings Ms. Rowling did for the original, along with all five of the fairy tales with comments and footnots by “Professor Dumbeldore”. The deluxe edition will set you back $100 and features metal parts on the cover, 10 additional drawings by Rowling and a few other extras.
It would be easy to call this a cash grab by Rowling, but like she did with the set of text books a few years back, all of the proceeds from these books will be going to charity. The charity, Children’s High Level Group, was set up by Rowling and Emma Nicholson MEP to help vulnerable children.
I know I gave the last book a harsh review, but it is always hard to argue with anything that is done to benefit children, so kudos to her for using her notoriety to help them out.
The second book is just amazing that it will even exist. I have talked about Garfield Minus Garfield before, and it amazed me in this day and age of copyright lawsuits that such a creature could exist. My amazement deepened even more when Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, talked about how he felt it was a wonderful idea.
Today the story takes an even odder turn with the announcement that Garfield Minus Garfield is becoming a book, and it will be published alongside a book celebrating the 30th anniversary of the original series. The the Garfield Minus Garfield book will publish the original strip along with the version that features only the character of Jon Arbuckle.
This whole concept is just amazing, and congratulations to Dan Walsh, the creator of the site, on the book deal.


There has been a lot of coverage in the media, especially in the UK, that the identity of well-known graffiti artist
His works, such as the
For the most part I have tried staying out of the whole controversy over the Olympics being held in China, except for one post about
The Dark Knight passed $300 million in ten days, setting a new record for the fastest ever to that mark. The previous record holder was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest doing it in 16 days. However, this still does not knock the film into the realm of profitability.

So now you have DRM laden music you are facing either losing your ability to play, or having to go through steps you should never have to go through to make it work. Someone I spoke with said this is no different than people who have vinyl running out of options of how to play it. Well, the problem is that turntables are still being built, so, yes, that option is still very much alive to people who have vinyl albums.
Welcome back to the second episode of Scattercast! I hope you all enjoyed the first one, because the second one is far better, I feel! Here is what you can look forward to this week.
It seems Mtv has decided that it’s time for The Rocky Horror Picture Show to get a remake. Lou Adler, the original executive producer, is involved, and they will be working from the original script, including some songs that were cut from the original movie.
Who would have thought jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch while declaring your love for your future
Can we just call this “The Breast That Wouldn’t Die“?
I never thought I would see the day where
Just like
A year and a day ago I wrote about how some bloggers had the idea that
Fans of
So, I’m prepping to start doing podcasts, and I think I have most of the kinks worked out, but I am still lacking a name!
Heard of
Back in May I publiched a post named “
All of this came about over the weekend as Yahoo rejected another offer from Microsoft that seems to have been quietly brewing for a while now. The new joint deal between Icahn and Microsoft was proposed Friday night and would have reportedly put Microsoft in charge of the search business and Icahn controlling the rest of the company. The proposal included ousting the current board, including CEO Jerry Yang, and replacing them with Icahn’s chosen people.
On my second, and last day in Seattle (my entire time here is 46 hours), and I had some random observations to make about the place.
- Did someone forget to inform me this city is made of gold? I am paying insane prices for EVERYTHING. Hotel room, food, cab fares… apparently this city has a bit too much money, and they take it out on their visitors. Even my hotel wants to charge $20 a day to park a guests car. I’m sorry, but that’s something that I think should always be free to guests. You want to entice them to stay, not punish them for using your establishment. I have heard this is happening more and more places, but it still seems pretty stupid to me.
