Amazon's Kindle MatchBook turns past print purchases into low-cost ebooks

Amazon has a new plan to introduce tech-wary readers to the world of ebooks without breaking the bank. Starting in October, Amazon book buyers will be able to buy Kindle versions of their past, present, and future print purchases for $3 or less.

When it rolls out next month, Kindle MatchBook will offer an ebook purchase add-on for more than 10,000 book titles. MatchBook pricing has four different levels: free, $1, $2, and $3. It’s not clear how the pricing structure works or how many of the MatchBook add-ons will be free compared to the $3 level.

That’s a good number of titles at a competitive price, but so far, Amazon’s MatchBook-compatible books appear to be only from publisher HarperCollins and its various imprints.

Some of the MatchBook eligible titles include works from authors such as Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, Blake Crouch, James Rollins, Jodi Picoult, Neil Gaiman, Marcus Sakey, Wally Lamb, Jo Nesbo, Neal Stephenson, and J.A. Jance.

Amazon’s AutoRip service (pictured above) is like Kindle MatchBook for CDs.

MatchBook is very similar to AutoRip, a service introduced in January that gives you free digital versions of physical CDs purchased from Amazon. Like AutoRip, MatchBook lets you go way back in your Amazon purchase history to find qualifying books; any Amazon-purchased book from 1995 onwards could be eligible for a MatchBook “upgrade.”

As part of the new program, Amazon plans on making it easy to find your order history to see which of your past purchases are eligible for MatchBook.

The new service is also ongoing, so just because a book that you bought back in the days of dial-up isn’t eligible for MatchBook right now doesn’t mean it won’t be available in the future. That’s good news for anyone who purchased a non-HarperCollins book from Amazon over the past 28 years.

MatchBook sounds like a great deal to fill up a Kindle with past purchases and to encourage non-Kindle users to give ebooks a try. It also gives Amazon yet another method to lock more customers into its DRM-laden Kindle platform with a full library of their (presumably) favorite titles.

Amazon is getting very interested in services that bundle digital and physical goods. In addition to introducing AutoRip in January, Amazon announced its Mobile Associates API in August. Mobile Associates lets third-party Android developers sell physical goods from Amazon inside their apps.

Ian is an independent writer based in Tel Aviv, Israel. His current focus is on all things tech including mobile devices, desktop and laptop computers, software, social networks, Web apps, tech-related legislation and corporate tech news.
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Yale grad's 'Prism' program turns text metadata into wavy art

What if the NSA took your text message metadata and made a flowing, colorful diagram with a timeline?

The U.S. spy agency -- probably -- doesn't do that. But a 22-year-old Yale graduate, Bay Gross, was actually inspired by the U.S. government's Prism surveillance program revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Gross, who just started working at Google in New York on Monday, created an application he describes as "part data, part art" that analyzes a person's own SMS messages and lays them out in a rainbow wave. Appropriately, he named it "Prism."

Prism, which works on Mac OS, draws the SMS metadata from the user's own unencrypted backups within iTunes. It pulls who was texted and when and plots the data in a "Streamgraph," a type of stacked graph developed by Lee Byron, who is an interactive information designer with Facebook.

Byron, who was a graphics intern with the New York Times in 2008, developed a Streamgraph for the newspaper that displayed box office revenues for films. The graphic drew praise and criticism due to its unorthodox approach.

Streamgraphs emphasize the "legibility of individual layers, arranging the layers in a distinctively organic form," according to an academic paper authored by Byron and Martin Wattenberg.

Gross says from an analytical view the Streamgraph is "kind of useless." The y-axis, for example, which appears to represent volume of texts to a recipient, is "completely made up."

But Prism does enable a more emotive or romantic view of data. The x-axis, which represents time, can show the degree to which some relationships are zero sum or even seasonal, Gross said. You can see, for example, how some texting relationships start fast and furious but atrophy to a meager small stream.

The application doesn't show the content of the messages. Gross has also put in a feature where the graphs created by Prism can be exported but minus people's names. The graph can be manipulated using a variety of parameters, such as by date, popularity and frequency of contact.

Prism is a desktop application for Mac. Apple lets people encrypt their iPhone backups on a computer, but Prism needs access to an unencrypted backup. All of the processing is done on a person's computer, and nothing is sent to a remote server, Gross said.

Apple rejected Prism from inclusion in its App Store, but Gross said that's due to the company's strict guidelines for its store. However, Prism is a certified developer application.

Prism is free as part of its launch, but will eventually cost US$0.99.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

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