EA: The PC is ‘Extremely Healthy’ and Might Become ‘Biggest Platform’
EA trumpets the PC as a thriving platform at the heart of its “IPs across multiple devices” publishing strategy.
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INSIGHT: Inspiration and wealth will come to you if…
Inspiration and wealth will come to you if your goal is to help another person solve a problem.
Offermatic Raises $4.5 Million From Kleiner Perkins And Top Notch Angel Investors
Offermatic, which we dubbed the freak love child of Blippy, Groupon and Mint early on, has secured $4.5 million in funding in a Series A round led by early backer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
A group of Silicon Valley investors, including Ron Conway, former AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui and early execs from Facebook and Mint.com, also participated in the round.
Hamoui will also join Offermatic’s board of directors.
The additional capital will be used to hire more people and expand its services for consumers and retailers, Offermatic says.
Launched in beta last December, Offermatic basically delivers personalized savings to consumers based on their spending history. By linking existing credit and debit cards to an Offermatic account, people receive automatic discount offers on products and services, without the hassle of redeeming coupons or vouchers.
The company says, combined with offering one-click automatic rebates, the conversion rate among beta users has been 15 percent or more, which it says is 15 to 30 times higher than the average for online coupons.
Information provided by CrunchBase
Crime Writer Makes a Killing With 99 Cent E-Books
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Joe Konrath has an interesting interview with independent writer John Locke who currently holds the coveted #1 spot in the Amazon Top 100 and has sold just over 350,000 downloads on Kindle of his 99 cent books since January 1st of this year, which, with a royalty rate of 35%, is an annual income well over $500k. Locke says that 99 cents is the magic number and adds that when he lowered the price of his book The List from $2.99 to 99 cents, he started selling 20 times as many copies — about 800 a day, turning his loss lead into his biggest earner. 'These days the buying public looks at a $9.95 eBook and pauses. It's not an automatic sale,' says Locke. 'And the reason it's not is because the buyer knows when an eBook is priced ten times higher than it has to be. And so the buyer pauses. And it is in this pause—this golden, sweet-scented pause—that we independent authors gain the advantage, because we offer incredible value.' Kevin Kelly predicts that within 5 years all digital books will cost 99 cents. 'I don't think publishers are ready for how low book prices will go,' writes Kelly. 'It seems insane, dangerous, life threatening, but inevitable.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How We Spent Time Before the Internet [Humor]
When I harken back to the days before the internet, I can’t help but think how true this is: we know so much more now, but boy do we do less with it. Although instead of going to make the world a better place, I generally just went to kill time at the baseball card store. [Penny Arcade]More »