Norway Butter Crisis

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OK normally I post serious geeky economic news, bordering on the depressing, but as your geekonomist du blog, I have to share this story that is a great reminder of how social trends affect economics.

Norway is running out of butter.

Why? Because of a low-carb diet trend and some bad weather. Oh and they could get more butter from Denmark, but Denmark apparently isn't selling because of high import duties.

So next time you see some weird or odd trend or fad, pause for a moment, don't laugh, and ask yourself just what it's real-life economic impacts may be. The iPad may be cool, Skyrim may be awesome, but there's also a trend effect there.

Also, Norway Butter Crisis is an awesome name for a band or an MMO guild.

– Steven Savage

Giant Mess of News 12/9/2011

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Yeah, yeah I know news was moving away from roundups to more detailed posts and analyses, but damn, today had a lot of news.

Games:
Games were the largest share of Android's first 10 billion downloads. Yes, this is from the department of 'duh', but it's a reminder of the power and size of that market share.

B.S.:
Zynga tells investors it can double it's paying customers. I do not believe this possible in the short or medium term – but they didn't promise WHEN it could happen.

Legal Messes:
Apparently there are hacking charges against Groupon. This is more changing contracts/contacts, but also . . . well read the article.  Groupon's having bad times lately.

On Windows 8? Microsoft can change/remove apps apparently, at least that's the current plans. That's gonna go over well (anyone remember the infamous Kindle glitch?).  Watch this if you're a developer (or a lawyer)

There's some foofaraw in German where Motorola won seriously against Apple over a patent issue, but the resolution is anything but clear. This may come back later – or accelerate into further nastiness. Also remember who Motorola is part of now . . .

Also Apple lost in Australia over It's attempt to ban the Samsung Galaxy tablet, over – you got it – patents. This gets into ugliness involving countersuits and general stupidity.

Yes, patent suits are out of hand.  Yes they are killing innovation.  No, it's not being called out enough.

– Steven Savage

Amazon has a new Kindle promotional fund and effort

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Details are here.

Basically Amazon sets aside $6 million, the KDP Select fund.

If an author makes their book exclusive to Kindle for at least 90 days then it may go into the lending library, and you can earn part of this fund.

Sounds like it's a way to lock down indies, though oddly I can see this being too easy – the majority of my sales are through Kindle and I promote platform-independent.

But how will people react?  Well I confess I got an "oooh" reaction out of this myself – then realized there's no guarantee I'd get into the lending library anyway.

Still I think it shows Amazon is thinking long tail – they want to lock down authors, and they want to be a full-service platform.  This is important with eBooks, since though the Kindle may be easy, a lot of people are publishing in PDF and ePub anyway.

More as we find it.

– Steven Savage