This week’s episode of Turning This Car Around, America’s mostly sensual podcast on fatherhood, looks at sex. Part 1 of a two-parter.

We just talk about the birds this week. Bees will be next week.

TechCrunch got an email last week from a PR firm working for Samsung pushing one of their marketing videos. Then…

Today, we got a similar email from the same rep but this time we get the exciting promise of $100 to post the video!

Cha-ching.

David Pierce for The Verge:

“This is a phone. With cool camera stuff.” That’s how Samsung’s Philip Berne describes the Galaxy K zoom (“K is for camera… if you’re German”), the company’s latest attempt to figure out how to fully marry an excellent smartphone with an excellent camera.

Samsung is innovative the same way Doctor Moreau was. Horrible, twisted innovation that represents the unholy union of separate product categories.

On the latest episode of the Issues podcast, Mike Essl summed up why comic book companies should be pissed at Amazon right now:

The buy button in Comixology is what got me back into comics.

That’s true for me as well. Amazon is taking Apple’s 30 percent for themselves, yes, but if they were just screwing Apple it would be hard to get worked up over it. That’s not the case. They’re also making it harder for customers to buy comic books and harder for comic book publishers to sell them.

Marco Arment:

Amazon’s motivation is to lock up and control as much distribution as possible. The Kindle devices and platform are simply a means to that end. That’s why the hardware is sold with razor-thin (or no) profits: their sole purpose is to get you buying content from Amazon.

Marco places the blame on Comixology for selling themselves to Amazon, which, eh, OK, but if someone backed up a truck full of money to my front door… Let’s just say I can’t blame them that much.

It’s done, so now what?

I would imagine that Marvel and DC will still want their content available through Amazon. Why not? A sale is a sale. But they’ll also want to continue to offer their own apps that offer the easiest purchasing experience possible while also keeping open an avenue of distribution that’s not controlled by Amazon. The big question now is what steps they’ll take to do that.

Back in 2009, about six months before the introduction of the iPad, I wrote a review of the three comic book apps available for the iPhone. I came away liking iVerse’s the best, which is still available and has been rebranded as Comics Plus. It no longer has Marvel or DC titles, but does have Image and some others you might have heard of.

Interestingly, however, iVerse also makes the Marvel Global Comics app, which is Marvel’s app for the non-English versions of its comics, using the same engine as Comics Plus. I’m assuming that Marvel made an exclusive deal with Comixology for the English-language versions of their comics and gave the other languages to iVerse. Now, assuming Amazon ends Comixology’s development contract for Marvel’s English language app, it seems they’ve got an easy replacement apart from the Marvel Unlimited app (which I use but am not a huge fan of).

Comics Plus is seemingly not the same engine behind Marvel Unlimited. Some of the interface elements are similar, but I think that’s a Marvel branding thing, rather than it coming from the same developer. If the development contract with Comixology dies, I personally hope Marvel would replace its dedicated purchase-only app with Comics Plus rather than divert everyone to Marvel Unlimited. It’s a better experience.

I don’t know what DC would do. Probably wait six years to figure out the situation and then throw something crappy together in a hurry. (Sick burn.)

Unlike David Chartier, I’m not ready to dump my Prime membership over this situation because, well, OK, look, my wife is a Prime junkie and just today I got a popcorn popper overnight. Let’s not throw the wage-slave driven quick delivery of products my family desperately needs out with the bath water of outrage over user convenience in a comic book app.

But I am wondering why I still use the Kindle app and I think I’m done with it. I’m not advocating anyone else do what I’m doing, I just think maybe Amazon gets enough of my money other ways and don’t get me started on that Justice Department thing.

You’re welcome to complain about Apple’s 30 percent cut but Amazon takes its own cut which is often larger. And the only reason we’re even talking about this issue is because Apple created the iPad. Very few people bought comic books digitally before the iPad (probably more stole them). Remember how the iPad was going to save publications? This is probably the one place it’s actually made a measurable difference. As Gerry Conway and Mike Essl say, making it easy to buy comic books has worked out for comic book companies, consumers and Apple.

Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t working out for Amazon.

David Guzman writing for The Bygone Bureau allays your fears of Google Glass:

By now,

April 28, 2014 at 9:57 am

My thanks to Primary for sponsoring the Very Nice Web Site RSS feed this week. Haven’t you always wanted an Instagram client for your iPad? Now you can have one, with even more features. Looks and works great, too.

Instagram is great. Except when it’s not: when it’s filled with endless selfies, text memes, pictures of Moltz’s #poodle, and auto-playing videos in quiet rooms.

That’s where Primary comes in. Primary is a beautifully designed Instagram gallery app for iOS that lets you do so much more. Like hide all those pictures, people, tags, and videos you don’t want to see. Auto-playing videos? Never; not an option. Moltz’s #poodle? Filtered out; muted; hidden.

We could go on: fast-switch accounts, pinch to zoom, simple lists, native iPad support, light and dark themes to choose from. You get the idea. Don’t believe us? Ask Beautiful Pixels: “Gorgeous”. Ask iMore: “I seriously love” Primary. Just don’t ask Moltz’s #poodle.

Go make Instagram great again. Go get Primary.

via Syndicate Ads

Gerry Conway:

By forcing readers to leave the app and go searching the Comixology website, add books to a cart, process the cart, return to the app, activate download, and wait for their purchases to appear, Comixology has replaced what was a quick, simple, intuitive impulse purchase experience with a cumbersome multi-step process that will provide multiple opportunities along the path for the casual reader to think twice and decide, ah, never mind, I don’t really want to try that new book after all. I’ll stick with what I know. Or worse, when a new casual reader opens the Comixology app for the first time and sees that THERE ARE NO COMICS THERE, and that he or she will have to exit the app and go somewhere else and sign up for a new account, maybe he or she won’t bother buying a comic in the first place.

This is a disaster.

From the perspective of an educated buyer, I’m just going to switch apps to the ones that are more convenient. The Comixology app is basically dead to me. To me the question is what Marvel, DC and the other companies do from here. Amazon has screwed them probably more than it’s screwed Apple and comic book fans. Personally, I’m moving on. For them, though, it’s harder.

(Via Andrew Laurence and Tom Carmony)

The Verge:

It’s about to get a bit more difficult to buy comic books from a mobile device. Comixology is replacing its iOS app today with a new version that removes the ability to purchase comics.

Well, that answers that question. It is, of course, Amazon’s prerogative, but it definitely takes something away from the easy user experience of the app. I was wondering why when I went to look at the “new” Comixology app it had so many one-star reviews. Comixology also makes the Marvel and DC apps, so I just dragged the Marvel app out of a folder and put it on the first page of my iPad Air and dragged Comixology off it and into the folder.

So now the question is how long Amazon will allow that contract to continue. Sadly, based on the Marvel Unlimited app, I don’t have a lot of faith Marvel can make a replacement that’s as nice.

Hopefully this is an opportunity for another app creator to present themselves.

Daniel Eran Dilger points out that despite what everyone said, the iPhone 5c has done pretty well:

Speaking to analysts during Apple’s Q2 earnings conference call, chief executive Tim Cook stated that 69 percent of iPhone 5c buyers were new to iPhone, while 60 percent had switched from an Android phone. For the cheaper iPhone 4S, the ratios were even higher (although the sales volumes were much smaller): 85 percent were new to iPhone, while 62 percent switched from Android.

“Flop” was some sort of crypto-pundit code for “didn’t sell as many units as the iPhone 5s or as many as Apple expected.” Yet, it sold better than the iPhone 4S at the same price point from the previous year, which none of them seemed to understand.

There were rumors late last year that Apple would discontinue the iPhone 5c in the next update cycle. I really doubt that will happen. Would they bring back the iPhone 5 as the low end product? The 5c is doing better than people said and I think the having the plastic model at the low end makes even more sense, so I don’t see it being discontinued.

John McDuling at Quartz:

Amazon shares have had a terrible start to 2014. And today, it’s gotten a lot worse.

Shares of the online retail behemoth are down about 9% today alone. They’ve fallen 23% in 2014, compared to roughly flat performance for the S&P 500.

So, it’s after year 17 investors start wondering when you’re going to make a profit?

(Via Glenn Fleishman)