Amazon to pay royalties for fan fiction

Todd Bishop on the new “Kindle Worlds”:

The company says it will license rights to popular books, games, movies and other content to let independent authors write their own stories based on those worlds, and receive royalties from sales of their fan fiction through the company’s Kindle Store.

Seems like a smart idea. Though I have to imagine the most popular worlds, like Star Wars, would never agree to this. 

The Virginal Man of Steel

Dave Itzkoff talks with director Zack Snyder about his upcoming Superman film:

What drew Mr. Snyder in as he first read the “Man of Steel” script (while Mr. Nolan and his wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas, waited in his driveway) was a vision of the character that felt both classical and contemporary. On the one hand, Mr. Snyder suggested that for Clark Kent to be fully fleshed out, not every moment in his maturation needed to be depicted.

“We assume that Clark is not a virgin — I do,” he said. ” You don’t see that, but that’s the assumption.”

I love the notion of Snyder telling his producer (and wife) and Christopher Nolan to “wait in the car” while he goes to read a script. 

[via @anthonyha]

Learning From Los Gatos

Steven Johnson responding to a New Yorker column by George Packer:

Sure, companies went public or sold for staggering sums, but companies have been going public or selling out for generations without creating tens of thousands of millionaires along the way. The defining difference between Silicon Valley companies and almost every other industry in the U.S. is the virtually universal practice among tech companies of distributing meaningful equity (usually in the form of stock options) to ordinary employees. Before companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard began the practice fifty years ago, distributing stock options to anyone other than top management was virtually unheard of. But the engineering tradition that spawned Silicon Valley was much more egalitarian than traditional corporate culture.

Many great points here.

Xbox One runs three operating systems

Only three? They couldn’t squeeze a few more in there?

Seriously though, this part seems pretty key, as relayed by Sharif Sakr:

In terms of whether apps will be cross-compatible between the regular Windows Store and the storefront accessed by the new console, we’re told they won’t. Developers will have to do a bit of work to make a Windows app suitable for the Xbox One, not least in terms of tuning their UI for Kinect or the wireless controller. But Microsoft’s engineers told us that the underlying similarity between Windows 8/RT and Windows for the Xbox should make this a pretty easy feat for coders.

The long-term success of the Xbox One could very well ride on this alone. Third-party apps and games are something that all the console makers have dropped the ball on big time. And it’s not yet clear that they’re still not dropping that ball. But someone is going to nail this.

First Look at Xbox One

While everyone else was scrambling to get stories written as quickly as possible following the Xbox One unveiling, Wired’s Peter Rubin got the “exclusive” early look. And Wired’s presentation is quite nice.

I’m still not sure what to think of the new Xbox. Certainly, Microsoft did a better job presenting it to the world than Sony did a few weeks back with the Playstation 4. But even Rubin’s thoughtful walk-through makes the whole thing sound fairly complicated. I’m still just not sure that tablets and smartphones haven’t changed the gaming and living room space more than any of the old guard in the console arena cares to admit. (Though it’s looking like Nintendo will have to sooner rather than later.)

I had both the original Xbox and the Xbox 360. Overall, I found them to be solid systems with a number of UI/UX frustrations that I simply don’t think I have the patience for anymore. And then, of course, the red ring of death. Maybe Microsoft has greatly improved the experience here. We’ll see.

Certainly some of the new Kinect stuff sounds interesting. But the “wow” factor of the first Kinect seemed to subside faster than anyone thought it would. Just like the Wii before it. I’ll take simplicity and great user experience over something that gives good demo any day. 

With that in mind, I’m still more optimistic about whatever Apple brings to the table here whether it’s later this year or early next year. Surprise, surprise, I know. But there is zero chance I’m going to deal with IR-blasters to have a “seamless” experience.