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One that looks nice and is not too expensive...or we shall say "Nii!" again!!!
It's an on-demand world these days, and the next two businesses to be sacrificed on the altar of J-I-T production are big-box bookstores and anyone still in the video rental business, including NetFlix.
You've heard it before, right? Well, yes, you have. I have been hearing it for a dozen years at least, but I think this time the predictions may have more than wishful thinking behind them.
This Fortune article from last month says it's the "next little thing", but books-on-demand from a stand-alone kiosk are making their debut in 2007, offering over 2 million public domain titles, and they expect to work out deals with publishers to be able to offer virtually any book in print within the next five years.
Of course, these days big-box bookstores like to sell you a lot more than just books. The also like to sell you DVDs, but, gosh, wouldn't you know it, Sonic Solutions has just announced a DVD-on-demand system that will let people download movies and burn them to their own DVDs -- and they've already signed on all of the major studios so that you won't have to pirate anything in the process (as long as you're okay with whatever copy protection and DRM they build into the system). The resulting multi-fold increase of the number of titles legitimately available for download (whether limited-use or permanent purchase) should be the final nail in the coffin for small video stores, a serious thorn in the side of big-box bookstores, and will probably cause NetFlix to have to completely overhaul their business just to survive.
Along those lines, do take time to read David Denby's piece in this week's New Yorker where he considers the effect of recent technological innovations on the entire film industry. He does have a few decent counter-arguments to the current conventional wisdom, but overall he ends up having to agree with the prognosticators.
Nii! Nii!
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