With Kindle 2.0 not to hit the markets any time before Q1 2009, Amazon is trying to lure in customers by offering refurbished Kindles (1.0 of course) for $329, not much of a discount specially in these distressed times and given the fact that the newer better version would soon hit the shops. But for those who cant contain themselves, well you got to buy when you got to buy.

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In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of women armed with spatulas and ice-cream scoops and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes — creating the first-ever TV dinner. Thomas later said he got the idea from neatly packaged airplane food.

Football & Feastin’

Thanksgiving is ruled by two very powerful f-words: “food” and “football.” Nearly as old as the sport itself, the tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving began in 1876, when the newly formed American Intercollegiate Football Association held its first championship game. Less than a decade later, more than 5,000 club, college and high school football teams held games on Thanksgiving, with match-ups between Princeton and Yale drawing more than 40,000 fans out from their dining rooms. 1934 marked the first NFL game held on Thanksgiving when the Detroit Lions took on the Chicago Bears. The Lions have played on Thanksgiving ever since — except, of course, when the team was called away to serve during World War II.

Franksgiving

FDR learned the hard way not to mess with some traditions. In 1939, the President declared that Americans should celebrate the annual feast one week early, hoping the decision would spur retail sales during the Great Depression. But Americans did not react kindly to the New Deal meal. Some took to the streets while others took to name-calling; the mayor of Atlantic City solved the controversy by declaring his residents would simply enjoy two meals — Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving.” After two years of squabbling (or gobbling, as it were), Congress adopted a resolution in 1941 setting the fourth Thursday of November as the legal holiday

Mary Had a Little Thanksgiving Obession

The woman who wrote the classic nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also played an integral role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year letter-writing campaign, magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale finally convinced President Abraham Lincoln to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition.

Americans at the Abbey

In 1942, London’s Westminster Abbey held Thanksgiving services for U.S. troops stationed in England. More than 3,500 soldiers filled the church’s pews to sing America, the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner — the first time in the church’s 900-year history that a foreign army was invited to take over the grounds. It was an ironic gesture given the holiday’s origins as a festival for pilgrims fleeing religious tyranny in Britain.

Read more by clicking above. Happy Thanksgiving!

This is the sound of slork, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra.

All instrumentalists are equipped with a black MacBook and a hemispherical speaker pod made out of Ikea tableware.

The brain behind the orchestra is Ge Wang, and if his name sounds familiar that’s because you might have seen it mentioned recently in connection with the superb app Ocarina.

Recently highlighted at apple.com, slork makes use of custom software written by Ge Wang:

“I wanted to focus on the intersection of music and computer science. So I authored a language with my advisor, Perry Cook, and researchers at Princeton and beyond. We called it ChucK. It’s a programming language completely tailored for sound. It let us quickly synthesize sound and use various controllers in our performances.”

Well, for one thing, because they're not boneheads. This economy has the potential to become the worst economy since the Great Depression (it isn't yet, thankfully). VCs see this and understand that:

1. Profitable exits are going to be a lot rarer in the next couple of years, and
2. Potential investments--including current portfolio companies--are going to get a lot cheaper in the next few years (and, therefore, returns on future investments are going to get a lot higher than today's) .
   

That logic alone explains why money has gotten so tight so fast. But VC sources say there's also another important dynamic going on: The folks who supply the money that VCs invest--Limited Partners such as pension funds and endowments--are now strapped for cash because the values of their own portfolios have plummeted (and so many of the investments are illiquid). Some are reportedly beginning to default on or defer commitments. In VC-land, in other words, as elsewhere, the oxygen is being sucked out of the room.

Here are some notes from SAI conversations with two VC sources this morning:

There are now unbelievable difficulties in the LP world. Many of the best names are having liquidity problems. They are having trouble meeting capital calls from Private Equity and VC firms and need to sell stocks to get cash. Much of their stock portfolios are tied up in hedge funds with lockups, however, so they can't liquidate those positions.

Some Limited Partners are starting to default on their commitments to VC firms [this is scuttlebutt, not firsthand knowledge; the sources' firms have not seen defaults]. In some cases this can mean they lose their investment to date, but since the LPs think the the VC funds are going to be losers anyway it does not matter. Some second-tier VC funds are reportedly looking at the fine print to see if they can sue the LPs who don't follow through on their commitments.

[In case you don't know how VC funding works: When a VC "raises" a $100 million fund, what the firm really has done is gotten commitments from LPs that they will deliver $100 million over the life of the fund. The firm then issues "capital calls" over the next few years and gradually draws the money down. It is these calls that some LPs are reportedly starting to default on.]

The most agressive LPs have been hurt the most. For example, a rumor is circulating that Columbia's endowment fund is illiquid [can't raise the cash it needs to fund current commitments]. Harvard is trying to sell 1/3 of its private equity portfolio at a steep discount in a secondary offering. You would only do this today if you are really in deep doo doo.* [Private Equity Online is reporting this--see below]

The market price for LP positions in VC funds on average is 75 cents on the dollar. Limited partnership positions in PE funds are selling for 50-60 cents on the dollar. This suggests that $50-$100 billion in value has gone in the past few months from PE funds alone.

The major university endowments are reportedly down 25-30% on a mark-to-market basis [sounds extreme, but certainly possible]. Big universities are heavily in commodities, PE, VC hedge funds, and very little in bonds. They are getting killed across the board

Pension funds are a little bit less aggressive but they also may be more exposed soon.

We have only spoken to a couple of VCs about this, and we assume many firms are not affected. We have heard the endowment scuttlebutt before, though (Princeton was a name that came up a few weeks ago), and it makes sense: University endowments need to fund massive cash spending every year, but they also don't like to compromise annual returns by keeping much of the portfolio in cash. So now that the value of ALL assets has plummeted and so many endowment investments are subject to lock-ups, it certainly sounds plausible that the funds are having trouble raising necessary cash.

Any VCs or LPs care to weigh in? We'd love to hear from you. All sources obviously kept confidential. hblodget@alleyinsider.com.

See Also: Harvard, Yale, et al, Down 25%-30%?

More from Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock:

Tyler Cowen notes that this is truly a "real world pick", a nod to economists who write concretely about economics directed towards the public and to policy makers. Cowen also has a good set of links to help familiarize yourself with his work. He points fondly to Krugman's critique of Austrian trade cycle theory and a paper on why Brits have such bad food.

You also have to wonder whether the choice was seen as an anti-Bush pick, given Krugman's consistent criticism of the current administration.

See me perform a death defying demonstration of the latest legal-specific features of Adobe Acrobat 9!

Ok, that is overly dramatic to be sure, but you'll see the top legal features of Acrobat 9 and learn some tips and tricks, too!

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‘Stanza’ is an iPhone app which is developed by a Portland, Oregon based startup called Lexcycle. It is actually an e-book reader. It is currently the best iPhone application in the category of e-books. This might be alarming for Amazon’s Kindle which is also an e-book reader. The thing which differentiates them is that Kindle contains a price tag with it whereas Stanza is absolutely free. This is also the reason why Stanza has been downloaded 200,000 times with in the first six weeks of its release. On the other hand Kindle sells around 40,000 units per month but it can be understood as users have to pay for it.

With the app, people are also downloading e-books. One of the content providers of Stanza says that 20,000 e-books are being downloaded each day. Again the reason for such high number of downloads is that they are free right now. Being the best iPhone e-book application, it is designed finely and looks very neat. Kindle does seem to have a rival this time, lets see how things roll out in the near future.

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Amazon’s Kindle might have had hard luck with predictions of its success in the market but the present sale out has altered this. Citi’s Mark Mahaney; who had previously been quite discouraging towards it has tipped in its sales to touch more than 300,000 units by the end of this year.

Mark revisited his estimates and currently chalked out a new sale target that might count to 378,000 units by the end of this year and the total earning that he had previously topped at $750 million (or 3% of Amazon’s total sales) and the current success might have it jump to $1.1 billion; or 4% of total sales share.

There have been no changes whatsoever but the present change in estimates is primarily due to the hit Kindle has become in the market. Mahaney himself couldn’t come with anything convincing (as Peter Kafka reports) and said:

Getting real numbers out of Amazon is impossible, and the supply chain is pretty tightly wrapped, as well.

The change in estimates may have been triggered by the amount of positive feedback Kindle has received and it still retains the top slot at being the best seller at Amazon. There are already attempts by both France and Germany to create a similar device in order to compete Kindle but the original device has gained far more popularity and plans are to flood out 150,000 more units in its fourth quarter. Now if I were to pass out such an order, I would make sure my gadget is a must have for people and they are buying it as well.

That being put up, the chart below is Mahaney’s model that reveals Kindle’s impact on Amazon’s hit list.

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Amazon Kindle has created new pavements for readers and scholars. Peoples can have thousands of e-books, newspapers and articles in front of  with a single click, experiencing least burden on their shoulders. With their intention of introducing relatively big size kindle, Amazon is taking one step further in building a real educational platform for its audience.  In this regard, Germany is also planning to challenge a competition to an Internet Tycoon by developing a portable e-reader that will be a product of the Europe’s biggest telecommunication companies, Deutsche Telekom.

The Mighty German company has tested dozens of e-readers prototypes in Berlin entitled “News4me” . The project is headed by Deutsche Telekom Laboratories and is aimed to cater the needs of Internet niche who rely on laptops and cell phones. Though Telekom’s e-reader can not be considered as a true competitor of Amazon’s Kindle as it really lacks some key features such as unavailability of online content and RSS Subscription. Its mainly because the company itself is not manufacturing the device and therefore will not provide any kind of content for its use.

Thus, Germans will be restricted to download only personalized content from printed books and media. As pointed out by News4me Engineer, Dávid Kapitáni, their aim is to provide a relatively larger and bendable size of e-reader screen that can be easily operated by wide number of users:

Our aim is to give each reader to deliver the news to its current personal interest. We want the reader with a selection of individual articles from various newspapers subscribed to a mobile device with large screen supply," says technician the research goal in conversation with press. Model is the newspaper of paper combined with software engineering. The principle is similar to the service "as the Google service iGoogle. However, the News4Me offer to articles in newspapers or magazines reprinted. In addition, the researchers also take the form of real print products as possible retained.

Every reader of a newspaper or magazine has individual preferences for certain issues that particularly interested him. Hardly anyone reads the output of a print medium from front to back through. With the user can News4Me its individual newspaper from various sources and categories together.

Deutsche Telekom is the world’s leading telecommunications and information technology service providers offering international standards and its current e-reader project seems promising. Though the prices are still undeclared by the company, it seems that they have already started targeting ads to earn revenue.

According to recent updates, France is also trying to develop a similar portable product named as “Read&Go”. However, News4me and Read&Go are not publicly available in France and Germany right now.

However Amazon will definitely challenge them a tough competition. Amazon’s self provided content and its on growing acquisition (including the latest AbeBook acquisition) to enhance their Kindle’s capabilities will really give them a bitter pill to swallow.

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Amazon has recently acquired a Canada based company, AbeBooks. Being an online book marketplace, AbeBooks sells more than 110 million primarily used, out-of-print and rare books provided by thousands of independent sellers, providing them with a business and technological support and acting as an international marketing tool.

AbeBooks in 2002 had already collaborated with Amazon Marketplace program that help its 13,500 book sellers to boost their selling productivity. Though Amazon hasn’t provided any monetary detail about the acquisition but the deal is subjected to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and is expected to close before the end of the fourth quarter of 2008.

The deal is quiet astonishing as Amazon claims that e-books for its Kindle device are pioneer in making the future while popular paper books help companies to robust their profit. While the current collection of books offered by AbeBooks is rare and hardly reflects future. But its acquisition does make sense as it forms Amazon’s niche who are looking for rare and books that are no more printed. As the collection comprises of different booksellers it acts as a catalyst for enhancing digital marketplace. As pointed out by Russell Grandinetti, vice president of books for Amazon:

As a leader in rare and hard-to-find books, AbeBooks brings added breadth and expanded selection to our customers worldwide. AbeBooks provides a wide range of services to both sellers and customers, and we look forward to working with them to further grow their business. We’re excited to present all of our customers with the widest selection of books available any place on Earth.

While AbeBooks CEO Dr. Hannes Blum said that after its acquisition by Amazon, AbeBooks will continue to work as an stand-alone book marketplace with an eye on its global business:

AbeBooks will continue to operate as a stand-alone business with all aspects of AbeBooks’ bookseller and customer experience remaining intact. AbeBooks’ headquarters will remain in Victoria, BC, Canada, and our European offices will remain in Dusseldorf, Germany. We will continue to support both our international marketplaces and our domestic marketplace here in Canada. I will continue to lead AbeBooks.

He praised Amazon and is happy with this deal:

This deal brings together book sellers and book lovers from around the world, and offers both types of customers a great experience. We are very excited to be joining the Amazon family.

I personally think that Amazon is moving in the right direction as Booksellers at AbeBooks will definitely experience a drastic increase in their selling because of the Amazon’s scalable User base while Amazon can get all the hand-on collection of rare books at AbeBooks. The acquisition will also help AbeBooks to retain their identity as they will continue to operate as a stand-alone entity.

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