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Algérie / Alger | ||||||
Département of France | ||||||
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Anthem La Marseillaise (instrumental only) | ||||||
Chronological map of French Algeria's evolution. | ||||||
Capital | Algiers | |||||
History | ||||||
- | Surrender of Algiers | July 5, 1830 | ||||
- | Algerian Independence | July 3, 1962 | ||||
Today part of | Algeria |
Algérie / Alger | ||||||
Département of France | ||||||
| ||||||
| ||||||
Anthem La Marseillaise (instrumental only) | ||||||
Chronological map of French Algeria's evolution. | ||||||
Capital | Algiers | |||||
History | ||||||
- | Surrender of Algiers | July 5, 1830 | ||||
- | Algerian Independence | July 3, 1962 | ||||
Today part of | Algeria |
French Algeria (French: Alger to 1839, then Algérie afterward;[1] unofficially Algérie française,[2][3] Arabic: الجزائر الفرنسية Al-Jaza'ir Al-Fransiyah) lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest of French North Africa, was never considered part of France. One of France's longest-held overseas territories, Algeria became a destination for hundreds of thousands of European immigrants, known as colons and later, as pieds-noirs. However, indigenous Muslims remained a majority of the territory's population throughout its history. Gradually, dissatisfaction among the Muslim population with its lack of political and economic status fueled calls for greater political autonomy, and eventually independence, from France. Tensions between the two population groups came to a head in 1954, when the first violent events of what was later called the Algerian War began. The war concluded in 1962, when Algeria gained complete independence following the March 1962 Evian agreements and the July 1962 self-determination referendum.
Since the 1516 capture of Algiers by the Ottoman admirals, the brothers Oruç and Hayreddin Barbarossa, Algeria had been a base for conflict and piracy in the Mediterranean. In 1681, Louis XIV asked Admiral Abraham Duquesne to fight the Berber pirates and also ordered a large-scale attack on Algiers between 1682 and 1683 on the pretext of assisting Christian captives.[4] Again, d'Estrées bombarded Tripoli and Algiers from 1685 to 1688. An ambassador from Algiers visited the Court in Versailles, and a Treaty was signed in 1690 that provided peace throughout the 18th century.[5]
During the Directory regime of the First French Republic (1795–1799), the Bacri and the Busnach, Jewish negotiants of Algiers, provided important quantities of grain for Napoleon's soldiers who participated in the Italian campaign of 1796. However, Bonaparte refused to pay the bill back, claiming it was excessive. In 1820, Louis XVIII paid back half of the Directory's debts. The dey, who had loaned to the Bacri 250,000 francs, requested from France the rest of the money.
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The Dey of Algiers himself was weak politically, economically, and militarily. Algeria was then part of the Barbary States, along with today's Tunisia – which depended on the Ottoman Empire then led by Mahmud II—but enjoyed relative independence. The Barbary Coast was then the stronghold of the Berber pirates, which carried out raids against European and American ships.
Conflicts between the Barbary States and the newly independent United States of America culminated in the First (1801–1805) and Second (1815) Barbary Wars. An Anglo-Dutch force, led by Admiral Lord Exmouth, carried out a punitive expedition, the August 1816 bombardment of Algiers. The Dey was forced to sign the Barbary treaties, while the technological advance of U.S., British, and French forces overwhelmed the pirates' expertise at naval warfare.[citation needed]
The name of "Algeria" itself came from the French. Following the conquest under the July monarchy, the Algerian territories, disputed with the Ottoman Empire, were first named "French possessions in North Africa" before being called "Algeria" by Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, in 1839.[6]
The conquest of Algeria was initiated in the last days of the Bourbon Restoration by Charles X, as an attempt to increase his popularity amongst the French people, particularly in Paris, where many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars lived. His intention was to bolster patriotic sentiment, and distract attention from ineptly handled domestic policies by "skirmishing against the dey".[7]
In the 1790s, France had contracted to purchase wheat for the French army from two merchants in Algiers, Messrs. Bacri and Boushnak, and was in arrears paying them. These merchants, Bacri and Boushnak who had debts to the dey, claimed inability to pay those debts until France paid its debts to them. The dey had unsuccessfully negotiated with Pierre Deval, the French consul, to rectify this situation, and he suspected Deval of collaborating with the merchants against him, especially when the French government made no provisions for repaying the merchants in 1820. Deval's nephew Alexandre, the consul in Bône, further angered the dey by fortifying French storehouses in Bône and La Calle against the terms of prior agreements.[8]
After a contentious meeting in which Deval refused to provide satisfactory answers on 29 April 1827, the dey struck Deval with his fly whisk. Charles X used this slight against his diplomatic representative to first demand an apology from the dey, and then to initiate a blockade against the port of Algiers. France demanded that the dey send an ambassador to France to resolve the incident. When the dey responded with cannon fire directed toward one of the blockading ships, the French determined that more forceful action was required.[9]
Pierre Deval and other French residents of Algiers left for France, while the Minister of War, Clermont-Tonnerre, proposed a military expedition. However, the Count of Villèle, an ultra-royalist, President of the Council and the monarch's heir, opposed any military action. The Restoration[who?] finally decided to blockade Algiers for three years, but the overpowering presence of the French naval force prevented an incursion beyond the coastal perimeter[vague]. Meanwhile, the Berber pirates were able to exploit the geography of the coast with ease. Before the failure of the blockade, the Restoration decided on 31 January 1830 to engage a military expedition against Algiers.
Admiral Duperré commandeered an armada of 600 ships that originated from Toulon, leading it to Algiers. Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria, General de Bourmont then landed 27 kilometres (17 mi) west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch on 14 June 1830, with 34,000 soldiers. In response to the French, the Algerian dey ordered an opposition consisting of 7,000 janissaries, 19,000 troops from the beys of Constantine and Oran, and about 17,000 Kabyles. The French established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization. The French troops took the advantage on 19 June during the battle of Staouéli, and entered Algiers on 5 July after a three-week campaign. The Dey agreed to surrender in exchange for his freedom and the offer to retain possession of his personal wealth. Five days later, he exiled himself with his family, departing on a French ship for the Italian peninsula, then under the control of the Austrian Empire. 2,500 janissaries also quit the Algerian territories, heading for Asia,[clarification needed] on 11 July. The Dey's departure ended 313 years of Ottoman rule of the territory.
The French army then recruited the first zouaves (a title given to certain light infantry regiments) in October, followed by the spahis regiments, while France expropriated all the land properties belonging to the Turkish settlers, known as Beliks. In the western region of Oran, Sultan Abderrahmane of Morocco, the Commander of the Believers, could not remain indifferent to the massacres committed by the French Christian troops and to belligerent calls to enter jihad from the marabouts. Despite the diplomatic rupture between Morocco and the Two Sicilies in 1830, and the naval warfare engaged against the Austrian Empire as well as with Spain, then headed by Ferdinand VII, Sultan Abderrahmane lent his support to the Algerian insurgency triggered by Abd El-Kader. The latter would fight for years against the French. Directing an army of 12,000 men, Abd El-Kader first organized the blockade of Oran.
Algerian refugees were welcomed by the Moroccan population, while the Sultan's recommended that the authorities of Tetuan assist them, by providing jobs in the administration or the military forces. The inhabitants of Tlemcen, close to the Moroccan border, asked that they be placed under the Sultan's authority in order to escape the invaders. Abderrahmane thus named his nephew, Prince Moulay Ali, as Caliph of Tlemcen, charged with the protection of the city. In retaliation France executed two Moroccans: Mohamed Beliano and Benkirane as spies, while their goods were seized by the military governor of Oran, General Boyer.
Hardly had the news of the capture of Algiers reached Paris than Charles X was deposed during the Three Glorious Days of July 1830, and his cousin Louis-Philippe, the "citizen king", was named to preside over a constitutional monarchy. The new government, composed of liberal opponents of the Algiers expedition, was reluctant to pursue the conquest begun by the old regime, but withdrawing from Algeria proved more difficult than conquering it.[citation needed]
On 1 December 1830, King Louis-Philippe named the Duc de Rovigo as head of military staff in Algeria. De Rogivo took control of Bône and initiated colonisation of the land, expropriations, etc. He was recalled in 1833 due to the overtly violent nature of the repression. Wishing to avoid a conflict with Morocco, Louis-Philippe sent an extraordinary mission to the Sultan, mixed with displays of military might, sending war ships to the bay of Tangiers. An ambassador was sent to the Sultan Moulay Abderrahmane in February 1832, headed by the Count of Mornay and including the painter Eugène Delacroix. The Sultan, however, refused French demands to evacuate Tlemcen.
In 1834, France annexed the occupied areas of Algeria, which had an estimated Muslim population of about two million, as a colony. Colonial administration in the occupied areas—the so-called régime du sabre (government of the sword)—was placed under a governor general, a high-ranking army officer invested with civil and military jurisdiction, who was responsible to the minister of war. Marshal Bugeaud, who became the first governor-general, headed the conquest, making a systemic use of torture and following a "scorched earth" policy.
Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a land rush. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the Mitidja Plain and envisioned the production there of cotton on a large scale. As governor general (1835–36), he used his office to make private investments in land and encouraged army officers and bureaucrats in his administration to do the same. This development created a vested interest among government officials in greater French involvement in Algeria. Commercial interests with influence in the government also began to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in expanding the French zone of occupation. They created large agricultural tracts, built factories and businesses, and exploited cheap local labor.
Among others testimonies, Lieutenant-Colonel de Montagnac wrote on 15 March 1843, in a letter to a friend:
"All populations who do not accept our conditions must be despoiled. Everything must be seized, devastated, without age or sex distinction: grass must not grow any more where the French army has set foot. Who wants the end wants the means, whatever may say our philanthropists. I personally warn all good soldiers whom I have the honour to lead that if they happen to bring me a living Arab, they will receive a beating with the flat of the saber.... This is how, my dear friend, we must make war against Arabs: kill all men over the age of fifteen, take all their women and children, load them onto naval vessels, send them to the Marquesas Islands or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate all who will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs."[10]
In the same way, Alexis de Tocqueville, deputy and famous representative of the liberal tradition in political philosophy, declared in 1841:
"war in Africa is a science. Everyone is familiar with its rules and everyone can apply those rules with almost complete certainty of success. One of the greatest services that Field Marshal Bugeaud has rendered his country is to have spread, perfected and made everyone aware of this new science... As far as I am concerned, I came back from Africa with the pathetic notion that at present in our way of waging war we are far more barbaric than the Arabs themselves. These days, they represent civilization, we do not. This way of waging war seems to me as stupid as it is cruel. It can only be found in the head of a coarse and brutal soldier. Indeed, it was pointless to replace the Turks only to reproduce what the world rightly found so hateful in them. This, even for the sake of interest is more noxious than useful; for, as another officer was telling me, if our sole aim is to equal the Turks, in fact we shall be in a far lower position than theirs: barbarians for barbarians, the Turks will always outdo us because they are Muslim barbarians. In France, I have often heard men I respect but do not approve of, deplore that crops should be burnt and granaries emptied and finally that unarmed men, women and children should be seized. In my view these are unfortunate circumstances that any people wishing to wage war against the Arabs must accept. I think that all the means available to wreck tribes must be used, barring those that the human kind and the right of nations condemn.I personally believe that the laws of war enable us to ravage the country and that we must do so either by destroying the crops at harvest time or any time by making fast forays also known as raids the aim of which it to get hold of men or flocks."[11][12]
Whatever initial misgivings Louis Philippe's government may have had about occupying Algeria, the geopolitical realities of the situation created by the 1830 intervention argued strongly for reinforcing the French presence there. France had reason for concern that Britain, which was pledged to maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, would move to fill the vacuum left by a French pullout. The French devised elaborate plans for settling the hinterland left by Ottoman provincial authorities in 1830, but their efforts at state building were unsuccessful on account of lengthy armed resistance.
The most successful local opposition immediately after the fall of Algiers was led by Ahmad ibn Muhammad, bey of Constantine. He initiated a radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his beylik by replacing Turkish officials with local leaders, making Arabic the official language, and attempting to reform finances according to the precepts of Islam. After the French failed in several attempts to gain some of the bey's territories through negotiation, an ill-fated invasion force led by Bertrand Clauzel had to retreat from Constantine in 1836 in humiliation and defeat. However, the French captured Constantine under Sylvain Charles Valée the following year, on 13 October 1837.
Historians generally set the indigenous population of Algeria at less than three million in 1830,[14] a figure estimated to have been reduced by half by war, famine and disease during the French conquest. The controversial historian Daniel Lefeuvre has contested the common estimates concerning the death toll. He has recently alleged that if the Algerian population has decreased by 875,000 people between 1830 and 1872, the French military were not responsible for all of them, as a fraction of these deaths could be explained by the grasshopper invasions of 1866 and 1868, as well as by a rigorous winter in 1867–68, which caused a famine followed by an epidemic of cholera.[15]
The French began their occupation of Algiers in 1830, starting with a landing in Algiers. As occupation turned into colonization, Kabylie remained the only region independent of the French government. Pressure on the region increased, and the will of her people to resist and defend Kabylie increased as well.
A turning point in Lalla Fadma's life was the arrival in Kabylie, in about 1849, of a mysterious man who presented himself as Mohamed ben Abdallah (the name of the Prophet), but who is more commonly known as Bou Baghla. He was probably an ex-lieutenant in the army of Emir Abdelkader, defeated for the last time by the French in 1847. Bou Baghla refused to surrender at that battle, and retreated to Kabylie. From there he began a war against the French armies and their allies, often employing guerrilla tactics. Bou Baghla was a relentless fighter, and very eloquent in Arabic. He was very religious, and some legends tell about his thaumaturgic skills.
Bou Baghla went often to Summer to talk with the high-ranking members of the religious community, and Lalla Fadhma was soon attracted by his strong personality. At the same time, the relentless combatant was attracted by a woman so resolutely willing to contribute, by any means possible, to the war against the French. With her inspiring speeches, she convinced many men to fight as imseblen (volunteers ready to die as martyrs) and she herself, together with other women, participated in combat by providing cooking, medicines, and comfort to the fighting forces.
Traditional sources tell that a strong bond was formed between Lalla Fadhma and Bou Baghla. She saw this as a wedding of peers, rather than the traditional submission as a slave to a husband. In fact, at that time Bou Baghla left his first wife (Fatima Bent Sidi Aissa) and sent back to her owner a slave he had as a concubine (Halima Bent Messaoud). But on her side, Lalla Fadhma wasn't free: even if she was recognized as tamnafeqt ("woman who left her husband to get back to his family", a Kabylie institution), the matrimonial tie with her husband was still in place, and only her husband's will could free her. However he did not agree to, even when offered large bribes. The love between Fadhma and Bou remained platonic, but there were public expressions of this feeling between the two.
Fadhma was personally present at many fights in which Bou Baghla was involved, particularly the battle of Tachekkirt won by Bou Baghla forces (18–19 July 1854), where the French General Randon was caught but managed to escape later. On 26 December 1854, Bou Baghla was killed; some sources claim it was due to the treason of some of his allies. The resistance remained without a charismatic leader and a commander able to guide it efficiently. For this reason, during the first months of 1855, on a sanctuary built on top of the Azru Nethor peak, not far from the village where Fadhma was born, there was a great council among combatants and important figures of the tribes in Kabylie. They decided to grant Lalla Fadhma, assisted by her brothers, the command of combat.
The French faced other opposition as well in the area. The superior of a religious brotherhood, Muhyi ad Din, who had spent time in Ottoman jails for opposing the bey's rule, launched attacks against the French and their makhzen allies at Oran in 1832. In the same year, tribal elders chose Muhyi ad Din's son, twenty-five-year-old Abd al Qadir, to take his place leading the jihad, (which was declared that year[16]). Abd al Qadir, who was recognized as Amir al-Muminin (commander of the faithful), quickly gained the support of tribes throughout Algeria. A devout and austere marabout, he was also a cunning political leader and a resourceful warrior. From his capital in Tlemcen, Abd al Qadir set about building a territorial Muslim state based on the communities of the interior but drawing its strength from the tribes and religious brotherhoods. By 1839, he controlled more than two-thirds of Algeria. His government maintained an army and a bureaucracy, collected taxes, supported education, undertook public works, and established agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to stimulate economic activity.
The French in Algiers viewed with concern the success of a Muslim government and the rapid growth of a viable territorial state that barred the extension of European settlement. Abd al Qadir fought running battles across Algeria with French forces, which included units of the Foreign Legion, organized in 1831 for Algerian service. Although his forces were defeated by the French under General Thomas Bugeaud in 1836, Abd al Qadir negotiated a favorable peace treaty the next year. The treaty of Tafna gained conditional recognition for Abd al Qadir's regime by defining the territory under its control and salvaged his prestige among the tribes just as the shaykhs were about to desert him. To provoke new hostilities, the French deliberately broke the treaty in 1839 by occupying Constantine. Abd al Qadir took up the holy war again, destroyed the French settlements on the Mitidja Plain, and at one point advanced to the outskirts of Algiers itself. He struck where the French were weakest and retreated when they advanced against him in greater strength. The government moved from camp to camp with the amir and his army. Gradually, however, superior French resources and manpower and the defection of tribal chieftains took their toll. Reinforcements poured into Algeria after 1840 until Bugeaud had at his disposal 108,000 men, one-third of the French army.
One by one, the amir's strongholds fell to the French, and many of his ablest commanders were killed or captured so that by 1843 the Muslim state had collapsed.
Abd al Qadir took refuge in 1841 with his ally, the sultan of Morocco, Abd ar Rahman II, and launched raids into Algeria. This alliance led the French Navy to bombard and briefly occupy Essaouira (Mogador) under the Prince de Joinville on August 16, 1844. A French force was destroyed at the Battle of Sidi-Brahim in 1845. However, Abd al Qadir was obliged to surrender to the commander of Oran Province, General Louis de Lamoricière, at the end of 1847.
Abd al Qadir was promised safe conduct to Egypt or Palestine if his followers laid down their arms and kept the peace. He accepted these conditions, but the minister of war—who years earlier as general in Algeria had been badly defeated by Abd al Qadir—had him consigned in France in the Château d'Amboise.
Year | Total population[17][18] |
1830 | ~ 1,500,000 - 10,000,000 * |
1851 | 2,554,100 |
1900 | 4,675,000 |
1910 | 5,500,000 |
1940 | 7,600,000 |
1960 | 10,853,000 |
A commission of inquiry set up by the French Senate in 1892 and headed by former Premier Jules Ferry, an advocate of colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a policy that assumed French law, without major modifications, could fit the needs of an area inhabited by close to two million Europeans and four million Muslims. Muslims had no representation in Algeria's National Assembly and were grossly underrepresented on local councils. Because of the many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only 50,000 Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil communes. Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms were blocked or delayed by the local administration in Algeria, dominated by colons, and by the 27 colon representatives in the National Assembly (six deputies and three senators from each department).[citation needed]
Once elected to the National Assembly, colons became permanent fixtures. Because of their seniority, they exercised disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any government's survival.[citation needed] The leader of the colon delegation, Auguste Warnier (1810–1875), succeeded during the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to settlers and continue the Algerian state's appropriation of land from the local population and distribution to settlers. Consistent proponents of reform, like Georges Clemenceau and socialist Jean Jaurès, were rare in the National Assembly.
The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and trade was controlled by the grands colons. The modern European-owned and -managed sector of the economy centered around small industry and a highly developed export trade, designed to provide food and raw materials to France in return for capital and consumer goods. Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation.[19] By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in agriculture and practically all agricultural exports. The modern, or European, sector was run on a commercial basis and meshed with the French market system that it supplied with wine, citrus, olives, and vegetables. Nearly half of the value of European-owned real property was in vineyards by 1914. By contrast, subsistence cereal production—supplemented by olive, fig, and date growing and stock raising—formed the basis of the traditional sector, but the land available for cropping was submarginal even for cereals under prevailing traditional cultivation practices.
The colonial regime imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims than on Europeans.[20] The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes, from which the colons were normally exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. And colons controlled how these revenues would be spent. As a result, colon towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, while Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little if at all from tax revenues.
The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to learn reading, writing, and engage in religious studies. Not only did the state appropriate the habus lands (the religious foundations that constituted the main source of income for religious institutions, including schools) in 1843, but colon officials refused to allocate enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for enough teachers and religious leaders for the growing population. In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated madrasah (school) often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute bilingual, bicultural schools, intended to bring Muslim and European children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, rejected by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one estimate, fewer than 5% of Algerian children attended any kind of school in 1870. As late as 1954 only one Muslim boy in five and one girl in sixteen was receiving formal schooling[21]
Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along with European students in the French school system as part of France's "civilizing mission" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated, gallicized Muslims—the évolués (literally, the evolved ones)—had been created. Almost all of the handful of Muslims who accepted French citizenship were évolués; ironically, this privileged group of Muslims, strongly influenced by French culture and political attitudes, developed a new Algerian self-consciousness.
Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor General Jules Cambon wrote that Algeria had "only a dust of people left her." He referred to the destruction of the traditional ruling class that had left Muslims without leaders and had deprived France of interlocuteurs valables (literally, valid go-betweens), through whom to reach the masses of the people. He lamented that no genuine communication was possible between the two communities.[22]
The colons who ran Algeria maintained a dialog only with the beni-oui-ouis. Later they thwarted contact between the évolués and Muslim traditionalists on the one hand and between évolués and official circles in France on the other. They feared and mistrusted the Francophone évolués, who were classified either as assimilationist, insisting on being accepted as Frenchmen but on their own terms, or as integrationists, eager to work as members of a distinct Muslim elite on equal terms with the French.
Following its conquest of Ottoman controlled Algeria in 1830, for well over a century France maintained colonial rule in the territory which has been described as "quasi-apartheid".[23] The colonial law of 1865 allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to apply for French citizenship only if they abandoned their Muslim identity; Azzedine Haddour argues that this established "the formal structures of a political apartheid".[24] Camille Bonora-Waisman writes that, "[i]n contrast with the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates", this "colonial apartheid society" was unique to Algeria.[25]
This "internal system of apartheid" met with considerable resistance from the Muslims affected by it, and is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection.[26]
A royal ordinance in 1845 called for three types of administration in Algeria. In areas where Europeans were a substantial part of the population, colons elected mayors and councils for self-governing "full exercise" communes (communes de plein exercice). In the "mixed" communes, where Muslims were a large majority, government was in the hands of appointed and some elected officials, including representatives of the grands chefs (great chieftains) and a French administrator. The indigenous communes (communes indigènes), remote areas not adequately pacified, remained under the régime du sabre (rule of the sword).
By 1848 nearly all of northern Algeria was under French control. Important tools of the colonial administration, from this time until their elimination in the 1870s, were the bureaux arabes (Arab offices), staffed by Arabists whose function was to collect information on the indigenous people and to carry out administrative functions, nominally in cooperation with the army. The bureaux arabes on occasion acted with sympathy to the local population and formed a buffer between Muslims and colons.
Under the régime du sabre, the colons had been permitted limited self-government in areas where European settlement was most intense, but there was constant friction between them and the army. The colons charged that the bureaux arabes hindered the progress of colonization. They agitated against military rule, complaining that their legal rights were denied under the arbitrary controls imposed on the colony and insisting on a civil administration for Algeria fully integrated with metropolitan France. The army warned that the introduction of civilian government would invite Muslim retaliation and threaten the security of Algeria. The French government vacillated in its policy, yielding small concessions to the colon demands on the one hand while maintaining the régime du sabre to control the Muslim majority on the other.
Shortly after Louis Philippe's constitutional monarchy was overthrown in the revolution of 1848, the new government of the Second Republic ended Algeria's status as a colony and declared in the 1848 Constitution the occupied lands an integral part of France. Three civil territories—Alger, Oran, and Constantine—were organized as French departements (local administrative units) under a civilian government. This made them a part of France proper as opposed to a colony. For the first time, French citizens in the civil territories elected their own councils and mayors; Muslims had to be appointed, could not hold more than one-third of council seats, and could not serve as mayors or assistant mayors. The administration of territories outside the zones settled by colons remained under the French Army. Local Muslim administration was allowed to continue under the supervision of French Army commanders, charged with maintaining order in newly pacified regions, and the bureaux arabes. Theoretically, these areas were closed to European colonization.
Even before the decision was made to annex Algeria, major changes had taken place. In a bargain-hunting frenzy to take over or buy at low prices all manner of property—homes, shops, farms and factories—Europeans poured into Algiers after it fell. French authorities took possession of the beylik lands, from which Ottoman officials had derived income. Over time, as pressures increased to obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the state seized more categories of land, particularly that used by tribes, religious foundations, and villages[citation needed].
Called either colons (settlers), Algerians, or later, especially following the 1962 independence of Algeria, pieds noirs (literally, black feet), the European settlers were largely of peasant farmer or working-class origin from the poor southern areas of Italy, Spain,[27] and France. Others were criminal and political deportees from France, transported under sentence in large numbers to Algeria. In the 1840s and 1850s, to encourage settlement in rural areas, official policy was to offer grants of land for a fee and a promise that improvements would be made. A distinction soon developed between the grands colons (great settlers) at one end of the scale, often self-made men who had accumulated large estates or built successful businesses, and smallholders and workers at the other end, whose lot was often not much better than that of their Muslim counterparts. According to historian John Ruedy, although by 1848 only 15,000 of the 109,000 European settlers were in rural areas, "by systematically expropriating both pastors and farmers, rural colonization was the most important single factor in the destructing of traditional society."[citation needed]
European migration, encouraged during the Second Republic, stimulated the civilian administration to open new land for settlement against the advice of the army. With the advent of the Second Empire in 1852, Napoleon III returned Algeria to military control. In 1858 a separate Ministry of Algerian Affairs was created to supervise administration of the country through a military governor general assisted by a civil minister.
Napoleon III visited Algeria twice in the early 1860s. He was profoundly impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal chieftains, who appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and was shocked by the self-serving attitude of the colon leaders. He decided to halt the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to restrict contact between Muslims and the colons, whom he considered to have a corrupting influence on the indigenous population. He envisioned a grand design for preserving most of Algeria for the Muslims by founding a royaume arabe (Arab kingdom) with himself as the roi des Arabes (king of the Arabs). He instituted the so-called politics of the grands chefs to deal with the Muslims directly through their traditional leaders.[28]
To further his plans for the royaume arabe, Napoleon III issued two decrees affecting tribal structure, land tenure, and the legal status of Muslims in French Algeria. The first, promulgated in 1863, was intended to renounce the state's claims to tribal lands and eventually provide private plots to individuals in the tribes, thus dismantling "feudal" structures and protecting the lands from the colons. Tribal areas were to be identified, delimited into douars (administrative units), and given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among members of the douar over a period of one to three generations, after which it could be bought and sold by the individual owners. Unfortunately for the tribes, however, the plans of Napoleon III quickly unraveled. French officials sympathetic to the colons took much of the tribal land they surveyed into the public domain. In addition, some tribal leaders immediately sold communal lands for quick gains. The process of converting arable land to individual ownership was accelerated to only a few years when laws were enacted in the 1870s stipulating that no sale of land by an individual Muslim could be invalidated by the claim that it was collectively owned. The cudah and other tribal officials, appointed by the French on the basis of their loyalty to France rather than the allegiance owed them by the tribe, lost their credibility as they were drawn into the European orbit, becoming known derisively as béni-oui-oui.[29]
Napoleon III visualized three distinct Algerias: a French colony, an Arab country, and a military camp, each with a distinct form of local government. The second decree, issued in 1865, was designed to recognize the differences in cultural background of the French and the Muslims. As French nationals, Muslims could serve on equal terms in the French armed forces and civil service and could migrate to France proper. They were also granted the protection of French law while retaining the right to adhere to Islamic law in litigation concerning their personal status. But if Muslims wished to become full citizens, they had to accept the full jurisdiction of the French legal code, including laws affecting marriage and inheritance, and reject the authority of the religious courts. In effect, this meant that a Muslim had to renounce some of the mores of his religion in order to become a French citizen. This condition was bitterly resented by Muslims, for whom the only road to political equality was perceived to be apostasy. Over the next century, fewer than 3,000 Muslims chose to cross the barrier and become French citizens. A similar status applied to the Jewish natives.[30]
When the Prussians captured Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan (1870), ending the Second Empire, the colons in Algiers toppled the military government and installed a civilian administration. Meanwhile, in France the government of the Third Republic directed one of its ministers, Adolphe Crémieux, "to destroy the military regime ... [and] to completely assimilate Algeria into France." In October 1870, Crémieux, whose concern with Algerian affairs dated from the time of the Second Republic, issued a series of decrees providing for representation of the Algerian départements in the National Assembly of France and confirming colon control over local administration. A civilian governor general was made responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The Crémieux Decrees also granted blanket French citizenship to Algerian Jews, who then numbered about 40,000. This act set them apart from Muslims, in whose eyes they were identified thereafter with the colons. The measure had to be enforced, however, over the objections of the colons, who made little distinction between Muslims and Jews. (Automatic citizenship was subsequently extended in 1889 to children of non-French Europeans born in Algeria unless they specifically rejected it.)
The loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War, led to pressure on the French government to make new land available in Algeria for about 5,000 Alsatian and Lorrainer refugees who were resettled there. During the 1870s, both the amount of European-owned land and the number of settlers were doubled, and tens of thousands of unskilled Muslims, who had been uprooted from their land, wandered into the cities or to colon farming areas in search of work.
The most serious native insurrection since the time of Abd al Qadir broke out in 1871 in the Kabylie and spread through much of Algeria. The revolt was triggered by Crémieux's extension of civil (that is, colon) authority to previously self-governing tribal reserves and the abrogation of commitments made by the military government, but it clearly had its basis in more long-standing grievances. Since the Crimean War (1854–56), the demand for grain had pushed up the price of Algerian wheat to European levels. Storage silos were emptied when the world market's impact was felt in Algeria, and Muslim farmers sold their grain reserves—including seed grain—to speculators. But the community-owned silos were the fundamental adaptation of a subsistence economy to an unpredictable climate, and a good year's surplus was stored away against a bad year's dearth. When serious drought struck Algeria and grain crops failed in 1866 and for several years following, Muslim areas faced starvation, and with famine came pestilence. It was estimated that 20% of the Muslim population of Constantine died over a three-year period. In 1871 the civil authorities repudiated guarantees made to tribal chieftains by the previous military government for loans to replenish their seed supply. This act alienated even pro-French Muslim leaders, while it undercut their ability to control their people. It was against this background of misery and hopelessness that the stricken Kabyles rose in revolt, following immediately on the mutiny in January 1871 of a squadron of Muslim spahis in the French Army who had been ordered to embark for France.[31]
In the aftermath of the 1871 uprising, French authorities imposed stern measures to punish and control the whole Muslim population. France confiscated more than 5,000 km² of tribal land and placed the Kabylie under a régime d'exception (extraordinary rule), which denied the due process guaranteed French nationals. A special indigénat (native code) listed as offenses acts such as insolence and unauthorized assembly not punishable by French law, and the normal jurisdiction of the cudah was sharply restricted. The governor general was empowered to jail suspects for up to five years without trial. The argument was made in defense of these exceptional measures that the French penal code as applied to Frenchmen was too permissive to control Muslims. Some were deported to New Caledonia, see Algerians of the Pacific.
In the 1890s, the French administration and military called for the annexation of the Touat, the Gourara and the Tidikelt,[32] a complex that had been part of the Moroccan Empire for many centuries prior to the arrival of the French in Algeria.[33]
An armed conflict opposed French 19th Corps Oran and Algiers divisions to the Aït Khabbash, a fraction of the Aït Ounbgui khams of the Aït Atta confederation. The conflict ended by the annexation of the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt complex by France in 1901.[34]
In the 1930s, the Saoura valley and the region of Tindouf were in turn annexed to French Algeria at the expense of Morocco, which became a French protectorate since 1912.
Colonial troops of French Algeria were sent to fight in the mainland during the battle of France. After the Fall of France, the Third French Republic collapsed and was replaced by the Philippe Pétain's French State.
Many Algerians had fought as French soldiers during the Second World War. Thus Algerian Muslims felt that it was even more unjust that their votes were not equal to those of the other Algerians, especially after 1947 when the Algerian Assembly was created. This assembly was composed of 120 members. Algerian Muslims, representing about 6.85 million people, could designate 50% of the Assembly members, while 1,150,000 non-Muslim Algerians could designate the other half. Moreover, a massacre occurred in Sétif May 8, 1945. It opposed Algerians who were demonstrating for their national claim to the French Army. After skirmishes with Police, Algerians killed about 100 French. The French army retaliated harshly, resulting in the deaths of approximately 6,000 Algerians.[35] This triggered a radicalization of Algerian nationalists and could be considered the beginning of the Algerian War. In 1956, about 512,000 French soldiers were in Algeria. No resolution was imaginable in the short term. An overwhelming majority of French politicians were opposed to the idea of independence while independence was gaining ground in Muslim Algerians' minds[citation needed]. France was deadlocked and the Fourth Republic collapsed over this dispute.
" | "Vive l'Algérie française !" (lit. "Long live French Algeria!") Declaration of Charles de Gaulle (June 6, 1958, Mostaganem, French Algeria[36] | " |
In 1958, Charles de Gaulle's return to power in response to a military coup in Algiers on May was supposed to keep Algeria's status quo as departments of France as hinted by his famous, yet ambiguous, speeches delivered in Oran and Mostaganem on June 6, 1958. De Gaulle's republican constitution project was approved through the September 1958 referendum and the Fifth Republic was established the following month with De Gaulle as its President.
The latter consented independence in 1962 after a referendum on Algerian self-determination in January 1961 and despite a subsequent aborted military coup in Algiers led by four French generals in April 1961.
Relations between post-colonial Algeria and France have remained close throughout the years, although sometimes difficult. In 1962, the Evian Accords peace treaty provided land in the Sahara for the French Army, which it had used under de Gaulle to carry out its first nuclear tests (Gerboise bleue). Many European settlers (pieds-noirs) living in Algeria and Sephardic Jews, who both had been granted French citizenship by the Crémieux decrees at the end of the 19th century, were expelled to France where they formed a new community. On the other hand, the issue of the harkis, the Muslims who had fought on the French side during the war, still remained unresolved. Large numbers of harkis were killed in 1962, during the immediate aftermath of the Algerian War, while those who escaped with their families to France have tended to remain an unassimilated refugee community. The present Algerian government continues to refuse to allow harkis and their descendants to return to Algeria.
On February 23, 2005 the French law on colonialism was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservative majority, which imposed on high-school (lycée) teachers to teach the "positive values" of colonialism to their students, in particular in North Africa (article 4). The law created a public uproar and opposition from the whole of the left-wing, and was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac (UMP) at the beginning of 2006, after accusations of historical revisionism from various teachers and historians.
Algerians feared that the French law on colonialism would hinder the task the French confronting the dark side of their colonial rule in Algeria because article four of the law decreed among other things that "School programmes are to recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, ..."[37] Benjamin Stora, a leading specialist on French Algerian history of colonialism, said "France has never taken on its colonial history. It is a big difference with the Anglo-Saxon countries, where post-colonial studies are now in all the universities. We are phenomenally behind the times."[37] In his opinion, although the historical facts were known to academics, they were not well known by the French public and this led to a lack of honesty in France over French colonial treatment of the Algerian people.[37]
Algérie française was a slogan used about 1960 by those French people who wanted to keep Algeria ruled by France. Literally "French Algeria," it means that the three départements of Algeria were to be considered integral parts of France. By integral parts, it is meant that they have their deputies (representatives) in the French National Assembly, and so on. Further, the people of Algeria who were to be permitted to vote for the deputies would be those who universally accepted French law, rather than sharia (which was used in personal cases among Algerian Muslims under laws dating back to Napoleon III), and such people were predominantly of French origin or Jewish émigré origin. Many who used this slogan were returnees.[38]
In Paris, during the perennial traffic jams, adherence to the slogan was indicated by sounding one's automobile horn in the form of four telegraphic dots followed by a dash, as "al-gér-ie-fran-çaise." Whole choruses of such horn soundings were heard. This was intended to be reminiscent of the Second World War slogan, "V for Victory," which had been three dots followed by a dash. The intention was that the opponents of Algérie française were to be considered as traitorous as the collaborators with Germany during the Occupation of France.


text:
Amazon Kindle sells half as well as Microsoft Zune
February 4th, 2009
Daniel Eran Dilger
If you're hooked on phonics, you're probably stoked about Amazon's Kindle, which allows users to load up books, newspapers, and even blogs and Wikipedia articles from the web over-the-air for reading on a slow refreshing, grey e-Ink screen. But did you know it's selling half as well as that barometer of epic failure, the Microsoft Zune?
At least one analyst is excited about the potential of the Kindle to become a blockbuster, if only it follows in the pattern of the iPod. In other words, the task Apple accomplished in selling music players should be easy to replicate in any business: eBook readers, PDAs, Tablet PCs, UMPCs, even iPod clones. Since the Kindle sold 500,000 units in its first year, it must be due to sell twice as many during the global crisis of 2009, according to Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney.
AppleInsider | Amazon rumored to introduce Kindle 2.0 next Monday
Everything Counts in Large Amounts.
Just ask Microsoft, which has introduced all manner of consumer products that will all sell really well once they hit the same iPod magic curve that fires their sales up in the stratosphere automatically. Actually, that didn't ever happen, and it looks like it won't ever.
Exuberance about PDAs peaked shortly after 3COM took its Palm subsidiary private in 2000 and have grown increasingly inconsequential every year since. The Tablet/UMPC devices that Bill Gates pitched incessantly from the early 90s right up to his retirement from leading Microsoft have never achieved any measure of broad success outside of a few small niche markets.
And Microsoft's attempt to replicate the iPod's success with its own Zune resulted in intractable failure, with the company initially resorting to fire sales that liquidated the first year's inventory at as much as 60% off, and second year sales that never broke out past that million unit per year mark that defines the baseline of failure in consumer electronics products today.
The Egregious Incompetence of Palm
Mobile EEE PC, UMPC, and Internet Tablets vs the iPhone
Zune Sales Still In the Toilet
Microsoft's Zune crashes as iPod sales grow
There Can Be Only One.
Launching a brand new product, or even a new implementation of an existing product category, is very difficult. That's why it's more that a little impressive that Apple, while at its lowest point after the dot com bust, was able to successfully launch the iPod and turn it into a phenomenon within a couple years, despite having a full set of determined competitors, including both hardware companies like Sony with years of acumen in building gadgets, and software platform companies like Microsoft which were armed with existing industry relationships with the music studios and hardware partners that Apple lacked back then.
The success of the iPod involved shipping a good product that worked well, delivered a simple but obvious premise, was marketed well by a reputable company, and hit the market at just the right point to define itself as the gold standard for its kind. That type of success is very difficult to achieve, but Apple continued to hold onto the ball with the iPod for the rest of the decade, and still retains a 71% unit share of the US market and strong international sales.
Apple then did the same thing again in smartphones, a business that was entirely new to the company in 2007 when it launched the iPhone not just as an Apple branded phone, but as a fuller-featured iPod and a functional web browser. Pundits wrote the iPhone off at the time as being a fancy toy out of the price range of most consumers, but Apple sold nearly 4 million in its first six months on sale, well above that million unit per year barrier of failure.
The next year, Apple sold well more than ten million, not including the spun off iPod touch version. At the same time, Apple has continued to sell more iPods than ever despite the obvious cannibalization effect of all those new iPod-replacing iPhones hitting the market. That's a level of success the market doesn't spend much time contemplating.
Is Number Two Amazon Rivaling iTunes in Music Sales? Haha No
The iPod of Killers.
Really, where would analysts find the time? They're all busy making assumptions that every new product that hits the market will be "the iPod of" that segment. The Kindle was supposed to be the iPod of book readers, but it turns out that not everyone has the inclination to carry around "an iPod" for each activity they pursue.
When pundits asked Steve Jobs when Apple would be coming out with a Kindle-killer of its own, Jobs shrugged off the idea by saying that people don't even read books anymore. Of course they do, but in the sense of an activity that would sustain a standalone device, book reading just isn't there. Apple's solution for reading books on the go is suggested in the company's ad which recommends downloading an app that lets you read books on the iPhone.
Technically, that experience is less ideal than the Kindle. There's no easy on the eyes e-Ink screen on the iPhone, it's smaller, it uses annoying color to paint up the screen, it has to be recharged more often (a serious problem for 24-hour book readers who need to sit more than five feet away from a wall outlet), and using the iPhone makes you look like everyone else, not an elitist nerd on the cutting edge of eBook readerdom.
But for 80% of the market, reading an occasional book (or more likely, web content that actually works like a desktop browser) is far more satisfying when it can be done on a pocket-sized device that also doubles as a phone, an iPod, a game machine, a calculator, a novelty fart device, and 10,000 other things in the App Store.
And that's why, even with a nice redesign, Amazon's Kindle is not going to hit an iPod-like critical mass to become a billion dollar market any time soon, particularly not in the middle of a long term recession where people are more worried about their jobs and keeping their homes than at any point since the Depression.
It's not that the Kindle isn't any good, it's just not good enough to warrant being carried around by a large enough audience to matter. Add up all of the tech-savvy cat ladies who sit in on Oprah's book club, and you have a narrow niche market, not another iPod.
In-depth review: can Amazon's Kindle light a fire under eBooks?
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64 comments
- 1 enzos { 02.04.09 at 5:05 am }
Awkward looking thing.. might as well just carry the book, eh? And much cheaper.
Far and near, through vale and hill,
Are faces that attest the same,
And kindle like a fire new stirr'd,
At sound of Rob Roy's name. - 2 Brau { 02.04.09 at 5:48 am }
"and using the iPhone makes you look like everyone else, not an elitist nerd on the cutting edge of eBook readerdom."
Love the hilariously snide way you hit the nail on the head with that statement. Great read, made my day. Lol!
Half a mil swindled
and now sales dwindle
'cuz readers want iPhones
instead of a Kindle - 3 Joel { 02.04.09 at 6:24 am }
Not sure what this article is trying to argue. Yep, the Kindle is ugly, and yep there's some things it can do better, but its the first e-book reader to be mentioned by the mainstream.
And am I worried about people thinking I'm an "elitist nerd" when I use an e-reader in public…? Not really, I grew out of worrying about what people thought of me when I left school. I'm more concerned about my eyes, and from having a more efficient method carrying around books and notes.
- 4 Joel { 02.04.09 at 6:25 am }
(There are other e-readers, but the Kindle is the first I've heard about talked about on non-tech tv…)
- 5 Kindle Sales Speculation: 09 Edition Ep 1 « The Book is Dead { 02.04.09 at 6:40 am }
[...] it is today. Enough said. For more, follow the comment thread in the techcrunch summary, or check this rather more acerbic take. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Those Damn Kindle Numbers…Are books [...]
- 7 enzos { 02.04.09 at 7:18 am }
Très beau, Brau.
Coincidentally; listening to 'Bookstore Rap' from Sugar Mountain Live at Canterbury House 1968 on the iTunes.
-Enz - 8 Galley { 02.04.09 at 7:44 am }
It's 2009, for crying out loud! Every school kid should be carrying an electronic textbook.
- 9 Joel { 02.04.09 at 8:28 am }
So, given that the Kindle sold out in its first incarnation, and was given enthusiastic reviews by people in the non-mainstream, and might have a vs 2 coming out this week, how has it "failed"…? And the Sony Reader is now on its 3rd incarnation. How has that product "failed"…?
The only reason you supply for this failure is for the lack of sales. The iPod in its first year only sold 376,000 (Data from Wikipedia). By that measure the iPod didn't even clear the 500,000 you report for the Kindle. Clear failure. Hang on…
If the Kindle continues to have < 1 million sales per year for a couple of years, and is then withdrawn from market, then I would agree that it has failed. But to claim its failed when all the reports I read are good, and when using a friends device indicates it works well seems a bit premature to me…
And I would never rely on analysts predictions, especially on an emerging market such as this…
- 10 cy_starkman { 02.04.09 at 8:41 am }
why would anything be comparing an audio player or a video player to a book player.
its a book player not a frickin ipod.
I am at a loss though as to why E-Paper which when I read about it in the mid 90′s was meant to be just thicker than paper and even then was intending to have aerials and such woven into the fabric of the paper is so big and thick.
The Kindle. It reminds me of the Newton. Tech which will get called ol grand daddy as we roll up our thin film, multi haptic, semi organic media viewing device in 10 years.
- 11 Joel { 02.04.09 at 8:44 am }
Oops : non-mainstream should read mainstream. (I was going to put non-IT)
- 12 oomu { 02.04.09 at 9:23 am }
he didn't tell the kindle is a failure
he explains (again) why the so-called "analysts" are just pundits and liars when they try month after month to disguise the kindle in a new ipod-like succes.
the goal of theses pundits is to minimize apple accomplishment.
but yes, Amazon has a nice product, and yes for the first time , a "e-book" reader was mainstream (in USA.) but no, it's not an iconic success like ipod. - 13 Joel { 02.04.09 at 9:39 am }
Well… I would still argue its hard to determine if something is an iconic success, or not, within the first two years of availability. Particularly when the item we are talking about sold-out (through supply problems or unexpectedly high demand)…
But then I don't take pundits seriously and rely on what *I* see.
- 14 rickrandom { 02.04.09 at 10:02 am }
You've probably already read it, but John Siracusa over at Ars Technica recently wrote a very good article about e-readers and why they've never really gone anywhere. Well worth the read.
- 15 John Muir { 02.04.09 at 10:05 am }
I'm neither impressed nor dismayed by the Kindle. But here are a few points for the debate:
Kindle Strengths.
1. Designed by Amazon – book people – instead of the usual suspects (Sony, MS partners, etc.) with ulterior motives
2. Energy efficient screen technology for extended reading
3. Integrated book store syncKindle Flaws
1. Designed by Amazon. The hardware's shape and button placement are the subject of near universal complaint
2. Murky and smudgy screen technology
3. Crappy browser for the web at large, beyond Amazon and its partnersIt's swings and roundabouts with the Kindle. There are some things about it which are very promising, but nothing seems to have been achieved without serious compromise.
Personally, I read the web on the go (and watch movies and listen to music) far more than I read books. So my iPod touch is a much better fit.
But I can certainly see the promise in ebooks, with hardware more tailored for their demands -larger screen, epic battery life, daylight legible – than the iPhone / touch provides. It's just that so far, none of the contestants seem to have delivered.
Perhaps the ebook reader market is in its Creative Nomad phase, waiting for its transformation from geeky dream into mass hit reality. Amazon clearly hope so. I wonder if Apple is keeping an eye on this too.
- 16 edinburghmac { 02.04.09 at 10:38 am }
I don't see the great convenience of an E-book reader compared to the iPod. The iPod revolutionised music listening because it allowed people to listen to any of their music at any time (normally on a daily commute). This allowed people to choose to listen to whole albums, any individual song or rediscover their music libraries using shuffle. With books you make a conscious decision to read a book and then generally only read that one book until it's finished. You generally don't mix and match chapters from different books the way you can with music. Additionally, it would be quite easy to listen to dozens of whole albums in a day but there aren't many people who could finish a whole book in a day. To me the only use for an E-book reader is if you were going to be away from your books for an extended period of time (such as a holiday or lengthy visit). I'm not sure that we're all ready yet to give up on the printed page.
- 17 Orenge { 02.04.09 at 12:12 pm }
I don't like the bulk of the Kindle (lose the keyboard! I want to read books) nor the black-on-gray screen (technology will advance to make it true white I'm sure).
But I will stand up for them when it comes to sales: the Zune is a failure in a HUGE market–music players. Half of that number, in a TINY market (e book readers) is actually very good.
The headline is like saying that a certain brand of deep sea goggles sold only half what a minor brand of sunglasses sold.
- 18 SamLowry { 02.04.09 at 12:13 pm }
I don't get it. The one thing a book reader does not need is a keyboard. To include this in the second version is worse than keyboards on mail centric smartphones.
The iPod wasn't a success because it did only one thing, but because it did one thing exceptionally well. - 19 daGUY { 02.04.09 at 1:06 pm }
I agree overall with this article – if a device isn't designed well, and/or it doesn't have a clearly defined market, there's no magic point where it suddenly becomes the "iPod" of its category and takes off.
The Kindle definitely isn't there yet, and I don't know if it ever will be. The hardware is clumsy and awkward, it looks cheap, and there are still some major issues to work out. For instance, why is a third of the Kindle's surface devoted to a keyboard? Is it supposed to be used for reading or writing? The phrase "a camel is a horse designed by committee" comes to mind.
That said, I agree with Joel that it's a fallacy to use 1 million units/year as an absolute benchmark of success. The iPod only sold 325,000 units in its first full year on the market (2002), and 600,000 in total since its introduction in October 2001. If we applied this same logic to the iPod at the end of 2002, we'd conclude it was as much of a "failure" as the Kindle is now. Obviously, that's not an accurate indication of future success.
Heck, Microsoft sold 1.2 million Zunes in the first 6 months after its introduction (November 2006 – June 2007). It took Apple 2 years to hit the same number with the iPod.
So, one year of initial sales isn't really enough information to make a final judgment.
- 20 stefn { 02.04.09 at 1:39 pm }
Two points:
* Amazon will continue on with the Kindle 'cuz it knows all content is going digital and it must cover its bases. IOW, Amazon doesn't care if the Kindle sells in the millions right now. It's a place holder. Amazon knows that patience pays.
* Apple can make kindling of the Kindle if it does Kindle's EVDO, making our content available on MobileME all the time, any place. Wouldn't hurt if the screen were a tad bigger. But, yes, it must be pocketable!
- 21 stefn { 02.04.09 at 1:42 pm }
That's "…if it does Kindle's EVDO on the iPod Touch…"
- 22 addicted44 { 02.04.09 at 2:14 pm }
Daniel's point here is that while the Kindle serves those who are interested in it well, it is only serving a niche market. Unlike the iPod, its probably not going to be a worldwide phenomenon.Also, sales comparisons to the initial years of the iPod are flawed in that the iPod was originally, mac-only. The iPod achieved near Kindle like sales with an addressable market < 5% of that of the Kindle. It was pitched as a way to have people switch to the mac…
- 23 Joel { 02.04.09 at 2:29 pm }
Heh, I remember articles on the Internet at the time that said the reason it was Mac-only was because Mac-owners were the only people to afford it. And the only people geeky enough to bother with it :)
"It's a place holder. Amazon knows that patience pays." : Yes, and I would also say that perhaps Amazon rushed out the Kindle. It would explain the clunky looks and using EVDO. Amazon could have waited and produced a GSM version and we'd have the Kindle in the EU by now…
- 24 jmdunys { 02.04.09 at 2:33 pm }
Why spend money on an eReader?
Nowadays when you buy a phone, you get (at least) a calendar, a contact list, an alarm clock, a camera, and games.
If you get a Smartphone, you get all the above, plus email, web browser, etc.
There are reading applications available for WinMo, iPhone, RIM and probably others.I used to have a bible, a concordance, commentaries, and note taker on my HTC WinMo. I could finally read without using my glasses…
So really, why buy a standalone eReader? Beats me!
- 25 Joel { 02.04.09 at 2:40 pm }
Because e-ink provides a much nicer expereience (IMHO) than back-lit LCD…? And yes, its one of those things you really need to try…
- 26 harrywolf { 02.04.09 at 3:01 pm }
"the tech-savvy cat ladies who sit in on Oprah's book club" – Daniel, you are the King of Satire!
This article, while accurate and 'tech-savvy' (!) as usual, was also the funnest (sic) that you have written, maybe ever.
Woke me from my low-cash doldrums and am now headed out the door to conquer the world with a D.E. Dilger-inspired good feeling!
Thanks, Dan – and no politics – some of your more Ostrich-like readers will be pleased…..
- 27 harrywolf { 02.04.09 at 3:12 pm }
@ DaGuy:
Microsoft SHIPPED 1.2 million zunes – they didnt actually SELL that many.
They were discounting them down to $39.99 here at Best Buy in Vancouver BC. in midsummer 2008, and I would hazard a guess that they were from the 1.2 million that presumably floated around in boxes for over a year.
The iPod became the market leader because of a combination of factors – none of the competitors have all of those essential ingredients, and the iPhone is doing the same because of the App store and iTunes and its huge capacity as a music player (iPod) etc.etc.
Apple kept control of the OS and the Hardware and that, more than anything, is a rare and unbeatable combination.
Blackberry have a similar thing going, which is why they are also doing well.
Licensing parts of the whole works for Windows, mainly because of historical accident and criminal activity – it rarely works otherwise.
- 28 Jesse { 02.04.09 at 3:15 pm }
I think it behooves us all to admit we don't get it. Any geeky tech lover is going to look at the Kindle and go, "bleccch!"–myself included. Whatever Amazon's game is, they're doing something right, and us technorati are scratching our heads.
They've created the world's only name-brand ebook reader, and they've done it by doing the opposite of what everybody else thought you should do. Instead of making something sexy and streamlined and Ives-y futuristic, they made something ugly and ungainly and very very retro (the thing looks like a big 1980′s calculator!).
But it worked! Why? You got me. I hate the looks of it. I want none of it. But I don't buy books. I buy gadgets.
All us gadget-heads just don't get it, and I include myself. What Amazon has done–and it's baffling everyone–is make something that's an awful gadget, but a great product.
- 29 beanie { 02.04.09 at 3:34 pm }
But Kindle always seems to be in top 3 of the Amazon electronics bestsellers list. So is Amazon fiddling with their bestseller list or is it actually selling better on Amazon than other electronic gadgets, even individual iPod models.
Zune Touch based on NVidia Tegra is the most likely next hardware version, if Microsoft decides to continue Zune. If you look at the past, Microsoft does not get it right until the 3rd or 4th version. Microsoft was also planning to enter the European market when the Zune was good enough.
Netbooks are the offspring of UMPC. As netbooks become more powerful, they will fullfill the UMPC concept. The new Sony Lifestyle "netbook" looks cool.
Convertible Tablet/Laptop is the most likely form-factor for Tablet PCs. So the laptop can be used in clam-shell or tablet configuration. HP showed off the TouchSmart tx2 convertible tablet. ASUS showed off EEE PC T92 convertible tablet netbook. Windows 7 has touch so convertible tablet is the way to go.
- 30 David Dennis { 02.04.09 at 4:06 pm }
The Kindle sold 500,000 units in its first year, and if my memory serves, a bestselling book sells about 600,000 copies. This means Kindle sold about as many units as a bestselling book. In its target market of book readers, a tiny subset of the US population, that has to be considered a significant success.
Since music sells many more units than books, clearly a music player has a higher sales bar to climb over to be called a success. It is reasonable, by any standard, to call the iPod a success and the Zune a failure, since in the overall market, Zune didn't capture a sizable share.
So for a deeply flawed product – and we know Kindle buyers read, and therefore most of them have read the reviews – I'd say Kindle is an impressive success for Amazon, particularly since the media (i.e. books) are fairly pricey per unit.
When I visit the bookstore it's interesting to see a lot of publishing being done in color, even of mainstream books at reasonable prices. I would certainly not want to buy an Adobe Photoshop guide in black and white, for instance. So I think in the long run, Kindle's monochrome screen will be unappealing.
So far, so good for the Kindle. I wouldn't buy one, because of the screen and navigation awkwardness, but it seems to me Dan's a bit hard on it here. It's a worthy effort that deserves a better v2.0.
- 31 David Dennis { 02.04.09 at 4:08 pm }
Note that Amazon is the only place where you can buy a Kindle, while you can buy an iPod in Apple Stores, Wal*Mart, etc. So it should not be surprising that Kindle is always an Amazon bestseller.
- 32 Per { 02.04.09 at 4:22 pm }
"Add up all of the tech-savvy cat ladies who sit in on Oprah's book club, and you have a narrow niche market, not another iPod."
This had me laughing out loud. I had an awful day and getting to read stuff like this really lightens things up. Thanks.
- 33 daGUY { 02.04.09 at 5:34 pm }
@HarryWolf: I grabbed the numbers off Wikipedia. I thought it said sold, but it could have been shipped (or Wikipedia could be wrong…lol).
Anyway, my point was that I don't think it's fair to make a blanket rule that <1 million units sold in a year is a failure. As I said, the original iPod only sold 325,000 units in its first full year. A lot of people wrote it off at the time – remember the infamous Slashdot commentary? "No radio. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." If someone told you then the iPod was going to dominate in a few year's time, you would have laughed them off.
The other thing is, we're comparing entirely different devices here. iPods and Kindles overlap in some areas (both can browse the web, read documents, play music, etc.), but they're completely different products aimed at different markets. I don't think you can apply the same general "X sales in a year" rule for such different devices and then use that as a measure of success.
- 34 nat { 02.04.09 at 6:02 pm }
I don't get how the Kindle has become the first "mainstream" eBook reader as some in these comments have asserted. Ask 20 people on the street what a Kindle is and they'll say "kindling? that's for fireplaces right?" or "Ken doll? that's Barbie's boyfriend." In contrast, people more often than not call any mp3 player that remotely resembles an iPod, an iPod.
I question if dedicated eBook readers will ever reach serious market penetration. I could see reading digitized books on laptops becoming the norm. That's already possible and it's quite nice actually. I ended up reading most of The Picture of Dorian Gray on SparkNotes back in high school because reading real books is so relaxing it makes me drowsy. On a laptop, the text is backlit and more importantly, the ability to scroll the page line-by-line, rather than having to move your eyes down the page, keeps your eye muscles from getting worn out. Likewise, in my Sophomore year I was fortunate enough to get a massive Computer Certification Technician textbook that came with…a CD that contained a PDF!! Suddenly everything was instantly searchable, great for studying, homework, and open-book exams.
Why people would want to carry around a Kindle and a laptop if both could view the same eBooks is beyond me.
- 35 John Muir { 02.04.09 at 6:37 pm }
Great, great link that Siracusa story by the way Rick. He's always a good read and I'd missed that. Damn Ars not doing author specific RSS feeds!
He covers many of the points we're arguing again here. Definitely a good one to check out.
- 36 LuisDias { 02.04.09 at 7:05 pm }
I have to agree with Joel. While I understand Dan's point, I also don't see the reason to be such a snob against the Kindle.
To all of you who don't "see" why the Kindle is being a de facto success (not an iPod, forsure, but anyways a very good sell considering the price of it and the niche market of it), you should understand that the e-ink has no comparison whatsoever against the iPod.
If anything, I can't understand how anyone dismisses this device just because e-books are "readable" in the laptop, iPhone, etc. If anything, people saying this have never read an e-book, period. It hurts the eyes to read for so long a period of time against a backlit screen, and the e-ink is just like a conventional paper. It also uses next to nil power, so you don't worry about battery.
Ahw, yes it's "ugly", but then again, people that usually are interested in books aren't that snobbish for looks. You know, the usual drill between superficial peopl *ahem* looks, and deep content in books. People that read many books aren't that interested nor worried in looks.
That's probably what irritates Dan. The Kindle is a success despite irritatingly dismissing any "apple" notions of desing. And that's also probably why Apple will never enter such a market, because these people couldn't care less if the iKindle has 14 or 20 different colors in metal case or not. They don't care if they see a dull white keyboard or the lovely clickwheel.
Not in their e-books at least.
- 37 KenC { 02.04.09 at 8:33 pm }
I read tons of books every year. You'd think I'd be the ideal Kindle customer. The Kindle is too expensive. It should be heavily subsidized. $99 if you buy a book a month for a year. Free if you buy a book a month for 2 years.
Having said that, every time I look at a Kindle, I see an immature Newton. Why is that?
As for the person who said UMPCs became netbooks, I would point out to you Dan's point was that Gates was promoting UMPCs for selfish reasons. He thought he could sell more OSes and Office Suites. Netbooks are not going to be selling any Office Suites and most come with Linux. So, the rise of netbooks, is hardly the validation of Gates' vision.
- 38 KenC { 02.04.09 at 8:36 pm }
@luis, readers of lots of books ARE snobbish when it comes to looks. We like hardcovers with nice jackets, and heavy-st0ck paper that appear to have been cut with a letter opener. That's why a Kindle is so hard to stomach. You lose so much of what goes along with a good book.
- 39 mr_kitty { 02.04.09 at 8:45 pm }
One of my clients has a Kindle, and while the hardware is klunky and poorly designed, the convenience of having books immediately download for you is really nice.
If Amazon were truly interested in the life of the Kindle market, they'd release a Kindle app for the iPhone. The secondary market place of the kindle would normally violate the App store terms, but they could work with Apple to get special permission.
The main barrier to the kindle is it's very expensive for mediocre designed / manufactured equipment.
- 40 nelsonart { 02.04.09 at 10:44 pm }
I have probably read thousands of pages on Bloomberg using my iPod touch and don't really mind the white text on black background. You do a fair amount of scrolling and it's tiring, but short articles are fine.
That said, I'm going to take a hard look at the new Kindle when it comes out. Having a dictionary/thesaurus handy when reading is a nice feature. For me, it's going to come down to how that screen is.
It's embarrassingly ugly and I'm sure Apple could absolutely kill it if they chose to enter this market, but Guy Kawasaki was gushing over it so there must be something to it!
- 41 Per { 02.05.09 at 1:41 am }
I read a lot of books and if there's a choice I always choose the better looking edition. I still think that the paperback is unbeatable for reading. For school I can make quick notes or underline stuff that's important. I haven't seen that implemented as well or as quick in the digital realm. For me to switch to an eBook reader it would have to make everything about reader better than it already is, kind of how my iPod is better in every way than my CD collection (except for sound quality through my home stereo speakers maybe).
- 42 LuisDias { 02.05.09 at 8:53 am }
I am not talking about people that buy books, I'm talking about people that actually read them. Such people couldn't care less if the cover of the book is not that stylish. The main reason why covers are so stylish after all is mostly because they are excellent gifts, and an ugly cover isn't a good gift ;). With the Kindle, even if people buy you a "e-book gift", it won't be its cover that will blow your mind.
The only thing that keeps me from buying it is not its looks, as most people here complaint, but as you say, it's expensive. That's it. But there are tons of people that are price insensitive. You know, same people that are Apple's deep core base, or that actually spend 400$+ to buy Windows Ultimate etc.
So I don't think the Kindle will flop. Perhaps it will take two or three years, but the price will drop, perhaps by subsidies, or simple Moore's law, or both. When it drops to 99$, it will be quite a catch. Even I will buy it.
And with looks, Kindle 2.0 as is in Apple Insider is not half as bad as Kindle 1.0. I think the 3rd or 4th iteration will begin to be actually nice looking.
Last but not least. There is a good motive to compare it to the iPod. Although the iPod started to be a success and only afterwards the iTunes boosted, Amazon has the prime advantage of already having a huge internet shop in the cloud. The main reason why the Kindle is having more success than his rivals is because of this close interaction between the device and their site. Much like the iPod and iTunes. So the comparison there is fair game.
- 43 Joel { 02.05.09 at 10:47 am }
"Don't judge books (e-books or otherwise) by their covers"…?
- 44 fnsonin { 02.05.09 at 1:47 pm }
I have a collection of Classical CDs that is over 500 albums and close to 1500 actual CDs. I was able to rip all of those using iTunes and then play them on my iPod. I did not have to rebuy any of my albums or purchase any additional equipment to rip them on my Mac.
I have a collection of over 2000 books. Most of them are now out of print. How do I get that content to a Kindle?
That is the main reason that ebooks are never going to be as popular as music MP3s or H.264 videos. There is no way an average user can rip their existing books into an "iTunes" equivalent for the Kindle.
Therefore I would have to repurchase all of my books as ebooks. That would be too expensive and somehow I do not believe that 'Mathematische Physik" by Courant and Hilbert is going to have a Kindle edition any time soon. - 45 John E { 02.05.09 at 2:34 pm }
shucks, everyone sees that the Kindle is targeting a niche market. it's real competition isn't the iPod or laptops, it's traditional paperbacks. which the great majority of people (sorry, gadget guys) still find much more convenient and always will.
about the iPod, don't agree with Dan that it was THE revolutionary device that then took over its market. that is an oversimplification. it was iTunes instead that was THE real revolution, which of course was launched 10 months earlier in January 2001 (for the first time in history you could buy just the one track you wanted from an album for 99 cents! and burn it to a CD!!). early model iPod sales were very modest until 2004, once the Windows version of iTunes was released in late 2003, and then really took off in 2005.
iTunes is the true heart of this "ecosystem," and iPod is one of its extensions (along with AppleTV, iPhone, and your home media LAN). it's the one that makes $billions for Apple of course, so i don't mean to diss it. its styling and ease of use are very important factors in its success too. but without iTunes it would have been just one more nice looking media player competing with the Walkman. with iTunes, it killed the Walkman.
- 46 daGUY { 02.05.09 at 2:50 pm }
@John E: "it was iTunes instead that was THE real revolution, which of course was launched 10 months earlier in January 2001 (for the first time in history you could buy just the one track you wanted from an album for 99 cents! and burn it to a CD!!)"
Hm? The iTunes *Music Store* wasn't introduced until iTunes v4 in 2003. But yes, iTunes itself (as a means of organizing/syncing your media) was definitely a selling point for the original iPod.
- 47 LuisDias { 02.05.09 at 7:40 pm }
I have a collection of over 2000 books. Most of them are now out of print. How do I get that content to a Kindle?
You do realise that are alot of e-books freely available in the internet, right? Like, pay zero cash, right? I mean just look at the Gutenberg Project for instance.
The ignorance level that some people show up here is only comparable to their snobbish attitude towards everything that isn't an iPod or an iPhone. Get a life. Really.
- 48 LuisDias { 02.05.09 at 7:44 pm }
Also, while I see a reason to hold the same songs one has in a CD in the iPod, I don't understand how's that important for a book. I mean, yes, it would be nicer, but come on, how many times does a person read a book in a lifetime? 1,2 times? 10 times if it's the favorite book in the house? Not the same thing as your fav music that you'll hear 10.000 times I'd argue…
- 49 enzos { 02.05.09 at 9:17 pm }
WHY SO SERIOUS! .. Dan was just raining on the delusional parade of a tech journalist. And funny it was.
Personally, as long as their are books (similar size, same content, organic, no batteries required), I can't see much point in the whole category 'e-Book reader' .. . it's hardly going to set the world on fire (.. so maybe they could call the next one Prometheus*). Each to their own, though.
* (Forethought): A Titan who stole fire from the Sun Chariot by trickery and returned it to earth… To balance the irrevocable boon of fire, Zeus gave man a curse in the shape of that scapegoat on which early priests and poets so readily load the sins of our race. Woman (Pandora) was created and sent down to earth by the hands of Epimetheus (Afterthought)… - 50 fnsonin { 02.05.09 at 9:21 pm }
The primary reason I would use ebooks would be to have access to my personal library as I travel for work. I often have to reference books for quotes and for certain proofs while at a job site. It would be very convenient to do that using an ebook rather than having to go to the internet or the library to look it up.
I am very aware of the Gutenberg Project as well as many other sources of freely available mathematical information. The books I require access to are not in the public domain and require special formating for the mathematical formulas they contain.
I also own an iPod Touch with 16 GB of classical music in it and appreciate it very much. My original post said absolutely nothing negative about the iPod nor the iPhone.
For someone so passionate about the very limited Kindle book reader your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired.
Folke Sonin - 51 John E { 02.05.09 at 10:28 pm }
thanks daGUY for correcting my time sequence. all the memories kinda smudge together … but that 2003 date strengthens the point that iTunes made the iPod a success, especially once it was ported to Windows that year too, not vice versa. (wikipedia has very nice iPod timeline and sales charts for reference.) then the first Mini with the first click wheel came out in January 2004 … and the iPod began to get rolling.
- 52 LuisDias { 02.06.09 at 5:22 pm }
fnsonin, I'm sorry if I misunderstood you and also for the harsh tone. I don't think I read you wrong, though. You presented your case as if it was representative of general population and as…
…the main reason that ebooks are never going to be as popular as music MP3s or H.264 videos.
Surely, having 2000 books up your sleeve to get instant "quotes" isn't quite "representative". And much as noble as it can be, it's nothing but a small fetiche of yours, so your statement is still ridiculous.
My original post said absolutely nothing negative about the iPod nor the iPhone.
For someone so passionate about the very limited Kindle book reader your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired.I never said you said anything wrong with the i's. So your last comment is quite backfired really… do you shoot yourself in the foot this often?
- 53 Amazon to Make Kindle iPhone App for e-Book Reading? - 19th Edition | Tech & Telephone Blog { 02.06.09 at 9:52 pm }
[...] techeratti love the Kindle — so what if it's only available in the US, isselling half-as well as the Zune, Apple targeted "reading" in arecent commercial, and Google just optimized theirBooks [...]
- 54 fnsonin { 02.07.09 at 12:15 am }
Imagine if the iPod had not allowed you to use your existing content with the device. Instead you had to buy a special 'iPod' edition of the CD that you already owned. Would Apple have sold millions of iPods?
The answer is obvious. Extending this to books. If the Kindle uses only special Kindle editions of ebooks and provides no consumer friendly way of using previously purchased books, then it will not be as successful as the iPod as a mass market device.Most normal people resent being forced to repurchase existing content merely to use it in another format. Perhaps that is a 'value' fetish or maybe a 'not getting screwed' fetish. I leave that for you the fetish expert to decide.
It is not enjoyable to read an ebook. The experience is incredibly limiting. The only significant advantage an ebook has over a real book is portability of large collections.
Therefore I was addressing the only valid use case of a Kindle. Pointing out that in its present form, the Kindle is an epic fail because it will not easily allow the reuse of existing content.I owned a Kindle and returned it because all of the content I wanted either was not available or looked like crap. It is easier to read a book.
As for my reference regarding iPods and iPhones:
"My original post said absolutely nothing negative about the iPod nor the iPhone."
It should have read:
"My original post said absolutely nothing about the iPod nor the iPhone."
Obviously editing is not my strong point. Nevertheless, apology accepted and I hope that Amazon can figure out a legal way to import existing books into the Kindle. That would make it a keeper. - 55 Joel { 02.07.09 at 6:29 am }
If I ever launch a product, I wish it would have the "epic fail" of getting it Oprah, and selling out at 500,000 units. Perhaps, and here's a strange thought, some times different people have different opinions…?
Did you try any other e-readers, like the ones which fully support pdfs…? Or did you try to use the service provided by Amazon, or the other formats it supports. Perhaps the Kindle 2 will support pdfs…
Its a bit like saying I can't play ogg files on my iPod, and so all mp3 players must suck, and the Ipod is "epic fail". Do one will want them things…! :D
- 56 KathyLee { 02.08.09 at 10:00 am }
Hey! I'm a tech-savvy cat lady! :-D But I don't follow Oprah… I sadly agree with Jobs, but not that I don't read anymore – I don't read fiction anymore. I spend a lot of time reading, but it's online blogs, news, tech news and rarely any books. Even magazines are out-of-date by the time you get them. One thing about the Kindle which seemed neat, is the subscriptions to newspapers/mags. That could be cool if offered on the iPhone. I don't want to carry an e-reader just for that – the back-lit LCD of the iphone is ok on my eyes (thus far) for reading articles, not sure what it would be like for entire books.
- 57 daGUY { 02.09.09 at 1:48 pm }
The Kindle 2 was just officially released today (well, available for preorder): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/B00154JDAI/ref=nosim/daringfirebal-20
Overall, it looks like a solid update over the original – longer battery life, better display, better design (although it's still ugly in my opinion…but at least this time it's symmetric!), etc.
At the same time, I still kind of feel like this is a solution looking for a problem. Don't get me wrong – being able to carry around your entire library, search, look up definitions, etc. and download new books on the fly is pretty cool. But I feel like most people do more "short" reading nowadays (newspapers, magazines, blogs, websites, etc.), and while the Kindle can handle these things, other devices do it better (iPhone/iPod, for instance). Maybe I'm just not in the target market.
Bezos mentioned in his presentation that books have been largely the same for 500 years. Maybe that's because there's not really anything wrong with them?
- 58 Zephyrus of the Anemoi » Fires must be Kindled { 02.10.09 at 1:01 pm }
[...] the Kindle itself sold less than Microsoft's Zune by a 2-1 margin, that doesn't seem to make it a failure in Amazon's eyes. To be fair, [...]
- 59 Download Zune Book Reader and Read eBooks from Your Zune { 02.13.09 at 5:20 pm }
[...] Amazon Kindle sells half as well as Microsoft Zune I don't get how the Kindle has become the first "mainstream" eBook reader as some in these comments have asserted. Ask 20 people on the street what a Kindle is and they'll say "kindling? that's for fireplaces right? [...]
- 60 Unboxed: Amazon Kindle 2 gets iPod treatment. Will it sell? — RoughlyDrafted Magazine { 03.01.09 at 12:03 am }
[...] than the original models, will undoubtedly make the new ebook reader even more attractive to the relatively tiny audience of early [...]
- 61 Unboxing of the Kindle2 « Gloria Filiorum Patres { 03.03.09 at 10:01 am }
[...] than the original models, will undoubtedly make the new ebook reader even more attractive to the relatively tiny audience of early [...]
- 62 In-depth review: Kindle 2, the Apple TV of books — RoughlyDrafted Magazine { 03.04.09 at 6:54 pm }
[...] the privilege of test driving Amazon's e-reader experiment. The company only shipped about a half million Kindle devices last year. That's perhaps a significant achievement among e-readers but hardly [...]
- 63 Amazon to Make Kindle iPhone App for e-Book Reading? | iPhone Daily { 03.16.09 at 3:00 pm }
[...] techeratti love the Kindle — so what if it's only available in the US, is selling half-as well as the Zune, Apple targeted "reading" in a recent commercial, and Google just optimized their Books [...]
- 64 Amazon to Make Kindle iPhone App for e-Book Reading? | i-Phones Plus { 04.10.09 at 3:09 pm }
[...] techeratti love the Kindle — so what if it's only available in the US, is selling half-as well as the Zune, Apple targeted "reading" in a recent commercial, and Google just optimized their Books [...]
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
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secondary navigation
Ellaway, Anne and Kirk, Alison and Macintyre, S. and Mutrie, N. (2007) Nowhere to play? The relationship between the location of outdoor play areas and deprivation in Glasgow. Health and Place, 13. pp. 557-561. ISSN 1353-8292
Macintyre, S. and Mutrie, N. (2004) Socio-economic differences in cardiovascular disease and physical activity: stereotypes and reality. Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 124 (2). pp. 66-69. ISSN 1466-4240


text:
Michael Tse (謝天華) celebrated his 45th birthday surrounded by his good friends from the entertainment industry yesterday. Before the big celebration, Michael claimed that he would not get drunk. However in less than three hours, two people had to escort him out of the restaurant! At least Michael remembered to flash the reporters with his chok look before he went home!
Michael's wife booked a room at a Japanese Restaurant in the Wan Chai district to host Michael's big birthday bash. At approximately 8 PM, his friends started trickling into the party. The abundance of guests included Raymond Lam (林峯) and his cousin, Lin Xiawei (林夏薇), Wilson Chin (錢國偉), Alex Fong (方力申), Niki Chow (周麗淇), and dance choreographer Sunny Wong (黃國榮). In addition to his single friends, several celebrity couples such as Gigi Fu (傅明憲) and boyfriend Zhuangjia Bin (莊家彬), as well as Timmy Hung (洪天明) and Janet Chow (周家蔚), Michael Miu ( (苗僑偉) and 戚美珍 (戚美珍), Bobby Au Yeung (歐陽震華) and his wife.
Wishing for Health and Smooth Career
When speaking to reporters outside the celebration, birthday man Michael said, "My birthday wishes are to be healthy and be more successful career-wise. As I had just finished filming, I'm able to celebrate my birthday on the actual date! As a present, my wife bought me an underwater camera. Next month, I hope to go scuba diving with my wife."
Reporters continued to ask if he will get intoxicated today, Michael replied certainly, "I already booked a car and driver for my drunken friends. I will not get drunk myself!"
Michael Confirms Janet Chow's Pregnancy
When asked if Janet Chow (周家蔚) had any alcohol during the party? Michael revealed, "I only saw her drink water. She also ate enough for two people! Is it because they are still in the first trimester that they can't disclose?"
Afterwards, reporters advised Timmy and Janet that cars have been booked by Michael for his drunken friends, but Michael did not require one himself. Timmy hysterically laughed, "He's not getting drunk? Who had to be carried out at our wedding?" Janet explained that she did not drink any alcohol because she was the designated driver.
Drunken "Chok"
With such a great gathering of friends, Michael Tse cannot help but have a good time. Within three hours, Michael became inebriated. Accompanied by Sunny and Wilson, he staggered out of the restaurant with his eyes half closed at about 11 PM. He required the assistance of railings to enter the car. However, this did not prevent him from conjuring up a chok look for the reporters, exuding Laughing Gor's character! He did not stop chok-ing until his wife patted him on the shoulders advising him that it's time to leave.
Shortly after Michael's departure, TVB executive Virginia Lok (樂易玲) arrived at the party. After she found out that the birthday man has already left, she felt helpless.
Source: Oriental Daily
This article is written by Connie for JayneStars.com.
Note: This article is written for JayneStars.com. DO NOT re-post this article on any other websites. No part of this article may be copied, reproduced, rearranged, redistributed, modified by any means or in any form whatsoever without prior written permission. You may use the content online and for your non-commercial, personal use only. Copying these materials for anything other than your personal use is a violation of copyright laws.
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JayneStars Media LLC reserves all copyrights. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. By using the JayneStars website, you accept and agree to our Terms and Conditions of Use.Tags: Janet Chow, Lin Xia Wei, Michael Tse, Raymond Lam, Timmy Hung, Virginia Lok
lol poor 620… hahahahhah
poor indeed!
i see u guys posting about 620 .. what does 620 actually mean ?
620 just directly translate to "Lok Yi Ling" in Cantonese, usually to refer to Ms.Lok if I'm not mistaken?
Elle, you right on the money.
VIRGINa Look Yee Ling
6= Look
2= Yee
0= Ling
i am actually a great fan of michael..
I've never understood the need to drink until one is drunk, and I hope to never understand it.
drinking is like smoking. relax & have a good time
relax and have a good time smoking thats a joke smoking gives u cancer


text:
2013 / May / 24
Backjoy Posture Sleep Pillow Animation
- posted in: Product
I just finished this animation for a client called Backjoy . It was a little complex to create. I had to build a pillow with several layers and that would conform to a head as it moved about the pillow. I created the blue body in poser and rigged the body to a max rig. I also attached a 3d spine, artery's, and veins to the rig. I then had to hand animate the head and then pillow with a FFD mod. I used After Effects for all the post production.