Recipe from http://blog.ruhlman.com/2010/01/lemon-tarragon-brine-for-roasted-chicken.html using Cornish game hen.

The iPad's not out yet, but Amazon has fired the first salvo in the e-book wars by pulling all Macmillan titles - print and digital - from their store over a pricing dispute. Macmillan wants to raise e-book prices to $15, while Amazon wants to stay competitive by keeping them at $9.99 or lower.

Here's a letter from the Macmillan CEO on this issue. It'll be interesting to hear Amazon's perspective. I think they overreacted and they will suffer from a PR perspective much like NBC did over Conan, though I doubt you'll see pro-Macmillan rallies in Seattle. At least, Amazon hasn't remotely yanked copies from customers' Kindles like they did with Orwell's 1984 a few months back.

Steve Jobs actually hinted to the coming dispute in this candid interview with Walt Mossberg (at around the 2:00 minute mark):

Walt: Why should she buy an e-book for $14.99 when she could buy it for $9.99 on Amazon.

Steve Jobs:That won't be the case... The prices will be the same. The publishers are actually not happy with Amazon... they're withholding books from Amazon...

It's interesting that Apple had a similar dispute over digital music with record companies a while back and Amazon and others came along to offer variable pricing.

My boxee app for Reddit.TV is now live on the Boxee App Box. I've been a fan of Reddit.TV since it launched a couple of years back (or more?). What better way to procrastinate than by watching the top videos from reddit? After taking a rather long hiatus from boxee app development mostly because of work, travel and too much time on reddit, I decided to take a crack at getting reddit.tv to boxee.

With my limited graphic skills, I've tried my best to make the app look and feel like http://reddit.com with only a hint of orangered/vermilion thrown in there.

Youtube videos get special treatment from the boxee app (youtube being the most popular source for videos on reddit.tv). Youtube makes its videos available in a number of formats (HD, HQ, normal). The youtube links posted on reddit don't always point to the best format and the lowest format isn't usually pretty, especially on the big screen. The reddit.tv boxee app will figure out and play the highest quality format available for that video.

A couple of additional features that I hope to have available in an update soon:
1. The reddit article score isn't displayed. I had to disable this for performance reasons.
2. Auto play all the videos in succession.

If you have boxee, try it out and let me know what you think.

(This is my second boxee app; my first - OpenCourseWare - is also available on the App Box.)

Taken on a hike on Mount Hollywood earlier this year.