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I recently read an article in The Age that said the sales of ebooks were increasing, but the value of ebook sales had not increased. This suggests either the prices of ebooks are dropping or the price customers are buying ebooks for is decreasing. So I thought it was once more time to have a look at the prices of the top 100 Kindle ebooks. On August 22, at approximately 3pm Australian time, the graph above shows the prices of the top 100 Kindle ebooks. The best selling prices were obviously 0.99 cents, $1.99 and $4.99 with about half as many priced at $2.99 and $3.99.   The number of ebooks priced at 99cents decreased to 16, continuing a downward trend that began at the end of 2013.   The number of ebooks in the top 100 at $1.99 continues to increase, reaching its highest number in all the surveys.    Only seven were $2.99. After making a comeback over recent surveys, the number priced at $2.99 has dropped to its lowest on record. The gurus who sa...

Lucy is a strange science-fiction movie. Not so much because of its subject matter, more because it flirts with so many science-fiction sub-genres. But more about that latter. The film begins in Taiwan where Lucy, Sc arlett Johansson, is exposed to a new experimental drug and finds her brain capacity greatly expanded. This increases her ability to acquire knowledge and opens up abilities like telekinesis. To find out what is happening to her brain she contacts a brain researcher played by Morgan Freeman.  Lucy does not seem to know what sort of science-fiction film it wants to be. It starts out as a thriller with Lucy’s boyfriend trapping her in a very dangerous situation. For most of its running time the movie is very much an action/adventure movie, as Lucy attempts to extract herself from the mess she is in. In amongst the action, the film superficially explores the potential of an expanded human brain. Near the end the movie attempts some revelations about t...

I recently read a blog post titled A Scientific Guide to Posting Tweets, Facebook Posts, Emails and Blog Posts at the Best Times , by Belle Beth Cooper. The post had me thinking about the random nature of my blog posts. I have been trying to post once a week. For a while that used to be on Monday, but as my posts began to require more research it slipped to later in the week, with a few last desperate attempts on Sundays. I had not really noticed if the day or time I posted affected the amount of views or comments. I was thinking the number of views or comments had more to do with the topic of the post. Like if I reviewed a current film or talked about television science-fiction I usually get more hits and comments than when I review a book. When I write about ebook sales, the number of comments seems to increase too. But what other factors affect the number of views or comments on my posts. One factor that seems to limit comments is the perceived difficulty of m...