Shelfari CEO Josh Hug — how can you dislike a man whose last name is "Hug"? —blamed the whole mess on "an unexperienced but well-meaning intern." Ironically, the company that exposed Shelfari's tactics was rival books social network LibraryThing. AbeBooks, a recently acquired Amazon.com subsidiary, owns 40 percent of LibraryThing. Who will be motivated to report on Shelfari's user-gathering tactics now? Oh, right — that would be you, gentle reader!

It makes sense: Why pay to develop your own social software when you can buy up existing technology and communities of potential customers as well? Never mind the apparent conflict of interest, or Shelfari's spammy history. Those concerns are for companies who aren't trying to corner nascent markets through vertical integration. (Photo by Tim Mansfield)

They say Amazon executives told them "high-end estimates on Kindle sales reported by TechCrunch and a Citigroup analyst are not reasonable." Writes one of the McAdams Wright Ragen analysts: "[Amazon execs] told us that the Kindle is definitely selling very well, but they also said the analysts and reporters giving out these extremely high estimates 'did not run them by company. Since we've never seen a Kindle in person, we're inclined to believe the Amazon executives when they say the Kindle isn't quite such a huge hit. But the suits might also be trying to keep expectations low enough to be easily surpassed.

A report from TechCrunch, which pegged Kindle sales so far this year at 240,000. "We acknowledge being 'out-sourced' by TechCrunch," Mahaney writes it his note, "But we believe the 240K number was well-sourced and believe reports of 40,000 shipments a month may also be reasonable."

If you didn't buy Amazon,com's e-book reader — shown above in a CNET video — you're far, far from alone. A CrunchGear rumor report says Amazon will try again for this year's holiday shopping season. Kindle 2.0, says "an insider," will be bigger, less fussy to use, and thank God Almighty they're going to get rid of the original model's retro 1983 IBM PC sickly off-white plastic case color. Even Zune Brown would be an improvement. The key points from CrunchGear's report:

An insider let slip that two new Amazon Kindle models will hit stores this holiday season, with the first coming as early as October.

The first is an updated version with the same sized screen, a smaller form factor, and an improved interface. The source told us that Amazon has “skipped three or four generations,” comparing the old Kindle to the 1st gen iPod and the new version to something like the sexy iPod Mini.

The second new model, which is shaped like an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of paper, is considerably bigger than the current model and should be available next year.

Both models should come in multiple colors and may be aimed at younger readers.

Limited Brands CEO Leslie Wexner, for example, spent much of his $1.25 million 2007 security allowance toward "protecting" his corporate aircraft, yacht and 22,371-sq. ft. home. "Security has become a convenient excuse for getting shareholders to pick up the cost for the CEO's lifestyle,' corporate watchdog American Federation of State's director of corporate governance and pension investment told the Wall Street Journal. (Illustration by Richard Blakeley)

We are currently investigating an issue that has impacted the availability of the Amazon.com website. Engineers are actively engaged in resolving this issue and we will provide an update once the issue is resolved.

According to our commenters, Amazon's web services such as EC2, S3 and SQS experienced no outages, so the problem didn't take down dozens of startups with it. Shame.

Apple employees are leading the way in a challenge that started May 1, put on by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. Cisco is a fairly close second, with Yahoo in fourth and Google not even fielding a team. But then at Google, employees can drive to work satisfied that the company is saving the environment with its vast fleet of three plug-in hybrids. (Photo by Richard Masoner)

Some commenters couldn't believe we included the Google job on our list. Wrote one particularly unsympatethic commenter, Elaine Chow:

WAAAH I WORK FOR GOOGLE BUT I'M ONLY A CSR PERSON BECAUSE I WAS ONE OF THE DUMB ONES THAT COULDN'T GET A MORE 'CREATIVE' JOB WAAAH!

But another commenter, claiming to be a Google employee, explained exactly why we put the job on our list:

I'm [a Google customer service rep] and there's no opportunity for job growth. All you do all day long is customer service. In the beginning, the free food and perks prevented me from killing myself.
but now, the novelty of the cool perks is gone, and i'm left with the dismal realizationthat my job sucks. So yeah, WAHHHH I WORK AT GOOGLE AND ITS LIKE EVERY OTHER MIND NUMBING JOB OUT THERE. Plus, all the managers suck. I think more people complain about the fresh out of B-school managers — who all want to be all stars when really their only job is to make sure we're answering emails — than anything else.

No commenters defended the Amazon job. In fact, most echoed Dangster, who wrote:

These aren't valid reasons why this particular jobs sucks. I have a friend who works as a support engineer at Amazon, and his job sucks because he has to work nights, weekends, and holidays, in addition to his normal 40hr/week schedule.

Added another commenter, Edgewise: "As for the description, it doesn't quite evoke the drudgery."

We hear Google customer service reps get paid between $45,000 and $65,000. Readers guessed $57,000. As for the Amazon job, we guessed it paid $80,000; readers guessed $70,000, but a former employee who commented on the story said no one working as a support engineer at Amazon gets paid more than $60,000.

Check out both the Google and Amazon jobs, then come back here and let us know in the poll below: Which is the worse entry-level job in tech?

The representatives declined to discuss sales numbers of the Kindle, only saying that it's generally first or second on the list of best selling items in the retailer's electronics category. And there was no information about demographics — a critical piece of data to book marketers, where the sheer number and breadth of subject matter in published titles, combined with limited marketing budgets, mean that niche audience appeals are critical.

Publishers receive 35 percent of the list price they set for titles per sale. However, larger publishers who move lots of physical units can probably negotiate better deals, and even get physical books converted to e-book format for free. But the Amazonians declined to comment on specifics due to antitrust concerns — belying their role as price-setter for the entire publishing market in print and otherwise.

Later, I dropped by the Amazon booth to see the Kindle in the wild. There were maybe three or four units on display, each closely held by a spokesperson. Visitors weren't even allowed to handle one of the devices for themselves, presumably for fear they'd walk away with one.

But giving them away might have been a smart move. Nothing sells the Kindle like the Kindle, not even the price cut to $359 from $399 that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos touted in his speech Friday. A three-figure price point simply won't get the devices into the hands of readers fast enough to make the market for content worthwhile for publishers anytime soon.

• On former White House spokesmonkey Scott McClellan's new book, which won't be back in physical stock until June 9 but is still available on the Kindle for $9.99: "One of the great things about electronic books — they don't go out of stock."
• Regarding reading on a laptop, Bezos asserted, "You certainly can't curl up in bed with one." Actually, our laptop has been our most faithful sleeping partner in years.
• Playing up the Kindle's ability to look up definitions on the fly. "I have discovered my vocabulary is not nearly as good as I thought it was ... I was living in a nice fantasy world where my contextual guesses were accurate."
• Of the 125,000 titles available as both physical books and Kindle e-books, six percent of the sales go to Kindle. Some, including Bezos, buy both a physical copy and an electronic copy — presumably because a Kindle full of books doesn't telegraph just how smart you are.
• Anderson asked by what factor the number of titles available on Kindle would grow by next year in Bezos estimation. "I wouldn't be happy with 20 million. I'm hard to make happy. Bwahahahaha!" (Bezos' laugh is surprisingly deep and loud for such a small man).
• Like Amazon's offering of used copies alongside new copies, it didn't change the amount of original sales, only expanded, suggesting it's not a zero-sum game. "Most people bought as many books as they previously bought, and plus they buy Kindle books."
• Explaining Amazon's strategy of only offering print-on-demand titles printed through BookSurge in its shipping discounts, he said it's because it's cheaper to pack multiple purchases in one box — hence POD books must be printed at Amazon fulfillment centers to qualify.
• Early in the discussion with Bezos, Anderson kept turning the conversation towards his"long tail" theory. Eventually, Bezos caught on, expounding on how Amazon's whole business model was based on niche content availability being a differentiator — shrewdly buttering up Anderson while subtly claiming credit for the idea.

It cites a case pending in New York that would close the loophole, and garner the state $50 million in possible revenue. Instead, Pennsylvania is giving the book-business behemoth — or its customers, rather — a $1,750,000 tax break. And here I wondered how Carnegie Mellon was able to convince Bezos to fly to Pittsburgh for a commencement address.

Boo fucking hoo. I clicked through about 4 of those and if they are representative, then getting paid 60-70K right out of college at an "entry" level job is nothing to complain about, regardless of the "tough" working conditions (ceiling too low? CSR work? no windows? cubicle? oh the torture!!). I spent half my life to get a Ph.D. and will barely be making that as an asst professor at a major research university.

By the way, if you actually work one of these jobs, create an anonymous Gmail account — or Yahoo Mail, if it's the Google job — and tell us the real number.

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(Photo by eston)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that I wouldn't have been able to get any of these jobs out of college. I didn't finish with a 3.8, do a year of service in Nicaragua or file any patents during my sophomore year. But the worst part of this list is the fact that the people taking these jobs did. To paraphrase Dan Lyons, there's something distinctly evil about the way Google and the other companies listed below hoard the world's best and brightest and put them to work on creating more efficient text ads or, worse, tasking them with taking phone calls from angry customers.

Follow the link for each job to see a picture of their locations, a list of key responsibilities, first hand accounts of why each job is so bad and how much they pay.

• Tech's ten worst entry-level jobs
• Online sales and operations account manager, Google
• Support engineer, Washington-Seattle, Amazon.com
• Content Acquisition Intern, IODA
• Customer support specialist, Fox Interactive, MySpace division
• Database administrator (temporary), Google, contracted through WorkforceLogic
• Support professional, product: Windows, Microsoft
• Executive admin to Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore
• Analyst, user operations, Facebook
• Operations finance, analyst intern, Yahoo
• Part-time guide, Mahalo

(Top photo by star5112)

The sort of resourcefulness, perhaps, that has a writer like Maney plumbing the shelves of juvenile nonfiction for recycled material. The third-world prison bit has also been reported in the New York Post, the U.K.'s Observer, Playboy, and even Wired, which is, like Portfolio, published by Condé Nast.

Thanks to a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, that means Texas can collect sales tax. It's unclear how much more Amazon.com customers will have to pay, but in New York, Comptroller Susan Combs says the state would have picked up $541 million from Amazon in 2006 if it collected sales tax on orders shipped to New York residents. (Photo by Robert Scoble)

The company then trotted out the likes of Ian freed, Amazon.com's VP on the Kindle project, and Rikko Sakaguchi, SVP at Sony Ericsson, to explain how their devices were using Java. A Sun software engineer and designer showed off Java-powered apps, such as the ConnectedLife widget which travels from Facebook to desktop client to mobile device. (He did not mention that Facebook has dropped support for Java.) Green announced that the latest build of the Java software was available today, and that the developers suite, OpenJDK, now supports popular Linux distributions Ubuntu and Red Hat, with a Fedora release within a month.

A software-emulated mobile device was shown running Google's Android — presumably the two companies have made nice. But beyond the OpenJDK announcement, nary a word was spoken about the enterprise market and if any role for Java in datacenter applications was mentioned, I missed it. I was listening for Green or CEO Jonathan Schwartz to say something, anything, about the company's quarterly earnings and new revenue streams. Instead, he talked about how the latest Java releases will be free and open-source.

I guess the company will make their coin providing support to the device manufacturers who use the JavaME mobile platform or the JavaFX suite of multimedia tools — competing with other application development environments such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. Problem is, Sun's tools for content developers require a level of Java expertise well above that required by Adobe's easy-to-use Flash tools, and both Flash and Silverlight are also being licensed for free to device manufacturers. But hey, did we mention Neil Young?

It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore.

Like Google, which also claimed to see no dark clouds on the business horizon, Amazon.com made a good, long-term bet. The ongoing shift to e-commerce obscures any short-term business-cycle bumps.

Also, Amazon.com's customers tend to be wealthy, and in America's bifurcated economy, the well-to-do are feeling the pinch less than the poor. (Wal-Mart shoppers choose between gas and groceries; Amazon.com shoppers choose between Starbucks and steak.)

There are other reasons, such as the winner-take-all nature of the Web. Google may have created a theoretical level playing field for online stores. Who needs to go to a one-stop shop when you can just search for what you want to buy? But the reality is that search is a tedious way to buy things online, and going to one store is convenient. That one store, for most people, is Amazon.com, and no one else has come along with a site worth changing that habit for.

The thing that's helping Amazon.com the most, I think, is simply the adoption of broadband. Fast Web connections make it quicker to buy something online than to drive to a store. And the longer someone has been an Internet user, the more likely they are to shop online. For the Facebook generation, it's second nature. Until broadband hits saturation in the U.S. and other markets, Amazon.com will have a powerful growth engine behind it. Bezos may like to talk about all the innovative things Amazon is doing, but the truth is, he can now afford to coast.

In retrospect, it's obvious that Valentine's lack of motivation was reflected in the final product. Even Bill Gates has conceded Vista's failure now, and there's talk that Microsoft will replace it with an early release of Windows Seven, Vista's successor. It's hard to imagine Valentine, or anyone, making a video about Vista that's anything like the Windows XP promotion below:

So who is this woman for whom Valentine dumped Microsoft? A filing with the SEC reveals that Puerini was the "housemate" of Valentine mentioned, but not named, in a similar filing last year. Puerini, Amazon's director of user retail experience, just got a $1 million stock grant, an amount the company says is similar to the compensation earned by other employees at her level. So lets grant that she's smart. Her Facebook profile photo, reproduced above, suggests she's good-looking as well. A catch for Valentine, and apparently worth leaving Microsoft in the middle of completing its most important product.

Has the couple shipped their own product? Puerini has a baby registry for an arrival dated last September. The pair also have a wedding registry on the site — but it's labeled as a test. On it, Puerini writes: "ABOUT THE COUPLE: This is a test registry. I am not getting married. I have no plans to get married. I repeat - this is a test! :-)" The baby registry may therefore also be a test.

One thing Valentine and Puerini have definitely done as a couple: donate an amount between $25,000 and $250,000 to Washington State University (PDF).

The transformation began when Amazon plunged into auctions. Amazon's dotcom-era server-and-database combo was staggering under the complexity. Engineers gambled on a Net-centric idea. Bingo. "We were building these services for ourselves," says [the Amazon employee] who wrote the Amazon Web Services business plan. "They could be valuable to other people." 10,000 new developers are signing up monthly, with the total closing on 400,000. The idea that AWS is about wringing extra bucks out of Amazon's data centers? "That ship sailed."AWS's 2007 revenue: $100 million. Other companies building data centers: Salesforce.com, EMC, IBM, Google. Bezos: "I'd be surprised if no one else does this. It's a really good idea!" Ace up his sleeve: Commodity business prices plunge toward the cost of production. "We've never had 35 or 40 percent margins."