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Tag: Amazon

  • Although Everyone’s Mining Your Data, Facebook Remains The Most Distrusted

    Online properties collect, analyze, and later use various types of your personal data. This is a fact of life, and most people accept it. If you think that you’re making moves on Facebook, Google, online retail sites, etc. that are free of some sort of watchful eye, you’re sorely mistaken.

    But a new poll suggests that people feel differently about the use of their information on the web – and it all depends on who’s using it.

    A Harris Interactive/Placecast survey asked over 2,200 U.S. adults about their “level of comfort with the use of their data” by a couple different online companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon. What they found was that for whatever reason, people are seriously wary of Facebook – more so than other companies that clearly mine user data as well.

    Only one-third of those surveyed said they felt comfortable with Facebook’s handling of their user data. Of course, on of the main reason that Facebook collects and analyzes user data is to target ads.

    On the flip side, twice that many respondents (66%) felt perfectly fine with Amazon using their data on past purchases to recommend new products.

    Surprisingly, 41% said that they trust Google’s use of their data to display ads during search.

    All of these uses of data involves advertisements, but for some reason Facebook continues to engender the most concern among internet users.

    User distrust of Facebook ad practices is likely to grow, as the company steps up its game in an attempt to recruit more advertisers and generate revenue as a newly public entity.

    [via Bloomberg]

  • Amazon Gets First Dibs On Streaming Fringe And The West Wing

    Amazon is emerging as a major powerhouse in the video streaming business. Amazon Prime Instant Video is expanding at a faster rate than Netflix did in its early years and just scored a major deal with Warner Bros. for their television content.

    Amazon announced today that they have entered into an agreement that will bring Warner Bros. television content to Amazon Prime Instant Video including popular shows like The West Wing and Fringe. Other shows include Dark Blue, Alcatraz and The Whole Truth.

    “Since launching Prime Instant Video, we’ve continued to expand both the quantity and quality of video content for our Prime members,” said Brad Beale, director of digital video content acquisition for Amazon. “Bringing Fringe and The West Wing – two shows with a devoted fan base – to Prime Instant Video first, is another way for us to add value for Prime members and to continue to give customers content they love.”

    Fringe and The West Wing will be exclusive to Amazon Prime Instant Video for the summer. The shows should show up on other services like Netflix in the fall. Still, it’s a pretty big win for Amazon. Convincing people to fork over $79 for a year of Amazon Prime is pretty difficult, but adding exclusive content makes it far more enticing.

    People who want to catch up on Fringe or The West Wing can watch them on the PC, Kindle Fire, Xbox 360, PS3 and Roku. Amazon will probably be adding streaming apps to other devices over time. We’ll probably even see Amazon Prime Instant Video show up on or near the launch of the Wii U this fall.

  • Amazon Enters The Free-To-Play Business With Game Connect

    In just a few years, Amazon has gone from major retailer of physical games to major player in the digital games business. They beat Steam to the punch with a massive July sale that rivaled what Steam does in Summer Sales. The only thing they lacked was a large catalog of free-to-play games and MMOs. Well, they are lacking no more.

    Amazon announced today the launch of Game Connect, a new service that will see many of the more popular free-to-play and MMOs delivered digitally to players through Amazon’s digital games portal. It’s more than just delivery though as integration into Game Connect will allow players to buy in-game items through Amazon which makes microtransactions easier for both developers and players.

    So how does this all work? Customers can now link their in-game accounts to their Amazon account for easy delivery of those crazy costumes or power-ups they want to get in their favorite free-to-play games. During the checkout process, players will see similar items from the same game or other games to increase visibility across the platform. All in all, it’s a great way to extend brand awareness across the network.

    “Customers can now discover a new category of free-to-play games and can experience the convenience of having virtual items purchased with their Amazon account delivered directly to their game accounts,” says Mike Frazzini, director, Amazon Games. “Game Connect helps game developers reach more customers, move more quickly and grow their business by simplifying the purchase process for customers. This is an exciting next step for the Digital Games Store and we have even more to come.”

    Game Connect is starting off with a pretty big collection of games that will appeal to players of different types. You’ve got more action oriented affair like World of Tanks and Super Monday Night Combat to more traditional free-to-play role-playing games like Shin Megami Tensei Imagine and Runescape.

    If you play any of these games, take note: Linking your account with Amazon Game Connect will net you exclusive in-game items that are normally valued at around $15 or more. It’s a great way for Amazon to get their foot in the door with these games and you get free stuff. It’s a win-win for everybody. Check out Amazon’s Game Connect exclusive offers at their store front.

    Game Connect is obviously Amazon firing a shot across the bow of Steam. Many companies have risen with services trying to take down Steam and all have met with minimal success. Amazon stands to make the biggest dent in Steam’s market share and Game Connect is one more tool for them to reach that goal. It will be really interesting to watch this play out over the next few months to see if Steam allows free-to-play games on their service to connect with Game Connect.

  • WWJD? Read The Bible On A Christian Tablet

    Religion and technology have traditionally been at odds. Whenever somebody creates a new innovative technology, somebody somewhere is going to say it’s of the devil. It’s just the nature of things. One Christian group is hoping to buck that trend, however, and appeal directly to the technology obsessed masses.

    Family Christian, a company that deals in wholesome family friendly products, is now selling a tablet called edifi. It’s an Android powered tablet that’s all about the Bible and family-friendly programming. Speaking to Fox News, technology supervisor for Family Christian, Brian Honorable, says that the tablet came about as a way to “offer our customers the ability to use our Holy Bible application.”

    The edifi tablet definitely has the Bible, in 27 languages no less, but what else can it do? It features the Family Christian Reader app so that you won’t have to expose yourselves to the evils of the modern publishing industry. Other apps include a browser with pre-installed safe search, Christian Internet radio and movie playback capability. While the tablet doesn’t have Google Play, user reviews indicate that you can download apps from third party Android app vendors.

    The actual hardware behind the machine isn’t too shabby for its asking price of $149. It features a 7 inch touch screen at 480×800, 8GB of internal memory that can be expanded to 40GB through SD cards and HDMI output up to 1080p. The actual innards, while a mystery, are reportedly similar to that of the Kindle Fire.

    Despite the number of Christians in the U.S., you would think the edifi serves a niche demographic. Most of my Christian friends are happy with their iPads or Android tablets and wouldn’t even give the newest competitor a chance. He wouldn’t cite sales numbers, but Honorable did tell Fox News that sales have been strong. It’s impressive enough that a small Christian company was able to make a tablet, so I’m willing to accept that it’s at least probably profitable for them.

    If you find yourself in need of some digital salvation, the edifi might just be what you need. You can pick it up from their online store or at one of Family Christian’s many retail locations.

    Check out the promotional video which features odd choices such as music from Sister Act and a video clip from Wall-E. I would have figured they would use VeggieTales instead, but to each their own.

  • Amazon Starts To Take Kindle Fire Gaming Seriously

    It’s pretty much accepted that gaming is the killer app for tablets and other mobile devices. People can not get enough of them. Apple and Google have been pretty proactive in this regard by providing developers extra tools to help them reach even more players. Amazon is finally getting their game together by offering tools to Kindle Fire game developers.

    Amazon announced the limited availability to Amazon GameCircle today for interested developers. It will bring achievements, leaderboards and sync APIs to the masses so anybody can integrate these much requested features into their games.

    “Our goal is to give developers great tools to quickly and easily reach new customers and keep them engaged. That’s why we’re creating easy-to-integrate APIs for features like leaderboards, achievements and sync. We also introduced In-App Purchasing API in April, allowing developers to offer a seamless 1-Click purchasing experience within their apps and games, and we’re just getting started,” said Paul Ryder, Vice President of Apps, Games, and Services at Amazon. “GameCircle gives developers the right tools to build an immersive, more entertaining experience on Kindle Fire, which will ultimately help developers grow their business.”

    Obviously, the most important addition here is achievements. Since their introduction on the Xbox 360 in 2005, achievements have become one of the most important aspects in modern gaming. I know people who will not play a game unless it has achievements and Amazon obviously hopes the addition of achievements will help increase players on Kindle Fire.

    Amazon Starts To Take Kindle Fire Gaming Seriously

    Achievements are presented in game so the player will never have to interrupt the experience to see what other achievements they have left. It’s up to developers, however, to either present achievements during the course of gameplay through pop-ups or have the player pause the game to view earned achievements.

    Before people were comparing their achievements, the leaderboard was how we competed with others. It’s still a valuable tool for developers since it keeps players engaged as they try to beat one more high score. Once again, leaderboards will be available in game so the player will never have to leave the experience to find out which score they have to beat next.

    Amazon Starts To Take Kindle Fire Gaming Seriously

    The most helpful out of all the new features coming to GameCircle is sync. Using Amazon’s powerful cloud infrastructure, players will be able to save in-game progress to the Cloud and pick up right where they left off. Players will no longer have to worry about losing progress when restoring a corrupt game or switching between Kindle Fire devices. It’s an especially good move since Amazon is rumored to be launching the Kindle Fire 2 later this year.

    If you’re a game developer on Kindle Fire and want to integrate GameCircle into your product, sign up for an invite now.

  • Amazon Smartphone is Currently in the Works

    An Amazon smartphone is rumored to be in the works, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. If these hushed whispers and nameless tips are to be believed, the device in-question would be powered by Google’s Android operating system. The company is looking to give Apple and the iPhone a run for its money, though industry insiders seem to feel that, while a smartphone from the likes of Amazon is certainly intriguing, it will have a long, hard road ahead if it plans to compete directly with the almighty Apple.

    Anonymous sources close to the project told the SFC that Foxconn International Holdings Ltd, a mobile phone manufacturer based out of China, will assist Amazon with the project. If the company’s name sounds vaguely familiar, you may recall the riot that took place at one of the factories back in June, an event which saw over 1,000 employees clash with security over poor working conditions. The manufacturer is also responsible for making iPhones.

    The introduction of an Amazon smartphone would certainly give the company more avenues for its digital distribution system, which allows users to download an endless stream of movies, music, games, and books to a large number of mobile devices. Although Amazon has certainly enjoyed success with the Kindle Fire, adding an affordable smartphone to their stable of gadgets would allow it to compete in the ever-growing mobile market.

    Currently, Amazon is acquiring a number of patents in order to protect itself from allegations of infringement, a matter that has caused some trouble for the Google Tab in the United Kingdom. Sources indicate that these patents cover a wide variety of wireless technology.

    A release date for the Amazon smartphone has not yet been set.

  • Is Hulu’s CEO Heading To Facebook?

    Is Hulu’s CEO Heading To Facebook?

    Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has just jumped from one rumor whirlwind to another, as the New York Post is reporting that Kilar may be on his way to Facebook.

    The Post quotes sources that say Mark Zuckerberg is very interested in Kilar and is considering him for a “senior role” in the company.

    Kilar joined Hulu after years of work with Amazon. At Amazon, Kilar was instrumental in getting the company to move toward the video business.

    Kilar is bouncing around the executive pipeline as of late, as Facebook is the second high-profile company that’s reportedly eyeing the Hulu CEO. Last week, it was reported that Yahoo! had narrowed down their CEO search to two men – Kilar and current interim CEO Ross Levinsohn.

    But shortly after that news came down, Kilar bowed out of the race, with Hulu releasing the following statement:

    As has been reported, Jason Kilar has been a focus of the Yahoo CEO search committee. He has graciously declined to be considered.

    In a “senior role” at Facebook, could Kilar help direct focus to online video, feature films, or social interaction among viewers on the network? It would make sense. The Post also speculates that Kilar could be in Zuckerberg’s crosshairs in order to boost Facebook’s online video advertising.

    Hulu has declined our request to comment.

  • Amazon Planning To Build An iPhone Competitor?

    Remember when Amazon was just an online bookstore? Man, those were the days. Palm and Handspring were making PDAs, email was finally catching on, and most of us still had to call the internet from our home phone lines. A lot has changed since then, and Amazon is a whole lot more than “the world’s largest bookstore” these days. They basically invented the e-reader market a few years back, and when Apple tried to take it away from them with the iPad, they responded with the Kindle Fire. Though the Kindle Fire hasn’t made much progress toward knocking the iPad from it’s lofty perch at the head of the tablet market, it’s done pretty well for itself.

    Now, however, it looks like Amazon may not be content with gaining a foothold in the tablet market. According to a report this morning from Bloomberg, they may be going after the smartphone market, too. Citing “two people with knowledge of the matter,” Bloomberg says that Amazon is working with Foxconn to create their own smartphone, which, for the sake of convenience, we’ll call the Kindle Phone until Amazon tells us otherwise. They also say that Amazon is in the process of acquiring patents to insulate itself from charges of infringement down the line.

    Bloomberg’s report doesn’t say anything about potential carriers of the software platform for this Kindle Phone. The carrier question will be difficult to speculate on until an actual announcement is made. As far as the operating system goes, though, the answer is pretty clear. The Kindle Fire runs on a modified version of the Android operating system. It makes the most sense to use the same software on Amazon’s smartphone as well, especially if the phone shares the Kindle branding. To do otherwise is to run into potential compatibility problems between two members of the Kindle family.

    Of course, this Kindle Phone is all just a rumor at this point. Nevertheless it’s a logical move for Amazon. The mammoth online retailer has a thriving content ecosystem already in place. That ecosystem has been a major contributing factor to the success of the Kindle Fire, and would give any Amazon smartphone a definite boost.

  • Nexus 7 vs. Kindle Fire: Which Should Get Your $200?

    When Google unveiled the Nexus 7 at Google I/O last week, it struck right at the heart of the growing 7-inch tablet market. The Nexus 7 might be shiny and new, but how does it stack up to the current king of the 7-inchers, Amazon’s Kindle Fire? Here we break down the features of both tablets so that you can decide where to spend your hard-earned $200.

    First, let’s look at what a customer will be looking at – the screens. Both the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7 share 7 inches of diagonal screen space. The Fire sports a nice screen resolution of 1024 x 600, but the Nexus 7 beats it out with a 1280 x 800 screen resolution. In addition, the Nexus 7’s 216 ppi pixel density soundly beats the Fire’s 170 ppi.

    As for the body of the device, while the 7.81-inch tall Nexus 7 is slightly taller than the 7.48-inch tall Fire, the Nexus is a hair thinner at .41-inches thick compared to the Fire’s .45-inches. Both tablets are 4.72-inches wide.

    Inside the devices, the Nexus 7 shows off what difference a year can now make in terms of hardware manufacturing. The 7 has a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, an NVidia 12-core graphics processor, and 1024 MB of RAM. It comes with either 8 GB or 16 GB of internal memory, and has a 4325 mAh battery. That type of hardware is impressive for a 7-inch tablet, and should be good enough save the Nexus 7 from obsolescence for years to come. It was made clear last week that Google is selling the Nexus 7 at cost.

    The Kindle Fire, on the other hand, has only a 1 GHz Texas Instruments dual-core processor and 512 MB or RAM. The Fire, though, does have a large 4400 mAh battery, which Amazon claims will run up to 7.5 hours of continuous video.

    As disparate as the hardware seems, the software is really where these tablets differentiate themselves. Although both tablets are running on Google’s Android operating system, the Fire runs a heavily modified version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Amazon has placed its services front-and-center, and made it difficult for customers to use any others. Amazon Prime members will be able to get the most out the Kindle Fire with Amazon’s library of free streaming movies and shows for Prime members. Amazon’s video selection is good, but not nearly as nice as Netflix streaming, which is, thankfully, available as a free app in Amazon’s app store. Prime members will also be able to access one free book per month from the Amazon Lending Library, which now includes the Harry Potter books.

    The Nexus 7 will be running Google’s newest version of Android, 4.1 Jelly Bean. This means Google’s tablet will have access to the vast array of apps, games, and media in the Google Play store, as well as access many other companies’ products, including Amazon’s. Nexus 7 users will be able to read their Kindle collection through the Kindle Android app, though Prime members will not be able to borrow their monthly book if they do not own a Kindle. Also, as a Nexus device, the Nexus 7 will be getting the latest Android updates straight from Google.

    In terms of connectivity, the Kindle Fire is a bit lacking. While the Nexus 7 even has NFC support, the Fire is missing more basic features that the Nexus 7 has, such as Bluetooth and a front-facing camera.

    The comparison between the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire is actually a bit unfair. The Fire is nearly a year older than the Nexus 7, and the tablets were designed with different purposes in mind. Google designed its tablet to showcase all of the media in the Google Play store, including modern mobile games that are becoming progressively processor-intensive. Amazon designed the Kindle Fire as an extension of its e-ink Kindle e-readers, and the result is a device that is great for consuming media content straight from Amazon. The next version of the Kindle Fire (which some rumors relate will roll out in July – around the same time that the Nexus 7 ships) will certainly make up for its hardware deficiencies, making consumers’ choice much harder.

    If you are looking for the latest, fastest, and most feature-rich 7-inch tablet currently on the market, Google’s Nexus 7 has just about everything. However, if you are an Amazon Prime member who is heavily invested in Amazon’s content ecosystem, you might want to wait a couple of months to see just what Amazon has in store.

  • Amazon Signals Plan to Enter 3D Map Market with UpNext Acquisition

    Amazon has put its best mapping foot forward today and purchased 3D-mapping startup UpNext for an undisclosed amount, according to a report from GigaOM. UpNext only consists of four people – Raj Advani, Vik Advani, Robin Har and Danny Moon, all of whom are founders – who will be making the coast-to-coast relocation from their current digs in New York City to Amazon’s mothership in Seattle. It goes without saying that these four young gentleman are now worth lot more money than they were when they woke up this morning.

    Currently, users of Kindle Fire have to resort to third-party Android apps like MapQuest to get some map information, or else just go to a website via the browser, so the acquisition of UpNext certainly indicates that there would be a native Amazon mapping service in the future.

    UpNext recently released the following demo video of its app on iOS that shows off the service’s 3D maps.

    The app for iOS does require a front-facing camera, so unless Amazon plans to alter the app dramatically to let it run on the currently camera-less Kindle, it does seem to indicate that the Kindle Fire 2 could have a front-facing camera, which was what Wired speculated on last week.

    The next year or two is going to be a time of some interesting experiments in the online search market. Long the undisputed leader in all things search, Google is going to meet some legitimate challenges in the near future. The most notable will be from Apple, which has spent the last couple of years picking up mapping companies, resulting in Apple announcing that it will be releasing its own mapping service with iOS 6, thus booting Google Maps as the default map app on Apple devices. That seems to be the approach that Amazon is taking here, especially if the company should acquire more geoservice companies in the future.

    Amazon doesn’t have any other reason for purchasing UpNext than to enter the map market and compete directly against Google, Apple, and Bing. All we’re missing at this picnic table is Facebook and then everybody will have a piece of the map cake.

    [Via GigaOM.]

  • Can Google’s Compute Engine Compete With Amazon?

    Google impressed today with the reveal of Compute Engine, a cloud infrastructure that’s like App Engine on steroids. The company impressed with a demonstration of the cloud infrastructure’s power to deliver thousands upon thousands of processor cores to data heavy apps and services. While Google was talking up its advantages to help research, there was another market they didn’t really address – cloud-based business.

    Amazon Web Services is the de facto standard when it comes to cloud-based Web hosting. Businesses from all over the world depend upon Amazon to host their content, Web sites and businesses without fail. Netflix is one of the more prominent users of Amazon’s servers as they use the online retail giant’s infrastructure to deliver streaming video to millions of subscribers.

    It’s that kind of business that Google is attempting to attract with Compute Engine. Sure, it’s proven itself to be great for research, but research grants can only go so far. Google will now have to sell its infrastructure to businesses and maybe even steal customers away from Amazon.

    The biggest factor in the newly christened cloud war between Amazon and Google is definitely price. During the I/O keynote, Urs Holzle said that they had been driving the price down of virtual computing over the years. They have apparently been successful in this endeavor since he exclaimed that Google is able to offer “50 percent more compute per dollar.”

    When looking at that price versus what they offer, it’s not as rosy for Google. ZDNet broke down the pricing structure and found that Google is somewhat lacking when it comes to pricing options compared to Amazon. At the moment, Google only offers four options and they’re all paid with the most expensive being eight virtual cores at $1.16 per hour. Amazon has more options, including Windows-based VMs, that go all the way up to eight cores as well for $2.40 per hour.

    So Google wins on price alone, but as ZDNet points out, they just can’t compete with Amazon’s head start at the moment. Amazon offers more services and used its headstart to sign a lot of deals with those within the Enterprise market. Is Google going to do well with their newest venture? No doubt, but they will have to do more than just cure cancer to start making a splash.

  • Kindle Fire 2 Getting A July Release Date?

    Kindle Fire 2 Getting A July Release Date?

    Amazon may release their second generation Kindle Fire as soon as next month, a full four months before the one year anniversary of the first generation Kindle Fire. While there has been plenty of speculation about what the next Kindle Fire will look like, most of the rumors surrounding the tablet have expected the device to launch in the fall, closer to a year after the launch of the original (which released on November 15, 2011).

    Now, CNet is citing “a credible source” who claims that Amazon will be holding a launch event for the Kindle Fire 2 on July 31. This actually matches up with reports from DigiTimes (which is, after all, occasionally right) claiming that the Kindle Fire 2 would be coming early in the third quarter. Of course, DigiTimes also claimed that Amazon would include a much higher-resolution display and drop the Kindle Fire’s price by $50. We’ll have to wait and see on those.

    Apart from the release date, little else is known about the Kindle Fire 2. It will presumably stay the same size as its predecessor, and keep a similar, if not identical, price point (DigiTimes notwithstanding). While the new tablet is unlikely to present any more of a threat to the iPad than its predecessor, you can bet it will make a major splash in the non-iPad tablet market.

  • Is Google About To Maim Amazon Cloud?

    Is Google About To Maim Amazon Cloud?

    I don’t like to use the word “kill,” when it comes to tech competition. Rarely does one product actually come out and kill its competitor. That goes especially for when the competitor is a market leader, and an Internet giant, but even giants can be vulnerable to severe competitive damage, and Amazon may soon have a big battle on its hands.

    Om Malik at GigaOm reports that Google is “very likely to launch” a cloud services platform at Google I/O next week, which would take on the popular Amazon EC2 Cloud.

    While we’re going to have to leave the news filed in the rumor department for now, it has long seemed like only a matter of time before Google would launch such an offering, given its various existing cloud offerings.

    Then there’s the fact that Google wants businesses everywhere to “Go Google”. Such an offering would be an important step in truly getting corporate infrastructure to go Google.

    Malik, pointing out that GigaOm wrote last month that Google would launch a a cloud service this year, writes, “It was one of the topics of discussion in the hallways of our Structure 2012 conference. We have since confirmed with multiple sources who are familiar with Google’s plans which include a more comprehensive offering that its current app engine and storage offerings.”

    If Google comes out with significantly lower pricing, it could totally disrupt the cloud market, as it disrupted email when it launched Gmail.

    Obviously, Google is not commenting on this, as the company never comments on rumor or speculation.

    One thing is nearly certain. Google will have plenty of major announcements at its developer conference next week, which starts on Wednesday. From the sound of things, you can also expect plenty on the Google+ front (and speaking of corporations, rumor has it that Google may soon launch an enterprise version of Google+).

    By the way, here’s a Google I/O preview video about cloud data sessions Google just uploaded:

  • Jeff Bezos: Cuckoo Chimes Still A Go For The 10,000 Year Clock

    Jeff Bezos has been getting some attention this week for some of the interesting investments he’s made, thanks to a Wall Street Journal article about them.

    The article discusses a patent Bezos’ name is on, for some kind of cell phone airbag-type gadget and Glassbaby, a handmade glass company Bezos has invested in.

    Of course the 10,000 Year Clock also came up. The WSJ reports:

    It’s like a grandfather clock on a grander scale, Mr. Bezos said. When it’s finished, it will play an elaborate cuckoo-like sequence for the anniversary of every year, decade, century, millennium and 10 millennia.

    People who visit the clock when it is finished years from now will also be treated to a daily chime sequence that has been choreographed by musician Brian Eno, who serves on the project’s board.

    We reported on this endeavor last year, when it became known that Bezos had invested $42 million into the project. Essentially, it’s a clock that is supposed to run for 10,000 years. It runs on solar power, relying on computers to calculate the sun’s positions for 10,000 years.

    Here are some interesting videos about the project:

    Clock One – Raise Bore from The Long Now Foundation on Vimeo.

    The Journal quotes Bezos as saying, “The reason I’m doing it is that it is a symbol of long-term thinking, and the idea of long-term responsibility. We humans have become so technologically sophisticated that in certain ways we’re dangerous to ourselves. It’s going to be increasingly important over time for humanity to take a longer-term view of its future.”

    In case you were wondering whether the cuckoo thing is a joke, this has always been part of the plan, as it was discussed last year, as well.

  • Amazon App Store Going International

    Amazon App Store Going International

    The Amazon App Store has been one of the most successful ventures for the company to date. It’s already proven to be more profitable than Google’s own Play distribution platform. The only thing really holding it back is that it’s only available in the U.S. Amazon is changing that this summer.

    Amazon announced today that they are now accepting apps for the Amazon App Store international launch later this summer. Developers will now be able to sell Kindle Fire apps to customers in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The move will help Amazon catch up to both Apple and Google as they have been launching their various stores in countries across the planet.

    Amazon has a few tips and changes for developers who want to jump onto the international bandwagon. First up, developers will have to choose which countries they want their apps to be sold in. In all honesty, you should probably sell your app in every country that’s applicable. You can set your prices for each country separately, but please try to keep to normal conversion rates.

    Releasing internationally will probably lead to the localization of your app. Amazon doesn’t require that your apps be localized even if you are releasing in foreign countries, but they encourage it. While Amazon doesn’t feature their own localization service, there’s another Android partner (Google) that can help.

    As far as changes go, Amazon is also updating the Mobile App Distribution agreement. The company will now put revenue share at 70 percent of each paid app sale. It used to be 70 percent of the app’s sale price or 20 percent of list price with whatever the higher amount was being paid out to developers.

    The other change has developers getting more control over their own app distribution. Developers will now be able to set up times to which their apps will be available to Amazon customers. It allows developers to roll out apps to users in different countries over the course of a week instead of it dropping all at once.

    If the changes to the developer agreement weren’t enough, Amazon has another offer for potential developers to make apps for their platform. They have waived the annual developer fee for 2012 so you can sign up to make apps for the Kindle Fire and the Amazon mobile platform right now.

  • Harry Potter Books Now Available Through the Amazon Lending Library

    Harry Potter Books Now Available Through the Amazon Lending Library

    Amazon announced today that Amazon Prime members can borrow all seven Harry Potter books through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The Lending Library is Amazon’s service that allows Prime members to “borrow” an ebook once per month from a selection of over 145,000 books. The Harry Potter books are available for borrowing in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

    “Nowhere else can customers borrow any of the seven Harry Potter books for free, with an unlimited supply of each title and no waiting list,” said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle content at Amazon. “A $79 Prime membership was already the best deal in retail, and now it’s become even more valuable.”

    Amazon has purchased an exclusive license from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore website to make the ebooks available through its service. If the Harry Potter series just isn’t your choice of literature, the Lending Library also has 100 current and former New York Times best sellers in its catalogue.

    For an Amazon Prime subscriber and Kindle owner, borrowing a book from Amazon is easy. On a Kindle device, navigate to the Kindle storefront. From there, choose the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library from the categories menu. Browse the thousands of books tagged with the Amazon Prime logo, then select “Borrow for Free” on a book’s purchase page.

  • Amazon Updates the Kindle App For iOS

    Amazon this week updated its Kindle app for iOS. The iPhone and iPad versions both got improvements, though they were different for each.

    The iPad edition of the Kindle app received the more major changes, with the app now having smaller margins and a “cleaner” look. More exciting, though, is the new inclusion of comic books, graphic novels, and children’s books, as seen above. The layout for these titles has been improved, and they are displayed in full color. Amazon states that over 1000 children’s books are currently available, including titles from the Brown Bear and Curious George series.

    The iPhone version of the Kindle app got more technical, but needed, upgrades. The app now has a search feature that allows users to search through their Kindle libraries for a specific title or author. An issue with the iPhone version that prevented it from looking up words in Google or Wikipedia has also now been fixed.

    The Kindle app is available in the Apple App Store. It allows users to access their Kindle library and read books that are synched across any Kindle device or any device running the Kindle app. It is free and comes in a variety of languages, including the major romance languages, German, and Japanese.

  • Amazon Web Services Outage Brings Down Websites

    Last Thursday night a power outage in a Northern Virginia data center caused some websites running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud technology to go down. The issue was resolved within a few hours, and Amazon was quick to provide updates on the situation at its status page for AWS. The situation began at around 9:45 PDT, and the status page displayed the following message for its Amazon ElastiCache in Northern Virginia:

    Some Cache Clusters in a single AZ in the US-EAST-1 region are currently unavailable. We are also experiencing increased error rates and latencies for the ElastiCache APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region. We are investigating the issue.

    Amazon less than an hour later discovered the source of the problem and posted the message that it was beginning to bring cache clusters back online. One hour after that, it was announced that the service was finally recovering, and at around midnight PDT Amazon announced the situation was resolved:

    The service has recovered and is operating normally. All affected Cache Clusters are now back online, API error rates have recovered and customers can once again launch new Cache Clusters. We will follow up with more details of the issue.

    The outage led to some sites, such as Quora, Pinterest, and Dropbox, being unavailable or unusable. This is the same type of situation Amazon Web Services faced last year, when another datacenter (in Virginia, no less) suffered the same problem. It sparked many questions about whether cloud platforms were safe for major websites to run on.

    Amazon’s response to last year’s issue was to promise better accountability and transparency. To the company’s credit, it seems that the service has improved: last night its status updates came quickly and the situation was resolved in a timely fashion. Amazon Web Services just this week expanded service and lowered prices for its support packages.

    (via ZDNet)

  • Amazon Web Services Lowers Prices, Expands Support

    Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud services company, announced today that it has expanded its free support and lowered its prices for premium support plans. Amazon’s support offerings have also been renamed to reflect the new changes.

    The Basic support plan is the free service for all AWS customers. It now includes 24-hour support by email or phone for billing and account issues, as well as tech support. This is in addition to the access customers get to the AWS Developer Forums, technical FAQs, AWS Service Health Dashboard, and other self-help support features.

    What was previously the “Bronze tier” for customer support is now called the Developer support plan. It costs $49 per month and comes with all of the features of the Basic plan, plus a guaranteed 12-hour response time for support cases and one-on-one support for AWS questions. Bronze customers also gain access to AWS support engineers during local business hours.

    The “Gold tier” has now been renamed the Business support plan, and its price has been reduced from $400 to only $100 per month. Also, a 3% pricing tier has been added to the existing tiers of 5%, 7%, and 10%. Business plan members get the benefits of the lower tiers, plus a one-hour support case response time and support engineers available at any time through chat, email, or phone. In addition, Business plan members will get the new service that Amazon is heavily emphasizing: AWS Trusted Advisor. The new service monitors a customer’s services and notifies them when an optimization could be made to save money.

    “Amazon has been passionate about customer service since we started the company 17 years ago,” said Brent Jaye, general manager of AWS Support. “Putting customers first is part of our DNA. We not only employ talented support engineers all over the world, but also build technology that enables them to provide proactive and helpful information to our customers. Our new Trusted Advisor program is a good example of that — we use technology to determine if customers have security adjustments they should make, or if they’re not architected as fault tolerant as they might want to be, or if they have under-utilized instances that they can terminate and save money. We then use both technology and support professionals to surface this information to customers.”

    The high-end “Platinum tier” is now the Enterprise support plan, and it comes with a 15-minute response time for “mission-critical issues” and a dedicated account manager. Of course, this is in addition to all of the previous tiers’ benefits, including Trusted Advisor. The Enterprise plan now has the same usage-based pricing tiers as the Business plan: 3%, 5%, 7%, and 10%.

  • Amazon Closing in on Deals With Major Music Labels

    Earlier this week the Amazon Cloud Player app was released for the iPhone. The app allows customers to stream or download music from their Amazon Cloud Drive, and functions as a normal audio player. Now it looks as if Amazon is looking to expand its service with deals involving the major U.S. record labels.

    According to CNET, Amazon has already hammered out agreements with UMG, EMI, and Sony. It will soon complete negotiations with Warner on a similar agreement.

    Why Amazon is just now reaching agreements with the record companies is anyone’s guess. The CNET article floats the idea that the company might be trying to match Apple’s iTunes Match service, which, for a subscription fee, will turn a user’s non-iTunes-bought music into a high quality version sitting in their iCloud drive – all without any uploading involved. Currently, Amazon Cloud Drive requires users to upload all of their music before it can be streamed. Amazon certainly has the music library to make an iTunes Match-like service possible.

    It’s also possible, though, that Amazon is planning a subscription service similar to Rhapsody or Spotify. The Amazon Cloud Player could be augmented to stream free music with ads, or to give users wide access to Amazon’s catalogue of music for a monthly subscription fee. Whatever Amazon chooses to do with its new music license deals, though, it’s clear that more options and content are headed to customers

  • Amazon Competes With Google On A Bunch Of gTLDs

    Google applied for 101 gTLDs, according to the big list ICANN revealed this week. Amazon, didn’t apply for quite that many, but still made a very significant showing on the list with 76 applications of its own.

    You can see Google’s full list here, and Amazon’s below.

    First, it’s worth pointing out that the two Internet giants applied for more than a few of the same domains. These include: .app, .book, .buy, .cloud, .dev, .drive, .game, .map, .movie, .music, .play, .search, .shop, .show, .store, and .talk.

    Some of these would be obvious choices for either company, but some stand out for various reasons. Drive, for example, is actually the name of a Google product. Amazon does have Cloud Drive, however. Google has Google Play, formerly known as Android Market (and the Google eBookstore and Google Music). The closest thing Amazon has to that name, as far as I can tell, is Amazon Cloud Player. Google has a product called Google Talk. Amazon has no product with that name, to my knowledge.

    The one that really stands out on this list, of course, is Search. While this is an obvious choice for Google, it is quite interesting that Amazon would apply for it. Amazon has its own search feature, of course, but what would Amazon do with a .search TLD? Also worth noting is the fact that neither Yahoo or Microsoft applied for it. There were a couple other applicants: dot Now Limited and Bitter McCook, which comes with a donuts.co email address. Donuts, Inc. applied for a bunch, and has a partnership with Demand Media, which could enable Demand Media to acquire the rights to some of them. You can view Demand’s own list of applied-for gTLDs here.

    It’s a little surprising that Google didn’t apply for some of the others on Amazon’s list. That includes things like: .circle, .group, .mobile, .news, and .video.

    It’s also interesting that Facebook apparently didn’t apply for any of the gTLDs, while Amazon did apply for .like, and is the only company that did so, according to the list.

    Now, on to Amazon’s full list:

    – .amazon
    – .app
    – .audible
    – .author
    – .aws
    – .book
    – .bot
    – .box
    – .buy
    – .call
    – .circle
    – .cloud
    – .coupon
    – .deal
    – .dev
    – .drive
    – .fast
    – .fire
    – .free
    – .game
    – .got
    – .group
    – .hot
    – .imdb
    – .jot
    – .joy
    – .kids
    – .kindle
    – .like
    – .mail
    – .map
    – .mobile
    – .moi
    – .movie
    – .music
    – .news
    – .now
    – .pay
    – .pin
    – .play
    – .prime
    – .read
    – .room
    – .safe
    – .save
    – .search
    – .secure
    – .shop
    – .show
    – .silk
    – .smile
    – .song
    – .spot
    – .store
    – .talk
    – .tunes
    – .tushu
    – .video
    – .wanggou
    – .wow
    – .yamaxun
    – .you
    – .yun
    – .zappos
    – .zero
    – . アマゾン
    – .クラウド
    – .ストア
    – .セール
    – .ファッション
    – .ポイント
    – .亚马逊
    – .家電
    – .書籍
    – .通販
    – .食品

    You can see ICANN’s full list of gTLDs applied for (and their applicants) here.