It’s Black Friday in the United States, but Amazon this morning revealed a couple of deals that it will be running from Cyber Monday and/or the next few days (specifically, starting at midnight on Sunday, November 27, through the end of next week).
The company is selling a $79 Kindle, a $99 Kindle Touch, a $149 Kindle Touch 3G and a $199 Kindle Fire – and reiterates that the latter device is “currently the best-selling item across all of Amazon”. Good thing they’re prepared for the rush. → Read More
Chances are you’ve already heard about the beef between Amazon and Penguin over the sales and lending terms of Penguin e-titles through Amazon’s Kindle lending program. If not, we can recap quickly.
A few days ago Penguin came out with a statement saying that it would suspend making e-editions of new books for libraries and that libraries are to lock down any e-titles for Amazon.com’s Kindle ereader. → Read More
According to new consumer survey data from ChangeWave Research, Amazon’s Kindle Fire is poised to become the first real competitor to the Apple iPad, with one in five planned tablet buyers (22%) indicating they will purchase the Kindle Fire. This is the first time since the original iPad’s launch that the number two device ever achieved a double-digit percentage in terms of consumer interest. → Read More
I’m an author, but thankfully I’m not a member of the Authors Guild, that “not-for-profit American organization of and for authors”, who a few days ago issued a statement that first lauded publishers for not signing on to Amazon’s new Kindle book-lending program for Amazon Prime members, and then condemned those few publishers who did agree, citing a convoluted argument that authors aren’t protected by such an agreement.
That argument concludes: “[Publishers should] not decide for themselves how to step into this brave new world of subscription models without solving all this before they receive their first dollar. My guess is that most publishers, when faced with the complexity of the problem and the unlikelihood of finding a solution that makes everyone happy, will decide it’s just not worth the trouble. And that, perhaps, would be the best outcome of all.”
Oh my. The stupid, it burns. → Read More
Amazon’s Kindle Fire is arriving at many a home this week, and as expected with a launch of this magnitude, there are a few bugs yet to be squashed. Some users are reporting issues with wifi reception, and others say that the device shuts off its wireless when you turn the display off.
There’s no word from Amazon and homebrew remedies aren’t working for everyone. Are you having trouble with your Fire? → Read More
Digitimes, quoting “sources from upstream supply chains,” is stating that PC manufacturers like Dell, Acer, and HP are building fewer tablet products in direct reaction to devices like the iPad, Kindle Fire, and Nook Tablet. Citing an inability to gain traction against devices with rich content to back them up, the manufacturers are looking elsewhere to regain a foothold in the mobile market.
In truth, manufacturers know they won’t get far building vehicles for Android, Google Music notwithstanding. Building and marketing a tablet like the Xoom or the Asus Transformer is a perilous process and is buffeted by the whims of a price-conscious consumer. It doesn’t make economic sense to build and try to sell a few hundred thousand slates that will be considered obsolete in a few months. → Read More
So the Kindle Fire shipped Monday, and the early reviews are out in full force. The reactions, as per usual, are varied. But, for what it’s worth, The Fire is already the best-selling item on Amazon, and many are now saying that the eCommerce giant could sell 5 million of its new devices by the end of the year. No, it’s not an iPad killer, but people are excited by the Kindle’s touch and Android-based evolution, and at $200 there’s no doubt Amazon is going to sell more than a few.
But what’s more interesting (at least to me) than the potential growth of Amazon’s market cap should the Kindle sell like hot cakes, or Apple looking over its shoulder, is how Kindle sales could be a huge victory for one of the little guys. → Read More
iFixit, bless their hearts, have taken a Kindle Fire to pieces, though as it turns out, there aren’t too many pieces to begin with. The battery is one huge unit, and all the processing and I/O occurs on a single PCB at the bottom of the device.
Those expecting a carbon copy of the Playbook both outside and in will be disappointed: the layout, batteries, PCB, and all the components are different, making the form factor more or less the only real similarity between the two devices. → Read More
During last year’s holiday shopping season, Amazon released Price Check for the iPhone, a comparison shopping app which allows users can scan the barcode of a product, take a picture of an item or say the product’s name to access product listings on Amazon.com’s marketplace. Today, the e-commerce giant is launching the app on Android phones.
Shoppers use the Price Check app to scan a barcode, snap a picture, or say or type a product name to see prices from Amazon.com’s marketplace and its 2 million online merchants. One exclusive feature to the Android app is the ability to scan in either portrait or landscape mode. The app will display prices sorted from lowest to highest and will also show if the item is available for free shipping. → Read More
If you’re the proud owner of a (actually, pretty much any) tablet computer, you can install Zinio, which bills itself as the world’s largest newsstand. Starting today, you can also install the Zinio app, and thus gain access to its 5,000+ magazines, on Amazon’s Kindle Fire device.
Zinio’s app is available now on Amazon’s Appstore, free of charge and just in time for the Fire’s official debut. → Read More
Emboldened by solid pre-order numbers for their new Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon has bumped its order numbers from manufacturers yet again, this time to a round five million units by year’s end. Presumably they are looking to fulfill as many orders as possible before the all-important holiday rush. → Read More
The month before Apple revealed its “intelligent assistant,” Siri, Amazon was quietly buying out a company that performs voice-to-text actions like transcribing voicemails, whatever those are. In fact, its only user-facing product did just that, and its users received notice last month that the service would soon be discontinued.
CLT Blog, a local news source in Yap’s hometown, Charlotte, noted the change and discovered an SEC filing that, while it didn’t spell much out explicitly, did show that the merger documents were on file here in Seattle, in South Lake Union, in a building owned by Amazon. → Read More
This morning, Amazon announced that Kindle Cloud Reader, the nifty HTML5-based Web app that lets customers read Kindle books in their browser (online or offline), is now available for Mozilla Firefox 6 and above, in addition to Google Chrome and Safari (on iPad and desktop).
Not much else to report in terms of news, but Chris Blizzard, Director of Platform Product Management for Mozilla’s Web browser, says there are now more than 450 million Firefox users worldwide. → Read More
Amazon subsidiary A9.com has just launched a new augmented reality iPhone app—Flow Powered by Amazon. Flow uses augmented reality to help users explore and discover tens of millions of products in a real world setting, including books, DVDs, packaged electronics and toys, to give shoppers interactive product information about these items in the real world.
Here’s how it works. Once downloaded, you can point the app toward a book, video game, CD, DVD or other product with a UPC barcode. When the app recognized the product, it will display the Amazon.com product information, including the option to play multimedia content and read customer reviews.
→ Read More
Amazon reported third quarter earnings today. Net income decreased 73% to $63 million in the third quarter, or $0.14 per diluted share, compared with net income of $231 million, or $0.51 per diluted share, in third quarter 2010. The e-commerce giant missed Wall Street expectations; analysts expected a profit of $0.25 cents per share on $10.91 billion in revenue.
Net sales increased 44% to $10.88 billion in the third quarter, compared with $7.56 billion in third quarter 2010. Operating income was $79 million in the third quarter, compared with $268 million in third quarter 2010.
→ Read More
Amazon-owned Quidsi has tackled diapers, drugstore items, pet supplies and toys in its empire of retail verticals. And today, Quidsi’s Soap.com is adding groceries to the list, with a new category for non-perishable food items.
For background, Quidsi launched with Diapers.com, which quickly became the biggest seller of diapers online. Last year, it expanded into drugstore items with Soap.com and this year (post Amazon acquisition); Quidsi expanded to pet supplies with Wag.com. and toys with YoYo.
→ Read More
Is Jeff Bezos really like a “giant-brained alien?” In categorizing the Amazon founder’s unusual genius, Google (and former Amazon) engineer Steve Yegge compares Bezos and those like him to “hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.” He is not trying to be disrespectful. He is just trying to explain how to go about pitching an idea to someone like Bezos. (The short answer: assume he already knows everything about the topic you are going to present, no slides, and “delete every third paragraph” of your pitch).
Yegge does this in a follow up post on Google+ to his earlier rant on Google+ and Amazon. → Read More
Remember Google engineer Steve Yegge’s long rant about his past experiences at Amazon and his current employer’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+ (which he dubbed a “knee-jerk reaction” and a “pathetic afterthought”? If you haven’t read it yet, it’s well worth your time.
Yegge has now followed up on his it-was-meant-to-be-an-internal-memo diatribe, saying nothing bad happened to him at Google after his rant went viral. He did get laughed at a lot, he adds, by everyone all the way up to the top (Google co-founder Sergey Brin publicly said he didn’t read all of it because it was too long but sometimes used it as a “night-time aid”).
Then he goes on to sing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ praises. And then some. → Read More
Amazon has announced an update to the Kindle file format integrating many HTML5 tags and CSS attributes. Many expected a concession by Amazon in the form of an EPUB-compatible upgrade, and this comes as a slight surprise — but it’s a natural evolution of the format, really, and of course everyone is already familiar with the toolset.
In a way this makes Kindle formatted books nothing more than extremely long webpages, but that’s really a matter of perspective. Flexible layouts and well-known rules for handling text, fonts, images, and so on mean that the file format is adaptable to many devices, zoom levels, resolutions, and so on. → Read More
If you’re looking to upgrade your e-reader, Amazon just made the transition that much easier. Today the online retailer extended its Trade-In program to cover Kindles and other e-readers. Trading in a Kindle should net you anywhere from $25 to $135 depending on the model and the device’s condition.
After entering your old e-reader into the system, Amazon will award you with a gift card for the value of your device. And if you’re about to toss your old Kindle in the garbage over shipping costs, think again — Amazon offers free shipping. → Read More
