Articles about Amazon

A few years ago, if you wanted to join a website you had to create a brand new account, enter your email address and come up with yet another password to try and remember. That’s all changed of course and now you can log into a vast amount of sites using existing credentials for services like Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Today, Amazon adds itself to the list of services you can use to gain access to other sites with the introduction of Login with Amazon.

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Although Microsoft has yet to officially reveal the price of its next generation games console, Amazon has decided to set the figure at £599.99 on its pre-order page.

This is considerably higher than most people would have expected -- closer to £400 would have been a reasonable guess -- and dwarfs the launch price of the Xbox 360 which cost gamers £209.99 for the core system back in December 2005.

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On Thursday, Amazon announces that the Kindle Fire HD tablets, in 7-inch and 8.9-inch trim, are now available for pre-order through its website in more than 170 countries and regions worldwide. Previously, the US e-commerce company only offered the two devices in a lower number of markets.

"Kindle Fire HD is the number one best-selling item in the world for Amazon since its launch, and we're thrilled to make it available to even more customers around the globe today", says Amazon Kindle vice president Dave Limp. The two devices go on sale from June 13, with the price starting at $214 for the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD and $284 for its bigger brother, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD (both with no special offers and sponsored screensavers).

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Amazon wishes to confuse its Kindle Fire market in much the same way Microsoft does with Xbox Points. Today the online retail giant announces "Coins", a new form of virtual currency that tablet customers can use to make purchases both in the app store, as well as in-app.

"Amazon Coins is an easy way to purchase apps and in-app items on Kindle Fire, and for developers it’s another opportunity to drive traffic, downloads and increased monetization" Amazon claims. While this seems to add disorder, there is a silver lining. For one, customers will receive up to a ten percent discount when buying Coins to make purchases, as opposed to using good old fashion real currency.

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Vikings is proving to be a hot TV show this season, since March 3rd premiere on the History channel. It has finished its nine episode season one run, but remains in demand. Now Amazon, through its LOVEFiLM service brings the famed barbarians back to jolly old England, where the Vikings landed near the end of the eighth century.

The drama portrays the world of these Dark Age raiders, traders and explorers -- not from an outsider's view, but, through the eyes of Viking society.

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There’s more than one way to advertise a product and while I am a big fan of the approach that specifically focuses on features, I understand there is a need for other approaches. Sometimes you just need to go for the pure emotional response. In the case of the ads released by Microsoft today which focus on the Asian market that seems to be what they were going for. Take a look.

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Some of Microsoft's greatest battles aren't being fought in the open, contentious field of constant public opinion and media coverage. If there's one thing Microsoft has always done better than the competition, it's blowing open new areas of opportunity and running with the ball on the sly. Apple and Samsung can keep their tactical flags limited to consumer electronics; Microsoft has far greater potential as a rising star in the cloud arena. The war started with its drive to push email to the cloud with Office 365, and the next leg of battle sits in the helm of Windows Azure and XaaS dominance.

If you're under the impression that we are not yet in the era of massive, prevalent 'big data', you're wildly mistaken. Our data needs are already climbing to astronomical levels, with IBM stating that 90 percent of the data in existence today was created in just the last two years. Not surprisingly, much of these growing data needs are being tossed into virtual environments whether it be on-premise in a VMWare or Hyper-V driven route, or my personal favorite: cloud-hosted virtual machines.

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Mother's Day is fast approaching and, naturally, Amazon would like to sell you a holiday gift. The online retailer would really like you to purchase a Kindle Fire HD tablet, and it is making sure that this purchase will hurt your wallet just a bit less than it normally would. Amazon now places the Kindle Fire HD on its site for a temporarily discounted price.

For this coming Mother's Day, Amazon knocks $20 off the usual $199 price tag for the Kindle Fire HD 16 GB model. This is the 7-inch screen tablet with 1280 x 800 resolution (720p), Dolby audio, WiFi and 1.2 Ghz dual-core processor. The retailer also throws in some free cloud storage for mom to keep those family pictures.

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Best Buy is in trouble you know. It’s in the news all the time. I wrote a big column about it myself last year. Same store sales have suffered, corporate employees are being laid off, the big U.S. electronics retailer is pulling out of Europe. Best Buy management is in turmoil. The founder leaves in a huff, then tries and fails to take the company private, and is now making nice-nice with the same management he previously reviled. There’s a new head of stores (I wish him well), who thinks the answer is price matching, better sales training and paying workers to sell more stuff, which sounds like commissions to me (Best Buy was always anti-commission).

All this drama is generally lain at the feet of Amazon.com on the Internet and Walmart down the street, both of which have reportedly been cleaning Best Buy’s clock. Only they haven’t. Best Buy has been killing itself with bad Information Technology. It’s been a long, long time since I introduced a new Cringely Law, but here comes one (I’m not sure what number this is), courtesy of Best Buy: compartmentalized IT can kill companies that are understaffed and overstressed.

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So much for Apple's tablet reign that analysts stoutly stood by even just months ago. Android kicks ass, crushing iOS shipments during first quarter, according to IDC. Among the top four, the fruit-logo company posted the lowest year-over-year growth (65.3 percent), and considerably less than the overall market (142.4 percent). Meanwhile, the company's market share fell by 18.5 points to 39.6 percent.

Among tablet manufacturers, Apple is market leader, with the question being for how much longer. Samsung share rose 282.6 percent -- ASUS even more (350 percent). Strong Nexus 7 shipments pushed ASUS past Amazon to take third place. ASUS' challenge and opportunity could be Google I/O, where the tablet launched last year and new model is rumored for the event starting May 15. Challenge is maintaining shipments during product transition; opportunity is capitalizing on new sales.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of consumers, publishes its report on safety in the digital age. There are some winners and also some major losers this time around in the "Who has your back?" statement -- hint put down your cell phone, step away slowly and nobody gets hurt.

The annual report looks at major technology service providers' commitment to users' rights in the face of government data demands. EFF examines 18 companies' terms of service, privacy policies, advocacy, and courtroom track records and awards up to six gold stars for best practices in categories such as requiring a warrant for content, telling users about government data demands and publishing a transparency report.

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Amazon is not one to miss out on any revenue market and today proves this by making its free Kindle apps more appealing to customers who are either blind or visually impaired. The upgrades are not available on all platforms yet, but are certainly a move in the right direction.

New features will allow customers to access the read aloud feature for the more than 1.8 million titles available in the Kindle Store and seamlessly navigate within their library or within a book, including consistent title, menu and button names.

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Audible, a leading choice in the audio book market and a company that was purchased by Amazon back in 2008, is now working with Microsoft to drum up new business for both entities with offers to both the PC and mobile platform. The Amazon subsidiary has long offered free book deals in a number of forms, including the many podcasts sponsored with its advertising.

Today Microsoft announces that customers of both Windows 8 and Windows Phone can grab a free audio book with no subscription or credit card required. "Audible has apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone that let you download and listen to books on the go. With over 135,000 titles from classics to New York Times bestsellers, you can enjoy endless hours of entertainment" says Microsoft's Kristina Libby.

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Consumers have a rich selection of services for TV and movie content: iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, and I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting. Some of these are tied to hardware (like iTunes) and others try to be agnostic in this regard.

My service of choice is Amazon Prime Instant Video. Amazon Prime is a $79 annual membership that gives you 2-day shipping on most items you buy from the retailer, allows you "to stream thousands of movies and TV shows" and access to the Kindle Lending Library with thousands of books.

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Up front I should confess that I love Amazon Prime. The service is a bit cheaper than Netflix for streaming movies and TV shows but brings along other perks such as free second-day shipping and a lending library for Kindle users. The retailer continues to add features and work with studios in an effort to provide more content to viewers.

Today Amazon releases pilot episodes for 14 new, original shows. We have known these were coming for some time, but the service waited until all pilots were ready and pushes them now as one giant release.

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