Articles about Amazon

Today Amazon kicks off the first-ever AWS (Amazon Web Services) conference in Las Vegas. Sure, it is too late to get to AWS re:Invent now and the Technical Bootcamps are all sold out anyway, but that doesn't mean you need to miss everything. Some of the event will be live-streamed right to your computer. The show kicks off today and runs through November 29th.

This conference is tailor-made for those looking to integrate the Amazon cloud services into their business. There are workgroups surrounding the use of AWS in building web-scale apps, a talk given by Adrian Cockcroft, the Director of Cloud Architecture at Netflix, AWS cloud security and a whole lot more. In fact, there will be over 150 different sessions.

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Some advice to Google: If you launch exciting new products right before the holidays, it's a good idea to have them to sell. Not only are new Nexus devices sold out, so are new Chromebooks. Worse, they're not available in stores that stock them. Ah, yeah, what a brilliant way to push a new product category to the masses: Look, but you can't buy.

The new $199 Acer and $249 Samsung Chromebooks are on display in 500 Best Buys, and Google staffs sales specialists, who are there during store hours and are contracted through the end of the year. But the search and information giant can't stock Chromebooks. Like Amazon and Google Play, the Samsung Chromebook is sold out (the new Acer model is still available from Google today but not yet stocked by Amazon). Units coming into Best Buy are generally already claimed from online orders. Even the few returns, available as open-box purchases, sell within a couple hours. Google pays sales staff to educate potential buyers, who leave stores empty-handed.

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Perhaps, with all the buzz about Apple iPad mini, Google Nexus 10 and Microsoft Surface, you forgot about another important tablet launch. Amazon Kindle Fire HD WiFi is available, starting today, following two months or preorders. The LTE model comes next week. So many headline competing tablets launched since Amazon's September announcement, Kindle Fire HD could easily be overlooked. Completely forgotten? Buyers will answer that question.

Kindle Fire HD certainly looked like the iPad killer when unveiled. The 8.9-inch models nip iPad's 9.7-inches, offering much more, for much less. In-between Kindle Fire HD's announcement and availability, Apple punched out 7.9-inch iPad mini. Meanwhile Google stepped with newer Nexus 7 tablets (one with 3G) and larger Nexus 10. What distinguishes the lot are curated app and content stores. You're not just buying a tablet, or as Robert Johnson expressed in his Surface review yesterday, but an ecosystem, too. The point: No one should buy based on hardware features alone. Kindle HD and its competitors are about so much more.

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Thanksgiving may still be a couple of weeks away, but web retailing giant Amazon is already in the holiday spirit. Last week the retailer introduced its Black Friday store and now trots out the Amazon Santa app. Yes, Kris Kringel has finally moved into the digital age with his very own app. Now you don't have to worry if that old fashioned hand-written letter will arrive at the North Pole in time, just send the old man a digital wishlist.

These days our kids are very tech-savvy and snail mail is becoming somewhat of a memory. So why not set little Johnny or Jane up with a way to convey gift wishes in a manner that is understood by their generation? That's where Amazon steps in to fill the void. Amazon Santa will let you sign into your account, then you can allow your children to start browsing the store and creating their wish lists. While they think their lists will be forwarded safely into Santa's hands, you can browse for gift ideas and even share with family members who are wondering what to purchase.

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Amazon has quietly rolled out a new pricing plan for its premium membership service Amazon Prime which finally allows customers to make monthly payments instead of annual lump sum fees. That's all good right? Not so fast...

With Amazon Prime, subscribers get a lot of benefits from the popular online retailer: Free Two-Day, Standard, and no-rush Shipping, access to the Prime Instant Video streaming service, and access to the Kindle Lending Library where subscribers can freely borrow and read Kindle books as often as they like.

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The holidays seem to get earlier every year, with retailers like Wal-Mart rolling out its Christmas decorations before the leaves have even begun to change. With Halloween now behind us and Thanksgiving approaching, Internet retail giant Amazon has gone a step further by bringing early Black Friday deals to customers.

The company today unveiled its Black Friday Deals web site, complete with a Daily Deal starting today. In addition to those daily deals, there is a long list of products being offered at deep discounts, from cameras to toys to computers, and even kitchenware. The store kicked off with a discount of up to 65% on Joss Whedon DVD's including such popular titles as Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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This morning Amazon quietly pushed out a brand new app designed to let Android devices interface with their popular Cloud Drive storage service. Amazon, of course, has a horse in this race with their Kindle Fire HD tablets that have seen increased sales in recent days, ironically at what appears to be Apple's expense. The app is specifically designed for photos, so let's take a walk though and see what it can do.

First, it's a free install and is available from both Google Play and the Amazon AppStore for Android. Once you have downloaded it to your device you are presented with a sign-in screen that requires you to have, or create, an Amazon account, which is something that the vast majority of people probably already have anyway. Users automatically have 5 GB of free storage, but more can be purchased for prices comparable to those offered by Google Drive or SkyDrive.

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If you haven't been to Amazon for a day or so, do visit and check out the guerrilla marketing before it's gone. The online retail giant has revamped its ever-changing home page to directly take on iPad mini. A graphic compares iPad mini with Kindle Fire HD -- highlighting differences such as display resolution, HD playback and stereo instead of mono. Of course, the glaring difference is the price -- $329 versus $199, Apple's device being the more expensive.

Last week, Amazon boasted that the day after Apple announced iPad mini, $199 Kindle Fire HD had its biggest sales day ever, implying that many people waited to see the competition and then went for the Amazon product instead.

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Like Microsoft in the late late 1990s and early 2000s, antitrust scrutiny confronts Google on two continents. Among the core issues emerging from the preliminary investigations: privacy. Your data, who has access to it, how clear are the search giant's privacy policies and how carefully does the company adhere to them. But Google is by no means the only concern. Facebook is renown for making user interface and feature changes that can suddenly and unexpectedly expose personal data, and there are problems past about third-party applications accessing what they shouldn't.

As more established tech companies offer more services in the cloud, increasingly there is lingering question: Whom do you trust with your personal data? Last month, Apple expanded cloud services with iOS 6 and iPad mini and the fourth-generation 9.7-inch model go on sale November 2, supporting them. On Friday, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and Surface and does same with Windows Phone on October 29. To get the most from these products, users must have a Microsoft account, like Apple and Google require for their cloud services. Meanwhile, Office 365 extends online sync, storage and collaboration features.

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Apple should learn something from Google and Samsung. In a poll which results I'll post today, the majority of respondents tell us that iPad mini costs too much; prices start at $329. Meanwhile, the 11.6-inch Chromebook is priced just right. The WiFi model is Amazon's laptop top-seller, while the $329.99 3G model is No. 4 (and declining). Both models are sold out, like Google Play. Get one, if you can!

Many of you want new Chromebook, which swaps x86 for ARM architecture. So far, 1,770 people have responded to buying poll "Why you buy $249 Chromebook?". More than 35 percent plan to get one within 3 months, while 15.37 already placed orders. How funny if Google's Chrome OS portable turned out to be autumn's ARM sleeper sales success, and not iPad mini or Microsoft Surface.

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Whether some might people like it or not, we live in the cloud era and there the key role is played by services. But what happens when there's an outage? Yesterday I tried to log into Flipboard, but unlike what would usually happen, the message "service is currently down" greeted me.

It wasn't a scheduled maintenance. Flipboard announced via Google+ that the service was down and it "only" took roughly five hours to get it back up. So what happened? According to Data Center Knowledge and Wired, when Amazon Cloud went down so did Heroku, Flipboard, Foursquare, Reddit "and others", with problems reported to its North Virginia-based servers. But the cloud is supposed to be the future, and it doesn't include pulling the plug and sending people off: "Go to sleep, I'm incapable of anything now!"

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I bought my first ebook in 1999 and in recent years stopped purchasing print altogether. My wife is a relative ebook newbie, so I am surprised that she and not me received an email today from Amazon about a forthcoming purchasing credit. Perhaps you got a similar message.

In April, the Justice Department accused Apple and five publishers -- Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster -- of fixing ebook prices. Three publishers settled; MacMillan and Penguin, along with Apple, refused. The three publishers also settled with states attorneys general, agreeing to put $69 million in a fund for consumers. The Amazon purchasing credit is product of the settlement.

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I'm not locked in to any one company's ecosystem right now. I have a Windows 7 Ultrabook, a desktop I built myself running Mint Linux, an iPad, and my trusty Galaxy Nexus. Each appliance serves the purpose I purchased it for very well, and I feel no need to switch away from any of them for the moment. When I perform basic daily tasks, things run smoothly. I use Dropbox and Google Drive for sharing much of my content back and forth, and it's a great experience.

When it comes to purchasing digital content like music, movies, or books, it feels like I am punished for not being locked in to any one content system.

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Almost two weeks after Amazon unveiled new tablets, the $199 7-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet gets "a new lease on life" through rooting.

Gaining elevated privileges (popularly known as "root") is facilitated by an exploit found in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich that Amazon didn't fix before shipping the tablet. The fairly uncomplicated process gives the Kindle Fire HD a new trick up its sleeve -- using the Google Play Store, which provides access to all apps available there.

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Following Amazon's Kindle Fire HD announcement, a reader reminded me of a prediction I made at the start of the year: "If Apple gives up its position of industry leadership in 2012 the only company capable of assuming that role is Amazon.com". I stand by those words -- Amazon is really bringing the fight to Apple -- but the most important part is "if Apple gives up its position", which it clearly hasn’t, at least not yet. The real loser here, in fact, is not Apple but Microsoft.

I could be wrong about this but I don’t recall any pundits (me included) predicting that Amazon would introduce a larger format tablet, yet that’s exactly what they did. The larger Kindle Fire HD with its built-in content and app ecosystem (and that killer 4G data package!) is a viable iPad competitor at a terrific price and puts real pressure on the Cupertino, Calif.-based company. Will Apple match the price? I don’t think so. That’s not the game they want to play. But the game is on, nevertheless, and users can only benefit from competition.

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