The Wall Street Journal shook the tech world Wednesday with news that Amazon plans to release its own Android-based tablet in October, a clear effort to take Apple head on now that it has nearly dominated the e-reader market with its market-leading Kindle device.

While the device is not a replacement for the Kindle, it's likely that the e-retailer will make it compatible with its array of services. Amazon already has a stable of offerings that could make any tablet successful: its cloud-based music service, its own music store, the Kindle e-bookstore, and its streaming and downloadable video offerings.

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Whoa, look what I pulled out of my Junk Mail folder -- a "notice of termination" email from Amazon. Last year I signed up to be an Amazon Associate and collected not one cent, never having participated. For active participants, this must be a troubling day -- make that Friday.

California is broke and looking to raise cash any way it can. Earlier today, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new tax law that would compel online retailers like Amazon to collect sales tax. The new provisions go into effect Friday. Well, hell, what can I still order online during the next 40 hours?

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Amazon apparently is getting into the Groupon coupon-like business by aggregating deals from LivingSocial. But don't rush out to the AmazonLocal website, unless you live in Boise, Idaho. That appears to be the only city where there are local deals.

Tip of the hat goes to TheNextWeb for uncovering AmazonLocal and its apparently one-city offering. I've got a call in asking for more details and will update this story should Amazon respond.

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If you've seen Amazon's new Mac Software Downloads store it's the question to ask. Amazon offers digital downloads from the Mac's two largest developers, Adobe and Microsoft. Apple does not. Well, Windows Phone 7 Connector is available from Apple's shop. But, hey, where's Microsoft Office?

Perhaps the answer to that question will come next month during Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, where Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" takes center stage. The Mac App Store, which debuted in January as an add-on to v10.6 "Snow Leopard," will be built into Lion.

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In a veritable repeat of the events of 2010, Amazon on Wednesday dropped the cost of its 3G-equipped Kindle with Special Offers to $164 after new, cheaper Kobo and Nook e-readers were debuted by its competitors.

Kobo, the e-reader brand associated with Borders and Indigo bookstores debuted a new 6" touchscreen e-reader on Monday called Kobo eReader Touch Edition. The new device cost $129.99, and last year's Kobo model dropped in price to $99.

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In three and a half years, Amazon's Kindle has grown from a single dedicated e-reader to a full-blown e-book platform available on nearly every popular operating system. Today, Amazon announced that Kindle-format e-books have finally begun to outsell traditional paper-bound books.

Since April 1, 2011, Amazon has been selling 105 Kindle books for every 100 print books it sells. It's only a small lead, but just one year ago, Amazon was only selling 60 Kindle books to every 100 paper books, so sales growth has been extremely rapid.

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Going against what seems to be the prevailing logic, the ad-supported Wi-Fi Kindle is now the best selling device on Amazon, the company's bestseller list indicates. The top three are all Kindles, with the Wi-Fi model coming in second and the Wi-Fi+3G model third.

Amazon sells the version of Kindle with ads for $114, $25 less than the $139 price of its sister ad-less Wi-Fi only model. The version that adds 3G connectivity retails for $189. The online retailer has been selling the ad-supported model for about a month, and the devices overall regularly top Amazon's bestseller list.

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UK-based music and video download site 7digital on Tuesday updated its Android music player application, making its MP3 download store available to Android devices in the US, UK, Canada, and 13 other countries.

Open source software users should already be familiar with 7digital, since it powers the Ubuntu One Music Store and is the default download store for media management software Songbird. Like Amazon, it offers DRM-free music downloads from all of the "big four" record labels, and the updated Android app lets users browse and preview all of the downloadable albums and songs.

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Evidence seemed to build that Amazon is in the process of building an Android tablet on Tuesday as DigiTimes reported sources said electronics maker Quanta had received orders for such a device.

Amazon's tablet, which is believed to run on Android, would likely be the next-generation Kindle as opposed to a separate device. Gdgt's Peter Rojas said last week that he expected Amazon to do something similar to what Barnes & Noble has done with the new Nook.

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Should I feel special? Today I got an invitation from Amazon offering "free, instant access" to "membership-only fashion destination" MyHabit.com. Are you a "valued Amazon.com customer," who received this invite, too?

I'm a sucker for good marketing but I'm a perpetual T-Shirt, shorts and sneakers wearer. Besides I'm short and chunky. I don't look good in designer anything. I do like Amazon's branding and marketing though. MyHabit.com is truly inspired branding. Every fashionista I know, including my 16 year-old daughter, is a clothes and fashion addict.

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Amazon appeared to finally have the issues with its Web Services cloud platform under control, saying late Friday afternoon that all but its most "time consuming" volumes had been recovered and were back online. This seems to match up with reports that those websites that depended on Amazon's cloud were for the most part operating normally.

The partial failure which affected Amazon's cloud servers in its Northern Virginia facility, occurred early Thursday morning. Several popular websites including Foursquare, Reddit, and Quora were down for much of Thursday, and those issues extended into Friday as well.

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A partial failure of Amazon's cloud server network brought down the websites of several popular services, including Quora, Reddit and Foursquare for several hours beginning around 4:41am Eastern Time Thursday. The issues were isolated to the company's data centers in Northern Virginia.

Amazon's AWS status page indicated that as of press time Thursday afternoon on the East Coast, issues were still ongoing, including "instance connectivity, latency and error rates." According to the company, the issue began when a unspecified "networking event" caused AWS servers to erroneously re-mirror a large amount of data.

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Amazon on Wednesday announced Kindle Library Lending, a program that will let Kindle users borrow books from more than 11,000 libraries in the United States. The program follows Amazon's person-to-person Kindle Book Lending feature that debuted at the end of 2010 and addresses long-running concerns that e-readers like the Kindle would bypass libraries entirely.

In the program, users will be able to check out Kindle books from their local library, and then add notes and highlights which are synced to the user's Kindle account. If the book is re-rented or purchased, all the annotations and highlighted passages are retained. They do not pass from user to user.

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Amazon on Monday announced it had dropped the price of the third generation Kindle e-reader by $25. If this reduction in price came as a result of the usual maturation of technology (where declining manufacturing costs are passed along to the consumer), it would not be an especially newsworthy event. However, the price was reduced for a different reason: because the Kindle e-reader can now display sponsored advertisements.

The Kindle's famous screensavers can now be replaced by full screen advertisements which are customizable in the "Manage Your Kindle" section on a user's Amazon.com account. Users can indicate the amount of screensavers they see that include elements such as landscapes and scenery, architecture, travel images, photography, and illustrations.

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As a music producer who went through the rapid changes from the "tangible content" era to the "digital content" era I am incredibly pleased with Amazon's cloud storage and personal music streaming services. Editor's Note: Amazon unveiled Cloud Drive and Cloud Player on March 29.

I had conceived of a unique service similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive around 2004. Lacking the funds and expertise to put something together I chose a career path for my music that was far from designing web and app code. After 10 years of composing, producing, engineering and performing I have amassed a very large publishing catalog of music that I own and operate.

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