Sign me up, baby. Today, Amazon started offering my music (yours, too) from the cloud -- in a web browser or through an Android app. Sorry iPhone users. There is no app for you. The service chokes in Mobile Safari on iPhone, so that's no option.

The concept is simple: Amazon stores your music on its servers -- and you can listen anytime, anywhere and on anything. There are two conjoined services -- Cloud Drive for storage, which also can be used for documents and other files, and Cloud Player for listening to music. Setup is seamless. Amazon customers click links while signed into their accounts, and that's it (Ease of use stops there; see next couple of paragraphs). Amazon offers 5GB storage for free. Additional storage ranges from 20GB to 1TB and from $20 to $1,000 a year, respectively. However, Amazon is running a promotion through the end of the year. Buy one album and get upgraded to 20GB of storage for free.

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Leading Web retailer Amazon today launched its official app store for Android mobile devices. Rumors of this app store first surfaced in late 2010, and Tuesday's launch follows a lawsuit by Apple over Amazon's use of "app store" to describe it.

Like Google's revised Android Market, Amazon's Web-based app store pushes downloaded apps from a browser to the wireless device. Amazon's app store, however, requires that a client application be installed on the target device to allow downloading.

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If you're not asking the question, you should. It makes sense out of Amazon imminently launching an app store to rival Google's Android Marketplace. Why else does Amazon need its own Android app store? Well, there's an answer to that question, too. Read on.

Firstly, in the short term, any Android-based Kindle isn't about Amazon competing with iPad or other Apple iOS devices. Amazon's ambitions are much larger: Capitalizing on the enormous Android ecosystem of applications and devices and extending its core competency as a retailer. Amazon already does this on Android and other mobile operating systems with the Kindle app. But Amazon sells more digital content than just ebooks. Android Kindle -- as device or app -- would allow Amazon to better bundle other digitally downloaded products, like movies, music and TV shows.

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One of Amazon's best values is its Prime service, which costs $79 a year. For that fee, buyers get free two-day shipping or overnight packages for $3.99 per item. Today, Amazon added something more: free streaming of 5,000 movies or TV shows. Or so the retailer claims. I only see 1,688 movies and 484 TV shows currently available on Amazon Instant Video.

Amazon offers a surpringly good selection, too; that is sure to give Netflix some unexpected and needed competition in the streaming market, and Prime is a better value. Netflix charges $7.99 per month (before taxes) for movie and TV show streaming, or minimum $95.88 a year. Not only does Prime cost less but it offers more in the aforementioned shipping costs -- and there's something else: Amazon allows the sharing of Prime among four accounts in the household. If, say, you're a college student with roomies sharing Primes, the value just got whole lots better.

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Wednesday, Web retailer Amazon launched its Kindle Singles line of literature designed specifically for consumption on e-readers. The works, priced between $1.00 and $3.00, include original works of prose, essays and theses, and the the first TEDBooks.

Last October, Amazon introduced Kindle Singles as a format ideally suited for the reading habits of e-reader users. They are longer than a magazine article and shorter than a novel (around 20,000 words or 60 pages,) and specifically tailored to deliver well-developed content in a very direct manner, sort of like Reader's Digest condensed literature.

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Amazon on Tuesday debuted a new bulk e-mail solution for businesses and developers as part of its web services offering. According to the company, Amazon SES is intended to take out the complexity of sending large amounts of e-mail for smaller businesses while ensuring delivery in a timely manner.

Users would receive their first gigabyte of data transfer at no charge, and would be free to those who use Amazon Web Service's EC2 cloud or Elastic Beanstalk application-management service as long as it falls within their bandwidth allocations. 2,000 e-mails per day would be covered under the free plan.

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Amazon on Friday announced that its Kindle Digital Text Platform, or DTP, will be renamed Kindle Direct Publishing. All other aspects of the self-publishing platform appear to remain unchanged.

One year ago, Amazon launched Kindle DTP in more than one hundred countries worldwide, pushing Amazon's proprietary Kindle e-book format into the hands of independent publishers and content creators who might otherwise have considered publishing their materials on a more open format, like ePub, which Barnes & Noble's Pubit! self publishing platform uses for creating Nook-compatible e-books.

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Deal site LivingSocial has got a helluva bargain today: A $20 Amazon gift card for 10 bucks. Who could resist that? I could. Should you?

LivingSocial specializes in half-price deals, typically specific to larger cities -- assuming you live there. I went to the site for the first time early this afternoon. By Internet magic, most likely IP address, LivingSocial correctly detected my city as San Diego. I clicked through to see the big deal, the aforementioned half-price Amazon gift card.

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Today, IDC initiated coverage of the media tablet and e-reader markets, ranking Apple and Amazon leaders in their categories, respectively. Reporting on two separate product markets in one release is unusual for IDC. But it makes sense. So-called media tablets and e-readers will likely become one category in the not-so-distant future.

What's more interesting is IDC's tablet definition. In October, I observed that if iPad counted as a personal computer, Apple would likely meet or beat top-ranked HP in Q3 US PC market share. IDC has decided iPad isn't a PC, but Tablet PC would be one.

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Web retailer Amazon.com is launching its own Android app store both for Android devices and for the Web. Wednesday, the company opened the beta of its developer portal, inviting Android appmakers to enroll in the program and submit their apps for approval.

There may be one "official" Android Market that is run by Google, but that doesn't mean Google necessarily owns the Android application trade. Thanks to the mobile OS's open source underpinnings, there are many third-party app stores designed by carriers, manufacturers, and software companies. Some companies that have released devices running on Android have also created app stores exclusive to their devices.

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One of the major advantages Barnes and Noble's Nook e-reader offered over Amazon's Kindle was the ability to lend other users e-books that you had purchased. Today, Amazon closed that gap when it announced Kindle Book Lending.

Just like Barnes and Noble's Nook, Kindle users can now share certain books they have purchased with friends for a period of 14 days. From the "Manage Your Kindle" menu in your Amazon account, you can select "loan this book," and then enter the recipient's e-mail address and name. They do not have to own the Kindle hardware, and can read the book in any of the free Kindle applications. If one receives an e-mail alerting you that someone has loaned you a book, you have seven days to initiate the loan and start the 14 day loan period.

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Internet retail giant Amazon may sell a lot of stuff, but nothing has sold like the Kindle. The company said Tuesday that the third generation of the book reader has become its best selling product of all time, surpassing 2007 bestseller Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

As has been the case with the Kindle since its initial release, Amazon still has refused to give an exact number of devices sold. An educated guess on sales can be made, however: Harry Potter sold about 2.5 million copies during the first quarter following its release.

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Amazon became the target of Internet criticism after initially ignoring pleas to remove a book it listed in its Kindle store on the subject of pedophilia, only to quietly change position and remove the book on Thursday without much notice.

The book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" by Phillip Graves, was sold by Amazon for $4.79. It was intended to give those interested in such activity advice on the subject. However, child protection advocates saw the book as potentially dangerous, and threatened to boycott the online retailer.

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Amazon on Tuesday announced it will begin paying 70% royalties to magazine and newspaper publishers who release their periodicals on the Amazon Kindle starting in December. The move follows a similar royalty increase Amazon made in June, when the company began offering a 70% option for books published through its Digital Text Platform (DTP.)

Coincidentally, the company today launched the Beta of the Kindle Publishing for Periodicals tool, which is similar to DTP, but lets publishers add content and preview Kindle formatting prior to making their titles available on the E-reader.

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Though Amazon doesn't disclose how many Kindle e-readers it sells, the online retailer today announced that the latest generation Kindle devices are the fastest selling Kindles so far. 24 days into the fourth quarter 2010, the 3rd generation Kindle has already passed total Kindle sales for the entire fourth quarter last year.

This sales explosion is no doubt the result of the Kindle's increased availability after it launched in retail stores early in September. Consumers who may have never seen a Kindle before finally gained the ability to feel how lightweight it is, and see its new higher contrast screen.

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