Amazon

The online retailer said over the weekend that it would begin to roll out its music store worldwide during this year in an effort to more broadly compete with market-leader iTunes.

Amazon launched its MP3 store in September of last year, and has since expanded to include music from all four major labels as well as 33,000 independent labels. The company says that it has the broadest DRM-free offering of any service.

Amazon.com said on Monday that it would rather pay €1000 a day in fines than abolish its free shipping on books in France.

Free shipping from Amazon.fr is apparently a violation of a 1981 law that was passed to ensure the French public receives equal access to all forms of literature.

The developers of a Web services application environment that leverages the leased computing services of Amazon have reworked their Web functionality to incorporate Adobe's Web language for Flash applications.

In another challenge to the conventional application services model, a nearly five-year-old startup called Coghead, led by former Red Hat executive Paul McNamara, has updated its unique Web application development suite to incorporate Adobe's Flex Web development language.

With the last remaining label of the big four to join the online retailer's new music store, it could be argued that DRM is essentially dead.

Last week, Sony announced its plans to go DRM-free. It did not name any distribution points at the time, although analysts speculated that Amazon would eventually carry Sony's content.

The label has announced a deal that allows Amazon to sell DRM-free tracks through its online music store.

The addition of Warner brings the number of DRM-free tracks on Amazon MP3 to 2.9 million, more than any other online music service. Amazon already has deals with many independent labels, as well as majors EMI and Universal.

Those wishing to receive an Amazon Kindle book reader before Christmas are resorting to auction site eBay, and paying a 200 percent premium in the process.

Despite mediocre reviews from well-known technology pundits Walt Mossberg and David Pogue, consumers are eager to get their hands on the new device. The $399 Kindle has sold out from Amazon, and the company has stopped giving estimated ship dates.

After apparently sluggish sales at its own homegrown store, AOL has decided to end its own video download service and outsource it to Amazon's Unbox.

Although financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, both sites would split revenues from videos sold through AOL, the companies said. AOL's own service lasted for about one year.

A federal judge in Wisconsin said that the federal government's request for the records of sales by an indicted man raised some concerns, causing the US Attorney's Office to drop the subpoena.

Robert D'Angelo, indicted in October, is being charged with tax evasion and mail fraud. The feds were seeking to force Amazon to hand over the records of nearly 24,000 books the man had sold through the site over the past four years.

As expected, Amazon debuted its $399 Kindle book reader at a Monday press event in New York. But will it be enough to finally help electronic books take off?

The retailer is ready to make a big deal out of the product as well: a letter from CEO Jeff Bezos greeted users visiting the Amazon.com front page beginning Monday morning. He says that Kindle was born of his interest in electronic books, and how they could be improved.

One of the nation's biggest online retailers is reportedly close to shipping its own electronic book reader, sources report.

Details of the actual unit are not available, although the 'Kindle' as it is called, apparently has an EVDO data connection. Reports seem to suggested that at least a dozen media partners will be available at launch.

Amazon has begun offering a promotion that would allow customers to receive one Blu-ray move free when they buy another at full price. Although the sale is said to be for a "limited time," no expiration date was given. 72 movies in all are included as part of the deal, with prices on Blu-ray movies either $19.95 or $26.95. As would be expected, the least expensive of the two discs is counted as the free movie.

There have been reports that the discount has not been applied to some purchases, although Amazon.com said that those not receiving the freebie should contact the site to have their orders adjusted. In any case, such a move is not unexpected. With HD DVD now selling their players for as low as $98, pressure is on Blu-ray to answer back. While Blu-ray cannot match HD DVD on player price, it seems to have turned to its ever-growing catalog of movie titles to drum up sales.

In a symbolic victory for advocates of patent reform, a part-time motion-capture actor who has appeared - albeit masked by CGI animation - in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, has succeeded in striking down Amazon's patent claim of having invented the single-click purchase procedure.

Auckland, New Zealand resident Peter Calveley petitioned the US Patent and Trademark Office back in November 2005 to re-examine the 26 claims made by Amazon in what had been called, "Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communications Network." By the following February, by soliciting private donations through his blog, Calveley had raised the nearly $2,500 necessary to fund the full re-examination. In May, his case was under way.

Amazon.com launched the public beta of its digital music store Tuesday, offering over 2 million DRM-free tracks.

The new music store could be seen as a strong competitor to iTunes, as it features many of the same artists without copy protection on the files. This means that not only can the tracks purchased from Amazon MP3 be copied, burned, and stored on multiple computers, but they are also compatible with most portable devices, including the iPod. All songs are encoded at 256 kilobits per second.

Amazon is attempting to drum up interest among developers for its Web Services offering by sponsoring a contest which looks for the best business venture that makes use of its technologies. A first prize of $50,000 cash, $50,000 in web service credits, and a possible financing offer will be awarded to the winner, while others could receive up to $5,000 in credits for their entries. All qualifying entrants receive up to $25 in web service credits for participating.

Web Services from the retailer actually has nothing to do with e-commerce on the site: rather, the engineering and technology back end is made available for developers to use in whatever form they would like. Over 265,000 developers have signed up to use the service since it was launched in July 2002, the company said. More information on the contest can be found on the company's website.

It didn't take very long for NBC Universal to find a new outlet for its programming following its break with Apple. The channel's shows will now be available through Amazon for the same price they were on iTunes.

The programs will be sold through Amazon's Unbox service for $1.99 USD per episode. Like iTunes, episodes will be available the day after they air on the network, however Amazon has agreed to let the company bundle programming together.