Amazon

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will review Amazon.com's claims to a patent that covers its one-click buying option after a New Zealand actor successful raised a "substantial new question of patentability," according to a ruling by the agency.

Peter Calveley, whose film credits include being a motion capture performer behind the computer-generated characters in the The Lord of the Rings, claims that he had record of prior inventions in the field. He refers to a 1998 patent filed which discussed a single action that would be used for purchasing.

Online retailer Amazon.com has dropped Google as its search result provider and selected Microsoft's new Windows Live Search instead. The change affects both Amazon's A9.com search engine and the company's Alexa toolbar and Web site.

The move is the first public show of support for Microsoft new search technology, which will eventually replace MSN Search after it leaves beta. Although neither Amazon nor Microsoft announced the switch, it follows rumors that eBay was also talking to the Redmond company in response to competition from Google Base. Amazon, like eBay, allows its users to sell their goods through the online store.

Amazon's Web services arm on Tuesday introduced S3, a servicefor software developers that aims to provide a scalable and reliable data storage service at a low cost. S3 -- short for Simple Storage Service -- costs $0.15 per GB per month for storage, and $0.20 per GB of data transferred.

Developers would gain access to the same data storage infrastructure Amazon uses to run its network of Web sites. The company said it aims to pass the benefits of "Web-scale computing" on to developers.

Sources near Amazon say that the company may be close to offering downloadable movies, with discussions ongoing between the online retailer and movie studios Universal, Paramount and Warner Bros. The service could open its doors by this summer.

Amazon has already toyed with the idea of online DVD rental, and is looking into a digital music service of its own. With the success that Apple has seen by adding video content to its iTunes Music Store, some companies are looking into ways to monetize online video content.

Amazon is in talks with both the major record labels and digital music player manufacturers about creating a music offering to compete with market-dominating iTunes. The plans call for Amazon-branded music players that would be deeply discounted -- or even free -- in connection with a subscription music service.

The program would work much like a post-pay cellular plan, where a customer receives a phone at a discount in exchange for a long-term subscription. A flat monthly fee would be charged, and Amazon is even considering pre-loading the devices with songs suggested by the online retailer using the consumer's music buying habits.

Amazon recently began testing a program similar to Google's AdWords that would allow a Web site owner to place sponsored links on their sites to generate additional revenue. The online retailer began testing the service in late January, however it has not announced any official launch date or revealed the third-party provider of the sponsored links, as the company is not hosting that portion of the service on its own.

As well as displaying sponsored links, the service would also intersperse links to Amazon products, which the company hopes would become a major source of traffic to its sites.

Amazon.com on Wednesday rolled out a new feature for book authors called "Amazon Connect," which enables authors to post blog entries that appear on book detail pages, customer accounts and author profile pages. Amazon users can then reply to the postings, and sign up to receive updates.

"We invite authors to communicate with their readers in a way that hasn't before been possible," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. "Amazon Connect brings the author's message to the reader instead of waiting for the reader to find the message."

Amazon on Tuesday rolled out the Alexa Web Search Platform, which opens up 5 billion documents and 300 terabytes of data to anyone, along with offering computer and storage time for processing tasks. The idea is to enable the creation of new services that utilize Alexa's vast Web archive and search technology.

In its simplest form, Amazon is providing storage space and server power to users at a price of $1 per CPU hour consumed, $1 per gig of storage used, $1 per 50 gigs of data processed, and $1 per gig of data uploaded. A user will have access to the equivalent of a 3.6GHz Linux server with 4GB of memory.

Travel site SideStep received a major boost on Thursday by securing a partnership with Amazon to become the e-retailer's search engine in its travel store, replacing competitor Hotwire.com. The deal gives SideStep access to Amazon's 52 million users.

Unlike other travel sites such as Travelocity and Orbitz, SideStep searches partner Web sites for the lowest fares and then directs users to that company's booking application. Although it has been around since 2000, SideStep has remained fairly unpublicized. But recently, a spate of travel search engines have cropped up, including America Online funded Kayak.com.

Amazon said on Thursday that it was developing a new program to allow customers to purchase the rights to view either portions of or an entire book online.

The effort could be viewed as a response to Google's announcement that it had significantly expanded its online book searching service, while taking an approach that is more acceptable to authors and publishers.

All those loose coins sitting around your house are music to Amazon's ears. The popular e-commerce site announced on Tuesday a program that will allow users of Coinstar counting machines to cash in their extra change for Amazon.com gift certificates.

Coinstar normally charges an 8.9 percent convenience fee for use of its machines. However, by selecting the option to receive an Amazon gift certificate, users would be able to bypass the charge.

Amazon's A9.com search engine on Tuesday began to offer a street-level photo mapping service it hopes will compete with similar services from MSN and Google. The company says that using street-level views of city blocks instead of satellite images will give it an edge over other services.

In January, A9.com began to offer photos within its Yellow Page listings. A picture would be shown of the business, as well as a block view that would display adjacent storefronts.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday that online retailer Amazon.com is considering an entrance into the digital music business, and has held talks with industry executives over the past two weeks to license content.

Further fueling speculation is a job listing on the Amazon Web site that asks for a content acquisition manager to work in its "forthcoming" music service. According to the post, this position "will seek and license digital-music content world-wide, including content from major recording labels and independent recording labels and artists."

Amazon.com on Thursday leaked details of PalmOne's rumored LifeDrive PDA that is expected to ship later this month. According to details on the Web page, the PDA is rumored to have a 4GB hard drive and color screen, as well as wireless connectivity.

According to sources, the retail price of the LifeDrive, slated for release on May 18, is expected to be around $500. The unit will have a 416MHz Intel XScale, the fastest processor in a Palm handheld to date, along with a 320x480 display resolution.

Industry sources are saying that Amazon is looking to enter the online DVD rental market – although the retailer would rather partner with an already existing service than launch its own. According to Reuters, Amazon has already approached Netflix and Blockbuster, although no details were given as to the status of negotiations with either company.

Amazon is already in the online DVD rental business in the UK, having launched a service there late last year. All companies involved declined to comment on the information.