Apple has prophesied an “chilling effect” on digital media negotiations should it be castigated over iBooks pricing allegations, though the DoJ has dismissed the claims as egotistical. Speaking during closing statements at the New York trial in which Apple is accused of conspiring with publishers to force up the prices of ebooks, Apple lead attorney
Microsoft considered challenging Amazon’s dominance in online retail with a webstore, codenamed Project Brazil, of its own, though recently axed its plans before launch. “Project Brazil was an incubation to enable a more direct commerce model between customers and brands and merchants” a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to the WSJ, though declined to detail why, exactly,
Xbox 360 owners subscribing to Amazon’s LOVEFiLM on-demand movie service can now get the same enhanced Instant streaming system that their PS3 peers have been enjoying since May, as the Microsoft console gets the new entertainment update. The refresh brings support for the LOVEFiLM Watchlist – effectively a queue of titles the user wants to
James Gandolfini, a terrific actor
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You might be a budding writer with a script for what you think could be the next big thing in movies. But making the words leap out of the page and onto a storyboard is difficult if you don’t have the artistic skills to carry out your concept. The Storyteller tool that Amazon has just debuted is designed to help you out with this.
Bring your ideas and vision to life by clicking through the Storyteller’s various menus and adding pre-drawn and custom backgrounds, characters, props, and settings. This will help you sell your story and hopefully find a director or producer who’ll be willing to work on your film once they see what your concept is all about.
Amazon Studios director, Roy Price, explains why they came up with the tool: “We’ve found that many writers want to see their story up on its feet in visual form but find it harder than it should be to create a storyboard. Storyteller provides a digital backlot, acting troupe, prop department and assistant editor – everything you need to bring your story to life.”
Sounds neat, doesn’t it? You can try out Amazon Storyteller here.
[via Dvice]
Look at the people with smiling faces in the above illustration. It’s not too difficult to figure out what’s going on: it’s their birthday, and they’re all happy because they’re about to get presents. What if they knew that you had totally spaced on the fact that they were celebrating the anniversary of their birth? Fortunately, there are plenty of services that will remind you of friends’ and family members’ DOBs, and Amazon is now joining their ranks with a Facebook-integrated program called Birthday Gift. The idea is simple: you can order an Amazon gift card for a Facebook friend ahead of time, and the company will make sure it gets delivered on their momentous day. What’s more, you can also send invites to mutual friends to see if they want to pitch in a few bucks. This way, nobody feels terribly cheap for plunking down a couple dollars, and you won’t settle for the standard Wall post birthday wish. Check out the video below to see how it all works.
Via: AllThingsD
Source: Amazon
Amazon recently picked Alpha House as one of its new original series coming to the company’s Instant Video streaming service. However, unlike Netflix, Amazon won’t be releasing the entire season all at once. It’s not certain what release model Amazon will use, but the company has said that it will indeed be a “different model.”
When Steve Jobs presented the initial design for his donut-like headquarters to the Cupertino City Council, in 2011, he described the building as a reaction against suburban office parks. “We’ve come up with a design that puts 12,000 people in one building; which sounds a bit odd,” he said. “But we’ve seen these office parks with a lot of buildings, and they get pretty boring pretty fast. We’d like to do something better.” The question, though, is better for whom?
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