Along with the holidays come the familiar headaches of e-commerce. Buying things. Receiving things. Forgetting about things ordered, searching frantically for confirmation numbers, and breathing sighs of relief when their statuses are confirmed. Stop that! There’s a better way. More »
Amazon continues its week of pre-holiday savings by giving customers a jump one some bandwidth-clogging Cyber Monday deals. To be perfectly honest, some of the deals look awfully familiar (we’ve been seeing some since the site kicked off its promotion, last Monday), but some do seem too good to pass up.
Check out some of the best deals, after the jump.
If you’re headed to the mall this weekend, Amazon’s new iPhone app might be an ideal companion for comparison-shopping and price checking.
As a bonus — for Amazon — the company has figured out a way to advertise its own products is everyone else’s stores, using a clever application that leverages the key features of smartphones — in particular, Apple’s latest iPhones.
Price Check for iPhone initially doesn’t seem very different from Amazon’s well-established, multiplatform “shopping cart” frontend, which has always allowed users to check prices and buy products on the go. The difference is the variety and speed of inputs you can use to find items in the store, which make the app particularly well-suited for using it while you’re standing in the aisle of a store, gazing at something you’re thinking of buying.
Here are the main ways you can use the Amazon app:
There’s also a handy list of “Recent Price Checks,” so you can keep track of products you’ve scanned, and a shopping cart, so you can buy products from Amazon directly. You can’t access your own wish list, which skews the app towards impulse buys or holiday shopping for other people.
When the app was first announced, I was confused; why was Amazon launching yet another shopping application for iOS? There’s the old standby Amazon.com, the Windowshop App for iPad and now PriceCheck? Did customers really need a whole page (or in iOS 4, a folder) devoted just to apps for Amazon?
Now I think I understand the strategy much better. Each Amazon application capitalizes on the unique hardware and anthropology of the device. Windowshop is a browsing catalog, suited to the full-sized screen and laid-back posture of the iPad. Even the name suggests voyeurism and fantasy. Price Check is mobile, pulling in camera, voice and autofocus to make something you can whip out of your pocket to make a snap decision while the Black Friday hordes crowd in around you.
Different devices, different scenarios, different shopping experiences — but all of them funneling you to just one store, up in the cloud. Smart. Now I wonder when and if other platforms (Android, Blackberry, etc.) will get their chance to play with similar new toys.
See Also:
Black Friday, Schmack Schmriday: here are the best iPhone apps for shopping all year round. More »
It’s not the Kindle lending feature that Amazon has in the works, but the company has just rolled out another fairly big Kindle feature for those feeling a bit generous this holiday season. That comes in the form of a new “give as a gift” option now present on Amazon.com, which will let you send an e-book to anyone with an email address, who can then read it on the Kindle-friendly device of their choice (or an actual Kindle, of course). As Amazon is all too happy to point out, it’s the first major bookseller to offer such a service, but we’ve got to guess it won’t be the last.
Amazon introduces Kindle book gifting just in time for the holidays originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Yeah, retailers are always undercutting carrier pricing, sometimes pretty dramatically, but Amazon’s taking things to the limit this weekend. You can score any of Verizon’s major Droid phones for a penny, and Verizon is also fronting the $35 Verizon line activation fee. Of course, you’ll have to sign up for a two year contract, and you’d better not think about canceling out of it: Amazon has a $250 per device cancellation fee on top of Verizon’s own hefty charge. Ah, the price of free.
Verizon’s Droid lineup available at Amazon for a penny per handset with no activation fee originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’ve already shared some opinions on why Samsung’s Galaxy Tab pricing makes sense stateside — granted, that was before AT&T announced it would be charging $50 more than every other US carrier. After initially showing up for pre-order in the UK on Carphone Warehouse for £530 ($850) and for a Queen’s ransom of £799 ($1280) on Amazon though, we’re glad to find The Inquirer reporting that Tab prices on both Amazon and Dixons have dropped to £469 ($738) for a 16GB model with free delivery. Carphone Warehouse has also cut prices down to £489.99 ($784) for the 32GB version. Sure, that may still sound steep to us Yankees, but keep in mind it’s now a good bit less than the basic 16GB 3G iPad which currently sells for £529 ($850). Whether these prices will slide even closer to Stateside levels is still obviously anyone’s guess, but at this point we’re sure those of you in the UK won’t have an issue paying less for your tab.
Samsung cuts Galaxy Tab prices in the UK, still more than AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Excuse us, ViewSonic, but we think there’s been some sort of mistake — your ViewPad 7 tablet is on sale at Amazon for $599, over a hundred dollars more than you said it would cost just two weeks back. Yes, we certainly understand you have to import the OlivePad rebadge from a substantial distance and negotiate with Google for its Android Market innards, but we’re not exactly ecstatic about the 600MHz ARM CPU — even with front- and rear-facing cameras on board. Given that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab doesn’t have phone functionality stateside, we admit there’s a market for a seven-inch Froyo tablet that can do voice calls, but did you really have to take Sammy’s controversial price point as well?
[Thanks, onelove]
ViewSonic ViewPad 7 tablet up for pre-order, now costs a wallet-crunching $599 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This article was written on November 21, 2007 by CyberNet.
Just like last year, Amazon is running their “Amazon Customers Vote” event in which customers browse through six rounds of different products priced at insanely low prices, and then vote for the product they’d want to buy. Whichever product wins each round with the most customer votes will be sold randomly to people who voted for the item. Each item that is chosen will have a specific buying date in which the lucky random “winners” can purchase the product at the given price.
Here’s what they’ve got:
Some of those prices are pretty amazing, aren’t they? Like the Samsung 46″ LCD HDTV for $719 when it is priced originally at $1,749! That’s one heck of a deal. And the Wii for $79 bucks? You can’t beat that!
There area few things you should keep in mind though, and that is that you’re only eligible to win a product that you voted for. That means if a product wins that you didn’t vote for, you won’t be able to be chosen to purchase it. You also can’t change your vote, once you’ve voted, that’s what you have to stick with. The last important thing to keep in mind is that you have to return to the site on the buying day for each round (which I list above) to see if you won. If you did, you’ll have to checkout soon because they won’t hold the item for you.
As a side note, could this Amazon Customers Vote event be giving us an idea of who’s ahead in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD battle? A Blu-ray player and a HD DVD player are both available for $149, yet 42% of the votes (currently) are for the HD DVD player while Blu-ray only has 23% of the votes. Hmmmmm…
What are you waiting for? Go vote!
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Related Posts:
Through Monday Nov. 15th, Amazon’s offering all AT&T handsets for a penny (plus that pesky new two-year contract). This is your first chance—unless you’re a Microsoft employee—to pick up a Windows Phone 7 device for practically nothing. More »
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