Judging by the leaked terms and conditions, Amazon plans to swagger into the Android world with an alternative app download store, fists a-whirling. Are they building it to co-exist with Android’s Market…or for an Android-powered SuperKindle? More »
This article was written on November 15, 2007 by CyberNet.
It’s hard to believe it, but the #1 most influential reviewer on Amazon who has submitted over 5,000 reviews to the site doesn’t even have an Internet connection in his home! His name is Peter Harris – he’s 56 from Leicester, UK, and over 50,000 people have seen his reviews. He started writing reviews when he lost his job in the IT field and says that his reviews are written from home, but he travels to his local library to use their Internet connection to actually publish them to Amazon’s site. It’s too bad that he couldn’t get paid for all of his hard work (5,000 reviews! Wow!), but he says it’s something he loves to do and it keeps him busy.
This got me thinking about the roll that product reviews often play in determining whether or not we buy something. If multiple people have given a bad review for a product I’m considering to buy, those reviews usually end up being my deciding factor. Amazon is probably one of the more well-known and widely used sites out there that offer reviews, but there are so many others like Newegg, Best Buy, Dell, even Wal-Mart has started a review section. Do you check sites for product reviews before buying something and if so, where is it that you go for the best product reviews? Let us know in the comments!
Source: The Inquirer
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Amazon continues to expand its reading and media software to whole new classes of devices, from new tablets to PC web browsers. It’s just not immediately clear just how far the retail giant is going to go.
We’ll take these news items one at a time, in increasing order of uncertainty:
On the one hand, again — Amazon sells a lot of digital products online, not just e-books: movies, games, music. And it’s not hard to make an Android tablet. In fact, at this point, Amazon has more hardware-production experience with the Kindle than some of the companies that are coming forward with pretty solid products. Add an App Store and it starts to look pretty appealing.
On the other hand, Amazon’s built up good brand identification with the Kindle, e-books, and E Ink. Will they turn around and say, “oh yeah, multimedia tablets are really awesome, but not, um, more awesome than a Kindle, I mean, um, why not buy both?” Just seems a little surprising. Level of certainty: Pretty cloudy. The source was right about an app store, but as they say, a stopped clock can be right twice a day. If Amazon releases some kind of other media hardware, whether using Android or anything else, it’s equally likely to be a TV box or a smartphone or something else that equally plays to their strength while being a little more differentiated from a dedicated reading machine than a tablet.
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It’s been forever and a day since Amazon first offered its users access to the opening few pages of a book on its web store, but now that feature is being codified under the Kindle umbrella as a new Kindle for the Web service. It’ll allow external sites to embed book samples right into their content stream, while users get a new Share button for spreading the good word about Chuck Palahniuk’s visionary writing across their social networks. Font sizes, line spacing, and even background color are adjustable too. Hit up the source link to try it out for yourself.
Kindle for the Web overhauls Amazon’s online book previews, adds sharing and embedding features originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Amazon is set to open the doors on an Android App Store, adding to the list of places where you may or may not be able to buy software for your device. According to Tech Crunch’s excellent MG Siegler, the store’s structure will be very similar to that of Apple’s App Store.
Developers will have to pay $99 to sign up, just like with Apple, and will get the same 70:30 revenue split. Amazon will decide what gets into the store, pull any apps it doesn’t like, and wrap everything up in its DRM. Further, you can’t sell your apps cheaper elsewhere. If it costs a dollar in the Android Market, it has to cost a dollar over at Amazon.
And it will be dollars. The Amazon app store will be U.S-only at launch, although as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out, “Amazon takes payments in more countries than Google Checkout does.” Apps can also be free.
One problem that won’t be solved is customer confusion. Unless Amazon makes its own tablet which has exclusive use of the store, then it will have to pick a range of Android devices to support. Unlike its music store, whose goods (MP3 files) can be played anywhere, an app store could only support a subset of devices.
Amazon will join Verizon and Google as outlets for Android apps, adding to the confusion. Remember the arguments about Android being “open” and iOS being “closed”? They’re starting to look a little silly now.
Yep, Amazon Launching Their Own App Store For Android Too [MG Siegler via ★]
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This sounds like madness to us, but take it for what you will: TechCrunch is reporting via some tipsters that Amazon is preparing to launch its own Android app store, of all things. Revenue split is rumored to be “the greater of 70 percent of the purchase price or 20 percent of the List Price as of the purchase date,” which is pretty strange wording — this “List Price” concept is apparently designed to prevent you from undercutting pricing with other services — and there’ll be a $99 fee to gain entry, which is pretty standard. Apps will be required to use Amazon DRM and could be featured on Amazon’s site, which is potentially a pretty big upside considering the kind of traffic that bad boy gets. As TechCrunch notes, a particularly interesting blurb in the alleged terms states that “[Amazon has] sole discretion to determine all features and operations of [programs] and to set the retail price and other terms on which [they] sell Apps,” implying that pricing is their call — not yours — and they’ve got some say in how your app’s going to work and what it’s going to do.
Clearly we’re missing something here, since they’re starting with zero market share, the Android Market is the obvious choice for consumers, and there are some really odd terms — and Bezos isn’t a dummy — so we’ll hold out and see where this goes. After all, with Google apparently actively reigning in devices by lording Market access over manufacturers’ heads, there might actually be some room for third parties to get some traction here over the long term.
Update: TechCrunch is now throwing in a rumored Amazon tablet at no extra charge. Could launch beside the app store if its source is correct. If.
Amazon launching its own Android app store? (update: tablet too?) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
One of the great original fears when Amazon built the Kindle was that they were after some iTunes / iPod-style walled garden ecosystem. And while, sure, Kindle is a walled garden ecosystem, those walls sure are extensive! Amazon just announced that it will be supporting the new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, in addition to the BlackBerry mobile app they’ve already got. There aren’t any specific details about this app, but Amazon is all about the consistent user experience, with features like WhisperSync keeping your copy of Neal Stephenson perfectly synced across a myriad of devices, so there’s nothing much to say we suppose. We are sure, however, that page turns will be blazing with that dual core processor.
Continue reading Amazon bringing Kindle app to BlackBerry PlayBook, loves making Kindle apps
Amazon bringing Kindle app to BlackBerry PlayBook, loves making Kindle apps originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Bush daughters Barbara and Jenna addressed a crowd last week during a panel at the sixth annual Clinton Global Health Initiative event in New York City. The twins discussed the importance of health care and women’s rights in a global context.
Former first lady Laura Bush was also on-hand for the event. CNBC sat down with Jenna and Barbara’s mother sat down with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo to discuss her continuing fight for global literacy. “The basic skill you need to succeed is to be able to read,” Bush said.
At the end of the interview, Bartiromo snuck in a final question, asking the former first lady if she owned a Kindle. She answered that she did indeed, and that she particularly liked the device’s ability to download books instantly in the middle of the night.
As for her husband, former president George W. Bush is an iPad fan. Actually, the guy just seems to be an Apple fan in general. You may remember, about five years back, when the then-president revealed the contents of his iPod for the world, which held a paltry 250 songs, including a lot of country and tracks by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison.
What’s on W’s iPad? He’s not telling. If I had to guess, I’d say the MLB app and a lot of games. Send us your suggestions in the comments.
Amazon’s German branch has been a tiny bit fast on the trigger. Windows Phone 7 isn’t due to launch at least until October 11, but here we are, dazing dreamily at the first listing of a device bearing the hot new OS: LG’s Optimus 7. Or is it the E900? You can tell Amazon’s offering is way early since the e-tailer has opted to list both names — it now seems like the E900 was the codename and the Optimus branding will be what you see in stores — just to make sure snoopers like us don’t miss out on it. So what’s there to see? Not much actually, official product images are predictably missing and all we’re told is that the handset will cost €499, include a GPS chip, and be capable of filling five million pixels with photonic data and then displaying the results on a 3.5-inch touchscreen. Such teases, these online retailers are.
LG Optimus 7 pops up on Amazon.de with 5 megapixel camera, 3.5-inch touchscreen, €499 price originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 07:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
This article was written on January 16, 2008 by CyberNet.
The New York Times managed to get some time with Steve Jobs yesterday after his keynote, and there were some interesting remarks in the interview from Jobs. Apparently his mother never taught him that if he didn’t have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all.
First up was the Amazon Kindle (review). This is portable reading device designed by Amazon that is able to download digital books without ever needing to be connected to a computer. Amazon can’t even keep the device in stock, but Jobs said that:
It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.
Then he went on to talk about the Google Android (review) mobile operating system which is expected to be released later this year. Interestingly enough Apple has worked with Google to provide specialized services on the iPhone, such as mapping and YouTube videos, but that didn’t hold Jobs back from expressing his true feelings:
Having created a phone its a lot harder than it looks. We’ll see how good their software is and we’ll see how consumers like it and how quickly it is adopted. I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It’s just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners.
The thing is that Google isn’t actually creating phones, instead they are developing the software to run on the phones. It’s likely that there will be dozens of different devices running Android when it is released, and that will help speed up the adoption rate. Particularly if they are more affordable than the iPhone.
I can’t wait to see what the future holds for both Kindle and Android, and to see just how accurate Jobs’ predictions are.
New York Times [via Gizmodo]
Thanks to “Google” for the tip!
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