Amazon

Is Amazon Spying on Me?

I know I buy a great deal from Amazon, but I am starting to think they have hidden cameras in my house! You see, back in January, I ordered a box of KIND bars for our trip to Costa Rica. We figured with all the flights, layovers, and bus transfers in our travel schedule, we would need snacks. As it turned out, we didn’t eat all of them, and I unearthed a bag of leftover bars while cleaning out my suitcase over the weekend. I stuck them in the pantry and promptly forgot about them. Until Monday, when I returned…

eBooks, Editorials

What’s Next for eBooks after the DoJ Settlement?

Today was a big, big day for eBook fans! The Department of Justice agreed with everyone who has been screaming for three years that the “agency model” was unfair, anti-competitive and anti-consumer. They settled with several publishers, though Apple and Macmillan are still fighting the DoJ in court. So, what did the settlement today do? And how will it impact the future of ebooks? Read on for my thoughts! The Settlement: I am going to defer to Wired here, as they quickly had an excellent breakdown of what the settlement states: Terminate its current contracts with Apple within seven days…

eBooks

Department of Justice Sues Apple and Several Publishers over eBook Prices

Huge ebook news this morning! The US Department of Justice has officially filed anti-trust lawsuits against Apple and Hachette Books, as well as some sort of legal action against MacMillan, Harper Collins, and Penguin. All of these charges are related to the Agency Model, where prices are set by the publisher and discounts at the retail level are disallowed. I am not surprised that it has come to this. All the publishers were very insistent they did not do anything wrong, and that it was purely coincidence that all of them developed the same exact pricing plan at the same…

Editorials, News

Nokia Lumia 900 Has Botched Retail Launch, Yet Still Hits #1 on Amazon!

This past Sunday, my brother was visiting; he and my wife and I went for a long bike ride, taking a path around the local mall along the way … and noting that everything was closed. Because it was Easter. It just also happened to be the launch day of the Nokia Lumia 900, the de facto flagship phone of the entire Windows Phone line-up. There have been articles questioning the wisdom of an Easter launch, but none more pointed than the one from the New York Times: AT&T said last month that when Nokia’s new Lumia 900 phone went…

News

Amazon Instant Video Lands on the Playstation 3!

One of the best things about the Kindle Fire and Roku for me is the Amazon Instant Video service tied in with my Amazon Prime membership. I love all of the available movies and shows, and made frequent use of them. Now Amazon is extending the reach of the service – to the Playstation 3! Here are some details: Good news — Prime Instant Video is now available on PlayStation 3. Since launching a year ago, we’ve more than tripled our library, including titles such as Sons of Anarchy, Downton Abbey, Lost, Glee, 24, Deadliest Catch, SpongeBob SquarePants, Office Space,…

News

FREE Readability Android App Launches on Amazon AppStore

Readability was a small app that hoped to make browsing the web better by making it a more simple and streamlined reading experience, but ended up gaining notoriety for publicly taking Apple to task for the in-app purchase revenue sharing system. Now the app has finally arrived on Android, and is launching exclusively on the Amazon AppStore for Android, and for FREE! The app has gotten solid early reviews, and is definitely worth checking out. Here is the overview: Read on Your Terms Readability turns any Web page into a clean view for reading now or later on your computer…

News

The Southern Foodie is a Must-Read Kindle Book

My parents were born and raised in New York. I was born in Summit, New Jersey. I grew up in a little place called Berkeley Heights, NJ. In other words, I am a North Easterner through and through. (Some would use the word “Yankee” to describe me.) Yes, I’m a northerner through and through and am happy to be back living in the Garden State. There was, however, a time when this Yankee lived in the South. Yes, I went to college in North Carolina and I even joined a southern fraternity that was founded on “December 21, 1865, at…

Editorials

I Prefer Amazon’s AppStore to the Android Market and Apparently I’m Not Alone

Do you want to know my #1 pet peeve with the Android Market? How unnecessarily difficult they make switching devices. I upgraded to a new Droid 4 last week and I STILL don’t have all of my apps set up yet. Contrast this with Amazon, where all of my apps were all ready to reinstall as soon as I logged into my account. The basic problem is that the Android Market doesn’t track apps for your account unless you spend money on them … which is perhaps the most idiotic thing I have ever heard about. This means trying to…

News, Reviews

Sling Media Brings SlingPlayer to Kindle Fire!

Sling Media, makers of the SlingBox, today announces the availability of the SlingPlayer app for the Kindle Fire. What is the SlingBox? It is a device that works with all of your various set-top boxes to: allow folks to watch their TV from wherever they are with their PC, Mac, tablet or smartphone. And now, with SlingPlayer for Kindle Fire, they can bring their living room TV experience to their Kindle Fire tablets. The SlingPlayer software is already available for Apple iPhone and iPad devices, Android Phones, Android Tablets as well as for the Blackberry, Windows Phone and other devices….

News

M-Edge Suing Amazon; You Had Better Stock Up on Kindle Cases Now!

M-Edge makes some awesome cases for the Kindle and other ebook readers. They made the case I had my original Kindle in for many years, and I loved it. We’ve also covered many of their iPad cases here at Gear Diary and they consistently receive high marks for build quality and useful, eye-catching designs. Unfortunately, M-Edge is alleging in a lawsuit that Amazon doesn’t feel the same way about their Kindle cases. According to the Wall Street Journal, M-Edge is claiming some pretty unpleasant business dealings have gone down with Amazon: M-Edge said in the lawsuit that in November 2009,…

Editorials

Amazon Reminds Google … ‘Um, We OWN This Whole Mega-Deal Thing’ …

I should have known better than to rush into buying music on Google. As I say repeatedly, they have the absolute worst music service bar none. Yet that old siren song of ‘great music, low prices’ lulled me into not checking Amazon. BIG MISTAKE. On Google I got the music, can play it on my PC or Android phone, and download it one … track … at … a … time. And THEN manually import it into iTunes. And THEN fix the FUBAR MP3 info and tags, because Google can’t even manage that 2002 level of technology. Had I gone…

eBooks, Reviews

The Gear Diary Kindle Fire Tablet Review

November 15th saw the release of what will quickly become the #2 selling tablet of all time: the Amazon Kindle Fire. Since then we have seen plenty of ‘race to be first’ reviews, but my goal was to spend some time integrating the Fire into my life before completing my review. This week we also saw the usability study that looked at the issues around the 7″ screen specifically with the Fire but related to mid-sized tablets in general. Dan and I each got one that arrived on the 15th: Dan’s has already gone back to Amazon, while I have…

Gear Bits

One More Tablet Gone; Can Microsoft Avoid the Same Fate?

image courtesy of BerryReporter Clinton recently wrote an opinion piece entitled, “As RIM Writes Off The Playbook, The Pressure is on Microsoft to Make a Complete Windows 8 Tablet“, in which he says: This morning the Wall Street Journal reported that RIM is taking a $485 million charge for their lackluster tablet, the Playbook. The charge comes by way of a markdown in the value of the massive inventor that RIM still has of the devices. It is a brutal and costly reminder that if you kinda-sorta-maybe-woulda-shoulda your tablet strategy, the price can be steep. Very steep. and The challenge facing Microsoft is that they are…

Gear Bits

Amazon: It May Be Easy, but It’s a Risk

Now that Amazon is shipping the Kindle Fire, I got to thinking: what if you gift the Fire or any other Kindle? Well, if you do, make sure you do what Laptopmag.com says in their post and keep YOUR Kindle account safe. After I read this, I did some more thinking: What if someone stole your shiny new Kindle off of your porch? If this happens, then that thief has access to ALL of your books and can purchase books on your account. This is bad. This is very bad. Gear Diary’s own Michael Anderson and Dan Cohen are both trying out the Kindle Fire,…

Gear Bits

Amazon’s Android Appstore — Same Legendary Amazon Service

I may have moved on to an iPhone, but I still have a hacked NOOKcolor running Android! Plus I have two years’ worth of Android apps between Google’s Marketplace and, more recently, Amazon’s Appstore. While it wasn’t an everyday ritual, I did try to grab Amazon’s free apps of the day if they looked halfway decent, figuring I might want to use them in the future. Now, I’m used to Amazon’s Kindle service, where they send me a nice email if a book is updated by the publisher with instructions on how to update it. But I’ve paid for those…

eBooks, Editorials

Amazon’s Proposed eBook Subscription Service — a Round Peg in a Square Hole?

The Wall Street Journal weighed in over the weekend with a very interesting and surprising rumor. Supposedly, Amazon has been shopping an “ebook subscription service” around to publishers, in an effort to bundle ebooks with Prime membership. Sort of like Netflix for eBooks. The closest analog to this is the old “Book of the Month Club” type deals, but this is definitely a step up. It benefits consumers, but does it actually benefit the business of selling books? First, let’s look at the specifics, as far as they’re known right now according to the Journal: Amazon.com Inc. is talking with book…

Reviews

Kindle Cloud Reader iPad Review: Simple to Use, Awesome to Behold!

Carly highlighted the new Amazon Cloud Reader a couple of days ago, which provided a web-based solution for reading – and purchasing – Kindle books from Amazon.com on pretty much any device regardless of native app support (except for the BlackBerry Playbook, which is just in a woeful state at this point). While many companies, Amazon included, have discussed moving more apps to platform-independent HTML5, the timing of this release seems to good to be true, as Carly indicated with her ‘Don’t Tread on Kindle’ tagline. We have just seen a rash of changes, starting with Kobo, then Amazon, and…

eBooks, Editorials

When Is an eReader an Impulse Buy?

Amazon started selling the Kindle 3G With Special Offers (“Kindeal 3G) in May, for $164 – a drop of 25 from the full non-ad-supported version. Two weeks ago, they dropped that price further, to $139. This week, they have started selling the refurbished Kindle WiFi for $100 and the refurb Kindle 3G for $130. These are not ad-supported versions of the device, but the full versions that sell for $139 and $189 respectively, in their non-refurb models. This sure looks like the typical inventory-clearing moves of a manufacturer about to introduce a new model. The current generation was introduced right around one year ago, and speculation…

Editorials

Capitalism Versus the Independent Bookstore

Seattle Mystery Bookshop created quite the tempest in a teapot this past week. They’re a small independent bookstore in, you guessed it, Seattle. Seattle is also the home of Amazon.com, and it’s clear from SMB’s attitude that they are not happy to have Bezos and Company in their backyard. In fact, Seattle Mystery Bookshop so thoroughly hates Amazon.com that they refuse to carry books or handle author signings by Amazon-published authors. Why? Because Amazon is a Big Evil Corporation. To best illustrate this debate, you need to start with the email exchange between the bookshop and the unnamed author. The…

Gear Bits

Amazon Free App Reminder Does What It Says – Amazon Android App Store

Ever since it was launched, we have extolled the virtues of the Amazon Android App Store, as well as pointed out a few issues with it. Like it or not, Amazon’s Android App Store has been well-received by Android users, especially since they have a different paid application available for free every day. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get busy. So I don’t check the Amazon App Store every day. Which means I could miss out on such gems as Nuance’s FlexT9 keyboard for free. Well, an enterprising developer came up with a solution for those of…

News

Amazon Prime Videos (finally) Adds New Content

Remember back to the heady days in late February when Amazon launched the ‘Prime Video’ service and then a few days later made available ‘more than 5000’ movies and TV shows FREE for Prime members? Well, now about 10 weeks later Amazon has added new content! They just added 22 new videos … a whopping 0.5% addition to the library! Seriously, this is decent set of movies – Network, The Majestic, Superman (the REAL one), The Right Stuff, and more. Definitely worth checking out … I mean, they are free if you are already a Prime member! If you want…

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