Amazon

Borders Gets Snarky

Apparently, this closing Borders is really, really, bitter about the whole bankruptcy thing. We’ve spent plenty of time rehashing why everything went so wrong for Borders, but this store did nail one thing we all secretly miss when retailers disappear.  


Amazon Appstore: Is Choice Good for Android Users?

Competition is always a good thing, right? I mean, the iPhone was the first true innovation in the smartphone market for years. And along came Android, which accelerated healthy competition and made all smartphones better, and therefore better for users. So why am I not very happy with the Amazon Appstore, at least at the moment? The promise of the Amazon Appstore sounds great, at least on paper. Adding another option for a store for consumers to buy Android apps sounds like a win-win situation, but in practice, I don’t think that it is all that it is thought to…


Amazon Adds Unlimited Free Streaming for Prime Members

I joined Amazon Prime last year by way of a free one-month trial and somewhat reluctantly paid the $79 annual fee, but by the end of the year the service had easily paid for itself in terms of greatly reduced shipping costs, no minimum to qualify for free shipping, priority treatment and so on. At the same time, my wife bought me a Roku XDS for Christmas and my family has greatly enjoyed the simplified access to Hulu+, Netflix and rental movies through Amazon On-Demand. We recently decided to (once again) cancel Netflix due to the selection and our usage…


Amazon Video on Demand Comes to the Rescue!

I’ll be honest — I am not always on top of ordering gifts ahead of time. Even when I have a plan, or am told exactly what to purchase, I somehow always push it to the last minute. Luckily for me, I was ordering Sarah “Big Love: Season 4” for Valentine’s Day, and Amazon comes through like a champ by offering free “video on demand” rentals with purchase! See, without it I would have been without part of Sarah’s Valentine’s day present (bad Carly!) But thanks to the free rentals, we were able to start watching the show even though…


Amazon Releases ‘Deals’ App to Track Gold Box and Lightning Deals

Do you check Amazon more or less daily for their great Gold Box or Lightning deals? Me too! But way too may times I have been away from my laptop when I knew a deal was going on and missed out. So I was thrilled when I saw today that Amazon had created a small app to help track their daily deals! Here is their description: Stay up-to-date with Amazon Gold Box Deals wherever you go and never miss another deal. Amazon Deals for iPhone lets you check availability of current offers, schedule reminders, and purchase Lightning Deals and Gold…


The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Amazon Kindle Support

The Kindle 2 was my Christmas present in 2009 from my family.  I have spent most of the last year with nary an issue with my Kindle and I love it to death.  It’s how I prefer to read now.  I’ve read more books in the last year than in any year past.  However, on my trip down to Knoxville, TN for the holidays this year, I was reading along and then all of a sudden my Kindle developed a spot that would not go away; time to call support.  So I will cover the good and the bad of…


Shop Amazon, Wikipedia Style

Amazon isn’t shy about finding new ways to sell books, and now they’ve rolled out a fairly creative one. Using the Creative Commons license, Amazon is recreating Wikipedia articles about authors and books, hosting them on Amazon.com, and inserting links to buy books referenced in the articles. From CNet: “Shopping-enabled Wikipedia pages are a new introduction on Amazon.com,” Amazon spokeswoman Anya Waring told CNET when asked via e-mail. “As of November, we have rolled [the feature] out in the books category; however, [it] will be expanding to new categories in 2011.” It’s not an official partnership, Waring explained. Amazon’s use…


NPR’s Libraries and eBooks Report Highlights eBook Ignorance

The good folks at NPR’s Marketplace did a story on the state of ebooks and libraries the other night. At first I was excited, since it’s great to hear any story about ebooks, especially library programs that tend to fly under the radar. But NPR’s reporting was so horribly, egregiously, painfully inaccurate that I really wonder if they did any research at all. Let’s start with the biggest head-scratcher: Kai Ryssdal: For all that die-hard bibliophiles say they will never ever give up their actual printed books, they may be fighting a losing battle. E-book sales are up 118 percent…


Amazon’s New Pirated Book Policy

(image courtesy Houston News) Just  last year. there was a pretty serious controversy over how Amazon handled pirated books in the Kindle store. Since anyone can upload a book to Amazon, a version of 1984 was uploaded and sold without the copyright holder’s permission. Amazon took an unfortunate stance of removing all copies without warning, only to find a huge internet uproar emerge from the “big brother” behavior. Luckily, Amazon has learned from those mistakes. Their Australian store mistakenly sold a book under Jamie Oliver’s name that was not actually written by or affiliated with the chef. Rather than yank…


State of the eBook: The Return!

Hello and welcome back to State of the eBook! The series had a bit of a summer vacation, but the news is slowly picking back up! So pull yourself away from your new Kindle/nook app/iBooks and check out what’s been going on in the ebook world! Fuzzy Math A few bits of creative and flexible number reporting first. The Bookseller claims iBooks is “more popular than Facebook and Twitter”. Yes, they phrased it exactly like that. As one commenter on their post pointed out, iBooks is the default PDF reader on the iPad and iPhone, so that explains a big…


Amazon Is Having a Great Week

While B&N had some disappointing financial results, Amazon is riding high on some good news this week. They’ve had glowing early reviews for the Kindle 3, and some (unofficial) numbers indicate they’re trouncing Apple in the ebook wars. First, the Kindle 3 reviews. CNET, Kindle Review, and several other sites received review units, and everyone uniformly loved it! It sounds like the new screen and smaller size really help the Kindle to shine. Len Edgerly did a great video review as well: So the glowing reviews of the Kindle 3 are certainly one way to kill the “OMG iPad IS…


Thanks Amazon for Linking Me Up With Old Friends … um … I Think …

Before I start this story, here is a Public Service Announcement – if you use Amazon.com’s Wish List feature, be aware that unless you explicitly link each list to an address, it will direct shipments to whatever your default address was … WHEN THE LIST WAS CREATED! Please do yourself a favor and make sure your list isn’t sending stuff to that place you lived in 2002 when you created your first list for fun. OK, now back to our story … When I jumped at the possibility at writing for Gear Diary last year, one reason was that I…


Need Something Small for Amazon Super Saver Shipping? Try This!

Have you ever been shopping at Amazon.com, have exactly what you need, but then realize that it you could only find something for $4 you would get free shipping? I know I have … and typically end up over-spending as a result! But now with FillerItem.com all you need to do is figure out how much you need to add to make free shipping, enter that amount into the search box, and you will get a rather massive list of possible items. For example, I was looking at the excellent Picross 3D, which is $19.96, meaning I needed $5.04 in…


Publishers, Pricing, and Pretensions

Friday afternoon The Consumerist reported on a comment made by Michael Cader on a publishing industry site. Essentially, he said that if you can afford an ebook reader, you can afford higher ebook prices. Needless to say, many of us at Gear Diary vehemently disagreed. Each of us had our own take on the publishing industry, high prices, and our general frustration with publisher’s attitudes towards ebooks.


Random House Stands Alone With Amazon?

Random House has weighed in on the eBook price wars, and it looks like Macmillan, Hachette and Harper Collins won’t be sending them a fruit basket next Christmas. At the American Bookseller’s Association Winter Institute meeting, Random House made it clear they aren’t interested in pursuing the same “agency model” as their three colleagues. From the Mobileread forums: The only bright spot for Amazon, and Kindle owners, came from Madeline McIntosh, the President of Sales, Operations, and Digital for Random House. She pointed out that publishers “have no real experience at setting retail prices.” She also revelaed that one of…


Review: HP Mediasmart LX195

The single biggest problem my wife and other family members have is making sure that their data is backed up.  The HP Mediasmart LX195 will help you make sure that data is safe and a while lot more. This server is based on Microsoft’s Windows Home Server.  It’s not my normal operating system of choice, but I think that Microsoft and HP have done a good thing here.  They have done something that is difficult with Linux.  They have made it extremely easy to setup a media server and a backup server all in the same tidy package.  Try as…


Dan Brown’s new book: The Lost Symbol

Doubleday is now promoting Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol. If you didn’t already realize it, Dan Brown is the author of the insanely popular bestseller The Da Vinci Code. Mention this book in polite company, and 10 people will give you 25 opinions. Or just ask the Gear Diary contributors and watch your inbox get flooded with responses. So why is this big news for Gear Diary?


Amazon App for BlackBerry Review

Amazon has launched a free BlackBerry application, allowing customers to  find, discover, and purchase products directly from their smartphone.   The application is optimized for BlackBerry devices with track-ball interfaces.  This means, at least for now, BlackBerry Storm users are left out in the cold (sorry, those of you still clinging on to your track-wheel 8700 or earlier models won’t be able to use the application either).


Put Your eBook Library on Your Kindle

If you’re like me, you’ve got GOBS of eBooks, likely in more than one format, all over the place.  I’ve got tons of books in MS Reader format (now THERE’S a blast from the past that most of us would like to forget), eReader format, MobiPocket format, etc.  Some of the books that I have are ones that I’d really like the read again and again; but now that I’ve got a Kindle, I’m kindle screwed when it comes to my library of well over 300 titles.