Archive for the ‘amazon’ Category

The TwitterPeek is… a Peek for Twitter?

Peek’s never been one to shy away from the wacky and opportunistic marketing schemes but launching a whole product just for Twitter? That’s courage, drive, and possibly a mental health issue. Yet here’s the TwitterPeek — what looks to be the same old Peek you know, love, and probably haven’t purchased, stripped of its email and SMS functionality and re-oriented towards telling the entire world too much about your body and what you’re doing to it every waking moment of the day. Now, to be fair, we’re getting a distinctly strange feeling of phoniness about this whole thing, but there’s already an Amazon listing and a picture of the box has already surfaced on — where else? — Twitter, so this could really be happening. Just think about that for a second. And then tweet about it, of course.

[Via LiveDigitally]

Read – Amazon TwitterPeek listing
Read – Peter Ha’s TwitPic of the box

Continue reading The TwitterPeek is… a Peek for Twitter?

Filed under: Handhelds

The TwitterPeek is… a Peek for Twitter? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Black Nintendo Wii bundle listed on Amazon UK for £164.99

That black Nintendo Wii bundle Nintendo is gifting to Europe on November 6th has found itself home amongst the Amazon UK listings. Recommended price is £179.99 but the online retailer is knocking off eight percent to make it an event £164.99 — that’s about $269 to the US gamers who still don’t have a shot at getting this. What makes it interesting is that the identical bundle in white doesn’t have that £15 discount, but Amazon is sweetening the pot with the choice of two free titles, including FIFA10. Not as enticing? The £142.99 white, non-bundled Wii, but it is a lot cheaper. Our money’s still on the black bundle — or it would be, at least, if Nintendo would give the US writers on staff, and the country at large, a stab at the new console color.

[Thanks, Ian]

Read – Black Wii bundle with Wii Sports Resort
Read – White Wii bundle with Wii Sports Resort and two free games

Filed under: Gaming

Black Nintendo Wii bundle listed on Amazon UK for £164.99 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Switched On: Making book with ePUB

The ePUB standard, developed by Adobe, allows consumers to purchase books at a variety of digital stores and use them on a wide range of compatible devices without the manufacturer having to explicitly support them. That may sound a bit like the PlaysForSure initiative that Microsoft tried mounting to challenge the iPod but ultimately shifted away from (at least for MP3 players) in favor of the Zune, but ePUB has a better shot than PlaysForSure did.

First, unlike PlaysForSure, which was playing catch-up to the already dominant iPod, ePUB is appearing relatively early in the market; it need not break anyone’s “stranglehold.” Second, after attracting the support of Sony, the format achieved a significant coup with the support of Barnes & Noble, which noted last week that it was “excited” to be supporting the format in its forthcoming Nook e-reader.

Continue reading Switched On: Making book with ePUB

Filed under: Software

Switched On: Making book with ePUB originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon Dumps Sprint for Kindle 2, Embraces AT&T

In a stealthy yet significant move, Amazon has dropped Sprint as its wireless partner for the latest versions of the Kindle 2 e-book reader. From now on, new Kindle 2s, in the U.S. and worldwide, will be powered exclusively by AT&T’s 3G network.

“Due to strong customer demand for the new Kindle with U.S. and international wireless, we are consolidating our family of 6-inch Kindles,” says Drew Herdener, spokesperson for Amazon.

The move was announced in a quiet update to Amazon’s product page for the Kindle rather than through a press announcement.

The move is a big blow to Sprint, which was the first U.S. telecom carrier to experiment with supporting mobile devices beyond cellphones and netbooks. It also means AT&T has all but cornered the wireless-connectivity market for e-readers. In addition to the Kindle 2, AT&T’s network forms the backbone of the new Sony touchscreen reader and Barnes & Noble’s recently introduced Nook e-reader. All that’s left for Sprint? Providing service for Amazon’s XL-sized Kindle DX, and supporting all the existing Sprint-connected Kindles.

When Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007, the company highlighted wireless downloads of books as the device’s unique feature. The move helped the Kindle gain an edge over Sony, which had introduced its e-reader earlier but without wireless connectivity.

Earlier this year, Amazon offered a second-generation Kindle called Kindle 2 and a big-screen reader called the Kindle DX. Kindle 2 has a basic browser and lets users check text-heavy sites such as Wikipedia. But the devices were restricted to the United States.

Finally, this month, Amazon debuted an international version of the Kindle 2. It was the first Kindle to use AT&T’s network instead of Sprint’s. Kindle DX is still not available outside the states.

“Now that they are selling a Kindle overseas, it makes sense for them to have just one product that they can sell in all markets,” says Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. “And, since, in most of the world GSM is what is used, having a single product helps drive down costs for Amazon.” Sprint’s network is based on the CDMA standard.

That doesn’t mean Kindle buyers who bought their device before October will be switching to AT&T.

“Existing Kindle users, owners of the first- and second-generation Kindles and Kindle DX, will not notice any change to their experience. They will continue to utilize the Sprint network in the U.S.,” says Herdener.

And at least until Amazon introduces an international version of Kindle DX, Sprint will continue to be in business with Amazon.

“Sprint still powers the Kindle DX,” a Sprint spokesperson told Wired.com. “So it is not accurate to say that our relationship with Amazon is over.”

Meanwhile, for Kindle users, the switch from Sprint to AT&T raises questions about reliability of service. Weighed down by heavy data use from the iPhone, AT&T’s U.S. network has become congested, leading to slow connectivity and dropped calls.

And with about 3 million e-readers expected to be sold next year, could AT&T’s network face additional strain? Not really, says Golvin. “The type of connection that the Kindle needs is different from that of a phone, since there is no voice component, only a data component,” he says. “The actual capacity consumed by all Kindles now and those coming on to the network is very, very small compared to the rest of the network.”

Kindle users are also less likely to notice small delays or disturbances in the network, says Forrester’s Golvin. Unlike a web page, downloading a book does not require near–real-time display of different components.

“On an e-book reader, the congestion is invisible,” says Golvin. “The downloaded book arrives when it arrives, and a few seconds’ wait does not change much.”

See Also:

• Hands-on with International Kindle
• Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen ‘Nook’ E-Reader
• Amazon Kills U.S. Kindle, Cuts International Price
• International Kindle Now Shipping: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  
• Kindle Goes International — With a Little Help From AT&T
• Review: Amazon.com Kindle 2
  
• Review: Amazon.com Kindle DX

Top photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
Homepage photo: Gubatron/Flickr

American Booksellers Association concerned that rapidly falling book prices will be bad for consumers. Yes, you read that right. Low prices = bad.

Books, books, books! The American Booksellers Association, a trade group that represents small bookstores (not Barnes and Noble and the other big guys), has asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether or not Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target have “[devalued] the very concept of the book” with their ongoing price war. Well, they’re actually asking for an investigation into their selling practices. That is, because Amazon wants to outsell Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart wants to outsell Amazon, they both sell the latest book (think Stephen King, Dan Brown, etc.) for some really low price, like $10. When you consider that the average hardcover “should” cost something like $20-$30, just based on the wildly outdated economics of book-selling, then you understand why the ABA is so upset.

Here’s what the ABA is thinking: it represents The Little Guy, the indie bookstore on Main Street, USA that doesn’t have the clout of Barnes and Noble or Borders. If these big guys keep trying to undercut each other, it lowers the price Main Street can set for a book. Why would someone pay $30 for a book when they can buy it for $10 from Wal-Mart? The problem becomes, after Main Street goes out of business, that limits the amount of information (books) out there. And what if some author releases a crazy book about some controversial topic, one that Wal-Mart refuses to carry because it doesn’t want to “offend” its customers or whatever? Now there’s no Main Street bookstore to turn to, and that information never gets out there. Then the marketplace of ideas suffers, and we’re all worse off. That’s the ABA’s thinking, at least, and it’s not entirely unreasonable, I don’t think.

If you want, this topic could easily balloon into a much deeper, philosophical discussion on the entire book industry—remember, Barnes and Noble said the other day that the book industry is still bigger than Hollywood, video games, etc.—but other, better people have already begun to tackle that debate.

And why is this on CrunchGear? Yup, e-books. You can make the argument, and the ABA has done just that, that it was the initial release of the Kindle that got this whole dangerous price war started. Amazon needed to jumpstart the public’s acceptance of e-books, so they did the inverse of what game companies do when they release a new system: game companies make money on the software and lose money on the hardware (at least initially), while Amazon was selling these e-books for something like one-third their “actual” value. Gotta get those Kindles out there!

So that’s basically it. The ABA is concerned that a price war, started by the introduction of the Kindle, will eventually limit the number and quality of ideas available to y’all. You’re free to disagree, and I get the feeling that many of you will.

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