Amazon Launches App Store In China
Amazon has beat Google to it in launching its Android Appstore in China. It is the first western company to offer a platform for Chinese users to download both free and paid apps. Currently Google Play store only offers free apps in China.
Amazon Challenges Apple With Kindle TV
Amazon will soon release set-top Kindle TV later this year that can stream video over the internet. This is a challenge to Apple TV device. The device is being developed by Amazon’s Lab126 in Cupertino, California.
No info on specs or cost yet but we do know the Amazon TV box will plug into TVs and provide Amazon’s digital media content.
Amazon Banned The Sale Of Keep Calm Rape A Lot T-Shirts
Amazon has taken the action to banned the t-shirts with slogan “Keep Calm Rape A Lot” and “Keep Calm And Hit Her” slogans. The American clothing company, Solid Gold Bomb, that is selling this t-shirts blamed an automated computer dictionary for its series of the items emblazoned with offensive phrases.
Solid Gold Bomb has issued this statement on their contact us page:
We have been informed of the fact that we were selling an offensive t-shirt primarily in the UK. This has been immediately deleted as it was and had been automatically generated using a scripted computer process running against hundreds of thousands of dictionary words.
Any offensive items that are remaining are certainly in the deletion queue and will be removed as soon as the processing is complete. Although we did not in any way deliberately create the offensive t-shirts in question and it was the result of a scripted programming process that was compiled by only one member of our staff, we accept the responsibility of the error and our doing our best to correct the issues at hand.
Amazon Pushed Out Cloud Player App For iPad
Amazon has finally make available on the Apple Store the optimized Cloud Player app for the iPad and iPad mini. This app allows customers to play, download, manage, and create playlists from music stored in their Amazon music locker. From the Cloud Player app, users can either stream music in their library from the cloud, or download it for offline playback.
From App Store:
With Cloud Player, you can:
• Stream your music from the cloud.
• Download locally to enjoy your music offline – no Wi-Fi or mobile network needed.
• Create and edit playlists.
• Control your music from your lockscreen.
• Use Bluetooth to stream your music in your house or car.
• You can also listen to music in your Cloud Player library on your Kindle Fire, PC, Mac, Android-based device, Sonos, Roku, or Samsung Smart TV.
Amazon Challenges iTunes With Autorip
Amazon has turned up the heat against Apple’s iTunes Store by releasing AutoRip, allowing customers free MP3 versions of physical CDs they have already bought. Customers who bought any of the 50,000 AutoRip-eligible CDs from the Amazon Music Store from 1998 onwards will be able to access digital versions immediately through users’ accounts on Amazon Cloud Player.
Amazon Blames Deleted Data for Christmas Eve Netflix Cloud Outage
Amazon Cloud service (Amazon Web Services) fails again during Christmas. This time, Netflix is affected and the company tweeted, “We’re sorry for the Christmas Eve outage. Terrible timing! Engineers are working on it now. Stay tuned to @Netflixhelps for updates”.
Services were not restored until Christmas day morning. Amazon has publicly apologized for the outage and blaming human error for the server downtime. According to Amazon, a developer inadvertently deleted part of the “ELB state data” which handles load balancing which servers deliver content to each user across different locations and it took several hours of testing and troubleshooting to figure out what had gone wrong.
Amazon Cloud Outage Kills Netflix On Christmas
Amazon Cloud service (Amazon Web Services) fails again during Christmas. This time, Netflix is affected and the company tweeted, “We’re sorry for the Christmas Eve outage. Terrible timing! Engineers are working on it now. Stay tuned to @Netflixhelps for updates”.
Services were not restored until Christmas day morning.
Amazon Attacks Apple iPad Mini With Ad
Amazon is not going to loose to Apple’s new iPad Mini by releasing an ad attacking the new tablet. The Amazon’s “Much More for Much Less” criticising Apple’s new 7.9-inch tablet for falling short in specifications versus the Kindle Fire HD. Amazon says the $199 Kindle Fire HD with its 216ppi 7-inch display cost less than the $329 iPad mini, which has only 163ppi display. Look at the ad which list out more short comings of Apple’s iPad Mini.
Amazon Allow Kindle Fire Users To Block Ads For $15
Amazon has a change of heart over this weekend by changing pricing policy by allowing Kindle Fire HD users to pay $15 extra to turn off ads that are built into the devices.
From Amazon:
With Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD, there will be a special offers opt-out option for $15. We know from our Kindle reader line that customers love our special offers and very few people choose to opt out. We’re happy to offer customers the choice.
Kindle Fire HD 7-inch is $200 and ships September 14. The Kindle Fire 8.9-inch will retail at $300 and ships November 20. And adding 4G, with LTE and 32GB storage for only $500. The device will feature an HDMI output for sharing content on a TV. And the display will be using no-gap lamination techniques and antiglare polarization to improve readability. The dual-antenna Wi-Fi antenna system should improve Internet speed and streaming-media quality.
Amazon is also going to release a smartphone that runs on Android OS 4.0 and Nokia Maps.
Amazon Kindle Fire With X-Ray For Movies, Textbook And Books
Amazon’s X-Ray feature for the new Kindle Fire HD allow user to find out more information from what you are watching and reading.
From Amazon:
X-Ray for Movies
Explore favorite characters and actors at a touch. Kindle Fire HD uses the power of IMDb to bring Amazon’s exclusive X-Ray service to movies. Simply tap on any scene to instantly see which actors are currently on screen, jump straight to other movies in which they star, and more.
X-Ray for Books
Tap on any page as you read to access X-Ray, an easy way to uncover more from the books you love. Instantly find chapters and locations that mention ideas, characters, and important places, as well as background info, biographies, and more from Shelfari and Wikipedia.
X-Ray for Textbooks
We know there are things you’d rather be doing than studying, so we’ve created X-Ray for Textbooks to help you learn more while studying less. Want more information about a topic? With a single tap, you can find all related pages in the textbook as well as have instant access to the glossary and related content on sites like Wikipedia and YouTube.
