Blackberry Can Now Read E-Books

Amazon says that demand from users led to the development of a software e-reader for BlackBerry.Amazon launched on Thursday (18/02/2010) an application for BlackBerry Kindle. Thus, users of smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM) now have the functionality to read digital books purchased by Amazon’s online store, and synchronize them with the reader Kindle and other devices that support the e-book.

With the launch of the BlackBerry line joins the iPhone and iPod Touch that already have the application. The software also is available for Windows PCs. Amazon has plans to take the same product for Mac and the newly launched iPad.

Electronic books purchased by Amazon’s site can be downloaded to the Kindle via the wireless technology Whispersync. By launching applications Kindle, Amazon paves a way to sell as many books as possible. According to the company, the idea of bringing the application to BlackBerry refers only to meet user demand.

“Since the launch of the iPhone application last year, customers have asked us to provide similar experiences for BlackBerry line, and today we offer this,” said Ian Freed, vice president of Amazon Kindle in a statement.

According to The New York Times Amazon’s 420 thousand e-books available, including 102 of the 112 best-seller. How to use Amazon technology copyright protection itself, the store has less than half of electronic books available on competitors such as Sony and Barnes & Noble, which support a standard e-book open.

Still, the Kindle leads off with the market for e-reader. In presenting the results of the fourth fiscal quarter, last month, the chief executive of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, said that for every ten physical books sold, he sold six e-books.

Source:Ub-News

E-book price war Amazon Vs. Macmillan Books

The New York Times notes that books from Macmillan, one of the largest U.S. publishers, have been removed from Amazon.com. The post says that Amazon made the move in a disagreement over pricing. The publisher has asked Amazon to lift e-book prices to around $15 from $9.99. “Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books,” the Times reports.

As the piece notes, Macmillan is one of the publishers signed on to sell books through the new Apple iBooks store. Macmillan sells books under the Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and Henry Holt brands. The Times notes that the books can still be purchased from third parties on the Amazon site.

The Times reports that Macmillan proposed selling books for the Kindle under the same terms it will offer to Apple for the iPad. Under that model, the publisher sets the price, and revenue is split 70/30, with the larger share going to the publisher. Macmillan told Amazon it could keep buying e-books under the existing model - paying 50% of hardcover list price while pricing wherever it chooses - but that Macmillan would delay those editions by seven months after the hardcover release.

Neither company is commenting on the record.

It’s a fascinating battle, which at the heart revolves around this question: who gets to set prices for electronics books: the publishers or the sellers?

Kindle becomes most gifted Amazon item ever

The post-Christmas annual statement by Amazon.com has revealed that its Kindle e-book has become the most-gifted Amazon item ever this Christmas.

Reportedly, the e-book sales have outnumbered the sale of real books, and 9.5 million Kindle e-books were ordered on Dec. 14, which amounts to 110 e-books being ordered every second.

Jeff Bezos, the chief executive officer and founder of Amazon says, “We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history.”

“The Kindle Store includes over 390,000 books and the largest selections of the most popular books people want to read, including New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases,” he adds.

E-books are very affordable and also cheaper than real books. Market analysts are assuming a further dip in the prices, now that Barnes & Noble's competing Nook e-reader is also in the market.

Main Story:http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=RssLanding&cat=news&id=1369429

Apple, Amazon offering Snow Leopard discounts

Mac OS X Snow Leopard arrives Friday and will cost $29 for those who already use Mac OS X Leopard. However, there are some deals out there.

The best of the deals comes from Apple. With its Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date Program, users can get the new operating system for $9.95. To qualify for that price, they must have purchased a qualifying Mac on or after June 8.

Apple is pretty open with the number of computers that qualify for this offer. Everything from iMacs to its MacBook notebooks is included. Specific model numbers are listed on Apple's Web site.

Apple's deal ends December 26.

For those who don't qualify for that deal, Amazon.com has an alternative one. Amazon is selling Snow Leopard for $25 for upgrades from Leopard. Apple said that Amazon also has reduced pricing--$149--on the Snow Leopard Box Set, which includes iLife '09 and iWork '09, for those upgrading from Mac OS X Tiger. (Amazon specifies that the box set is for those upgrading from Leopard. But Apple's site and an Apple rep said only Tiger users need the box set.)

More Review At : http://news.cnet.com

Introducing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) lets you create your own logically isolated set of Amazon EC2 instances and connect it to your existing network using an IPsec VPN connection. This new offering lets you take advantage of the low cost and flexibility of AWS while leveraging the investment you have already made in your IT infrastructure.

Here’s all you need to do to get started:

1.  Create a VPC. You define your VPC’s private IP address space, which can range from a /28 (16 IPs) up to a /18 (16,384 IPs). You can use any IPv4 address range, including Private Address Spaces identified in RFC 1918 and any other routable IP address block.

2.  Partition your VPC’s IP address space into one or more subnets. Multiple subnets in a VPC are arranged in a star topology and enable you to create logically isolated collections of instances. You can create up to 20 Subnets per VPC (you can request more using this form). You can also use this form to request a VPC larger than a /18 or additional EC2 instances for use within your VPC.

3.  Create a customer gateway to represent the device (typically a router or a software VPN appliance) anchoring the VPN connection from your network.

4.  Create a VPN gateway to represent the AWS end of the VPN connection.

5.  Attach the VPN gateway to your VPC.

6.  Create a VPN connection between the VPN gateway and the customer gateway.

7.  Launch EC2 instances within your VPC using an enhanced form of the Amazon EC2 RunInstances API call or the ec2-run-instances command to specify the VPC and the desired subnet.

Once you have done this, all Internet-bound traffic generated by your Amazon EC2 instances within your VPC routes across the VPN connection, where it wends its way through your outbound firewall and any other network security devices under your control before exiting from your network.



Source For Images and News :http://aws.typepad.com/

Amazon Creates Shopping Application for Android

Amazon.com announced the release of its latest mobile shopping application, “Amazon App for Android”, which is available as a free download to a user’s device in Android Market.

The application includes the experimental Amazon Remembers feature that gives Android users two different ways to use their device camera to find and remember items available for sale on Amazon.com: they can either snap a photo of an item or scan a barcode, and then receive a product match.

Amazon Remembers is available on Amazon’s family of shopping applications, including the Amazon App for iPhone and iPod Touch, the Amazon App for BlackBerry, and now on the Amazon App for Android.

Using the Amazon App for Android, customers can snap a photo of a product or scan a barcode for a fun and easy way to build a list of photographs showing products they want to remember for later, make price comparisons across multiple merchants, and purchase products from Amazon.com and thousands of other retailers on the Amazon.com site.

Source For This: http://www.slashphone.com

Palm Pre @ Amazon.com

Since August 1st, you've got the option of buying Palm Pre from Amazon.com too. The best thing is, it is available in non contract form and you don’t have to deal with any mail in rebates.

That means that you pay $199.99 when you buy the Pre with a two year contract with Sprint.

If you want to check it out yourself, simply log onto Amazon.com and enter your Zip Code on the right hand side of the site to check availability. The phone costs you $199.99 out the virtual door.

Also of note, you can nab the non-contract version for $499.99, which is a $50 savings over the Sprint pricing, and certainly a value compared to Best Buy's $749.99 price tag. But you'll have to wait for 4 to 6 weeks for the delivery

Amazon Kindle 2

When the Kindle came out a year ago, it was well received but was also criticized for not being good enough. The Kindle 2 released by Amazon a little while back appears to have fixed that.

- The Kindle have revolutionized reading and this Wall Street Journal article explains how

- Here is the definitive verdict on the Kindle from NYTIMES David Pogue

Is there anything which could pose a threat to the Kindle. Why the Iphone of course. And the Kindle App on the iPhone specifically. The NYTIMES Bits Blog disects the App.


And the computerworld reports that book sales on the Apple iPhone App seems to be skyrocketing. Either way, Jeff Bezos comes out a winner.

And the future of newspaper - This businessweek article suggest that it would be cheaper for NYTIMES to give each subscriber a kindle and access the NYTIMES than to deliver a physiscal paper.