Vittorio Pasteris

Si chiama Fire il Kindle – tablet a colori con Android di Amazon che ha anche presentato lettori classici da 79 e 99 dollari: l’ebook reader diventa una commodity. Il Kidle Fire è decisamente più piccolo dell’Ipad e costa la metà del device di Apple.

Quelli di Techcrunch hanno palpato per un po’ il nuovo Kindle di Amazon che dovrebbe costare 250$

First of all, before every commenter asks, no, sadly, I don’t have any pictures to share. That was the one condition of me getting this information. So instead you’ll have to rely on my prose to draw a picture of the device in your head. Or you can just look at a BlackBerry PlayBook — because it looks very similar in terms of form-factor.

So here’s what I know and what I saw: Again, the device is a 7-inch tablet with a capacitive touch screen. It is multi-touch, but from what I saw, I believe the reports that it relies on a two-finger multi-touch (instead of 10-finger, like the iPad uses) are accurate. This will be the first Kindle with a full-color screen. And yes, it is back-lit. There is no e-ink to be found anywhere on this device.

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Via Reuters

Amazon’s Cloud Drive, announced on Tuesday, allows customers to store about 1,000 songs on the company’s Web servers for free instead of their own hard drives and play them over an Internet connection directly from Web browsers and on phones running Google Inc’s Android software.

Sony Music, home to artists such as Shakira and Kings of Leon, was upset by Amazon’s decision to launch the service without new licenses for music streaming, said spokeswoman Liz Young. “We hope that they’ll reach a new license deal,” Young said, “but we’re keeping all of our legal options open.”

Amazon beat rivals Google and Apple Inc into the market for such “music locker” services, which are meant to appeal to consumers frustrated by the complexities of storing their favorite songs at work, home and on their smartphones. Apple and Google were expected to launch their services at the end of last year. Shares of Amazon rose 3.1 percent to close at $174.62 on Nasdaq.

Via Techcrunch

This morning Amazon is officially launching its Android App Store — a storefront for apps that will compete directly with Google’s official Android Market. We first broke the news about the impending App Store back in September and had some thorough coverage on the details in January when it opened to developer submissions. But now the store is finally going live to consumers (it will be rolling out over the course of the day, so you may not be able to access yet). And while there were leaks abound about this morning’s launch, there are still a few details that Amazon managed to keep quiet.

The biggest one: Amazon will let you ‘Test Drive’ nearly any Android application in the App Store directly from your browser using some very interesting technology (Update: Amazon says it’s available for “many applications”) . Click the ‘Test Drive’ button, and Amazon will launch an emulated instance of Android on its EC2 cloud, which you’ll be able to control directly from your browser (it uses Flash). Some features won’t work right now (like functions that take advantage of the phone’s accelerometer) but you should be able to at least get the gist of what you’re buying. Amazon was unable to give me early access to this prior to today’s launch, but I’ll update with my impressions as soon as I get to try it out.

Via Technium

In October 2009 John Walkenbach noticed that the price of the Kindle was falling at a consistent rate, lowering almost on a schedule. By June 2010, the rate was so unwavering that he could easily forecast the date at which the Kindle would be free: November 2011.

Since then I’ve mentioned this forecast to all kinds of folks. In August, 2010 I had the chance to point it out to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. He merely smiled and said, “Oh, you noticed that!” And then smiled again.

When I brought it to the attention of publishing veterans they would often laugh nervously. How outrageous! they would say. It must cost something to make? The trick was figuring out how Amazon could bundle the free Kindle and still make money. My thought was the cell phone model: a free Kindle if you buy X number of e-books.

But last week Michael Arrington at TechCruch reported on a rumor which hints at a more clever plan: a free Kindle for every Prime customer of Amazon. Prime customers pay $79 per year for free 2-day shipping, and as of last week, free unlimited streaming movies (a la Netflix). Arrington writes:

Via Techcrunch

Fragmentation. Curation. Recommendations. Take your pick: Android is getting all three, compliments of a new Amazon-run application marketplace due to launch later this year.  Today, Amazon has launched the developer-facing part of the store, inviting devs to submit their applications so that they’re ready when the app store is ready for its consumer debut later this year (Amazon isn’t giving a firm date on the full launch). The developer portal is at http://developer.amazon.com.

We reported on this impending news back in September, so it isn’t a huge surprise. But it’s going to bring some very interesting dynamics to the way Android applications are purchased and distributed. In some senses, this is the Android equivalent of Apple’s App Store — even more so than Google’s official Android Market.

I spoke with Aaron Rubenson, category leader for Amazon Mobile Services, and Ameesh Paleja, general manager for the Engineering Division of Mobile Services, about the new store, and it clearly has the potential to be a big deal.

First, some background for those who don’t follow Android too closely. All Google-endorsed Android devices ship with the Android Market, along with a suite of other Google-made applications like Gmail. Android Market is a lot like Apple’s App Store with a few key differences: it doesn’t have an approval system, so developers can quickly submit and iterate on their applications. It also tends to have a lot of junky applications that Apple would reject — things that crash on launch on certain devices, or apps with that occasionally have features that don’t work as expected. While Google’s terms do require descriptions to be accurate, the general attitude is to let the market decide what works, and it surfaces the top rated applications (most of the time) while letting the junk sink.

Via Reuters

Il lettore di AmazonCom di terza generazione Kindle ha scalato la classifica degli oggetti più venduti a livello mondiale dal sito Web con ordini che, al 29 novembre, superavano i 13,7 milioni. La tavoletta wireless per leggere libri in formato elettronico è in vendita a 139 dollari sul sito internazionale di Amazon. Il Kindle 3G, che compete con l’iPad della Apple, il Nook di Barnes & Noble o i vari lettori di e-book della Sony, può contenere fino a 3.500 libri secondo Amazon.

Via Vittorio Bertola

Io non sono un grande amante delle campagne di boicottaggio e delle iniziative personali per salvare il mondo, perché penso che se una azienda agisce male o se un certo comportamento è negativo per la collettività dovrebbe essere innanzi tutto lo Stato a intervenire, nella sua funzione di regolatore e garante del bene comune.

Ciò detto, dovevo comprare un libro e un blu-ray e nonostante sul nuovissimo Amazon.it il totale fosse di sette euro inferiore a quello di Bol (quasi il 20%), ho scelto di comprare su quest’ultimo: perché non mi è piaciuto il modo in cui Amazon ha scaricato Wikileaks invece di difenderlo. Quando ci vuole, ci vuole…

Lo sfratto del sito di Wikileaks da parte di Amazon si va arricchendo di dettagli e diventa  critica la situazione di Amazon che non ha chiarito i motivi per cui ha mandato via Wikileaks dai suoi server. Sicuramente avrà le sue buone ragioni, che però potrebbero costargli  molto care nel caso in cui i consumatori in rete ritenessero, come ragionevolmente può essere, che il suo gesto sia poco corretto. A quel punto potrebbero decidere una  protesta civile in rete finalizzata a consigliare di non comprare libri e reglai natalizi sul maggiore sito mondiale di ecommerce. Conviene in giornata dare un’occhiata alle quotazioni delle azioni dell’azienda fondata da Jeff Bezos. E’ l’economia connessa e il potere ai consumatori.

Wikileaks scrive su Twitter

WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free–fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.

e poi

If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.TPM

TPM spiega meglio i fatti

Early this week, after hacker attacks on its site, Wikileaks moved its operation, including all those diplomatic cables, to the greener pastures of Amazon.com’s cloud servers. But today, it was down again and mid-afternoon we found out the reason: Amazon had axed Wikileaks from its servers.

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Via Techcrunch

WikiLeaks was briefly down this morning not only because of ongoing DDoS attacks, but because it was actually taken off Amazon Web Services by Amazon and moved back to a Swedish provider, according to a statement from Senator Joe Lieberman:

“This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks’ previous publication of classified material. The company’s decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them.

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La classica lettera ai clienti di Jeff Bezos, apre il nuovo www.amazon.it

UPDATE1: Manca il Kindle

UPDATE2: Cosa c’è nel nuovo Amazon italiano

E’ quasi il momento di Amazon.it Via Il Post

Amazon apre il sito italiano la settimana prossima. Un vero e proprio sito italiano di e-commerce, alla stregua degli altri già presenti negli Stati Uniti, in Canada, in Giappone, in Germania e in Francia, in Cina e in Gran Bretagna. Le voci che circolavano da qualche mese su una prossima apertura alludevano al 2011 e anche a un’ipotesi di presenza parziale legata ai siti europei già esistenti: invece il sito sarà un sito completo con distribuzione e logistica appoggiata sulle sedi vicine all’Italia, in Francia, Germania e Lussemburgo.

L’annuncio e la messa online sono previsti per la settimana prossima, ma a Roma e a Milano in questi giorni sono già comparsi dei cartelloni pubblicitari misteriosi fino a un certo punto, come mostra il sito Bitmat: quello di Roma dice “Puntiamo sull’Italia” e quello di Milano “non è il solito pacco”, sobriamente illustrati da un abbozzo di simbolo di Amazon. La prima apertura riguarderà almeno otto categorie di prodotti: libri, musica, dvd, software, videogiochi, apparecchi elettronici, orologi, giocattoli.