iT Rumors: Amazon

Amazon

We are just days from Christmas and if you rely on online businesses and shipping, there might be a big chance that you won't get your gifts unless you order pretty soon. With that in mind Amazon has just slashed €30 of the Kindle Fire HDX 7 tablet, at least on its German website.

The new Kindle Fire HDX with a Snapdragon 800 processor, great screen and 16GB of storage features just one downside, a locked down operating system, but then again it is selling for just €199. The 32GB version now sells for €239, while the 64GB version is €279, much less than an iPad mini with Retina with comparable storage.

Amazon wants 14 euro more if you want the Kindle HDX without adverts on it and LTE versions starts at €309 for 16GB, $349 for 32GB and €389 for the 64GB version.

The same deal works for UK customers who can now buy a Kindle Fire HDX for £169.00 for 16GB, £199.00 for 32GB and £229.00 for 64GB, or £30.00 less than yesterday. Amazon was not so kind to French and Spanish customers as they are not getting this rather sizable discount, at least not yet.

You can grab one in Germany here and in Britain you can take advantage of the discount here.

Amazon.com made headlines this week with the announcement of Amazon Prime Air, but it isn't the only company that's testing delivery drones.

Reports this week say UPS and Google are two other companies that are also testing delivery drones for their services.

Unnamed sources say UPS is "testing and evaluating" different ways that it could add drones to its fleet of brown delivery vehicles, according to The Verge. Though UPS has not confirmed this report, the company did not dismiss it either.

"The commercial use of drones is an interesting technology and we’ll continue to evaluate it," UPS said in a statement. "UPS invests more in technology than any other company in the delivery business, and we’re always planning for the future."

In Silicon Valley, Google is also testing delivery drones. Reports from as far back as February by news site 9to5Google say Google has been testing "mini-drone delivery systems" that it would like to use with Google Shopping Express, a same-day delivery service available in San Francisco and surrounding areas.

The Google drones come from Google X, the same department that is responsible for Google Glass and the company's self-driving cars, according to 9to5Google.

Some day soon, we'll likely receive our packages from drones; but first, government regulations need to change.

Source : latimes.com

It’s the biggest shopping day of the year, but it looks like the deals are getting started extra early at Amazon for all you gadget, gaming and entertainment fans in the audience. Yes, Black Friday isn’t officially until November 29th, but Amazon’s sale is kicking off this Sunday, November 24 with deep discounts coming as often as every ten minutes.

There are tons of highlights in terms of electronics, as well as video games, books, movies, coffee makers and more. You can get a Vizio 55-inch 1080p Smart HDTV for just $479.99, for example or a 50-inch Seiki LED HDTV for $229. A Sony BDP-S3100 Blu-Ray player is on sale for $54.99, a Canon T3 DSLR is “under $400,” and an HTC One is just a penny when you sign a contract with Sprint, Verizon or AT&T.

Some of the other goodies include a PS3 250GB bundle with The Last of Us and Batman: Arkham Origins for $199, Call of Duty Ghosts for $39.96, buy two get one free Skylanders Swap Force characters, up to 63 percent off thousands of movies and TV shows, a Mr. Coffee single cup Keurig coffee brewer for $64.99 and more.

The best way to keep tabs on what you can score is to bookmark the Amazon Black Friday Hub page and visit it periodically over the course of the whole week leading up to Black Friday. Good luck and happy shopping!

Source : The Verge

Amazon is refreshing its tablet software, designed for its next-generation Kindle tablets, including the recently announced Kindle Fire HD and Fire HDX.

IT managers haven't been kept out of the loop either: Fire OS 3.1 comes with new Kindle-specific device management hooks (APIs) that will integrate with existing mobile device management (MDM) systems.The Seattle, Wash.-based company touted new enterprise features in its Fire OS 3.1 update that will support bring-your-own-device (BYOD) users with secure Wi-Fi network support and native virtual-private networking (VPN) software.

Also added:

Voice dictation available in all languages converts speech-to-text. For enterprise users, offline support is available in U.S. English only.
1-Tap archive frees up device space by pushing content into the cloud for later downloading, and identifying content that has not been used recently
Fire OS now supports Kerberos authentication, enabling the ability to browse secure Intranet websites from the Silk browser
Wireless printing of photos, PDF documents, emails, contacts, calendar, and documents
A new feature opened up, Second Screen, allows you to turn your television into a primary screen while using your Kindle Fire HD or Fire HDX tablet as a space to check email, browse the Web, or access to other apps.

Fire OS 3.1 also lands with Cloud Collections, which helps to organize books, newspapers, magazines, and apps in customized collections for easy reference. Amazon’s cloud-powered Whispersync synchronizes the collections across Kindle devices so that content is available on all of your devices.

For book lovers, Goodreads is now integrated, allowing users to find the latest books and engage with others on book discussion.

Performance and battery life has also been improved, and the update comes with a round of bug fixes.

Via: ZDNet

Amazon doesn’t want to just be known as your entertainment portal—it wants to be your everything portal. The company hopes to continue to instill that vibe with the latestsoftware update for its Android-based tablet line. Fire OS 3.1 begins rolling out Monday to Kindle Fire HD and Fire HDX devices, bringing with it a few new features, like enterprise support and wireless printing to turn your existing Kindle into more than just a destination for ebooks and video. The update also beefs up the last-generation Kindle Fire HD with some of the HDX’s marquee features.

BYOD, finally

For Amazon to make its tablets a be-all, end-all device for consumers, it needed to cater to the business crowd, too. The device now includes better enterprise support with features like the ability to connect to secure Wi-Fi networks and log on to a corporate network via VPN. Fire OS 3.1 also supports Kerberos authentication for more secure browsing of your company’s internal Intranet through the Silk browser, as well as a Kindle-specific device management API to make life easier on your IT department.

See what your friends are reading

Amazon aims to be more friendly with the integrated Goodreads social network for book lovers. The service lets you connect with friends to share things like your favorite quotes, what you’re currently reading, and what you thought of the books you’ve read. You can also import every book you’ve ever bought or read through Amazon into your Goodreads account and sign up for a daily or weekly newsletter that offers suggestions on what’s new to read in your favorite genres.

Share your screen with your TV

As if the Amazon Video app on almost every set-top box out there wasn’t enough, the bundled Second Screen feature is now supported for the older Kindle Fire HD. Second Screen lets you “fling” movies from your Kindle to your television set through supported third-party devices. Amazon writes that the feature is meant to free up your device so that you can use it for apps like X-Ray or browsing the Web—a definite ploy to get you to always use the device when you’re thinking of entertainment in your living room. The feature is currently limited to the PlayStation 3 and compatible Samsung TVs, though Amazon writes that it will be available later this year for the just-released PlayStation 4.

Other miscellaneous features in Fire OS 3.1 include things like wireless printing and voice dictation to convert your speech into text. Voice dictation is available in all languages when you’re connected to a network, though only English is available offline.

Source : TechHive

Amazon is refreshing its tablet software, designed for its next-generation Kindle tablets, including the recently announced Kindle Fire HD and Fire HDX.

Also added:

Voice dictation available in all languages converts speech-to-text. For enterprise users, offline support is available in U.S. English only.
1-Tap archive frees up device space by pushing content into the cloud for later downloading, and identifying content that has not been used recently
Fire OS now supports Kerberos authentication, enabling the ability to browse secure Intranet websites from the Silk browser
Wireless printing of photos, PDF documents, emails, contacts, calendar, and documents
A new feature opened up, Second Screen, allows you to turn your television into a primary screen while using your Kindle Fire HD or Fire HDX tablet as a space to check email, browse the Web, or access to other apps.

For book lovers, Goodreads is now integrated, allowing users to find the latest books and engage with others on book discussion.

Performance and battery life has also been improved, and the update comes with a round of bug fixes.

Via: ZDNet

If the promotional images are any indication, there's bound to be an awful lot of BlackBerry checking happening in Amazon's new Alpha House series. And now you can finally see for yourself. The first three episodes of the Capitol Hill comedy (including April's pilot) have just hit Amazon all at once. Not quite the binge watching we've become accustomed to over on Netflix, but it should be enough to keep you at home on a Friday night. The first three are free. Additional episodes of the John Goodman vehicle will be free for Prime users, starting next week
Source : Alpha House

Amazon.com unveiled a new partnership with the U.S. Postal Service to deliver online orders from the world's largest Internet retailer on Sunday for the first time.

The service started this weekend in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas and Amazon plans to expand it to a large portion of the U.S. population in 2014, including Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix.

Amazon is not charging extra for the new service, so members of the company's popular Prime service will be able to buy products on Friday and get them by Sunday for free. The service also applies to non-Prime members, who can get free five to eight-day shipping on orders of at least $35 (up from $25 previously).

Amazon has been spending billions of dollars building new warehouses around the world so it can deliver products more quickly. The company hopes that adding Sunday as a delivery option will generate more sales.

"The three big pieces of growth for us are selection, lower prices and speed," said Dave Clark, vice president of worldwide operations and customer service. "Adding an additional day is all about delivery speed. An Amazon customer can order a backpack and a Kindle for their child and be packing it up on Sunday for school on Monday."

The deal is also a welcome new source of revenue for the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service, which has been trying tap into the growth of online shopping.

"It will certainly help. The fastest growing segment is the package business," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said. "The future of package delivery is a seven-day-a-week schedule. We've got the capacity to do it."

Source : USA TODAY