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All New Kindle Promises More Books, Easier Reading, For Longer

The All New Kindle is exponentially better than the previous generation's e-book reader.

Amazon’s All New Kindle will be available starting July 7th for $79.99.

The winds of change are upon Amazon. The company will be releasing the All New Kindle. The signature e-reader of Amazon will be thinner and lighter, its visual design will be brought up to date, and its battery time and storage capacity will be increased.

Priced at $79.99, it will remain the least expensive of all Kindle e-book readers.

The All New Kindle will be weighing 5.7 ounces (161.6 grams), making it one-eighth lighter than the current Kindle model. The sleeker designed frames will be available in either white or black color options.

The lighter weight and better-relaxed grip it offers will make using the All New Kindle with just one hand more comfortable and offer less muscle stress overall.

The six-inch-wide e-ink touchscreen displays have been enhanced to be more responsive . Apart from that, it remains the stock Kindle display, which is in no way a bad thing. The display will also remain glare free making outdoor reading easy in comfort.

The customizable homescreen has an up-to-date user interface design, which allows for the creation, editing, and management of lists. Book recommendations will also be an available option while connected to Wi-Fi.

All of these options will prove to be very useful for readers as the All New Kindle has a storage capacity of 8GB, which is twice of the former generation’s storage capacity.

Amazon also guarantees a battery that will last weeks, given the daily average time a person spends reading is 30 to 45 minutes.

The All New Kindle will also allow readers to export and e-mail notes, highlights, and bookmarks. These features can also be printed as PDF or as spreadsheet files.

Bluetooth audio support is also included as part of the core package. VoiceView is more accessible to visually impaired users.

The Word Wise feature will now include Chinese support, showing definitions of words as they are read.

The All New Kindle is currently available for pre-order only. Amazon will be releasing the new e-book reader to the world on July 7th.

Pre-ordering the Kindle guarantees free shipping, a very high chance of receiving it sooner, as well as 30-day trial Kindle Unlimited. The service boasts with more than 1 million titles.

Image Courtesy of Amazon.

Amazon Applying for a Patent That Uses Selfies for Payments

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Amazon is in process of signing a patent that allows you to confirm payments via facial recognition, changing the way we would make online purchases from now onwards. At least on Amazon, that is. However, just because this particular company has applied for the patent doesn’t mean it is necessarily the first that got the idea – even if it is in a different form.

This is currently considered one of the better alternatives when it comes to security, by far exceeding the amount of protection a PIN or a password can normally give. While fingerprint reading could also be a viable option, technology does not yet support this type of feature on all devices individuals use for online purchases. For example, some smartphones may have a fingerprint reader and so may some types of business laptops, but in the meantime, desktops will need a separate peripheral for that and tablets aren’t exactly popular for featuring fingerprint readers yet.

The patent that Amazon has applied for is very much reminiscent of the way so many fiction pieces would depict an access point that would scan your face or your eye in order to provide entry through high-security doors. Instead of having to enter a code or a password, the app would request that you place your face in the designated box after you hit the purchase button. Afterwards, the system would take two separate pictures of your face – once using a normal expression and the second that would request a specific action on the user’s behalf. These actions could mean blinking an eye, smiling, tilting their head or mimicking other facial expressions.

This is an initiative that Amazon had to ensure that the system cannot be tricked by the use of 2D photos of the owner, which could sometimes confuse the method that it employs to recognize a face.

Amazon commented on where this initiative came from when research done on a number of cases revealed the dire issue that passwords have. Because on mobile devices entering passwords can easily turn into a nuisance that can result in either accidentally locking yourself out of your account or convincing you to hit the ‘always remember password’ button. Naturally, the latter will create some problems should your device be stolen, for example.

And because fingerprint reading is not that kindly regarded by a number of individuals as it will unequivocally store that type of personal data which could fall into the wrong hands should a catastrophe occur.

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Hoverboards Take the Blame for Numerous Incidents

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Faulty Segway hoverboards have been involved in several accidents, one of them being fatal.

A while ago, everyone was going bonkers about “Back to The Future” getting real. Unfortunately, no one has come up with the blueprints for a time machine, but several gadget manufacturers have come up with their own hoverboard design. But are these technical jewels safe? Hoverboards take the blame for numerous incidents, one of them being even fatal.

So, what’s a hoverboard and what is is supposed to do? If you have seen the movies, then you know why everyone is hyped. If not, during his trip to the future, the character played by Michel J. Fox was riding a device than basically lifted him into thin air.

Since then, every engineer out there wanted to make the hoverboard reality. Several failed experiments later, Segway announced that it was successful of developing a sustainable hoverboard design. Technically, Segway’s scooter isn’t actually a real hoverboard, because it does not float. Still, a hands-free scooter is better than nothing. Or so we think.

Recently, there have been a lot of disturbing news regarding similar devices going haywire and literally blowing up (and not blowing out our minds).

These rumors seem also to be fueled by Amazon’s decision to withdraw from the market several hoverboard products. According to official statements, it would seem that the products failed to meet up specification in the area of fire hazard.

Upon a closer investigations, authorities have found that the devices had non-compliant plugs. Also, these plugs didn’t even have backup fuses, thus, the risk of a house fire increases tenfold.

The London Fire Brigade reported that a crew has been dispatched after someone complained of a fire. Upon reaching the scene, the fire crew discovered that fire started due to a faulty Swagway battery charger.

And to make matters worse, it would seem that almost 90 percent of the products sold under the hoverboard category had similar issues, making them dangerous to have around the house.

Officially, this is not the main reason why Amazon decided to withdraw hoverboards from their site is entirely different. It would seem that the companies producing these gadgets are in violation of the Consumer Rights Act, which entitles each customer to a refund if they find the product to be adequate.

Apart from house fires and no refunds, it would seem that the devices are also deadly. At the beginning of the week, a teen from Alperton lost his life after he crashed into a bus. This tragical event happened while the teen was riding a Segway hoverboard.

Photo credits:www.wikipedia.org

What to Expect from the New Amazon Kindle Update?

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It seems that today Amazon and Facebook take the lead in the tech news. If you heard something about a new Amazon Kindle update for your beloved Kindle Voyage and Kindle Paper White e – readers, we are here to tell you more on the subject. Always keeping in mind the user experience and always trying to improve users’ satisfaction with its flagship product, Amazon recently released a firmware update for Kindle.

The over-the-air, automatic update seems to solve some issues Kindle users complained about (not in the sense that the software wasn’t working properly, but in the sense that it lacked some well desired features) and to bring new skills to the table.

The new Amazon Kindle update is mainly focused on families, children, and people who learn English as a second language, but the new features also address young school pupils who need to get more and more familiarized with their native English language.

One of the most interesting novelties brought by the new Amazon Kindle update is by far the Word Wise feature. This allows the readers to tap on a word they don’t understand or are less familiar with and be offered a pop – up screen with a detailed definition of the word, together with a list of synonyms. This feature is highly important for readers outside the English language universe who read original texts via their Kindles, while also helping children and even natives to enrich their vocabulary.

Another exciting feature everybody is talking about is the Family Sharing one, or the Family Library. If you ever wanted to have access to your partner’s downloaded e – books, the Family Library allows family members, spouses and children to have interchangeable access to the others’ Kindle books.

If you are an active member of Goodreads, reviewing books, making recommendations and following others’ book suggestions, you will be happy to know that the new Amazon Deeper Goodreads Integration feature will give you the chance to share your reading progress, check ratings and write reviews by adding and managing e-books from your Kindle library to your Goodreads shelf.

The one feature brought by the new Amazon Kindle update eliciting the most interest and appraisal is the new Kindle FreeTime Unlimited option. This one is focused on children and parents are most likely to embrace it immediately, as the feature allows access to an unlimited number of chapter books and early readers for children, only for a low subscription of $2.99 per month.

The new Amazon Kindle update comes with more features than we described here, but we will let you get your hands on them and see for yourself. All in all, Amazon manages to strengthen its fans loyalty and faith, by upgrading the very product that established the company’s position as a leader in the e-readers industry.

The Amazon AWS Lambda New Web Service Is Here

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The AWS re:Invent conference this week ended with a few interesting news and the introduction of a new web service in the public cloud, the Amazon AWS Lambda. Amazon is trying for years to compete with other tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and even Oracle, releasing new services and entering the smartphone manufacturing business, while providing tech solutions for business customers. However, the bold move of unveiling a new computing service for developers elicited a lot of interest in the tech media.

The Amazon AWS Lambda is a computing service aimed to businesses and was described by Amazon’s chief technology officer, Werner Vogels as

an event-driven computing service for dynamic applications.

At a first glance, this sounds just like any other computing service in the Amazon portfolio, which is already offering services to some customers like the CIA and Netflix at very competitive prices, but it is more to the Amazon AWS Lambda than the eye can see. According to the specialists looking deeper into this service, Lambda is a

tool to implement rules that carry out functions using Amazon’s manifold complex features, without requiring extensive configuration and maintenance.

In other words, this new cloud computing service can perform at light speeds by triggering codes based on events, thus aiding developers to manage cloud computing resources in a very effective manner. Lambda leverages the JavaScript code via the Node.js and is able to help developers change the way they design, build, run and manage dynamic applications.

On the Amazon Web Services blog, the company presents the Amazon AWS Lambda as a zero-administration computing platform which doesn’t require pre – installed operating systems or language environments. It also doesn’t require EC2 instances to be configured, launched or monitored.

People witnessing the Lambda reveal described the new cloud service as being revolutionary or potentially revolutionary, as it may give developers the chance to write and manage applications which would be otherwise very difficult to build. Moreover, what is really great about Lambda, is that it can perform at very low costs, a feature that can propel Amazon among the biggest players in this field, very soon.

Microsoft and Oracle, for instance, have been offering tech solutions and services to business customers for years, while Amazon is just getting ready for this game. However, Amazon has a solid ground to develop the Lambda and make it the next best thing in cloud computing. According to a recent report offered by the Synergy Research Group, Amazon holds tight in its hands a 27% of the world market for cloud infrastructure services, while Microsoft only holds 10%.

Although the Amazon AWS Lambda has its shortcomings, just as any new product has, Amazon is really confident in its success and we will all find out in due time if this new cloud computing service is going to be as revolutionary as believed.

Fire TV Stick Unveiled by Amazon

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After the Fire Phone’s not so excellent performance and Amazon’s staggering losses in the September quarter, the tech giant has unveiled the Fire TV stick, a media-streaming device which plugs into a TV set much like a USB stick and lets users browse anything from music to videos from Netflix, Hulu and Pandora.

The Fire TV stick seeks to extend its reach into customer’s digital lives by streaming content from Amazon’s Prime service, as well as other providers such as Showtime, Spotify or Netflix. According to Amazon’s announcements, the device will be released on the 19^th of November, although eager users are free to order it immediately.

Costing $39, the Fire TV Stick plugs into the high-definition port of your TV and comes equipped with a remote control. It mirrors media content and application from phones or tablets in addition to streaming content, Amazon statements said.

With the introduction of the Fire TV stick, it’s clear that competition with home-media services is stepping up. Following Amazon’s introduction of the Fire TV box this year, the Fire TV stick seems to attempt to compete with Google’s plug-in device, the Chromecast, which retails at a price of $35 and tops Amazon’s electronics best sellers. The Chromecast has also topped other Roku Inc. and Apple Inc. offerings.

“The Fire TV Stick will be a natural progression of the Fire TV,”

Morningstar Inc. analyst, RJ Hottovy said in a statement.

“They will have more success among core Amazon Prime users, but it will be more difficult switching customers away.”

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick is able to directly sync with the Fire TV box and is expected to drive more $99 annual subscriptions to Prime, thus offering free of charge fast shipping as well as instant video streaming access.

The tech giant is offering a 30-day membership to Prime free of charge for every Fire TV Stick purchase. In addition, current Prime members also have bonuses: for the first two days, they can preorder the Fire TV stick for just $19.

Amazon describes its device as being more powerful than Google’s Chromecast, however, after last week’s debacle of an earnings announcement, when the Fire Phone proved to be a disappointment, many question whether the company’s attempts at adding more products would indeed bring innovation to its future.

The tech giant’s shares have already gone down 0.5 percent on Monday morning, indicating that the market no longer trusts Amazon as it did in the past.

Amazon Fire Phone Fails, Causes Staggering Q3 Losses

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Amazon just announced its third quarter earnings today and the retailer giant is surely navigating in shallow waters. In its earnings conference call, Amazon reported a third quarter loss of $544 million, compared to the $25 million losses announced in the third quarter of 2013. Who’s the culprit you would ask? None other than the Fire Phone, some company reps report. According to reports, the eccentric smartphone wasn’t as hot as expected, causing the company a $170 million write-down in addition to supplier commitment costs.

It’s true that very few had expected the Amazon Fire Phone to be as great a trailblazer as the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy. What is surprising, though, is that it performed as terribly as it did in the market. In fact, the retailer giant is not a newborn where mobile devices are concerned and although smartphones are slightly different from ereaders or tablets, it still doesn’t explain why the Fire Phone did so badly. The device itself is no underdog, porting the basic hardware that normally comprises any high-end smartphone.

What many would blame is the Fire Phone’s exclusivity to one (and just one) carrier. While such a stunt could have been pulled off by a highly popular and more established smartphone producer, Amazon shouldn’t have attempted to shut out others out from the device. And it’s true that when you’re just starting out, you might experience some issues when deciding to get in bed with only one carrier, be it AT&T. The Fire Phone simply couldn’t solve the adoption problems even when the price was brought down to just one U.S. dollar.

However, there are some who believe that the Fire Phone had an even bigger problem. While other Amazon devices focus on one particular use case (and that is precisely where they perform excellently), the Fire Phone isn’t much of anything. It does good, but so do countless other models and as a reading device, it’s not as good to begin with. The Fire Phone was designed to be intimately connected to Amazon’s selling business, and although people love shopping, buying a smartphone dedicated just for online shopping simply doesn’t seem reasonable.

There are some notable features that the Fire Phone also has, for instance, the Dynamic Perspective, however, these fancy gimmicks only sugar coat the device’s clear lack of vision.

And when you’re planning to buy a smartphone, the Fire Phone strikes one as being too expensive, looked down and as having poor specs. Not to mention no Google Play.

Project Wing Is Working: Google Delivery Drones Unveiled

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We all know Google has this Google X technology research branch which usually comes up with crazy ideas that prove themselves worthy of international appraisal, such as the Google self – driving car for example. We all know that Google got very interested into delivery drones to fly to remote areas and service regular customers even, but it made some efforts to keep things quiet until they had something to boast about. That day has come today, as Google finally made public their Project Wing: Google delivery drones can fly for thousands and miles and they can deliver anything from food to first – aid materials.

In fact,

test flights delivering candy, water, medicine, dog treats and other items to two farmers in Queensland, Australia

proved to be so successful, Google stepped out of the closet and made public its results. But one cannot ignore the fact that Google went head – to – head with Amazon, in a business that might bring the winning racer fabulous amounts of money.

If you remember, last year, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos announced his intentions to use flying drones to deliver the ordered goods to the customers’ doors.

Back in the day, we reported that Bezos was waiting for the FAA approval and that he was trying to bring innovation in a country that has very strict laws and regulations when it comes to commercial drones’ activity.

After Facebook lost Titan Aerospace to Google and after Amazon did everything possible to convince the FAA that drone testing was for the benefit of mankind, here comes Google again, succeeding once more.

Of course, their success will probably motivate the other tech giants interested in drone deliveries to take action and even mellow down the FAA or convince it that drones flying all over the place is not as dangerous as perceived. However, time will tell.

Back to the Google delivery drones, according to officials and people close to the project’s results reveal,

In total, 30 successful delivery flights of about 1km were made over the course of a week. Google said it selected these items “based on several conversations with local people – ranging from emergency services teams to fire crews to farmers – about how aerial delivery might help them in their jobs”.

Google spokesman Ray Gobberg said it was too soon to discuss specific business plans for the delivery drones, but the company said on its website that self-flying vehicles could offer a cheaper, faster and less wasteful way to move goods.

If analysts’ predictions become true, and they probably will, in the next few years we will see the tech behemoths’ battlefront placed in the e – commerce and fast deliveries market. With Google and Amazon confronting directly, there are going to be interesting times. And if Bezos is right, at some point in the future, seeing drones hovering above us is going to be perceived as normal as walking your dog.

Amazon Allegedly Acquires Twitch for $1billion

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Google was close to buying Twitch just a couple of months ago. The interest shown by the tech-giant made sense, as Twitch could have been combined its services with Google to offer better services for gamers. Moreover, Google is always interested in expanding its already gigantic user-base.

Other companies are interested in Twitch as well. Amazon allegedly acquires Twitch, according to the latest rumors. On Monday, the website The Information claims that Amazon will pay $1 billion for the video game streaming site. Neither Amazon, nor Twitch, have released any comments so far on the matter.

Twitch was introduced in June 2011. Its main focus is represented by video games. Basically, the platform, which is now one of the largest sources of web-traffic in the U.S., offers playthroughs of video games by users. Moreover, visitors can view content live or on-demand.

So far, Twitch managed to raise $35 million, with $20 million only in September 2013, Re/Code notes.

Video games are among the most popular form of content on YouTube, Reuters reports. So for Google, this will be a loss. For regular users, on the other hand, enjoying more diverse video platforms may be a good thing. YouTube announced in June that it will add new video tools for creators. Among the most important is the ability to upload videos at 60 fps, a highly relevant feature for gamers.

Amazon allegedly acquires Twitch to catch-up with Google and Netflix

Most gamers are young and represent an important target for most tech-companies. There are around one million gamers who upload their recordings each month, while around 50 million unique visitors as of last month watch them and comment. Not only that there are a lot of unique monthly visitors, but they are very engaged with the web-site. Re/Code says that according to a Twitch report, close to 60 percent of the visitors spend more than 20 hours per week on Twitch.

The problem for Amazon will be how exactly to monetize the acquisition. Younger men are harder to reach, but Amazon may adapt its Prime subscriptions to the new video business. Some of the users who upload their recordings on Twitch ask for donations or subsctiptions, so Amazon will have to deal with this type of engagement. Amazon allegedly acquires Twitch, so it will probably have to find another method of reward the broadcasters, in order to retain them on the platform.

The New BlackBerry 10.3 Will Come With Almost All Amazon Apps

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BlackBerry was the subject of many of our previous discussions. We cannot help but admiring the ambition the Canadian company displays in holding its ground in the smartphone market, wanting to reinvent and reborn itself with each passing moment.

The latest news concerning BlackBerry is that the company shook hands with none other than retail giant Amazon in order to deliver the new BlackBerry 10.3 together with more than 200,000 Amazon apps available in the Amazon App Store.

A company blog post dating yesterday says:

We’ve heard your appeals for access to more applications for your BlackBerry 10 device and we are delivering. We have announced a licensing agreement for the Amazon Appstore to bring more than 200,000 Android apps to you this fall when the BlackBerry 10.3 operating system launches.

While Amazon didn’t comment on this deal yet, which is not surprising since everybody (and especially Jeff Bezos) was busy with showcasing the new Amazon Fire smartphone, John Chen from BlackBerry confirmed the news. In an interview for the press, the company’s CEO stated that

We can leverage what [Amazon] can offer, while providing the Seattle, Wash., company with access to BlackBerry’s customer base.

It seems like a good deal for both brands, but it can be a life saver for BlackBerry. Since John Chen admitted more than once that he aimed to regain its corporate and enterprise niche, offering its individual customers access to almost all Amazon apps starting this fall will save him time and money. The BlackBerry app store is a corner shop compared to a supermarket, and the supermarket is, of course, represented by Apple’s and Google’s app stores. However, the new BlackBerry 10.3 will come together with a preloaded Amazon app store, giving BlackBerry users the chance to access movies, TV shows, games and so on.

In the meantime, John Chen will focus on the enterprise niche, as the company invests in other bigger projects:

Chen wants to remain a competitor in the smartphone segment but is focused on making BlackBerry a dominant force in machine-to-machine communications. The company’s QNX software already is a mainstay in the automobile industry, powering electronic and other systems in a wide range of cars. BlackBerry already works with hundreds of large enterprise clients, including corporations and government agencies, to manage and secure mobile devices on their internal networks.

Given the fact that Amazon just released its new 3D smartphone, the problem is whether this new development will affect the partnership with BlackBerry. John Chen stated that the two companies had different goals and their collaboration was strong and beneficial.