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Amazon Releases Free Kindle Application for PC

Jason Barry — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:22:27 -0600

Amazon announced today the release of “Kindle for PC,” a free application for Windows computers that allows customers to view more than 360,000 books on their home computer.

Customers do not need to own a Kindle to use the software, now they can purchase and download books on their PC. If you do own a Kindle and have set up Whispersync, you can access your entire Kindle library as well as your notes and marks. The software supports touchscreen gestures on Windows 7 so you can “finger-swipe flip” through pages and “pinch and zoom” content.

They have initially released a Windows only version, but a Mac version is on its way. They hope the new PC and Mac based software will help widen adoption of the Kindle library, in turn getting more publishers onboard.

Hacker, Amazon Both Claim Responsibility for Gay Book Flub

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:29:48 -0500

Over this past weekend a reported glitch caused 57,310 books, primarily those with gay and lesbian themes, to lose their important sales ranking on Amazon. The sales ranking, which allows users of Amazon to find best sellers easier, is important not only to potential readers but to authors as well. And, while according to Amazon it was “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” that caused the removal, a hacker is taking credit as well.

While Amazon maintains that the error was caused by a “glitch in our systems,” a (yet unnamed) hacker took credit for it, claiming that he used bugs on Amazon to trick people into flagging gay-themed books as inappropriate. The whole issue even caught the attention of Twitter users, who began using the hash tag “#amazonfail.”

Though, according to Mark R. Probst, author of “The Filly,” a gay western romance aimed at young adults, “I believe it was an error. I don’t think it was anything malicious they were trying to do.”

However, others aren’t so easily convinced. Author Daniel Mendelsohn, whose memoir “The Elusive Embrace” lost its ranking, says, “There are mistakes and there are mistakes. At some point in this process, which I don’t understand because I’m not a computer genius, the words gay and lesbian were clearly flagged, as well as some kind of porno tag. I say, do I want my book in anyone’s mind to be equivalent to a porno? And the answer is no.”

Image Credit: Amazon.com

What Recession? Amazon.com Reports Best Holiday Season Ever

Paul Lilly — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:13:05 -0600

Despite a weakened economy, holiday shoppers didn't skip a beat this year, at least not at Amazon.com. The company reported it had never seen a better holiday shopping season in its 14-year history, which included 6.3 million items ordered on December 15th, or nearly 73 items every second. Between November 15 and December 10, Amazon sold a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 about every 2.5 minutes. And in a particularly oddball statistic, Amazon.com says that the weight of all GPS devices sold from Black Friday through December was equal to that of 151 Mini Coopers. We don't know how many GPS units that breaks down to, but it sounds like an awful lot.

Nintendo's Wii console remained a hot seller, as did the Wii remote and Wii nunchuk controller. In consumer electronics, Samsung's 52" 120Hz LCD HDTV, the Apple iPod touch 8GB, and the Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook with 160GB hard drive led the pack.

According to Comscore, heavy snowfall benefited online stores as shoppers chose to stay in rather than battle the weather and crowds.

"Online spending over the most recent weekend was clearly substantially heavier than the corresponding weekend nearest Christmas last year, which suggests that many consumers opted for the cozier confines of online shopping rather than having to brave the severe cold and snowstorms affecting much of the northern half of the country,” said ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

But even though this was Amazon's best holiday shopping season ever, ComScore estimates that through December 21, online shoppers spent $24.71 billion on the internet, down 1 percent versus the same period in 2007.

Amazon Spares Your Fingers with Blister Pack-Free Initiative

Alex Castle — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:07:38 -0600

Image Credit: Amazon.com

You've bought computer parts online, right? If you have, then we're sure you've experienced the Herculean ordeal of trying to free a delicate little part (say, a memory card) from its nigh-unbreakable PVC prison. Well, today Amazon has shown that they feel our pain, announcing a new initiative to eventually offer all their products with less obnoxious, extraneous packaging.

The initiative extends beyond tech stuff and beyond just PVC blister packs. The retail giant says that the plan won't just save our fingers, but the environment too. For instance, the press release says that for a single toy pirate ship, the new packaging "eliminates 36 inches of plastic-coated wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of printed corrugated package inserts and 36.1 square inches of printed folding carton materials. Also eliminated are 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene and two molded plastic fasteners."

For right now Amazon's only going to be offering the new packaging on items from certain sourcces, like Microsoft and Transcend, but says "our vision is to offer our entire catalog of products in Frustration-Free Packaging."

Sounds pretty good, right? Do you think we can expect other retailers to follow suit? Let us know after the break.

Windows XP, the Economics 101 Edition

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:36:54 -0500

Cut off the supply for a product that people still want, and the demand skyrockets. Windows XP is the product, and Amazon.com's Software Bestseller list proves that Windows XP is still a hot item. CNet reports that Windows XP ranks high on the Amazon.com best-selling software list., and here's what we discovered:

Windows XP Professional SP2 full version was number 9, XP Home SP2 full version was number 18, and XP Professional SP2 upgrade was at number 64 as this article was posted (XP Home SP2 upgrade was not in the top 100).

By comparison, the best-selling Windows Vista version, Home Premium SP1 upgrade, was number 58, followed by Ultimate SP1 SP1 upgrade at number 82, and Home Premium SP1 full version at number 88. Amazon updates its software rankings hourly, so check back often.

Although Windows XP "officially" went off the market June 30, what that means in practice is, as long as you can track down a copy, your money's still good. CNet reports that Staples, Office Depot, Circuit City, and Office Max are still selling Windows XP. We also found Windows XP available at Best Buy and Sam's Club. However, Windows XP has "left the building" at Walmart.com and Target.com (individual stores might stil have copies for sale).

So, the reports of Windows XP's death at retail are, in the words of non-Windows user Mark Twain, "greatly exaggerated."

Amazon's Bezos Invests In and Advises Twitter

Chris Moody — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:42:09 -0500

Amazon.com founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board, Jeff Bezos through Bezos Expeditions (his investment company) has invested in Twitter and just accepted a seat on their board of directors. readwriteweb.com says, “the money will be spent on building up its infrastructure and reliability to become the communications utility it needs to be before it can become profitable.”
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The addition of Jeff Bezos as an advisor is a big deal for Twitter. On their blog, they says he is more than “an investor and advisor because he is also an inspiration.” They go on to say that, “Jeff's attention to business process details and distinctive, "honk-like laugh" are similarly admirable traits as far as we're concerned.”

If you’d like to see Twitter in action, visit Maximum PC Editor in Chief Will Smith’s Twitter site.

A Tale of Two E-Commerce Sites

Mark 'Marcus Soperus' Soper — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:12:21 -0600

How to Do E-Commerce Right

So, it's the end of 2007, and I've decided it's time to do a little hardware shopping for the office. I snagged a great deal at a local store on a triple-interface external hard disk with USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and eSATA ports. It's my first eSATA hard disk, but (like most folks) none of my PCs have eSATA ports.

After a bit of research, I decide the best way to add an eSATA port is to use a converter cable that plugs into an internal SATA port and provides eSATA ports via an empty slot on the rear of the case. Newegg's got a dual-port bracket for $3.19. I duly order it, and to avoid the spectacle of paying more for shipping than for the item, I add a couple of cakeboxes of Verbatim DataLifePlus printable media (CD-R and DVD+R).

Newegg fires off a series of detailed emails, the first within moments of my order, providing complete details of what I ordered, along with UPS tracking information after the order shipped. They delivered the goods - and they're good! Here's the detail from my first Newegg email:

There's no doubt about what I ordered.

How Many E-Commerce Mistakes Can a Company Make? Start Counting

I also needed to replace my sadly outdated Photoshop 7 with an upgrade to Photoshop CS3. Since I switched to a Canon Rebel XTi digital SLR this summer, and later switched to shooting 100% RAW files, a lot of my DSLR friends have been singing the praises of Adobe Lightroom.

Adobe's been offering a combo special - $75 off when you order Adobe Photoshop Elements CS3 with Adobe Lightroom. I'm a Windows user (that's why I write this blog!), so I ordered - or tried to order, at least - Windows versions of both. I also received an email from Adobe confirming my order. Here's the order detail:

Compared to Newegg's order detail, 'detail' is exactly what's missing from this order. What platform (Mac or Windows) did I order? Did I order the full or upgrade versions? I can't tell. Can Adobe?

What else was missing? Well, Adobe promised to send me an email with the package tracking information. They didn't. The only way I found out that Adobe had even sent my order was to battle through its cumbersome online customer service website earlier today and click the shopping cart (as if I was planning to make another order) before I could display a detailed summary of my order...only to discover that Adobe says I ordered the Mac version. Noooo!

Unhappy Customer, Unsatisfactory Options

I've gotten a couple of different versions from Adobe of what to do when I receive the wrong software (which won't arrive until Monday, even though I placed my order two days before my Newegg order). In version 1, I'll have the joy of digging up every serial number I've ever had for Adobe Photoshop to get a cross-shipment of the correct version. In Version 2, I get a refund right away, but need to reorder the product. I'm not sure which is worse, so I'll be hitting the ibuprofen and acetaminophen bottles to cure a headache first.

Here's to Learning How to Do E-Commerce Right

So, here's a few New Year's resolutions for Adobe, and any other technology company that does direct selling:

Make sure your 'thanks for your order' message makes it really clear what was ordered. Sometimes customers make a mistake, and sometimes you do. Either way, there's an opportunity to fix the problem before it goes out the door. Amazon.com does it, Newegg does it, so why can't Adobe?
Follow through on your commitments to keep the customer informed. If I had received timely, detailed information on my order, I could have corrected it before it was shipped. As it was, Adobe never informed me of anything - I had to dig through their site for it - and by the time I found it, I couldn't fix the mistake in the order.
If you can't do e-commerce right, hire somebody else to do it for you. I bought the Photoshop CS3/Lightroom bundle from Adobe because I couldn't get it anywhere else. I'd rather have made my purchase from Newegg, Amazon.com, or other vendors who know how to do e-commerce right. It wouldn't be difficult for Adobe (or other vendors whose e-commerce sites are lame) to team up with companies that do this for a living.

I'm hoping Adobe makes it as easy as possible for me to get the right version of CS3 - but I'm hoping even more that they decide to stop playing around with e-commerce and do it right.

Amazon Rebuffs A Subpoena

Erin Simon — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:35:17 -0600

Recently unsealed court records show that a federal prosecutor tried to subpoena records of 24,000 consumers' book purchases through Amazon, but the retailer stood up to the feds and a magistrate judge backed them up. Those individuals weren't the targets of the investigation; the prosecutor was instead seeking evidence against the seller, a former Madison, Wisconsin official named Robert D'Angelo who was accused of tax fraud for, among other things, running a used-book business out of his office without reporting the income. The prosecution wanted to subpoena the identities of people who bought books from D'Angelo to see if any would testify against him. The court documents had been sealed during the investigation, but Amazon recently convinced the judge to make them public.

Amazon refused to turn over that information in order to protect its customers' First Amendment rights. The First Amendment's protection of the freedom of expression necessarily includes some protections for anonymity both in creating speech and in consuming it; otherwise people would be afraid to engage in some sensitive or embarrassing communications. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker agreed, declaring that the subpoena's “chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America.” Although the prosecution wanted the sales records for a legitimate law enforcement goal, he ruled, “[i]t is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else.” Hear, hear.