Firstly, Apple isn’t ready to dwindle its price. HomePod will cost around $350, whereas you can buy a beginner-level Amazon Echo for $50. Amazon’s cheap smart assistant can basically do all the stuff a user could expect from a smart speaker. Of course, HomePod has some shiny, innovative features like scanning your room to configure the sound to the perfect frequency, but again, these are some a few features Apple rolls out in its devices to justify its outlandish prices.

Amazon Echo is better than Apple HomePod because it is far more flexible. You could link Amazon Echo with various smart home devices. You can even pair and integrate it with your car. Apple HomePod offers less flexibility, thanks to the closed ecosystem approach of Apple.

Apple is coming to terms with the hard market reality that the smartphone market has already reached its saturation point. The future belongs to Augmented Reality, IoT, Self-Driving cars. AI is the centerpiece of these technologies. Apple is also investing heavily in these areas. In 206, the company acquired about 6 startups which were working on innovative products in the realm of AI.

The competition is already heating up for Apple. In 2016, Google launched a special hardware chip, Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), to handle complex graphics in the Cloud. NVIDIA and Amazon already have similar products. Apple’s devices currently have two chips, one is designed to perform normal processing while the other one handles AI-based tasks. Apple Neural hardware will help the company fix its battery time problem.

Apple is expected to announce these new devices in Developers conference in June.

In a blog post, Google announced that users will be able to live stream their gaming experience in the form of exciting videos. The new game streaming service by Google will be separate from the YouTube’s native platform. So for example, if you are looking to search for the game streaming channels for the game “Assassins Creed”, typing “Assassin” will immediately show the recommended game streaming channels for the Assassins Creed game, and not any song or other video having the word Assassin.

YouTube Game streaming service will have a lot of catching up to do because Twitch is already the juggernaut in the game streaming markets. Thousands of people use this service to live streaming their gaming experiences.

Google says that using YouTube gaming, the live streams will be automatically convertible to YouTube videos. This is a nice feature which could imbibe many users.

]]> https://socialmediaseo.net/2015/06/12/google-to-launch-game-streaming-service-youtube-gaming/feed/ 0 https://socialmediaseo.net/2015/02/23/apple-investing-2-billion-to-open-new-data-centers-in-europe/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=apple-investing-2-billion-to-open-new-data-centers-in-europe https://socialmediaseo.net/2015/02/23/apple-investing-2-billion-to-open-new-data-centers-in-europe/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:13:07 +0000 http://preview.socialmediaseo.net/?p=31963 Apple has announced that it will open two new data centers in Europe for the first time. The tech giant will invest $2 billion in a data center endeavor, which, according to many experts, was taken after the massive demands from Europe to secure the data of iCloud, iTunes and other software services.

US companies are facing regulatory problems from Europe after Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower from the US intelligence services claimed that the US government is spying the Europe through its tech companies. Amazon also launched its native data center for Europe.

Apple will host iTunes, iCloud, software data and other services in its European data centers for the native users. The data centers will go live in 2017. Denmark and Ireland are chosen as the place for data centers. Ireland will be the headquarters of Apple operations now.

US tech companies have faced heavy fines in Europe due to regulatory issues. According to European laws, if a company is found to be guilty of not adhering to strict rules regarding user data privacy, fines are implemented, which can go up to $114 million. Apple used to sign a plethora of contracts, agreements, regulatory documents to host data of its European customers in its servers in the US. Opening data centers in Europe will relieve Apple of these daunting tasks. But this relaxation comes at $2 billion initial cost with continuous expenses in its European data centers from 2017.

EU accused Apple of some illegal tax arrangements with Irish government a few months back, but both parties rejected this claim.

If you are a US-based Google Chromecast user, we have good news for you. Several sources have reported that Google is offering a $6 Play Store credit to all the Chromecast users residing in U.S on Valentine’s Day.

Chromecast is simply a replacement for your HDMI cable. The added benefit is you can purchase movies from Google and watch them on your HD TV. Chromecast dongle streams media from your mobile to your HD TV screen and is one of the widely used streaming device in The United States. It costs just $35 and according to CNET, it has much free content available, so much that it is practically free.

What does Google want from this give away is obvious. This give away puts Google ahead of its rivals like Roku or Amazon’s TV play. Some sources also report the availability of this offer to Chromecast users in U.K. Google aims at increasing purchase of videos from its play store than other sources.

To receive the free credit, a user needs to meet a few requirements. Main requirements are having a Chromecast account and being a citizen of U.S. To claim this offer, you will just have to click on this link. There you are requested to confirm owning a Chromecast device and continue to check for available offers. Then you will join the network of your Chromecast gadget. If you are visiting this link from office, it won’t work. You have to be on the same network as you Chromecast streaming device is. There you will be asked to enter you Chromecast ID and verify it. After verifying your ID you will get a “redeem” button. Clicking it will add a $6 credit into your Play Store account.

This $6 credit is not compulsory to be used on movies. Once you have claimed the offer, the money is yours. You can spend it on anything in Play Store.

@joshuagates You don’t get free shirts? SYFY really doesn’t like you, do they?

— Klein Maetschke (@kleinmaetschke) December 12, 2013

#DestinationTruth t-shirt: $9.99. #HamburgerEarmuffs: $13.99. Who’s laughing now, @Amazon?

— Josh Gates (@joshuagates) December 12, 2013

Amazon: We’re happy to resend your order. ME: Sorry, I can’t hear you through all the lettuce and cheese. #HamburgerEarmuffs

— Josh Gates (@joshuagates) December 12, 2013

ME: I’m having a salad for lunch. HAMBURGER EARMUFFS: Shhhhh. pic.twitter.com/SebUdH5XsO

— Josh Gates (@joshuagates) December 12, 2013

Oh, just steamin’ my buns. #HamburgerEarmuffs pic.twitter.com/YKJoqjSBfC

— Josh Gates (@joshuagates) December 13, 2013

I was hoping to sleep in today, but it looks like somebody is wide awake. #HamburgerEarmuffs pic.twitter.com/LvbhMW7nxg

— Josh Gates (@joshuagates) December 13, 2013

The second picture is made to look like Amazon themselves replied to his joke, however it’s another Twitter user.  Either way, it’s hilarious.

EBAY

Perhaps the most popular shopping website in today’s world is eBay. It provides the wide range of items from electronics to clothing. The APP provides you with the searching option and hence you can easily find your desired items. You can compare prices and specifications. The images of products from various angles are provided that helps analyzing the product before buying. You are provided with the option to add the items to your chart and buy them.

AMAZON

This App provides great convenience to search for desired items in store, compare their prices and take their snapshots. The availability of the product in the market is also visible. This App is free for worldwide users for shopping.

GROUPON

Google play store provides this wonderful App that gives you the precious information about the discounted offers. You just sit back and get amazed at this App which searches for wonderful discount offers in shops from 50% to 90% on items of dining, spa and fitness. This App is completely free for all users.

SHOPSVVY

This cool App lets you compare the price of certain items on online shops with similar things nearby your home or on other online stores. This is possible by scanning the bar code of the item with your camera and determining whether the deal is good or not. This App will let you know the price range in which the certain items lie so that you may have idea of cost when you go out for purchasing them from your nearby stores.

ETSY

This App is very much similar to eBay as it searches for plenty of items from millions of online stores.  This App is totally free and you have the provision of setting up your own shop and see the response of your customers.

Shopping is no more a headache now with making of so many useful Android Apps. Now you can have best items at your home with online shopping Apps.

That’s what a kid, acting a little bit rude might say to our Christmas Merry-maker up North… But it’s true!

These are absolutely the hottest deals, that you will not want to miss – at unheard-of prices.

First, we’ve got the Sony Wifi Blu-Ray Player. Going on sale at Thanksgiving, this one time retail price of $105.00 is going straight down like a ho-ho-ho-ing Santa Claus, sliding onto your roof-top! How can you beat the Black Friday price of $55.00. Get it at Target!

Wait! Don’t spill that Thanksgiving cranberry sauce out of excitement! There is also a Nikon L320 Digital Camera that was $229.00. On Black Friday it is a super low price of $99.00! It is selling at Target too.

And if your kids stay up late, and they open that Nikon L3320 Digital Camera gift a little early, they might take a picture of… One of Santa’s Little Helpers – an elf with an another gift! This time it is the Kindle Fire 7″ HD 16GB Tablet. Originally it was $169.00. On Black Friday get it at Staples where it will be only $79.00!

And don’t forget the Element 50″ 1080p LED HDTV. It was $599.99, but at Target on Black Friday it will be $229.00. Rudolph, quit staring at your red nose, reflected on that shiny new LED HDTV!!!

Get up a little late on Black Friday? Don’t sweat it! Cyber Monday has some outstanding deals too. Amazon.com says that it has got 50% off LeapFrog LeapPad2 Learning Tablets – an Amazon Exclusive!!! And Amazon also has 50% off SpongeBob and VTech toys. Wow! Those gifts will keep the kids out of their parents’ hair!

I tried going to the Amazon website only to find out they had a 500 Error.  Now when I go to it, the site doesn’t even load.  Crazy to think that Amazon.com’s website is down, isn’t it?  Especially since they are known for their cloud solutions and storage services.  Hopefully the Amazon.com website will be back up from this downtime soon.

Exactly when the Amazon tablet is going to hit the market is unknown at this point.  Most speculation puts Amazon releasing their Android tablet sometime in October.  With analysts expecting Amazon to sell nearly 5 million units of their tablet in Q4, this leaves less than three full months to achieve this number.

But with Amazon being willing to what other retailers typically aren’t, like selling hardware (aka, the Kindle) at a loss in order to get more devices into more hands, which in turn generates more sales through Amazon.com, the online retailer may not need a full three months to hit 5 million units sold.

If Amazon is willing to sell their tablet at a loss, this means we could see the type of frenzy that unfolded when HP dropped the price of the HP TouchPad down to $99 – people immediately rushed retailers, both online and off line, to get their hands on a TouchPad.

This is exactly what can happen with the Amazon tablet.  And when it does, you now have a director competitor stealing some of the spotlight from the iPad.

According to FoxNews, Apple has sold almost 30 million iPads since launching its tablet in April 2010. Rival products from companies including Samsung Electronics Co, Research in Motion and Motorola Mobility, have failed to seriously challenge that early lead. This month, Hewlett-Packard scrapped its TouchPad after sales languished.

“Thus far, Apple has faced many would-be competitors, but none have gained significant market share,” FoxNews wrote. “Not only does Amazon have the potential to gain share quickly but its willingness to sell hardware at a loss, as it did with the Kindle, makes Amazon a nasty competitor.”

The future of computing could quite possibly be found in the new Chromebook.

What’s a Chromebook you ask?  Basically it’s a laptop built from the ground up to run on the web – and it’s made by Google.

I just received an email from Google telling me that the Acer Chromebook is now available at Amazon for $349.  This thing cost less than brand new iPads and other Android tablets.

Get the Acer Chromebook at Amazon

One of the more impressive specs on the Acer Chromebook is that it boots up in 8 seconds or less and resumes instantly.  No more having to wait endlessly for your laptop to boot up – just hit start, and less than 8 second later you on the Chromebook surfing away.

Another really awesome feature with the Chromebooks is that it’s the first consumer operating system designed from the ground up to defend against the ongoing threat of malware and viruses.

Here’s some product information from Amazon:

Key Features of the Acer Chromebook:

• 11.6” HD Widescreen CineCrystal LED-backlit LCD: (1366 x 768) resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio
• Dual-core Intel® Processor
• 2GB DDR3 Memory
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3150
• 16GB Solid State Drive
• 1.3 Megapixel HD Webcam (1280 x 1024)
• High-Definition Audio Support
• Two Built-in Speakers
• 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi CERTIFIED
• 2- USB 2.0 Ports
• 1- HDMI Port
• Full-sized Chrome Keyboard with dedicated keys for the web
• Oversized, Multi-touch Touchpad
• Memory card slot for storing photos, music, and video
• 6 hours of continuous use
• 3.2 lbs (system unit only)

Amazon product description

As a follow up to the fake Steve Jobs biography story I just wrote about.  I probably should have mentioned that Steve Jobs real biography is available at Amazon for pre-order.  You can now pre-order your copy of Steve Jobs biography, written by Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, for $20.60 which is a 37% discount from the retail price of $32.50.  You can also get the Kindle edition for $16.99.

Steve Jobs is due to be released on March 6, 2012.

Here’s the product description from Amazon about Steve Jobs biography, which is interesting reading in itself:

Product Description

About the Author

Walmart has the reputation of everyday low prices. This is because Walmart has built its brand on the fact that you don’t need to wait for a sale to get low prices on everyday products.  Just come to Walmart and get low prices everyday.

But the problem for Walmart is this – what do you do when your low prices are no longer the lowest prices in the market place?

Look at Amazon for example.  It’s without question that, item for item, you could go to Amazon.com and find a better price for the same product you’d find Walmart.  Couple that with Amazon’s offerings of things like free shipping, and even more discounts when you buy more product, and you now have a pricing environment that even Walmart has a hard time competing with.

For example, I went to Walmart.com and took one of the first products I saw which was the HP Mini 210 10.1″ Widescreen Netbook PC.

Walmart has then brand new starting at $248.00 and Amazon has them brand new starting at $248.99.

The only problem is that at Amazon.com, there are 4 used ones that start at $245.00 and at Walmart.com there are no used ones.

I understand that Walmart.com has the lower price on the brand new model, but you tell me which one you’re going to bwaluy?  Perhaps you’ll buy only new, and lot’s of people are like that.  But a lot of people will take the less expensive model as well, and that’s my whole point.

Amazon is beating Walmart at its own game by offering even lower prices on items that you can find at Walmart.  And when that happens, the bottom line is that Amazon starts turning over more products, faster.

So Walmart might have the everyday low prices you’d expect, but it’s looking more and more like Amazon.com has everyday lower prices than anyone else in the market place.

Walmart is launching video streaming service Vudu on the iPad today which will bring 20,000 instant movies and TV shows available for downloading and viewing.  What’s unique about Vudu launching on the iPad however is that it’s not launching as an app.  Instead, Vudu is launching as a mobile website that is compatible on the iPad, and thousands of other mobile devices.

I’ve written before how I believe the day is soon approaching when we will no longer be restricted with apps.  Instead, developers will build mobile versions of their sites and applications that can be accessed on literally every web enabled mobile device throughout the world.

According to Edward Litchy, general manager of Vudu, “It’s not an app… It’s an all-browser experience.  But you access it in a similar way.”

You simple point your mobile browser to Vudu.com and rent or buy your videos.  Once purchased, the videos can viewed online or through more than 300 devices including Internet-capable HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players and the Sony’s Plastation 3, according to Walmart.

With Apple charging 30% for content purchased through apps, companies like Walmart, Amazon, and others are finding ways to build applications to where they don’t have to share such a large percentage of revenue – Vudu.com is a great example.

Another great example of a mobile site that is not restricted to an app for particular, but rather can be accessed on thousands mobile devices, is the daily deal search engine ListYourDeals.com.

The developers of ListYourDeals decided to also avoid the constraints of having to build an app for each device and then share revenue with Apple.  Again, this is trend I believe we are going to be seeing more of in the future.

But there is one place you can actually find even better prices on the products from Amazon and that’s at the Amazon Outlet Store.  Here you’ll get the excess inventory of items that Amazon just needs to clear out of their warehouse.  This also means the prices you’ll get are even better than the normal Amazon website deals.

But who wants to have to visit the Amazon site directly all the time just to see the deals that happening?

No one…

That’s why the Amazon Outlet Deals Facebook page was launched.  Now, through Facebook, you can get some of the best deals from the Amazon Outlet Store sent directly to you in your news stream.

Basically at the Amazon Outlet Deals Facebook page you’ll be getting announcements for clearance items and outlet deals from a wide range of categories.

Become a fan of the Amazon Outlet Deals Facebook page today by clicking here.

News out of Taiwan tonight claims that, according to production figures, Amazon is on track to sell nearly 3 million tablets by October.

Since the beginning of July, PC manufacturer Quanta has been in mass production mode for Amazon, stating that Amazon demands 800,000 to 1 million units of the branded Amazon Android tablets per month from August to October.

This also directly implies that we are more than likely going to see an Amazon branded tablet, powered by Android, hit the scene any day now.

According to the Taiwan news source, Amazon’s tablet is a simpler, more efficient model, reflecting Amazon’s desire to gain marketshare quickly in the hyper competitive landscape of Android tablets.

According to BGR, Amazon is preparing to release two different tablets – a low end tablet called “Coyote”, and a high end tablet called “Hollywood”.  It is apparently the lower end “Coyote” that is currently under mass production, and the one that Amazon plans on selling nearly 3 million units of by October.

via Taiwan Economic News

Amazon

With the release of the Kindle, and now the soon to be Amazon Android tablet, the company continues to create outlets for more people to consume more products faster.

And with the mobile internet becoming faster and more stable – at least compared to say 5 years ago – creates an ever growing environment for Amazon to dominate and grow their online retail business.

The chart below shows you exactly what I’m talking about in terms of growth, profitability, and future sales predictions.

Amazon reported their year – over – year sales figures, and it shows the online retail giant’s sales figures at a 10 year high.

Here’s a chart from BI that shows Amazon’s explosive growth in sales over the past 10 years:

Amazon shares up while the NASDAQ is down

With Amazon breaking through a 10 year record high with online sales, the stock price (NASDAQ:AMZN) was up dramatically today, closing +8.34 (3.89%) at 222.52.

This stock price growth also outpaced the overall NASDAQ which closed down today -2.65% at 2,764.79.

However, in after hours trading, Amazon shares have taken a bit of a dip, they are trading currently at  222.35 -0.17 (-0.08%) in after market hours.

via BI, Google Finance

Even though Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, has publicly stated that Amazon is working on it’s own tablet, we have yet to see the Amazon tablet come to market.

There have been a couple of overriding issues that Amazon has struggled with in making the tablet a reality.

One issue was whether to build the Amazon tablet using Android, or simply develop their own Amazon mobile operating system.

The reason Android was picked was, according to some sources, was because if Amazon launched their own operating system, then in order to compete with Android and iOS (Apple’s OS for iPhone & iPad), Amazon would have to entice developers to build apps for yet another mobile operating system.

And this was something that Amazon didn’t feel would be an easy task.

The other problem with Amazon struggled with while considering Android was the fact that there are already a lot of Android tablets on the market and Amazon would be joining an already packed race.

But looking at the historic record of Amazon’s success, I would say that when the Amazon Android tablet comes to market, it will far and above any other Android tablet currently available.

Amazon just simply does not do things without ensuring they will be a market leader – at least in most cases.

via NYTimes

A discovery has been made deep in the coding language of the new Facebook video calling app that suggests Facebook could have something VERY big up its sleeve.

The uncovered code hints at a possible Facebook online music service that would compete with the likes of  iTunes, Google, and Amazon.

Here’s the code that was discovered by software engineer Jeff Rose:

if(paramString.equals(“com.facebook.peep”))
return this.window.getMember(“VideoChatPlugin”);
if (paramString.equals(“com.facebook.vibes”)) {
return this.window.getMember(“MusicDownloadDialog”);
}

Note the last line of actual code where it says “MusicDownloadDialog”.

Of course, this is the first solid sign that Facebook could be developing an online music store.

No one really knows anything at this point.

But why would the same batch of code for the new Facebook video calling app have a reference to “MusicDownloadDialog” in it?

Is it possible that Facebook’s online music store could also be integrated into the new Facebook video calling?

Thoughts?

via Gizmodo

Ebay is looking to start testing its own storage and shipping service for sellers.

This would allow sellers on Ebay to store products in an Ebay ran warehouse, and upon sales, the Ebay facility would fulfill the orders and manage the shipping of the products to buyers.

All of this comes in an effort by Ebay to be more competitive with Amazon’s fulfillment system that allows faster product delivery times and free shipping on all items.

And it will help facilitate faster delivery times from sellers in China where on Ebay, items are currently experiencing an average of 18 days’ for products to be delivered.

via WSJ

There are rumors out that Google could be launching, as early as today, a new Google music service that seems similar to what Amazon.com recently launched.

This isn’t a service that is going to compete with the likes of iTunes however.

Google’s music service seems to be more like a data storage service where users can upload music they’ve already purchased, and then listen to the music in a streamlined platform designed for the organization and delivery of music files.

The service offering from Google is said to only include an upload function – no downloading of music.  This is an attempt on Google’s part to limit the risk of the spreading of pirated music.

via WSJ

Guest Post / About the Author

This guest contribution was submitted by Pamelia Brown, who specializes in writing about associates degree. Questions and comments can be sent to: pamelia.brown@gmail.com.

According to Nate Hoffelder of Mediabistro, Amazon has just announced an ad-supported Kindle, which will ship in early May. You can just hear the sighs of nervous authors and publishers around the world, while advertising giants such as General Motors and Visa have already happily queued up to gain traction on the device.

What does this mean for reading in the 21^st century?

Well, not much actually, to be honest. Hoffelder reports that Amazon has not incorporated ads into the eBooks themselves, but merely runs the ads when the user turns on the Kindle and sleeps the Kindle. Essentially, imagine what it’s like to visit a website and have to sit through a short ad before you can view the content, and that’s probably very similar to the experience that will greet owners of this new Kindle in mid-May.

So what do consumers get in return for sitting through these ads? Amazon has dropped the price of the ad-supported Kindle by $25 and thrown in some great discounts, such as $6 Audible Books, $1 albums from the MP3 store, and some other goodies.

Despite all of these discounts, Hoffelder writes, “Of course, we still need to keep something in mind. If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”

To be honest, I have to disagree with his pessimistic sentiment. Amazon has essentially led the eBook movement from the very beginning and has been responsible for some great innovations, and I, for one, look forward to what they’ll do in the future. Because I’m a moderate reader, someone who reads for fun on the beach or while I’m traveling, I don’t mind the idea that my reading will be ad-supported, especially if it means I can pay a little bit less for the products I want.

For that reason, I don’t quite understand the tone of Hoffelder’s remark. Rather, I think of it as this: ‘If you’re not the customer, then you’ve not taken advantage of Amazon’s great deals!’

In a world of multiple reading and multimedia tablets all vying for your attention, the Kindle continues to impress me for its ease of use, great battery life, portability, and usability. If you’re looking for a simple reading device, then the Kindle is what you want. And now, it’ll be even cheaper, given Amazon’s brilliant and inconspicuous advertising scheme. I can’t wait until I get my new one.

Imagine walking into Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint, and simply walking up to the counter and asking for a free iPad or a free Android smartphone.

Or imagine the day, which I believe whole heartedly is coming sooner rather than later, when you go to Amazon.com and request one of those free Kindle devices.

I predict that within 5 years, devices like the iPad, iPhone, Android smartphones, and the Kindle, and a whole army of other devices that have yet to invented, are going to be offered 100% free of charge and 100% subsidized by advertising.

Look at the new “ad supported Kindle” that is currently in prototype.  It is expected to launch next month (May) for 25% less than the current ad free Kindle.

That means you’ll be able to purchase the new ad supported Kindle for only $114, as opposed to the $139 ad free device.

But this is just the initial launch of the ad supported device.

What is Amazon finds that a whole army of new customers are coming to Amazon.com and a whole new source of revenue is being facilitated?

Wouldn’t it make sense then to just open up the flood gates to the Kindle and just offer it for free?

And if it’s working for the Kindle, why wouldn’t the same business model work for Apple (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch), and Google (Android smartphones, Android tablets)?

My prediction…  within 5 years we’ll have free devices on the market that are 100% subsidized by ads.

Mark your calendars!

In my view, this also opens up a whole new realm of market possibilities.

Just think of the demand for advertiser relationships and sales, the gadgets and devices themselves, and the number of consumers that are holding these gadgets.

With the ease of data access – currently 3G and 4G connectivity and WiFi – these devices could deliver a constant stream of deals to people who are out and about shopping around their towns.

And if you are the device manufacturer, or the online ecommerce site that is delivering these ads, forget about just breaking even.

What would local advertisers be willing to pay if they knew they could be displaying their ads to customers who are currently around town shopping?  It would be a pretty big premium, in my opinion.

Check out the chart below:

It’s amazing to think how staggering the number of keywords are that ecommerce sites like Amazon must be spending money on.

For each product that Amazon sells, they more than likely run a keyword campaign.  If for nothing else, so that Amazon builds the brand name associated with those products.

Equally interesting is the wide range of industries that are represented. In just the top 3, you have ecommerce, financials, and telecommunications.  This puts Google in as very strong position for the long term knowing that the search ad industry is not dependent on any one single industry.

So is this for real, or is it an April fool’s joke?  There are some rumors out there that Amazon is about to release their very own smartphone called the Amazon Blaze. So far, there have only been photos and specs leaked on the device and it’s still yet unknown if this device is real or not. The Amazon Blaze smartphone is unique in that it comes with an embedded solar panel on the back to recharge the battery throughout the day – so long chargers!  And the Blaze is supposedly powered by Android 2.3 and comes with a display panel that does not have standard back lighting which will make it very easy to read off the display in sunlight. So what do you think? Is this for real, or just an elaborate April fool’s joke?

via Android Community

The Kindle has been Amazon’s longest running best selling item for 2 years now. And the Kindle now comes with free 3G  coverage for one low price of $189. Amazon is paying for the 3G coverage of their Kindle e-reader which now allows Kindle users to read books on both WiFi and 3G completely free of charge – pretty sweet deal.

I realize that the Kindle 3G might not be something new from Amazon (I haven’t researched it too much), but it is something I just noticed and thought was pretty cool.

Could Amazon be setting a new trend with the offer of free 3G on the Kindle?

What if other mobile phone companies started offering free 3G on their devices?

I’m fully convinced that one day soon, we will see both mobile phones and 3G connectivity become 100% free of charge to end users.

What do you think?

via Amazon

Amazon is becoming one of the forefront cloud data solution providers with their Amazon Web Services.

It’s becoming more clear that cloud computing is the future of data storage and web application storage. And if all the world’s information is going to get pushed online, then we need servers that can take it there and that’s where Amazon is making their mark.

Amazon Web Services just released their end of year note compilation highlighting the updates made throughout 2010, new strategies implemented, and updates to expect in 2011.

The note release is quite extensive, and very interesting reading material, so I decided to copy the entire email I received here for you to read as well.

In the comments, let me know what you think overall about the future of cloud computing, and then also where you Amazon fitting in with their extensive web services solutions.

Here’s Amazon Web Services’ end of year release notes for 2010:

Dear AWS Community,

With the end of 2010 drawing near, we took a quick glance at the past 12 months. Most of the releases we announced were direct requests from you (our customers), such as an Asia Pacific Region, combined data transfer pricing tiers, consolidated billing, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Micro Instances, Cluster and GPU Instances, CloudFront streaming, new relational database features from Amazon RDS, a DNS service, additional console support, and more. We hope you have found these releases useful as you build on top of AWS. We strive to be the most customer centric company on earth, and to do that, we continually need your feedback. Our annual customer survey is open and we hope you will take a few minutes to tell us what you think. Please start the survey and we thank you for sharing this exciting journey with us.

This newsletter highlights the announcements that we’ve made over the last month, specifically, PCI compliance and ISO 27001 certification, Amazon Route 53, free EC2 monitoring, GPU Clusters, Amazon S3 object size increased to 5 terabytes, and the finale of the AWS Start-Up Challenge. In addition, we have released new content to help you migrate your legacy applications to the cloud – see the whitepapers below. If you are interested in migration, check out the December 20 webinar, Jon Jenkins, Director of Corporate Applications will share insights about how Amazon.com, as a customer of AWS, migrated their own internal IT applications to the cloud.
Best wishes and have a Happy New Year!

Best wishes and have a Happy New Year!

News & Announcements

To keep you up-to-date, here are the latest news items and announcements from AWS.

AWS Achieves PCI DSS Level 1 Compliance and ISO 27001 Certification
Within the last month, AWS has achieved Level 1 PCI compliance and ISO 27001 certification of our infrastructure, data centers, and services. Many customers have asked us about these certifications and we hope this announcement provides further clarity and assurance for those evaluating our security practices. AWS is now a validated PCI Service Provider which means that merchants and other service providers can become Payment Card Industry (PCI) certified while storing, processing, and transmitting credit card information using AWS. In addition, we have achieved ISO 27001 certification. ISO 27001/27002 is a widely-adopted global security standard that sets requirements and best practices for managing company and customer information. AWS’s ISO 27001certification includes all AWS data centers in all regions worldwide and AWS has established a formal program to maintain the certification. For more information please visit our ISO 27001 FAQs and PCI DSS Level 1 FAQs.

Amazon Route 53 – A New DNS Service
AWS has introduced a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) service – Amazon Route 53. It is a reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating human readable names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1. Route 53 can be used to connect user requests to infrastructure running inside or outside of the AWS cloud. Route 53 is also designed to be fast—it uses a global network of DNS servers to respond to end users with low latency. To learn more, visit the Amazon Route 53 service page or register for the December 16 webinar.

Free Monitoring for Amazon EC2 Instances
We’re excited to let you know that all Amazon EC2 instances now come with free Basic Monitoring metrics fromAmazon CloudWatch. You don’t need to do anything to get started. Simply sign in to the AWS Management Console and select one of your active instances. You will immediately be able to view graphs and track performance metrics such as CPU utilization, disk reads and writes, and network traffic. Basic Monitoring for Amazon EC2 is available immediately in all regions (US-N. Virginia, US-N. California, EU-Ireland, APAC-Singapore) – try it today!

Announcing Cluster GPU Instances for Amazon EC2 and Elastic MapReduce Cluster Support
Cluster GPU Instances are now available for Amazon EC2 and offer the power of GPU processing in the cloud. They provide 22 GB of memory, 33.5 EC2 Compute Units, and utilize the Amazon EC2 Cluster network which provides high throughput and low latency for High Performance Computing (HPC) and data intensive applications. Each GPUinstance features two NVIDIA Tesla® M2050 GPUs, delivering peak performance of more than one trillion double-precision FLOPS. Many applications can be greatly accelerated by taking advantage of the parallel processing power of hundreds of cores in the new GPU instances, such as graphics rendering, engineering design, and oil and gas exploration. Visit the Instance Types page for more details.

In addition, now you can access Cluster GPU and Cluster Compute Instances through Amazon Elastic MapReduce, allowing you to combine Hadoop’s massively parallelized architecture with high performance computing. Elastic MapReduce will handle workload parallelization, node configuration and scaling, and cluster management. Further, Elastic MapReduce applications that are I/O intensive have the opportunity to realize performance improvement by leveraging the low latency, full bisection bandwidth 10 Gbps Ethernet network between the instances in these clusters.

Amazon S3 Releases Multipart Upload and Large Object Support
Amazon S3 has announced two key features: Multipart Upload and Large Object Support. Multipart Upload enables faster uploads by accepting a single object as a set of parts. With this feature you can create parallel uploads, pause and resume an object upload, and begin uploads before you know the total object size. Amazon S3 has also increased the maximum size of an object from 5 gigabytes to 5 terabytes. This increase enables you to easily store and reference high resolution videos, large backup files, scientific instrument data or other large datasets. For more information on these features, review the Amazon S3 Developer Guide.

Amazon Elastic MapReduce Announces Support for Hive 0.7 and Hive JDBC Drivers
Amazon Elastic MapReduce has launched the ability for customers to run Hive 0.7. This provides a number of exciting features including support for the HAVING clause, IN clause, and performance enhancements from local mode queries, improved column compression, and dynamic partitioning. In addition, Amazon Elastic MapReduce has released Hive JDBC drivers which can be used with external tools such as SQuirrel SQL, an open source universal database client providing a graphical query tool on top of Amazon Elastic MapReduce. Please see the Using Hive section of the Amazon Elastic MapReduce Developer Guide for more detail on these features.

Amazon SimpleDB Introduces Batch Delete API
Amazon SimpleDB, a non-relational database service, now supports a BatchDeleteAttributes API that allows you to perform multiple DeleteAttributes operations in a single call, which reduces round trips and latencies. This enables Amazon SimpleDB to optimize requests, which generally yields better throughput. To learn more, please visit theAmazon SimpleDB Developer Guide.

Amazon RDS Cost Comparison Calculator
Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud by automatically patching database software, running back ups, and more. To help you evaluate this service and compare the cost of deploying and managing databases on Amazon RDS to that of co-location or on-premise options, you can use the new Amazon RDS Cost Comparison Calculator. Download the tool and the user guide in the AWS Economics Center.

M-Dot Wins AWS Start-Up Challenge
AWS has chosen M-Dot Network as the winner of the fourth annual AWS Start-Up Challenge. The global competition received more than 1,500 applications from 22 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe. 15 regional semi-finalists and seven global finalists were selected, including Compass Labs, Loggly, Mediology, M-Dot, TellApart, Yottaa, and Zoombu. All finalists presented at the finale event in Palo Alto, California, where M-Dot was awarded $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in AWS service credits. Read the press release for full details.

AWS Customer Satisfaction Survey – We Want Your Feedback
At Amazon Web Services we strive to be the most customer centric company on earth and use customer feedback to help us improve our products and services. We would like to hear from you. Please take a moment to fill out our annual AWS Customer Satisfaction survey to tell us more information about you and your use of Amazon Web Services. The survey is completely anonymous and we anticipate that it will take 15 minutes to complete. We appreciate your time and feedback. Start the survey.

Featured Case Studies: Yelp and Bankinter
Yelp is a popular US-based consumer review website that uses Amazon S3 to store their log files growing at 100GB per day and Amazon Elastic MapReduce to process those logs, using approximately 20 separate batch scripts with s3cmd and the Ruby Elastic MapReduce utility for monitoring. Read the full case study.

Bankinter, one of Spain’s major banks, uses Amazon EC2 as an integral part of its credit-risk simulation application. With its application, developed utilizing the AWS SDK for Java, Bankinter brought its average simulation time-to-solution down from 23 hours to 20 minutes. Read the full case study.

Technical Resources

Check out these technical resources to help you build and grow on AWS.

Migrating your Existing Applications to the AWS Cloud
This set of whitepapers are targeted at architects and technical decision makers looking to build a cloud migration strategy. The main whitepaper discusses a phase-driven strategy for migrating applications to the cloud and is accompanied by three common use case scenarios with step-by-step migration strategies and architecture diagrams.

• Migrating your Existing Applications to the AWS Cloud (23 page PDF)
• Migrating Web Applications to AWS Cloud (4 page PDF)
• Migrating Batch Processing Applications to AWS Cloud (5 page PDF)
• Migrating Backend Processing Pipelines to AWS Cloud (5 page PDF)

Amazon Linux AMI 2010.11.1 Released
A new version of the Amazon Linux AMI is available. The new version includes new features, security fixes, package updates, additional packages, and a number of Perl libraries. Users of the existing Amazon Linux AMI can access the package additions and updates through our Yum repository. A full list of all changes and additions, along with the AMI IDs, can be found in the Amazon Linux AMI Release Notes.

Mobile SDKs for AWS
AWS has released two mobile SDKs for Android and iOS that make it easier for developers to write software that uses AWS infrastructure in their mobile applications. These make it even easier to build applications such as a video application, a social networking game, or a messaging client that broadcasts messages between devices, while utilizing the scalable infrastructure of Amazon Web Services. Find these SDKs and all resources for mobile development at aws.amazon.com/mobile.

AWS Solution Providers News

Check out the latest announcements from the AWS Solution Providers community.

Adobe® Flash® Media Server 4 Software Available on Amazon EC2
Adobe Flash Media Server, an industry leading solution for streaming video and social media applications, is now available on AWS without the upfront investment of software licenses. Now small to mid-size publishers, social media developers, customers creating one-time events, and enterprises can utilize the full functionality of Adobe Flash Media Enterprise Server 4 with a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Customers simply pay for server time and data transfer used, making it more affordable and easier to get started. Adobe Flash Media Server for AWS is available immediately in the US-N. Virginia and APAC Regions. Learn more at adobe.com/go/fmsaws or visit theirSolution Providers listing.

Riverbed Announces Cloud Steelhead on AWS
Cloud Steelhead from Riverbed is a cloud-intelligent WAN optimization solution running on Amazon Web Services, and can be deployed and managed in a few easy clicks. Cloud Steelhead combines the speed and simplicity of Steelhead with subscription pricing and a host of intelligent features like transparent interception. Organizations can easily install and scale Cloud Steelhead on Amazon EC2 and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) environments. See their Solution Provider listing.

Karmasphere Analyst Integrated with Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Amazon Elastic MapReduce is fully integrated with Karmasphere’s newly announced Analyst product. Karmasphere Analyst allows data professionals to discover schema in structured and unstructured data; create and access tables; develop and debug SQL; and view query results in a visualization tool against Hadoop clusters running Apache Hive on Amazon Elastic MapReduce. With Karmasphere Analyst, users such as technical analysts, SQLprogrammers, developers and DBAs can now use Amazon Elastic MapReduce in a familiar, graphical environment from their Windows, Mac or Linux desktop. See their Solution Provider listing.

AWS On The Road

We hope you can join AWS, our customers, and partners at the following events.

AWS User Group Amsterdam Meetup
January 12, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Cost Reduction Using the Public Cloud
January 13, 9am-1pm, London, UK
Amazon Web Services and Morgan Hill are running a series of interactive workshops during January 2011 (January 13, 20, 27)

AWS Training Course by ThoughtWorks
January 14, San Francisco, CA

Strata 2011
February 1-3, Santa Clara, CA
Visit the Amazon Web Services booth in the Sponsor Pavilion and hear the keynote by Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com.

AWS Training Course by ThoughtWorks
February 7, Atlanta, GA

Virtual Events

Learn more about AWS by attending an upcoming webinar or virtual event.

Introducing Amazon Route 53 – A New DNS Service from AWS
December 16, 9:00am PST
Attend this webinar to learn about AWS’s new highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) service – Amazon Route 53. In this webinar, you will get a chance to hear from the Route 53 product team about how the service offers you a reliable and cost effective way to route end users to your Internet applications. You will also get an overview of key Route 53 concepts, advantages, and how easy it is for you to get started and manage your DNS with Route 53. There will be plenty of time to ask questions about using the service and provide feedback on features you’d like to see Route 53 deliver over the coming months.

HPC on Amazon Web Services
December 17, 11:00am PST
With Amazon Web Services, businesses and researchers can easily fulfill their high performance computational requirements with the added benefit of ad-hoc provisioning and pay-as-you-go pricing. Listen to Deepak Singh PhD, Sr. Business Development Manager, explain how AWS’s HPC offering can benefit your research lab and business. Deepak will also talk about the performance of Amazon EC2’s newest innovations including cluster compute and cluster GPU instances and the customers that are succeeding by running HPC workloads in the cloud.

Migrating Internal IT Apps to Amazon Web Services
December 20, 11:00am PST
Attend this webinar and learn how Amazon.com, as a customer of AWS, migrated their own internal IT applications to the cloud. Jon Jenkins, Director of Corporate Applications at Amazon, will talk about best practices for migrating to the AWS cloud, including how his team evaluated the cloud services, how they got started, and where they are today with more than 50 internal applications running on AWS. In addition, JJ will dive into three key application architectures: a video processing engine, BMC Remedy, and SharePoint on AWS.

AWS Office Hours – Mechanical Turk
January 12, 9:00am PST
Expand your knowledge of the cloud and Amazon Mechanical Turk through an interactive Q&A session with AWSEvangelists Steve Riley and Jinesh Varia. Join us on Wednesday, January 12 from 9am – 10am PST to hear Steve and Jinesh field a variety of Amazon Mechanical Turk questions from an audience of your peers.

How to Get Cost Efficient, Secure, and Scalable Data Storage
January 27, 10:00am PST
Learn how your organization can reap the benefits of Cloud storage, just like NSK Inc., an IT Services Management firm in Boston, did by using TwinStrata and Amazon Web Services.

Healthcare Privacy In The Cloud
Recorded Podcast
In this edition of the Build for Change podcast series, Russell Keziere of interviews Steve Riley, Senior Technical Evangelist for AWS and Ben Frenkel, Channel Development Manager for Pega. How can the Cloud become a home for next generation healthcare applications? Doesn’t HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) preclude any kind of healthcare in the Cloud? As Steve and Ben discuss, HIPAA is an important consideration, but rarely a show stopper when it comes to leveraging cloud technology.

Here’s the images indicating that Wal Mart will be selling the iPad:

via MacRumors

The iPad has been exposed.

That’s right, the market leading, trend setting, and infallible iPad has a chink in its armor and Amazon has exposed it.

Apparently, in direct sunlight, the iPad has a glare that causes it to be unreadable. That’s a problem if you’re trying to read a book, or your email, or your Facebook stream.

So Amazon has exposes this weakness with the iPad with a new commercial.

But not only was the sun glare exposed as an iPad weakness, so was the price of the iPad. The iPad starts at $499, but the Kindle rings in at $139.

Here’s the Amazon commercial that takes a shot at the iPad: