Commerce

Amazon’s Got a Faster Kindle Fire HDX and a Fleet of $100 Tiny Tablets

Last year, Amazon’s Kindle tablets really grew up. They got fantastic and stylish new design, and a software update to back it up. This year, Amazon’s trotting out a new 8.9 Kindle Fire HDX with faster guts. You won’t find a 7-inch version if that’s what you’re looking for, but Amazon does have some staggeringly…

Leaked Details About Two New Kindles Appear Online

Details about two new upcoming Kindle readers have leaked online. A German website first pointed out that information about the next generation of Amazon’s e-readers had appeared on the German version of Amazon’s website. It’s gone now, but not before revealing that there will be two new types: an upgraded “basic” version, and a new…

Amazon’s Using the Heat From Its Data Centers To Warm Its New HQ

Downtown Seattle is being slowly consumed by Amazon-funded infrastructure, thanks to the expansion of its corporate headquarters—glass domes, bike lanes, streetcar improvements. Now the company has figured out an innovative way to heat their new buildings by using the energy generated by their data centers across the street. The process—called hydronic heat—works by transferring the…

Those Great Fire Phone Headphones Are Just $10 Right Now

The Fire Phone might be underperforming, but its accompanying earbuds are great. Gizmodo’s Eric Limer had great things to say about them that you can read below, and you can pick them up for just $10 today, with a $1 MP3 credit thrown in for good measure. That’s an easy recommendation for pretty much anyone,…

Your Amazon Account Can Be Hacked Via a Malicious Kindle Ebook

If you download Kindle ebooks from dubious sources aka anywhere other than Amazon, watch out. A security researcher has discovered a security hole in the “Manage Your Kindle” page on Amazon’s website that outs your Amazon credentials to hackers when you upload a malicious ebook. Amazon’s provides an extremely handy “Send to Kindle” plugin for…

Audible Security Flaw Lets Thieves Download Unlimited Free Audiobooks

A loophole in Audible’s security is making it easyto get unlimited free audiobooks, as long as you have no moral qualms about using a fake name and credit card. It turns out that Audible, which is owned by Amazon, doesn’t verify credit cards and user information before it allows people to start downloading audiobooks, so…

Amazon Redesigns Its Login Page For the First Time In Decades

Amazon has built its brand around consistency—it rarely follows popular user interface trends, and its design mission has always been ruthless pragmatism. But now, for the first time in many, many years, it’s given its login page an overhaul. It’s the end of an era, and it could signal broader, site-wide changes. The new page,…

Amazon’s third round of pilots are out today, streamable on Amazon Instant Video. There are five shows, three of which are comedies, including Red Oaks from Stephen Soderbergh; The Cosmopolitans, which stars Chloe Sevigny and Adam Brody; and Really, which stars some people I have never heard of. [Amazon]

Cloud Storage Showdown: Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud and More Compared

Cloud storage bigwig Dropbox just slashed the price of its plans, offering 1TB of storage for $10 per month. And it’s not alone. Over the last year, most of the major players have been cutting prices and upping sizes. So what’s the best option today? The price of storage has gotten so cheap that most…

How To Dodge A Bullet Ant 12 Stories Up — In The Rainforest Canopy

In the final installment of Into The Amazon, LCA heads into the rainforest canopy, overloads the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, discovers a constellation of stars under her feet, then shows you how you can do all this yourself, for science! I’m suspended over a nearly twelve-story abyss, so far above the forest floor that my…

Why Everyone Wanted to Buy Twitch

Even if you’re not “a gamer,” you’ve heard of Twitch. It’s a live-streaming juggernaut, the fourth-highest source of peak-time internet traffic in the United States, the place that did that Pokemon thing. It only makes sense that Google wanted to buy them, and that Amazon just did. In fact, the surprising thing is that more…

Into The Amazon: What To Do When Attacked By A Poo Bat

In part three of this series, Laurel actually gets into the Amazon, taking a swim after a reported lack of caiman sightings. That was after finding dozens of the world’s most venomous spiders and prior to a close encounter with ayahuasca. The spider above my head is as big as my hand, squatting on an…

The Amazon Fire Phone isn’t great. But its first software updatemeans that it now does multi-tasking, allows you to organize apps in folders, lets you pin apps to the home screen, and last longer on a charge, too. Still not good, but catching up.

Amazon’s New Mobile Card Reader Brutally Undercuts Square And PayPal

Look who crashed Square’s payments-on-the-go party. Amazon just announced its own credit card reader and app combination called Amazon Local Register, which will enable anyone from your mom organizing a yard sale to taco trucks use a smartphone or a tablet to instantly accept credit card payments. The device only costs $10, the app is…

Watch the Evolution of Amazon’s Kindle Hardware In a Single GIF

The Amazon Fire Phone is kind of whack, but being ugly is not one of its problems. Amazon’s hardware design has improved over the years, and the GadgetLove team created this GIF to illustrate how its products have evolved since that first clunky, oddly designed Kindle. Not every iteration is included (no Paperwhite, for example)…

NYC, Philly, DC and More Can Get Same-Day Amazon Delivery Now

Incredibly lazy? Physically bonded to your couch? Chronically last-minute? Amazon’s got your back—as long as you live in one of the six cities that just gained same-day delivery. Yes, if you’re in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Dallas, or Indianapolis, starting today you can choose to get your Amazon orders super-expedited to your…

Flappy Bird Is Back, Exclusively on Amazon’s Fire TV

Amazon’s Fire TV is a great, speedy, oddly expensive piece of hardware, and so naturally Amazon needs to find something that can make it special. Something that can make use of that controller. And what better console-selling exclusive than…Flappy Bird? Yep. https://kotaku.com/flappy-bird-is-back-on-amazon-fire-1614734545 Amazon’s Fire TV is the exclusive home of the multiplayer “sequel” to Flappy…

The 5 Best Things You Can Buy From Amazon’s 3D Printing Store

Amazon’s new 3D printing store has its share of straight-up bizarre flotsam, like an $66 decorative egg cup that absolutely no one in the world needs. I can’t mislead you: A lot of the stuff on offer is overpriced and weird. But some of the store’s offerings are solid. Here are our top picks. Wallet…

Amazon Pleads With Hachette to Cut E-Book Prices

In the ongoing spat between Amazon and Hachette over pricing, Amazon has now called for Hachette to simply cut its e-book prices—a move which, it claims, will lower consumer prices on digital titles and provide writers with a larger paycheck at the same time. https://gizmodo.com/when-amazon-plays-dirty-you-lose-1580596374 In a blog post published yesterday, the Amazon Books Team…

The Onion Profiles a New Kindle That Brags About Your Taste in Books

Bookworms who’ve balked at upgrading to an e-reader have a long list of reasons why they won’t give up their paper copies. But there’s only one real reason why anyone would carry around a book anymore: It lets them show off what they’re reading in public. And as The Onion reveals, that’s what led Amazon…