Commerce

EBay’s Testing Two New Ways to Help Sell Your Stuff

As major online retailers are being shoved further into the physical realm to keep competitive, eBay’s doing everything it can to stay in the fray with the announcement of two new pilot programs. https://gizmodo.com/how-amazon-s-same-day-delivery-plan-will-kill-your-loca-5925387 The first comes in the form of a “selling assistant” who essentially acts as a consignment store with pick-up service—for 25%…

Six Things Your Friends and Family Should Have Gotten You From Amazon

Finding the perfect Christmas gifts for your friends and family is a real challenge. And as you struggle to find things they might like, don’t forget they’re trying to do the same for you. So when you open those ugly earmuffs or the fondue pot they already got you last year, just smile politely and…

Amazon Sets Holiday Shopping Records Despite Making Half Of What It Made Last Year

On its peak day this holiday shopping season, Amazon sold an astonishing 26.5 million items at a rate of 306 items per second. And the honor of being the “#1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product” goes to Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD. The release is chock full of wins for Amazon but take…

Amazon’s Amazing Free Overnight Shipping: The Best Gifts

Behind on your holiday shopping? No worries. Amazon’s got free overnight shipping on hundreds of products through tomorrow. Here’s the best of what can still get to you—for free—before Christmas. http://amazon.com/freeshipping?tag=gizmodo08c-20 Quick note: Everything below ordered by tomorrow (12/22) at 11:59 AM PST will get to your house by end of day Monday, with free…

Is Amazon Working On Some Sort of “KindleCare”?

There’s been a (pretty shaky) rumor kicking around lately that Amazon might be trying its hand at a smartphone, and now there’s some circumstantial evidence that Amazon might be getting ready to push in another direction as well. According to GigaOM, Amazon might be getting into warranties. https://gizmodo.com/report-amazon-is-possibly-maybe-building-a-smartphone-5969121 The possibilty of Amazon launching some sort…

Amazon’s New Sitcoms Look Like They Might Actually Be Good

Amazon just took the lid off of a bunch of new, original series it’s taking to pilot, and surprise—some of them actually look really good. All Things D has the rundown on all six, and details about how they’ll be rolled out. Here’s the lineup, as told by ATD: Alpha House, about “four senators who…

Amazon Has Another Huge Security Hole

You may recall that Amazon was implicated as the weak link in the Mat Honan iCloud hack, wherein a gadget blogger had his entire online identity nuked from orbit because Amazon gave up the secondary identifying information necessary to issue a password reset over at Apple. (The last four of your credit card, incidentally.) I’m…

Penguin’s agreed with the DoJ to end pacts stopping it from lowering digital prices. Cheap Penguin ebooks FTW! [Reuters]

Your Amazon Account Might Be Getting Scammed with False Replacement Orders and You Can’t Do Anything About It

When our dear friend Mat Honan got hacked earlier this year, it was because of gaping security flaws in Apple and Amazon’s customer service systems. It hasn’t been fixed. Amazon’s customer service has another security flaw and it’s being exploited to hijack Amazon accounts and snag false replacement orders. And the scammers don’t even need…

Report: Amazon Is Possibly Maybe Building a Smartphone

Amazon just might be building a smartphone, according to the Taiwan Economic News. It claims Amazon has ordered 5 million devices and will launch the phone in the middle of 2013. This is one of those rumors that pops up every so often. It’s not very reliably sourced, so we can’t say that there’s a…

TNT is blowing up on Amazon. Falling Skies and The Closer will now be available on Prime Instant Streaming.

You Can Watch Amazon Instant Video on Your iPhone Now

One of the great things about Amazon Prime is it lets can stream a lot of movies and TV shows. And now you can do it through an iPhone app too. Amazon Instant Video has existed on the iPad, but the new version is totally updated for the iPhone 5’s extra bit of real estate.…

Every Kindle Fire Is on Sale Today—If You’re a Mom

On Monday, Amazon slashed prices on its 8.9-inch Kindle Fire tablets. If you missed that sale, you’re in luck; it’s back today, and this time applies to all Kindle Fire models. Oh, except this time you’ve got to be a mom. https://gizmodo.com/amazons-got-50-off-every-8-9-inch-kindle-fire-hd-today-5967084 The sale, limited to Amazon Mom members who also have Amazon Prime, includes…

Amazon Wants to Ship You a Laborer to Install Your Purchases

Amazon is always trying out new ideas: some work, others fail. Now the retailer is testing the idea of sending laborers to your house. https://gizmodo.com/amazon-lockers-review-the-drugstore-is-your-new-mailbo-5951272 Geek Wire has spotted that Amazon is testing a service—just in the Seattle area for now—whereby a friendly guy turns up at your place to install a new TV mount…

Is Amazon’s 8.9-Inch Kindle Fire HD a Flop?

You’ve probably heard by now that Amazon’s offering fifty bucks off every 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD. But while that’s great news for you, it hints at disappointing early days for Amazon’s big-boy tablet. Is the 8.9-inch Fire HD dying on the vine? https://gizmodo.com/amazons-got-50-off-every-8-9-inch-kindle-fire-hd-today-5967084 It would seem unlikely at first; Amazon recently crowed that it had…

Amazon’s Got $50 Off Every 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD Today (If You’re Quick)

Amazon’s Deal of the Day is a belter: its already competitively priced 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD can be had for $50 less than the usual selling price. Does that mean sales have been slower than expected? Who cares! It’s cheap tabletry for you and yours. The sale applies to all of Amazon’s larger Kindle Fires…

If You Order Amazon Gift Wrap, You Might Get This Instead

Amazon lets you pay a few extra bucks to “gift wrap” an order in case it’s being sent to someone special. Say, this holiday season! What they don’t tell you is that it’s being done by a mule. Redditor thinkimasofa sprung for the extra $3.99. He was expecting this. Instead, he received this. Close enough,…

Amazon’s Silk Browser Can Be Hacked to Provide Free Grid Computing

Cloud computing is big business. Companies and individual users rent bandwidth from large cloud services to perform all manner of tasks, from hosting small websites to churning through large, computing-intensive tasks like modelling new drug compounds. But what if you could gain access to all that computing power for free? It turns out that you…

Amazon’s New $3 Kid-Friendly Subscription Service

Amazon’s just launched Free Time Unlimited for its range of Kindle Fire tablets. It offers unlimited access to age-restricted movies, games and books for kids, for $3 a month. Essentially a subscription service for children, the service lets you tell Amazon your offspring’s gender and age, and then a custom library of books, movies, apps…

This Crazy Sea of Packages Is Santa’s Real Warehouse

Madness. That’s what Amazon’s warehouses are during the holiday shopping season. Take a look at these images. While I’ve seen others in the past, this angle of one of their warehouses is particularly striking. Endless sea of packages never ends! This is like the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Except nothing is…