Commerce

Amazon’s New Shopping Site Is Tailor Made for Hippies

Amazon will sell you just about anything through its subsidiaries, and now it’s adding a new site targeted specifically at a wide swath of dirty hippies environmentally-minded citizens. Vine is a new enterprise operated by Amazon’s Quidsi, the same company that runs Diapers.com and Soap.com. The idea is to sell people products that they can…

Kindle Fire HD’s ad opt-out will include getting rid of Recommended items on the home screen after an upcoming patch.

Walmart just broke up with Amazon; the megachain is going to stop selling all Kindle products, according to Reuters.

Google Play Finally Starts to Catch Up With 600 New Fox Titles

Google and Fox are teaming up to make the movie selection on Google Play much better. That is to say, better in the way of 600 new titles added to the storefront. In the next few weeks, new shows and movies like Family Guy, New Girl, Black Swan, X-Men, and hundreds of others will arrive…

Nokia has finally confirmed that Amazon is definitely licensing its Location Platform for maps and geocoding. [TNW]

Kindle Fire HD: The Pretty Little Tablet Spills Its Gorgeous Guts

The DIY maniacs at iFixit got their hands on the new Kindle Fire HD, cracked it open and found out some neat new details about the beautiful new 7-inch tablet’s guts. Until now, we knew Amazon’s spec battery life for the awesome the Kindle Fire HD, but we didn’t actually know how big the battery…

Developers Suspect the New Kindle Fires Will Be Hack-Resistant

If you were banking on hacking a new Kindle Fire to take advantage of cheap hardware without Amazon’s modded Android OS, you perhaps better think again. Developers over at XDA are speculating that they expect the new range of Fires to be too sophisticated to hack. In particular, a forum post provides evidence which suggests…

Amazon Is Going to Start Charging Sales Tax (in California)

Californians. Dudes. Dudettes. The gig is up, folks. Starting midnight, Amazon customers in the Golden State of California will have to start paying tax on purchases made on Amazon and “other large internet retailers”. Go click crazy now while you can! Amazon currently charges tax in seven states right now (Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North…

The wait is over: Amazon’s new Kindle Fire and Fire HD 7 are now in stock. They start shipping today. [Amazon]

Conan O’Brien’s Got an Even Cheaper Amazon Tablet For You

Amazon’s Kindle Fire has declared an all out price war with the iPad. But if you don’t need all those fancy color-screen bells and whistles, you can opt for the even cheaper e-ink Kindle. And if even that’s overkill, Conan O’ Brien has discovered Amazon is selling, or renting, an even cheaper solution. What the…

Hack Your Kindle to Use It as a Raspberry Pi Screen

Here’s something ultra-nerdy but incredibly fun: you can hack your Kindle to work as a display for a tiny portable computer like the Raspberry Pi. That’s exactly what Gef Tremblay did on a recent trip to Europe where he was travelling light: he took just a Kindle, a camera, an android phone and a Raspberry…

Days after a judge settled price fixing allegations, Amazon is slashing HarperCollins ebooks prices. Buy! [PaidContent]

Do You Use Your eReader for Anything Besides Reading Books?

E-Ink readers are great for reading books, or anything really, but mainly books. But many of them offering 3G, and apparently non-book-reading-and-buying activity is high enough that Amazon had to limit browser usage to 50MB per month. That raises the question, though: Do you use an e-ink reader for anything but reading books? Even articles…

Amazon Decides To Let Users Opt-Out of Ads on the New Kindle Fires After All

After confirmations to the contrary yesterday, Amazon has now come out and said that users will be able to opt-out of ads on the new Kindle Fire models for a one-time fee of $15. https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-all-the-new-kindle-fires-will-have-ads-that-5941434 An Amazon spokesperson reached out to us by email with the following statement: I wanted to let you know that…

The New Kindle Fire HD 4G Hasn’t Even Been Approved By The FCC Yet (Updated)

Before you can legally sell a device that does its thing on the airwaves, you have to get the permission of everyone’s favorite government agency, the FCC. And as of now, the FCC hasn’t cleared the new Kindle Fire HD 4G. The delay is probably due to the fact that the Kindle’s 4G wireless modem…

These Broken Kindle Screens Can Be Beautiful But Are They Art?

Pictures are art. Books are art. In their own way, gadgets are a kind of art. But what about a broken gadget showing (broken) pictures of books? Or a book filled with pictures of a broken gadget showing books? Whether you think it’s art or not, 56 Broken Kindles by Sebastian Schmieg and Silvio Lorusso…

The New Kindle Fires Will Have Bing for Search

Google may be the big name when it comes to Internet search, but Bing is certainly not giving up the fight. Now it’s the default search engine on all the new Kindle Fires, which will give it yet another foothold on its long, hard climb. If default Bing search strikes you as just another thing…

Confirmed: All The New Kindle Fires Will Have Ads That You Can’t Get Rid Of (Updated)

Before you get too excited about picking up a new Kindle Fire, there’s something you should know: it’s going to have ads, and you won’t be able to get rid of them. According to CNET, Amazon has confirmed that each and every model of the new Kindle Fire (7-inch, 8.9-inch, 4Gm etc) will have “Special…

E-Book Prices Should Start Dropping Soon

Book publishers have reached a settlement with the Department of Justice over the e-book price fixing ring of which Apple was allegedly kingpin. That settlement is great news, because it means we’ll be able to buy cheaper e-books really soon. Apple was accused of teaming up with HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette Book Group…

What Is a Frontlit Display?

The new Kindle Paperwhite has a frontlit screen. We knew it probably would. But the term “frontlit” is actually a little misleading, and the simplicity of what it does belies the considerable engineering required to pull it off. So what exactly is a frontlit screen, anyway? Other than amazing. A frontlit screen is, well, lit…