It has been leaked that Amazon has been testing a complete redesign of their site. Here is what it is going to look like.
Click to enlarge
The new design is currently in place on Amazon.com, but is still yet to launch in other countries. It will be interesting to see if users like the sleaker and more basic design.
What do you think?
In great news, I have just started writing for the Huffington Post UK. You can head over and check out my Huffington Post Profile here and you can also check out my first article “Amazon Finally Launch Digital Video Game Download Store in the UK“.
I am planning on writing a few articles per week on the Huffington Post, but the majority of articles will be on here.
Recently, we have had a lot of issues with the site and some functionality, but we have been working hard to fixed that and everything is slowly starting to come together. Thus, expect a lot more great articles to go live very soon.
Google Music beta is here and you can request your invite here (only if your in the USA).
So what is Google Music? Google Music is a very basic music locker and music player. Google music allows you to store your music library in the cloud (simply just add your mp3 files) and then play your music on both PC, MAC and Android phones. Google Music is currently free but has an upload capacity of 20,000 songs.
It seems like Google are trying to get into the music industry, but the product itself seems to have a limited shelf life. I really think music streaming of an unlimited library is the way forward. Owning your own mp3 files is very limiting and is going to cost a lot to the consumer in the long run (that is if they dont torrent the files in the first place). It seems like a music subscription service on every possible device is the way the industry is moving. I think it is going to be very difficult for the leading technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to win in this market, because they will have to get their products on all platforms through very difficult negotiations.
Google Music seems to be exactly the same as the recent Amazon Cloud Drive, so Google will need to match and beat them on price.
Overall, Google Music seems to be like a poor mans Spotify.
Amazon has just launched a great new membership fashion deals site, MyHabit.com. MyHabit will offer up to 60 percent off normal retail prices with free shipping and free returns. MyHabit will also feature some amazing photographs and 360 degree views of the clothing.
This daily deals site is something that Amazon could have utilised about 6 months ago, but now it seems like they are just way too late to the party.
Amazon.com seems to have finally succeeded in breaking into the “cloud” market with their new “Amazon Cloud Drive.” It touts a default of 5GB of online storage for free, unlimited access from any computer and, of course, reassures customers they will never have to worry about losing their files again. Their claim is, “Anything digital, securely stored, available anywhere.” But is it really as great as they claim? I decided to dig deeper and find out.
I received an email from Amazon when the cloud drive was launched and was given $2.00 in credit towards mp3 purchases. Intrigued by this new development (and the free music credits), I ventured to their website to check it out. I quickly found a song I wanted and clicked the buy button. It asked if I wanted to save the music to my cloud drive. “Simple enough,” I thought. Then I wouldn’t have to download it – I could just stream it. I immediately went to my new cloud drive, selected my new song (which was available immediately) and pressed play. It buffered up the song and played but I discovered it was also downloading to my computer as well. Bummer.
Next I decided to try uploading some music. I clicked “Upload to your Cloud Drive” and was prompted to download the “Amazon MP3 Uploader.” Wait a minute – so I have to use proprietary software to upload music? “That’s a bit inconvenient,” I thought, but I downloaded it anyway. After installing the software, it decided it had to scan my entire hard drive for music, which was a long and tedious process. Once it finally loaded, it told me I had X playlists and X songs not in my cloud drive and asked if I wanted to upload it all now. I declined (as it would have been way more than 5GB of space) and chose a few albums to upload. What I found was that it killed my internet speed and I saw no way to limit the upload rate. Frustrated after about 20 minutes of sluggish internet, I killed the uploader until that night when it could run and not bother me.
In the meantime, I checked out the Android mp3 player from Amazon, wondering if it too would have to download my music before playing it. I discovered that while it can play the song through buffered memory, it still has to download; so listening while downloading isn’t a good option as the song often plays faster than it downloads (unless you’re using Wi-Fi). So once again I’m stuck waiting.
Ultimately, I was able to get the music I wanted uploaded and then downloaded again (to my phone). Now that I have done so, I can simply open the Amazon cloud player and quickly hear what I want (slightly faster than searching my hard drive and includes better filtering options). So was the hassle worth it?
Pros:
Cons:
Overall, I would say Amazon has a potentially great thing going on here. If they simply added the ability to stream without downloading, I would give the Amazon Cloud Player and Drive 5/5 stars. As it is now, and considering their hefty fees for storage in excess of 5GB, I give it 3.5/5 stars. It’s a great concept, but could use a few tweaks to make it the best.
Nokia has just launched the E7 in the USA. US consumers can now purchase the E7 from all good Nokia retailers. The E7 was released in Europe back in February, but it was held back for US consumers.
The E7 features:
The E7 is available from Amazon.com for $649, or Nokia USA for $679.
[Via Phone Scoop]
It has been reported by AIM (Association of Independent Music) that iTunes, Amazon and Spotify, make up 94.4% of all indie digital revenues in the UK. Thus, the other services arent really worth worrying about at the moment.
Alison Wenham, head of the UK-based consortium, pointed to a lopsided logjam. “There are now a series of monopolies and it is jolly hard for anyone else to get a slice of the market”.
In the US there is still no Spotify presence and it seems as though eMusic is the third largest player, but Im sure they will change when Spotify finally enter the US this year.
via RouteNote
Dragon Age II is a single player role-playing game (RPG) for play on the PC. Epic sequel to the BioWare developed 2009 Game of the Year, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II continues the adventure with a new hero, Hawke, and utilizes the choices made by the player to affect a story that spans ten years worth of time in-game. Additional game features include: the ability to choose your character’s class and sex, a new cinematic in-game experience, a nonlinear narrative and the ability to import saved information from earlier Dragon Age games.
Price: $59.95 now only $39.99 (33% off). Buy Here at Amazon
Amazon Web Services has just launched CloudFormation. Allen Stern over at Centernetworks probably has the best description of the announcement.
The blog post announcing the launch, written by Amazon’s Jeff Barr, talks about baking and recipes and the difference between a cook and a baker. I guess today if you use Amazon Web Services, you can become a baker.
Becoming a baker means, “you can create an entire stack with one function call.” You setup a template of services and then when you run the job, Amazon will create and setup everything to your recipe. The recipe can include pretty much all of Amazon Web Services offerings including EC2, load balancers, Simple DB, SQS (Simple Queue Service), SNS (Simple Notification Service), etc. The template is written in JSON.
The blog post provides a sample template which “bakes” a WordPress setup on Amazon Web Services. It appears that if your goal is to run WordPress on Amazon, you could use their template, make your specific changes, and be up and running in minutes.
Jeff has another blog post showing how the CloudFormation process works within the admin console. Some of the sample templates include: Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, PHP Hello World and Rails Hello World applications.
Here is a great deal on an LG LHB535 1100-Watt Network Blu-ray Disc Home Theater System.
Price: $499.99 now only $249.00. Buy from Amazon here.
