Skip to Content

Joystiq has your stash of criminally complete GTA IV news!
AOL Tech

Posts with tag amazon

Camera Store Offers Shopper $75 to Remove Bad Amazon Review

by Tim Stevens, posted May 6th 2008 at 5:36PMBreaking News

Shopper Leaves Bad Amazon Review, Shop Offers $75 To RemoveWoe betide the online camera shopper. Those who have an affinity for expensive photo gear know that they can save a bundle online. But, doing so often means dealing with shady, NYC-based camera shops that would just as soon spew profanity at you on the phone as listen to your complaints. This is the trap that shopper and blogger Jason Weisberger fell into when ordering a new, $5,000 Nikon D3 from an Amazon-affiliated retailer, Cameta Camera. He didn't like the store's service and left it a bad review, which resulted in Cameta Camera seemingly offering him a bribe to remove the negative feedback!

Weisberger had paid a whopping $75 in shipping to get the camera delivered and found that the seller had simply thrown the camera's box into a larger box, with no extra packing, and sent it on its way. The outer box was thoroughly trashed during shipment but somehow the camera inside didn't receive any damage. Weisberger called to express his disappointment and, after getting treated rudely over the phone, left the negative feedback at Amazon.

The next day he received a very apologetic e-mail offering to refund the $75 shipping charge he received, on one condition -- that he remove that negative review. By Weisberger's account, that's bribery. Even so, the company in question makes a valid point, that often retailers rectify customer complaints but the customers in question don't then go back and update their reviews.

What's your take, an honest shop trying to protect its reputation, or a sleazy retailer trying to bribe its way to good reviews? At least they didn't sue him ... [Source: Dethroner, via BoingBoing]

Amazon Intros TextBuyIt, For Mobile Comparison Shopping

by Will Safer, posted Apr 3rd 2008 at 1:54PM

Amazon.com's TextBuyIt

We'll admit it. We've been chased out of a big box retailer or two for taking pictures of products and writing notes on prices. It seems comparison shopping isn't something these stores want their customers to be doing.

But in comes Amazon.com to the rescue.

The giant online retailer announced a new service called TextBuyIt for a little comparison shopping and buying, and it's as easy as sending a text and receiving a text message.

Here's how the new service from Amazon works:

First, find a product you want to buy. Send a text message to "AMAZON" (262966) with the name of the product, search term or a UPC or ISBN code, and in short order Amazon replies with the product or products that match the search, along with prices. To buy an item, reply to the text message by entering the unique single digit number next to the item you want. You then then receive a short phone call from Amazon with the final details of the order. Then you confirm or cancel the purchase.

Easy please-y.

If it's your first time using the TextBuyIt service, you'll be asked for your e-mail address and shipping ZIP code that's connected to your Amazon.com account. The e-tailer then uses your default settings for payment, shipping address and shipping speed.

This is another service that's similar to what our friends in Asia are already doing all the time. In Japan, it's common for shoppers to do their buying via mobile phone. Now we get to satisfy our need to shop on the fly, as well.

From Amazon.com and Reuters.


Related Links:

Amazon Gaining On iTunes' Lead In Online Music Sales

by Thomas Houston , posted Mar 27th 2008 at 10:02AM



Amazon recently moved into the number two online music retailer spot without much fanfare. Amazon's online MP3 store opened merely six months ago, and it appears to be gaining on the number one retailer -- Apple's iTunes Store, which commands 80% of online digital music sales.

The trends towards moving away from music burdened with digital rights management (DRM) software created new opportunities for Amazon. Why has DRM-free music -- which lets people play purchased tunes on any digital player or computer -- become such an important area of growth in the online music business? As Amazon's director of digital music, Pete Baltaxe, explained to USA Today: "Songs sold without DRM, at high quality, with album art, that's the best way to get people to buy music instead of stealing it," whereas DRM is a way to punish people who are buying...."

While Apple worked with record label EMI to sell DRM-free music in early 2007, the iTunes giant didn't have much luck getting other major labels immediately signed on. Instead of working with Apple -- currently offering 2 million DRM-free songs -- Warner, Sony/BMG and Universal decided to offer parts of their catalogs DRM-free on Amazon. Amazon's DRM-free library totals around 4.5 million, and is well-positioned to compete with iTunes.

Hopefully, the competition between the two retailers will result in better pricing and accessibility to music for consumers.

From USA Today

Related Links:

Gibson Sues 'Rock Band' Creators, Wal-Mart, and Other Retailers

by Thomas Houston , posted Mar 21st 2008 at 5:52PM



Legendary guitar company Gibson filed a patent-infringement suit against Viacom and Electronic Arts, the makers of 'Guitar Hero,' alleging that 'Rock Band''s unique controller and gameplay are currently covered by a Gibson patent. This news doesn't come as too much of a surprise. Earlier this month, Gibson alerted Activision that its 'Guitar Hero' game infringes on earlier Gibson patents, despite Gibson's licensing deals with 'Guitar Hero.'

Gibson also went on to file suit against retailers Toys 'R' Us, GameStop, Amazon, Wal-Mart and Kmart in order to halt sales of the hugely popular game. 'Rock Band' has been out for about six months now and the 'Guitar Hero' has been around for years, so we're wondering what took Gibson so long.

From Engadget and The Wall Street Journal

Related Links:

Amazon Kindle E-Book Reader Still In Short Supply

by Tim Stevens, posted Mar 13th 2008 at 10:19AM

Amazon's Kindle E-Book Reader Still in Short SupplyThe idea of an electronic book-sized device that could be loaded with hundreds or thousands of different titles is just about as old as the modern computer. Many so-called e-book readers have been produced over the years, but none got much attention from the traditionalists who said they still liked their paper.

Then came Amazon's Kindle, which appears to be doing to the e-book market what Apple's iPod did to the MP3 player market. But the Kindle may be a little too popular for its own good. Even months after its initial release, the Kindle is still experiencing shortages, which means you still can't order one and expect prompt delivery.

Amazon.com still features the Kindle prominently at the top of its front page, but click on in to buy and you'll see the following message:
Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. We are working hard to manufacture Kindles as quickly as possible and are prioritizing orders on a first come, first served basis. Please ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We will keep you informed by email as we get more precise delivery dates.
That's the same message that popped up before Christmas and hasn't come down since. According to reports, the average wait time for a Kindle seems to be about 4-6 weeks, which isn't terrible if you're a patient person. (We are, after all, talking about a device for reading books here, people, which is typically only a past-time of the laid back.)

That said, if you need your gadget fix right away, prepare to pay a $50 - $100 premium on eBay. That's far better than the $600 markup over the $400 retail price we saw right before the holidays.

From USA Today

Related Links:

Amazon, NY Governor Battle Over Online Sales Tax

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 13th 2008 at 5:02PM

Amazone and NY Governor Battle it Out Over Online Sales Tax
New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer has launched an effort to collect state sales tax on goods purchased online. The governor has said that forcing online retailers, such as Amazon.com, to collect the taxes would send an influx of $47 million to Albany.

Amazon is fighting the proposal tooth and nail. New York consumers are sure to not support the idea, but local merchants and small business owners think it's about time that online giants like Amazon lose their tax-free advantage.

Spitzer's budget proposal, which includes the online sales tax, faces an uphill battle. As if opposition from online retailers and consumers wasn't enough, law and precedent may not be on his side either. In 1992 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not force online retailers to collect sales taxes unless they had a physical retail outlet in the state.

New York currently collects sales taxes from online sales from companies with brick and mortar locations in the state.

From AOL Money & Finance

Related links:

HarperCollins Offering Free Books Online

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 11th 2008 at 3:11PM

HarperCollins Publisher
Shopping online is incredibly convenient, but shopping in a physical store has some perks. When shopping for books, all you have is reviews and maybe an excerpt or two to help you decide which new paperback to pick up. But at a book store, you can sit and read the first few chapters, or the whole book. HarperCollins, a major publishing company, is hoping to increase sales by allowing visitors to its Web site to read some of its more popular books for free.

Books such as 'Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy' by Food Network star Robert Irvine, 'I Dream in Blue: Life, Death and the New York Giants' by Roger Director, and 'The Undecided Voter's Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose' by Mark Halperin are available in their entirety for perusal on the HarperCollins Web site.

Books available through the Browse Inside program will only be available for one month and will not be downloadable for offline viewing or printing.

It seems that this experiment would work best for reference books (like the aforementioned cookbook) with lots of pictures and big type, since reading novels and the like on a typical computer screen can be irritating to the eyes and plenty tiring.

From the New York Times

Related Links:

Amazon Buys Audio-Book E-tailer Audible

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 1st 2008 at 5:21PM

Amazon Kindle
For the few of you out there lucky (crazy) enough to have gotten your hands on the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, one feature may have perplexed you -- the headphone jack. Headphones would be pretty useless on a device that can't play back audio. But we expect an update soon to unlock that feature as Amazon has just snatched up the web's biggest audio-book retailer, Audible.

Amazon sells everything else under the sun, so getting in on the audio-book market only makes sense. It's unclear how the Amazon purchase will affect Apple's deal with Audible for content access, or even who would pay $399 for an e-book reader only to listen to audio-books on it. That's what your iPod is for.

If you don't know what a Kindle is, see the gallery below.

Gallery: Amazon Kindle, Up Close



From BetaNews

Related links:

HDTV Sales Surge In Super Bowl Lead-Up

by Will Safer, posted Jan 31st 2008 at 10:57AM

Samsung 52-inch LN-T5265F


Of course you want to watch the Super Bowl in HDTV. Who doesn't? It seems the lead up to the big game is the second biggest driver of high-definition LCD TV sales for Amazon.com, according to the e-tailer's latest numbers. (The biggest driver is, of course, holiday season gift giving.)

So which TV leads the pack? The mantle this time goes to Samsung and its $2,199 52-inch 1080p LNT5265F set.

Samsung also dominates this top 10 list, with four of the spots. Sharp has three, Sony two and Toshiba just one. All but one of these TV sets is 1080p and all but two are larger than 40-inches. (Do we see the continued trend here? Go big and get the highest resolution you can.)

We're going to watch the game on a 42-inch Toshiba, but maybe we'll listen to one quarter of it on the radio -- and imagine what the game action looks like, just as in the olden days.

From Gearlog.


Related Links:



Netflix Pre-Empts Apple With Unlimited Movie Downloads

by Tim Stevens, posted Jan 15th 2008 at 1:35PM

Netflix Pre-Empts Apple With Unlimited Movie DownloadsIn the war between Netflix and Blockbuster for online rental domination, it sure looks like Netflix has come out ahead. As Blockbuster suffers layoffs and other financial woes, Netflix traffic from subscribers is way up, far past competition. That battle isn't quite over yet, but for Netflix it's time to start a second fight on a second front: online downloads. Its latest strike is to make "Instant" downloadable movies unlimited for most subscribers.

Netflix launched the streaming service back in early 2007 as "Watch it Now," but it got a retooling and a renaming when it was hacked in August. The service lets you stream one of hundreds of films and television series collections from the Netflix site through a web browser. Right now it sadly only works through Internet Explorer on Windows, making its applicability somewhat limited. Instead of opening it up to other browsers (and Macs), Netflix chose to remove any limits on hours of viewing per month on subscribers. This move comes ahead of an anticipated announcement from Apple of movie rentals from iTunes. This, combined with competition from Amazon's downloadable service and similar offerings from Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, means the downloadable rental space is finally heating up.

Can Netflix win both in the disc-based media realm as well as the online direct-download area? Its legion of dedicated subscribers will certainly be pulling from it, but Apple fans certainly don't lack dedication themselves.

From Consumerist

Related Links:

Netflix and LG to Bring Digital Movies to your TV

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 3rd 2008 at 2:09PM

Netflix Teams Up with LG to Bring Digital Movies to your TVAfter leaving Blockbuster in its dust, Netflix is looking to expand its reach beyond the decidedly low-tech DVD rental business. Sure, Netflix.com has its Watch Instantly feature, but that still requires a PC to stream digital content in questionable quality. Cutting out the computer is an important step in seamlessly integrating your digital content and your home theater. To that end Netflix is teaming up with LG to stream movies and TV shows straight to LG's upcoming line of Internet-connected HDTVs and combination Blu-ray / HD DVD players.

The Netflix deal is looking to one-up Amazon's deal with TiVo to stream films from its Unbox service to TiVo set top boxes. Netflix's likely hope is that it can ultimately ditch those costly red envelopes.

From the New York Times

Related links:

Amazon Kindle Hacked, Leading to More E-Books for Readers

by Tim Stevens, posted Dec 13th 2007 at 8:54AM

Kindle Protected Files Hacked, Still ProtectedJust a few weeks after its release, the Amazon Kindle has already had its DRM cracked. DRM is of course Digital Rights Management, the bane of many legal digital music download users. DRM is applied to the Kindle's files to keep users from simply sharing digital versions of books, magazine, and newspapers with friends.

Surprisingly, the new DRM-breach doesn't enable enable users to subvert that DRM and share those files. Instead, the development has expanded the library of file types that are readeable on the Kindle. Currently, the Kindle uses a modified version of the MobiPocket file format, created by a French eBook company that was purchased by Amazon back in 2005 when the Kindle was just a twinkle in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' eye.

But Reverse Engineering's Igor Skochinsky, the developer behind the DRM-crack, has discovered is that it's possible to take existing MobiPocket files and modify them to be viewable on the Kindle, something that was previously not possible thanks to the MobiPocket DRM. This means that the already reasonably impressive library (90,000 titles) of Kindle titles is now even greater. This is good news for readers, but some of the steam of this discovery was let out with word that Fictionwise, a major e-tailer of MobiPocket eBooks, is also now letting you directly download files in Kindle format, even for books you've bought in the past!

Anyhow, for other MobiPocket files that aren't going to be converted for you, Reverse Engineering provides a few scripts you can try to get them Kindle-ready

So what does all this tech-developer intrigue mean for you? More digital books for you early-adopting e-readers ou there -- -- assuming you managed to get one of the things to read them on.


From Reverse Engineering

Related Links:

Amazon's New Kindle Displays eBooks and Newspapers

by Tim Stevens, posted Nov 19th 2007 at 11:10AM

Amazon's Kindle: The eBook's Second ChanceThe book is the last bastion of non-digital media. Music and videos have long since gone digital, magazine and newspaper subscriptions are suffering as more readers turn to blogs and news sites to get their info, and it's hard to even compare the size of the video game industry to the board game industry. Yet the book has held on through a number of attempts at replacement, with various digital eBook readers coming and ultimately going over the years, most hindered by minimal selection. Now Amazon thinks the time is right for another. Today, the book giant launches its Kindle eBook Reader.

The Kindle is a small device with a six-inch E-ink display. E-ink is a type of LCD that requires very little power to operate, enabling the Kindle to get 30 hours of battery life despite sporting battery-sapping support for Wi-Fi and Sprint's high-speed mobile broadband EV-DO network. This means you can purchase and download books from almost wherever, even sitting at an airport terminal waiting for your flight, and you can also subscribe to blogs and even newspapers like 'The New York Times' and have them delivered straight to the device. With Amazon selling new releases at $9.99, the prices aren't too bad, especially compared to the $20 - $30 you might pay for your typical hardcover.

The Kindle is most comparable to Sony's Reader, another small E Ink-based eBook reader that sports much the same functionality but without the wireless, so you have to sync to your computer to get books. (The Reader also doesn't offer periodicals or newspapers.) We think the Reader looks a bit nicer with its understated design and silver or blue color when compared to the Kindle's angular design, making it look like a prop from an early 1980's sci-fi movie. The Reader is $100 cheaper, too, selling at $299 vs. $399 for the kindle. But, compare book prices, and you'll see Sony's charging $15.99 for new releases, which could add up if you're a frequent reader.

Amazon's definitely pulling out the stops to launch the Kindle today, letting the thing dominate their front page, setting up a massive product page, and even getting respectable authors like Toni Morrison to shill for the thing in a series of videos.

Will the Kindle finally bring the book into the digital age, or are we as a civilization destined to still be cutting down trees for our light reading hundreds of years for now? We just know this thing won't start any revolutions until it drops under $200.

From Newsweek.com

Related Links:

TiVo Adding Rhapsody Music Service

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 10th 2007 at 8:29AM

TiVo Adding Music Through Rhapsody

TiVo and Real announced a partnership yesterday that brings the popular Rhapsody service and its over four million songs to your TV (or, preferably, your TV that's connected to a home theater system). For $13 - $15 a month, you get access to the award-winning Rhapsody subscription service, which lets you "rent" any of its four million songs as long as you keep paying the monthly fee.

TiVo has been losing subscribers to the DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) offered by cable and satellite companies. TiVo is trying to convince consumers that its recorders are more than just DVRs, by offering extras like music from Rhapsody and downloadable movies from Amazon's Unbox movie service. These are cool services and extras, but unless you've got a sweet home theater setup with multiple speakers, do you really wants to listen to music on your TV?

From USA Today

Related Links:

Amazon MP3 Store Takes Aim at iTunes

by Tom Conlon, posted Sep 25th 2007 at 5:35PM

Amazon MP3 Store Takes Aim at iTunes

Today, Amazon.com quietly re-targeted its missiles to point them squarely at Apple. The Internet superstore has launched a public test version of amazonmp3, its new music download service that offers MP3s compatible with every digital media player on the planet. That means you can download tracks and listen to them with iTunes and iPod just as easily as you could with Windows Media Player and, say, a Creative Zen.

The songs are also free of DRM copy protection, meaning you can freely copy them from device to device without getting tripped up by legal red tape. Unfortunately, that means the store is only offering songs from Universal and EMI, the two major labels that have gotten with the times and dropped DRM. Warner and Sony still won't set their songs free on the Internet without DRM, which means they won't be appearing on amazonmp3 any time soon. Even Universal and EMI haven't opened up their catalogs completely, further diminishing what's available on amazonmp3.

That said, we like what we see so far. Unlike iTunes, there's no flat rate for songs and albums. Songs are generally 99 cents a pop, though the top 100 songs are offered at a 10-cent discount. Just like in a music store at the mall, there's a bargain bin for albums (usually priced $8.99) that price as low as $4.99 and under. We found some excellent multi-track singles from the likes of Nirvana, Lily Allen and the Pixies for dirt-cheap.

One thing to note: While songs can be downloaded a la carte through your browser, you will need to download an amazonmp3 client program in order to download albums – but you're already used to that from using iTunes anyway.

Overall, we think we've found a new way to buy music. The selection isn't as big as we'd like it right now, but if you've already got all of your information stored with Amazon as a customer anyway, this really couldn't be any more convenient.

Related Links:


AOL Tech Network



Latest Reviews from CNET.com

CNET provides the latest tech news, unbiased reviews, videos, podcasts, software, and downloads, making tech products easy to find, understand and use.

Top Product Reviews

Weblogs, Inc. Network

AOL News

Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in:

Joystiq
Download Squad
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
BloggingStocks
Xbox 360 Fanboy
Autoblog