amazon

Amazon has released a luxury version of the Kindle e-Reader, with a price tag to match. It's drawn comparisons to Apple's high-priced iPads, despite being a single-purpose device. New Kindle editions over the past few years have mainly involved very ... small tweaks to an established design. The new Kindle Oasis has been redesigned to be easier to hold. The most notable difference is that the device is no longer a perfectly flat device. One side of it is the thinnest a Kindle has ever been, at barely an eighth of an inch. However, the other side has a tapered bump that takes it up to a ... (view more)

Amazon will have to go to court to defend claims that the search tool on its site misleads customers about the products it stocks. Watchmaker Multi Time Machines (MTM) wants Amazon to make it clearer that it doesn't sell its watches. MTM specializes ... in selling expensive watches which are particularly sturdy and water resistant. They are designed to display the time in a way that's easy to read with very little light used; however, some models also have an option to switch on an extremely bright light. Although sold to the public, many of the watches are designed for and used by the ... (view more)

Apple has lost a federal appeal against a ruling that it conspired to keep e-book prices artificially high. The verdict means it will have to pay $450 million in penalties and compensation. It marks the ending of a case dating back to 2012 based ... around two different models of pricing for electronic books. Amazon, which dominated the market before Apple started selling ebooks, uses the same model as with print books: the publisher sets a wholesale price and then the retailer decides how much to charge customers. Apple instead pushed for the "agency model" in which the publisher ... (view more)

Amazon is reportedly exploring the idea of paying members of the public to deliver packages to their neighbors. It appears to be a bare bones idea that may not lead to anything. According to sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the project is ... codenamed On My Way. The basic idea is for Amazon to pay retail stores to act as a delivery hub for their neighborhood, working either on a flat rate for a certain time period, or a per-delivery fee. (Source: wsj.com ) The stores would then hold the parcel until a local citizen using a dedicated app saw there was a parcel available in their area ... (view more)

Amazon is launching a range of physical buttons to place around your home and press when you want to reorder an item for purchase. Despite the time of year, it insists the buttons are not an April Fool's Day joke. The buttons are called Amazon Dash. ... Each is linked to one of 18 retailers or brands, and you can get hold of buttons free of charge if you are a member of Amazon's Prime program, a subscription service that includes free shipping and online video access. (Source: forbes.com ) The buttons, which appear to be about the size of a USB memory stick, have adhesive stickers so you ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Mike' writes: " Dear Dennis, [Regarding your post about the TorrentLocker Ransomware virus , I would like to hire you to help me set up a backup on my system to help keep me protected against such threats. As for my question, I ... have a Windows 7 Lenovo desktop with a 1 TB internal hard drive] ... I want to clone my internal hard drive to an external hard drive , maybe once a week. I then want to reverse clone the hard drives [in case I get hit with a virus like TorrentLocker] ... It seems intuitive that [when I clone the hard drive for backup, that] both hard drives should ... (view more)

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) thinks Amazon.com should be on the hook for unauthorized purchases made by children while using apps on their smartphones, tablets, and even computers. In a recent complaint filed in a U.S. court, the ... FTC says parents whose children made unauthorized purchases should receive refunds from Amazon. The problem surrounds free-to-play games that are easily downloaded onto mobile devices; such games typically start out with a basic character and story, but then require players to make expensive (though easy to complete) 'purchases' in order to see ... (view more)

Most stories regarding privacy on the Internet involve complaints that tech firms go too far when divulging personal details of its users. In a twist of irony, however, advertisers are now complaining that Amazon and Apple are far too protective of ... their customer details. Several major advertising groups have told industry magazine 'Ad Age' that the two firms are missing out on ad revenue because they refuse to share personal customer information to the same extent as the likes of Google and Facebook. (Source: adage.com ) The advertisers say that the more details they have about ... (view more)