10Feb

QWERTY FTW! The Droid 4 Is Now Available, $199 From Verizon or $99 At Amazon

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The Droid 4 has landed. The fourth incarnation of the most important Android series is now on sale. Verizon is hawking the phone for $199 with a two-year contact, but the phone is also available through Amazon where it’s only $99 on-contract. Either way it’s a solid buy considering the LTE capability and quality hardware.

The Droid 4 shares much of the RAZR’s styling: cropped corners, silver trim, and similar soft buttons. It also packs much of the same internals with a LTE radio, 16GB internal memory, microSD card slot, 8MP camera, and the same, 12.5 hour battery. Plus the Droid 4 has a slide-out QWERTY keypad — something that is a must-have for some buyers.

We’ll have a full review of the phone in the coming days. So far we like what we see. The QWERTY keypad is tops.



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22Dec

Amazon Stops Hiding Competitors’ E-Reading Apps On The Kindle Fire

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Amazon has stopped pretending that a group of e-reading apps it allowed onto its Android Appstore weren’t available on the Kindle Fire. For whatever reason, the company was effectively hiding e-reading apps from companies like Wattpad, Kobo and Bluefire, even though they worked perfectly fine on the low-cost tablet computer.

Confused about why its app didn’t appear for users on the Kindle Fire, which is proving to be quite a sought-after device, Wattpad engaged in conversations with some folks over at Amazon, which apparently led to a necessary change in policy for all makers of mobile e-reading apps.

It’s unclear when Amazon started showing e-reading apps from rivals (including Wattpad’s) on Kindle Fire, exactly, but it seems they started appearing in listings sometime yesterday afternoon. Possibly, this was part of the Kindle Fire update that was delivered earlier this week.

Either way, this is good news for Wattpad, Kobo and other e-reading app developers, who no longer have to educate people on how to sideload their applications on the Kindle Fire.

Update: Wattpad’s Amy Martin points out to me that, while she’s certain that there were multiple e-reading apps in the listings yesterday evening, right now it’s back to Wattpad only. We’re trying to find out what’s up with that.

Last week, The Verge reported that Amazon redirected everyone trying to visit the Android Market website of direct app market.android.com links to its own Appstore.

However, GigaOm’s Kevin C. Tofel reported yesterday that the browsing block is no more.

I don’t consider Amazon to be an evil corporation, but both the hiding of competing e-reader apps and the browser redirection on the Kindle Fire were business practices bordering on downright shady. It is, however, worth noting that Amazon seems to be paying close attention to all feedback and prone to fixing what needs to be fixed rapidly.



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20Dec

Amazon Considered Acquiring RIM Over The Summer

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To say that RIM has had it rough these past few months is a understatement, but according to a new report from Reuters, it may not have had to go through these trials alone. In a surprising twist, Amazon was reportedly considering a RIM acquisition as recently as this past summer.

According to Reuters, Amazon had tasked an investment bank with exploring the possibility of a RIM buyout, although their sources don’t mention how far both parties were from finalizing a deal. The talks seemed to be largely informal in nature so it may have been nothing more than an open-ended meeting of the minds, but man — what a deal that would’ve been.

The real head-scratcher here is why Amazon would want with RIM in the first place. Analysts from Citigroup predicted last month that an Amazon-branded phone could see the light of day some time next year, and acquiring RIM would certainly give them a platform to work off of. Then again, Amazon made their interest in Android apparent in March when they officially launched their own Android app store, not to mention the fact that they were probably already working on the Android-powered Kindle Fire.

Patents then? RIM holds their fair share of wireless patents many of which could come in handy if Amazon ever chose to pursue a stronger presence in the mobile space. It’s a definite possibility, but with both parties keeping quiet on the subject, we may never know for sure.

Amazon apparently wasn’t the only one floating the notion of a RIM acquisition: Reuters mentions that bankers have tried to convince HTC and Samsung to make a move, although they made the obvious choice to ignore their ailing competitor.

Now it appears that RIM is looking to brave the market alone once again, as the company’s board has told co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to forget the idea of selling parts of the business. The company also seems to have begun a campaign of bright-eyed optimism in an attempt to convince people that the best is yet to come. Their most recent quarterly financials were filled with such bright-eyed gems as “we are more determined than ever to capitalize on our strengths,” and the company’s pair of CEOs announced shortly afterward that they would reduce their salaries to $1 per year.

Whether or not these maneuvers are enough to ease shareholder concerns is still up in the air, though a quick look at their stock performance shows that it doesn’t seem to be working so far. With share prices plummeting and the release of their next-gen BlackBerry 10 devices being pushed later into 2012, I can’t help but wonder if RIM regrets rebuffing Amazon’s advances.



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10Dec

Today Amazon Will Give You $15 To Use PriceCheck and Screw Local Retailers

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Amazon PriceCheck App

Today, December 10th, Amazon is offering a very special deal you’re going to love and your local brick-and-mortar retailer is going to hate. Use its PriceCheck mobile app and get 5% off your purchase, up to $5 at a time, as many as 3 times. Why the discounts to use PriceCheck? The app is designed to get you to visit local shops, try out a product, submit valuable pricing data to Amazon, leave without buying anything, and make your purchase on Amazon instead.

Actually scanning an in-store item isn’t technically required to get the discount, though Amazon doesn’t make this clear at first. The webpage for the deal states “Get a 5% discount just by checking a price”, but you can check a price by typing in a product’s name from home without submitting a local price. If you read the terms it says “In-store price submission and location confirmation are optional.”

Amazon explains the local pricing data helps it offer competitive prices. That’s exactly right. Because it offers such a wide range of products and makes the real money from hooking users on its shopping experience, Amazon can afford to lower its prices to beat out brick-and-mortars. PriceCheck helps it identify which products it needs to put on sale, and the one-day discount will get shoppers used to looking on Amazon for these deals.

Now, I’m no luddite. Efficient technology’s march over old models is natural and inevitable. But using shoppers to gather reconnaissance on its offline enemies is pretty aggressive. It also promotes show-rooming where users get the benefit of checking out a product in person, but then neglect the shops that pay overhead to offer that service.

There’s little that brick-and-mortar stores can do to stop this. If they berate people for scanning their products with PriceCheck, they’ll just push them right into Amazon’s clutches. Shoppers will have to decide whether to take the discount, or support their local mom-and-pop or even their local Walmart which at least keeps jobs nearby. But in this economy, most people’s allegiance is to their wallet.



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08Dec

Mobile Phone Payments Company Bango Signs Deal With Amazon

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Very interesting, Bango. Sometimes the biggest deals are the ones where everyone is keeping mum. That seems to be the case with this little blip of news coming out of the mobile phone payments company Bango today. The company announced it has signed a deal with Amazon.com, Inc. to provide “services.” And yep, that’s just about all it’s saying.

Bango provided a short statement, noting that Amazon is now a Bango customer, which makes it the third major customer to sign up for the mobile payments platform. Previously, Bango signed deals with Research in Motion (RIM) and Opera, both of which involve offering carrier billing services for those companies’ app stores. (Carrier billing is the payment mechanism that allows users to pay for purchases on their mobile phone bills.) However, in Opera’s case, customers are able to use a credit card or carrier billing to purchase apps.

Bango won’t confirm any details of the new agreement, including how much the deal is worth or even what services, specifically, it will be providing to Amazon.

But the conclusion being drawn from the news, of course, is that Bango will soon be providing carrier billing services to Amazon for its app store, the Amazon App Store for Android, which is available to any Android user (in the U.S.) as an installable app. The Store is also now a prominent feature on the company’s new Android-based tablet, the Kindle Fire. What’s interesting, however, is that the Fire doesn’t come in a 3G version, which could entail a carrier relationship. It’s a Wi-Fi only device. Perhaps Bango’s news, then, hints at something yet to come?

Then again, given that Bango also provides analytics services, it could be something less exciting (to consumers, at least) than paying for apps via your phone bill.

According to a Bango spokesperson, the company couldn’t share any information beyond what it has already provided due to “commercial sensitivities.”

“This was very much just a regulatory announcement that Bango was required to release as it is a publicly quoted company. We hope to be able to release more information in 2012,” the spokesperson said.

The full statement reads as follows:

Bango (AIM: BGO) announces today that it has signed an agreement to provide services to Amazon. The terms of this agreement are not being disclosed. The Board believes it is too early in the relationship to accurately forecast the level of business which it may generate.



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