Technologizer

Amazon’s PayPhrase to Speed Checkout

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Amazon on Wednesday rolled out its latest effort to simplify shopping on its site with a service called PayPhrase. Essentially, customers would set up a specific phrase and PIN which would be linked to shipping and billing information on Amazon. When used, the checkout process could potentially be shortened to a matter of seconds. PayPhrase won’t [...]

Amazon-Netflix? Let’s Make It Happen, Please.

Monday, July 13, 2009

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At this point, it’s just a rumor that’s giving Netflix’s stock a nice goose: Speculation has it that Amazon.com might move to buy Netflix, a merger that makes immense sense to me. Between its Amazon MP3 service and Video on Demand and the Kindle and Audible, Amazon.com is working overtime to reinvent itself for the [...]

The Next Online Music Revolution Is … CDs?

Thursday, May 21, 2009

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For $31 per year (Update: see the breakdown below), musicians both unknown and legendary will soon be able to get their CDs printed and sold through Amazon, no questions asked. Following in the footsteps of CDBaby, but with a crucial difference, TuneCore and Amazon will launch an on-demand CD printing service, Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk reports. [...]

Amazon Launches a URL Shortener

Friday, May 8, 2009

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Amazon has launched a URL shortening service to make it easier for customers to talk about its products on social networking sites–especially Twitter, where every character in a URL counts. I have argued that Twitter is overhyped, but I acknowledge Twittering as an activity will continue to be influential on how people use the Web. In [...]

5Words for 2/09/09

Monday, February 9, 2009

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Happy Monday morning, Technologizer pals: Is Amazon’s newest a King-le? iPhone could become a Kindle. Two e-book events happnening today. Triple-core chips from AMD. The Dalai Lama joins Twitter. Hey, Woz is going dancing. Some Apple Stores ban Facebook. Amazon’s cheapo BlackBerry Storm deal. Digital TV boxes getting scarce. Microsoft preps new phone services. Judge hands Psystar a victory.

The Best News I’ve Heard in Months

Monday, November 3, 2008

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Ever felt like you should keep a blowtorch on hand to blast your way into the tamper-resistant packaging that a lot of tech products come in these days? Help is at hand–and it doesn’t involve blowtorches. Instead, it takes the far more sensible step of making packaging easy to open. Amazon has launched an initiative called [...]

Netflix via TiVo? Cool. But Not Cool Enough.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

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So TiVo and Netflix are announcing that their longstanding, apparently-dormant plans to work together have amounted to something after all: Starting in early December, owners of TiVo boxes will be able to stream movies and TV shows from NetFlix, and the cost is included in their monthly Netflix subscription. That’s good news. But it’s also [...]

Oprah Gives Kindle the Thumbs Up

Friday, October 24, 2008

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If Howard Stern is the “King of all Media” (at least he tells himself that), then Oprah Winfrey should rightfully be considered the Queen. Amazon must be tickled pink that the iconic talk show host has given its Kindle a ringing endorsement, which came as part of her show on Friday. Winfrey says the device “was [...]

You Know, What I Really Want is a Sony Kindle

Friday, October 3, 2008

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Sony, which is among many other things the other big company besides Amazon that’s in the e-book game, has announced a new model: the Reader Digital Book PRS-700BC. Available in mid-November, it will sell for $399 and sports two significant features: a touchscreen that lets you turn the page by swiping and sidelighting that illuminates [...]

Dell Joins the Mini-Laptop Movement

Thursday, September 4, 2008

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Remember when laptops were big, heavy, and cost two or three thousand dollars? Most of the action at the moment involves undersized cheapie models like the eee PC, HP Mini-Note…and Dell’s new Inspiron.

When Amazon S3 Goes Boom, So Does the Web

Sunday, July 20, 2008

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The Web is atwitter with discussion of the technical hobgoblins that are bedeviling Amazon’s S3 Web storage platform today. S3, which a lot of significant Web-based services rely on to provide the disk space that they need to store stuff, has been glitchy or altogether inoperative for at least the last six hours. There’s some [...]