Amazon has launched a synchronized gaming platform for Kindle Fire owners, Amazon GameCircle, challenging Apple's Game Center in the process. GameCircle pulls together achievements into social leaderboards, as well as offering for games what Amazon WhisperSync already does for ebooks: allowing you to pick up where you left off playing when you switch device.
Amazon is currently testing prototype smartphones, with mass production potentially starting late in 2012 or early next year, with a screen size of 4-5 inches according to insiders. The online retailer is working with component suppliers on the hardware, sources at those suppliers confirmed to the WSJ, echoing reports last week that a smaller version of the Kindle Fire tablet was in the pipeline.
Amazon was the first company to bring a low-cost Android tablet to the masses, with the Kindle Fire costing just $199. The margins on the tablet were non-existent, although the going theory is that Amazon recoups the costs thanks to its large content libraries accessible via the Kindle Fire. Google has shaken things up with the introduction of the Nexus 7, a quad-core tablet with the same $199 price point, although rumors indicate that Amazon is preparing its answer to Google's tablet with a follow-up to the Kindle Fire.
The smartphone wars are about to crank up a notch, with retailer Amazon tipped to be readying a handset of its own that, while likely based on Android, would undoubtedly diverge from Google's ambitions for the platform. Amazon is working with Foxconn - the company that also produces Apple's iPhone - according to insider whispers to Bloomberg, with the retailer apparently quietly building up its mobile patent portfolio in a pre-emptive defense against smartphone lawsuits.
I've been messing around with a Kindle Fire for the past week or so as my good pal Marty picked one up pre-Christmas for the holiday stay up here in Northern Minnesota - it's been great but for the lack of Ice Cream Sandwich. That is to say, it's OK, but it's not the perfect masterpiece that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich would make it. Hackers have taken the reigns this past week and have made a port of the newest Android mobile operating system a relative reality here on this PlayBook form clone, making us once again wonder if it's worth the cheap, cheap price it costs.
The gauntlet has been thrown down today by Barnes & Noble with a device by the name of NOOK Tablet, an upgrade of their NOOK Color e-reader, a release here clearly aimed directly at Amazon's recently revealed Kindle Fire. What's been revealed this week is several upgrades from the NOOK Color to the new NOOK Tablet including a lighter chassis, a larger processor, and a whole new reassurance that you'll be running find with Nook Cloud for cloud storage. How does this add up against the Kindle Fire? Barnes and Noble CEO William J Lynch Jr has a few words to say on the subject, I assure you.
Get your documents all in order today on the Amazon Appstore with OfficeSuite Professional 5, an Office editing app that's normally $15, completely for free. As you may or may not know, the Amazon Appstore is a place where you can pick up apps on your Android device, this app store completely separate from the official Google version, that being called the Android Marketplace. If you'll take a look at your humble narrator's original Android Community 101: Amazon Appstore, it will all become abundantly clear. Today the Amazon Appstore is giving away no less than your one-stop shop for everything Office.
Amazon is talking up the new features that it is adding to the Kindle Format 8 (KF8) upgrade for ebooks. The key feature is the support of HTML5 in the new format. That HTML5 support brings all sort of goodies with it that will make ebooks using the new KF8 format more interactive and exciting. HTML5 means support for CSS3, fixed layouts, embedded fonts, drop caps, floating elements, text on background images, lists and a bunch more.
Rumors never stop floating around the tech world. The first generation Amazon Kindle Fire tablet isn’t even shipping until next month and we already have rumors on the next generation of the tablet. According to sources in the supply chain cited by DigiTimes, Foxconn will build the next generation Kindle.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced that it has talked openly with Amazon about privacy with the new Silk browser that will ship on the Kindle Fire tablet that was announced not long ago. The EFF wanted to find out since the browser on the Fire was new to the market how it was handling privacy. One key element of the browser that is different from most browsers on the market today is that rather than using the HTTP protocol, Silk will use the Amazon cloud servers and the SPDY protocol as well.
If you needed any more evidence that Amazon is building its own digital media empire, here it is. The New York Times reports that the online retail giant will publish over 120 books this quarter alone, both on its Kindle e-book platform and traditional physical copies. That puts it in the odd position of competing with some of its biggest suppliers, the traditional publishing houses that have been around for decades.