Fundamentally the “Send to Kindle” software adds a “Send to Kindle” option to the Windows context menu in Explorer when you right-click on one or multiple files (I know, that’s what I thought too!)  At its most basic this is just what it does.  There are few other features however that make it a little more useful than a way to get files and eBooks onto your device a second or two more quickly than normal.

One of these is that the Kindle doesn’t need to be physically connected to your PC when you do it.  The files will be synchronised with your Kindle Cloud and downloaded the next time the Kindle is on with WiFi activated.  This means that if you don’t have your Kindle handy when you realise there’s a useful file you’d like on it, this isn’t a barrier.

The other way it is useful is with a “Print to Kindle” option that will allow you to send pretty much anything and everything to your Kindle through the Windows print manager.  This latter feature will be genuinely useful for many people though, oddly, Amazon don’t make a fuss of either this or the wireless sync and you have do some digging on their website to find them out.

By default the Send to plug-in supports .DOC, .DOCX, .TXT, .RTF, .JPEG, .JPG, GIF, .PNG, .BMP and .PDF files though the printing option will extend this considerably.  Printed documents are sent as PDF files.

You can download the Send to Kindle software from the Amazon website for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 and the Kindle apps for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch are also supported.  Amazon say that support for other devices and for the Mac will be coming soon.

Third party retailers on Amazon may use different shipping providers and different shipping methods. They often do that to cut down the costs of shipping the goods to the customer.

This may be problematic if unreliable shipping providers are used.

Some users because of this may want to only buy first party sold products on Amazon shopping sites. And while that’s possible manually, it requires paying attention to the merchant listing on Amazon item pages.

Amazon lists who is selling the item. Items sold by Amazon are listed as such, while items sold by third party merchants list the name of the merchant there.

Shipped and sold by Amazon is a Firefox extension that filters out all items that are not sold by Amazon directly. The extension works on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.fr.

Filtering out items may have consequences on item availability on Amazon. Items that would otherwise be available may be filtered out so that they cannot be purchased on Amazon as long as the filter is on. It happens quite often though that Amazon and third parties both sell the item on Amazon. The extension in this case makes sure that the item sold directly by Amazon is displayed to the user.

The extension needs to be activated with a click on its toolbar item. Some Firefox users may not see the icon by default. If that’s the case, they need to right-click a blank spot on a toolbar, select customize from the context menu, and drag and drop the sold by Amazon icon to one of the browser toolbars. A click on the icon activates it, another deactivates the filter again.

Firefox users can download and install the add-on at the official Mozilla add-ons repository.

A recent article in the New York Times suggests that Amazon is now moving straight towards an even bigger goal. The company announced that it will publish 122 books in the fall of 2011 in “both physical and e-book form”.

According to the article Amazon is currently wooing top authors to publish their books directly on the shopping site. This puts publishers in a miserable position. They have to work with Amazon to sell books online but at the same time have to find a way to compete with the company as a publisher.

The move effectively eliminates the middle-men, the publishers and agents, and makes Amazon the jack of all trades. Amazon will do the editing, promoting, printing and selling. Regular Amazon users should not confuse Amazon Publishing with Amazon’s self-publishing platform CreateSpace. The former is the new division of Amazon while the latter allows everyone to publish their books on Amazon.

Amazon as a company will obviously benefit from this model. But what about authors and people who buy books? It is difficulty to say when it comes to authors. Amazon has not published any information about the deals that it struck with authors. Will authors make more money? The ones that Amazon is wooing most certainly will. It is likely that authors will get a bigger part of the pie considering that Amazon has to convince them somehow that it is worth to self-publish books.

Consumers on the other hand will likely not see a big difference. Amazon on the other hand has more control and leeway in the pricing which could be beneficial to customers.

Considering that Amazon has not shops in all countries of the world, it is likely that the Internet giant may need to cooperate to bring books to countries they do not have a shop in.

What’s your take on this? I personally think that this could shake things up quite a bit. Authors certainly find the option beneficial as it gives them more choice. Consumers on the other hand will likely be on the receiving end. Before Amazon Publishing they had the option to buy local or online. With Amazon Publishing, they can only buy on Amazon.

So called filler items are small inexpensive items that move the purchase over that threshold so that Amazon sends the items for free to your location.

One example to make it clearer: Say you have decided to buy the latest Harry Potter Blu-Ray on Amazon. It currently retails for $24.99. If you would only buy that item you would have to pay shipping costs on top of that price which would add $2.98 to the overall price that you have to pay. Shipping costs are even higher in other categories.

If you could find an item on Amazon that is sold for $0.01 you would save $2.97. This may not look as much but if your orders often do not qualify for Super Saving Shipping but come close then you may save quite some money over time.

Amazon Prime

Before we look at websites that let you search for filler items on Amazon, we should take a look at Amazon Prime.

If you order many smaller items on Amazon you may want to consider becoming an Amazon Prime member. You basically pay a yearly membership fee and get free shipping for all items on Amazon for the year. You find more information about Amazon.com Prime on the official website. You can sign up for a trial to test Amazon Prime.

Amazon Filler Services

Filler Item Finder

A rather messy looking website that claims to be in association with Amazon.com. You can enter the amount that you need for free shipping and filter by categories if you get to many results.

The site managed to return a lot of cheap items on Amazon, but only one $0.01 item and that was for a HTC Droid Eris Android Phone with a Verizon Wireless subscription. The second item would set you back $0.12 at the time of writing.

Cheapest item in the database: $0.13

FillerSeek

You can enter the amount needed to be eligible for free shipping on the Fillerseek website. It is furthermore possible to select a specific category that the filler item should be in. A click on search crawls the Amazon product database for products that match the requirements.

The site then displays products on the search results page. I was disappointed by the results, considering that the site suggested four or more Dollar items when my search explicitly asked for a $0.01 filler item.

Cheapest item in the database: $1

Amazon Filler Item Finder

This one is as basic as it gets. Just enter the amount you need to qualify for free shipping and hit the search button afterwards. You get a large list of product suggestions.

Like the other services so far, this one did not manage to find a one cent item on Amazon. Popular and very popular items are highlighted in the results listing. There is no option to filter by product group.

The site has a separate search engine for Canada and the United Kingdom.

Cheapest item in the database: $0.37

Superfillers

This service supports not only Amazon but other popular shopping destiations such as The Home Depot, Target or Petco. Just select the shopping site that you need filler items for on the left sidebar of the page and enter the amount that you are looking for.

The service displays items coming closest to the selected price first and then below that sorted into categories. This is actually more comfortable and eye pleasing than what the other services offered so far.

Cheapest item in the database: $0.37

Click Filler

Clickfiller displays a list of inexpensive products on the company’s start page. You can use the form at the top to filter for a specific price range, product names or categories.

The service, just like Filler Seek, fails to list the cheapest items on Amazon.

Cheapest item in the database: $0.99

Slick Fillers

Maintained by Slick Deals. You can search for a specific price and filter results by keyword or category.

The service, like many others fails to find one or two cent items on Amazon.

Cheapest item in the database: $0.40

Browser Extensions

Instead of using a third party website you can also use browser extensions to find filler items. PriceTrace is a price comparison add-on for the Firefox web browser that can search for filler items.

Just click on the fillers button in the toolbar when you are on Amazon. This opens a page on the official Pricefiller website that lists the filler items in the service’s database. Users who do not want to install an add-on for that can visit the page manually in every browser to search for items manually.

It does not make a lot of sense to install the add-on just for the price filler functionality, considering that you can add the search page on the PriceTrace website to your browser’s bookmarks to open it manually. Firefox users who use other features of the add-on, like price tracking, may find it handy on the other hand.

Cheapest item in the database: $0.56

Manual hunting for filler items

You can also try to find cheap items directly on Amazon to qualify for free shipping. Use a search like this one filler items search to find cheap items in the Industrial and Scientific category. There is even one item in the listing that you can buy for $0.01.

Verdict

Who would have thought that the cheapest filler items are not in the databases of the filler item services. All services do a lot better when the price that is needed to be eligible for free shipping goes up. Most shine starting around the $1 mark.

Manual hunting for items gets my recommendation if you are looking for items below the $1 Dollar mark.

Have another service to share? Let me know about it in the comments.

Update: The Pricetrace website is no longer available. Links have been removed.

The tablet, which has been rumoured for some time, would run on Google’s Android operating system which would be specially modified to get the best from Amazon’s Kindle eBook app, and to give the best full-colour eBook reader experience possible.

What we do know about this tablet is that it runs on a single-core processor with 6Gb or storage, a 7 inch screen, speakers, a micro USB post and, oddly, no cameras.  The new Kindle interface is rumoured to be reminiscent of Apple’s CoverFlow and the unit is expected to retail for around $250.

This will price it aggressively compared to other 7 inch tablets and with Amazon’s reputation for quality hardware already confirmed with the current generation of Kindle readers, should be widely sought after and very popular.

Personally I find Amazon’s choice of Android disappointing given the ongoing, and unanswered by Google, security concerns about the platform.  For being open-source however and light-weight it would remain the obvious choice given that neither Apple nor RIM are currently prepared to licence their tablet operating systems to third parties, that HP’s WebOS is currently hanging under a very large gallows axe and that Microsoft’s offering is not only far from finished, but probably wouldn’t be suitable for such a device anyway.

Currently the only direct competition to an Amazon tablet would be the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, which is scarcely available outside of the US.

It’s also possible that Amazon will use the event to announce a refresh to its current Kindle eReader range with possible additions including a touch-screen.

Whatever the outcome, as I mentioned previously, any Amazon tablet would almost instantly become a best-seller and would probably become the most-popular Amazon tablet around, besting the Samsung Galaxy Tab devices.  We’ll keep you informed of what Amazon announce.

But Godaddy is just one example where online shoppers can save big time. Think computer hardware for a moment, or clothes, entertainment related items or toys. Using a price comparison engine for those items is just the first step, as you may get a lower price at another merchant if you make use of coupons.

PriceBlink is a coupon search engine that powers both a Firefox add-on and a Chrome extension of the same name.

Both extensions work the same way. They search the service’s coupons database for every website you visit. A small bar at the top indicates that coupons have been found.

The first coupon in the list is highlighted in the row directly. All other coupons become available with a click on the View Coupons pulldown menu.

A click loads the PriceBlink website where all coupons are displayed on a page. The site itself groups coupons indicating if coupons are working, partially working or new.

It would obviously be more elegant if the coupon codes would be displayed directly on the same page, and not only after loading a page on the PriceBlink website. Regardless of that inconvenience, it is still worth the troubles in my opinion.

You can close the notification for the session or permanently, so that it won’t be displayed anymore on the current web page.

I have tested PriceBlink on a variety of sites. From Godaddy and BestBuy to Newegg, Gap, Dell and Barns and Noble. It worked on a lot of site. There are however sites where no results where displayed. Amazon is for instance is a prime example, probably due to the fact that Amazon coupon codes are rare.

Are you actively searching for coupons before you shop online? If so, do you search for coupons manually or use a browser extension instead?

Sometimes I encounter an item that I want to buy only to find out during checkout that I cannot. Amazon then displays one-liners like “We are not able to ship this item to your default shipping address”, “We’re sorry. This item can’t be shipped to your selected destination” or “The following items cannot be shipped to the addresses you selected”.

The free Firefox and Google Chrome extension “Does Amazon Ship to?” offers a solution. Amazon customers can use it to retrieve information if a specific product on the online shop’s website is shipping to a selected country.

The browser extension works with all localized Amazon stores, in particular with Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr and Amazon.de.

Once installed, the button appears on every Amazon product page. The button is added to the page after the page has been completely loaded. It may even take a second or two before it appears.

When you click on the button you see a country pulldown menu where you have to select the country you want the item to be shipped to.

Does Amazon Ship to will then retrieve the shipping information and display them in the program interface. All merchants, including third party merchants selling the item are displayed here with their asking price and, if available, shipping costs.

Basically, if you see a price and merchant you know that the item will be shipped to the selected country. If you do not see a merchant, you know it won’t.

Firefox users can download Does Amazon Ship to from the official Firefox add-on repository. Google Chrome users find the extension in the Chrome Web Store instead. (via)

You can, of course, read your kindle e-books on other devices too, but until now you’ve had to download an app in order to read a book on your iPad, or on your computer screen. There have been apps available for PCs, Macs, and every other conceivable device, for you to read your books wherever you may be. You can even read them on your iPhone if your eyesight is good enough!

But what was really missing in the Kindle armory was a web-based reader that could be run on anything capable of supporting a browser. With so much going on in “the cloud” these days, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and now you can read books from the Kindle Store, on anything with a web-browser. What’s more your Amazon account will automatically track the books you are reading and keep you up to date with your last read page, no matter what device you swap to.

There is another reason why Amazon has gone down the cloud-computing path however, and it has nothing to do with app-friendliness. By using a web-based platform for it’s Kindle store, the application isn’t regarded as a native program. In other words, it’s not a specific iPad app, or an iPhone app. By doing this, Amazon have avoided having to pay the 30% levy that Apple charges for any content sold through it’s devices. Apple announced plans to restrict the purchasing of products from applications running on their smart phones and tablets, and have prohibited links that allowed anyone to sell goods outside the Apple sales system. So Amazon has responded by building it’s Kindle app into a web application that runs on HTML5, and therefore bypasses the restrictions. Clever!

With Apple planning further restrictions in the future, many people are speculating that other companies will follow suit, and soon we’ll see more HTML5 apps being produced than native iPhone apps. It’s suggested that most companies will not be willing to bow to Apple’s levies, and will seek to develop new web based technologies to compensate for the loss of native apps. In the case of Amazon, why should Apple stand to gain 30% on every book sold via an Apple device? Many people see this as unfair, and they may well be right.

You can access the Amazon Kindle Clouder Reader here. Interestingly enough it is currently only compatible with Google Chrome and Safari browsers.

Applying a jailbreak to a Kindle is just a matter of hack and reboot. This does not apply to other devices, just Kindle devices. A Kindle jailbreak is actually quite safe, so users need not fear. To be on the safe side, backup all kindle files to an external memory device such as an external hard drive. The files can backup to the computer hard drive as well, but this does pose a minor security risk if any of the files kept on the Kindle are sensitive. The general rule is that removable memory devices are the best for backup. Usually files are not altered by this jailbreak but staying in the habit of backing files up is a good practice.

The Amazon Kindle has 23 default screensavers. Custom images and personalization is generally more fun though. This hack does not work on first generation Kindle devices. This demonstration is done with a Kindle 3 Wi-Fi basic. The mirrors included have been scanned for bugs and malware. The option to purchase premium versions, if desired, is offered, but the basic version works fine, there will simply be pop-up ads and a slower download time, both of which are negligible. Once again, this is safe and will not break the Kindle.

1. Download from one the four following mirrors. This is the jailbreak itself and one more application will be required later.

• http://www.filedude.com/download/T9i0ZJ9BSw29e7f8d4fb
• http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MQZXW2AE
• http://rapidshare.com/files/456856239/kindle-jailbreak-0.6.N.zip
• http://www.mediafire.com/?7abaaab8kxycv5c

2. These will be ZIP files containing the installers and uninstallers for all Kindle versions. The files are 48k. To find the correct Kindle Version, look for the suffix after the 0.6N. In this case, it is a Wi-Fi basic Kindle 3, not 3G:

3. Set the pointer over the “…” portion of the file name to check for versions in the suffix. In this case, it will be a suffix of “K3W_install.bin.” Connect the Kindle device to the computer. If the Kindle window does not automatically open, open it from the Computer menu. Just drag and drop the file into the Kindle root directory. Double click Kindle and drag/ drop:

4. Dismount the Kindle and from Home on the device, press the Menu Button > Settings > Menu Button > Update your Kindle.

5. The Kindle will take its time updating. There is a prompt requesting if you wish to continue. Click OK to start the update. The update is complete when a screen notifies that the update was successful. The Kindle will then restart. With a Kindle 2 there will generally be an error message. Ignore it and it will restart by itself. Everything will be fine.

6. The second phase of this operation is to install the Custom Screensaver Hack. This involves the very same steps as the jailbreak installation. After download, open the root directory and drag and drop the same way.

Drag and drop to the root directory. Find the suffix in for the version of the Kindle device being used. This time it appears after the 0.20N.

Follow the same steps as for the jailbreak update with the Kindle. Menu Button > Settings > Menu Button > Update your Kindle.

To add the screen savers, connect the Kindle again and look for the following menu:

1. The desired images will have to be modified before adding them to the screensavers file on the mounted Kindle device. The images will need to be formatted with an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop. The specifics of a Kindle device graphics can be found in the user manual, which is installed as a file on the Kindle itself. For the Kindle 3, the screen savers are 600×800 for the basic and 824×1200 for the DX. They will need to be saved in 8-bit grayscale as .PNG images. Results will vary depending on the original image. Several images can be added in a specific rotation. Remember to crop the image as well, since the Kindle has a different screen shape than monitors do.

That was the last step. The Kindle now has the ability to accept any screensaver image configuration desired. From this point, it just requires the image preparation as described and then a simple drag and drop to the screensavers file. Enjoy!

Words of caution: Please note that jailbreaking a device can have severe consequences. It can void the warranty or break the Kindle so that it needs repair. While it is unlikely that it happens if you follow the instructions, I want to be very clear that it is your sole responsibility. I’d also advise you to search on the Internet for newer versions of the Jailbreak files, especially if there is an extended amount of time between your visit to this guide and the time the article has been written.

There are some things to take into consideration. You cannot just upload any music and expect it to be there for free and forever. The formatting of the music, its size, and any changes to the files or the subscription will affect the space used by the music.

Formatting

The music file has to be a DRM-free MP3 or M4A file for it to be freely stored on paid accounts. (Note: not the lossless m4a type.) Anything else will count against your space, plus they will not work with the Cloud Player. Files with just the extension, but which are really another type of file, naturally will go against the space.

Alterations

For songs you previously purchased through Amazon, the file you upload has to be identical to the file on their servers. If you change the file, then it will take up space on free accounts (it is still free for a paid account). There likely are two reasons for this. One, there is no question that a file is the one purchased if it is exactly the same. Two, if the file is the same, it only needs to exist on Amazon’s server once. Access, from there, is really shared. That is why they can afford to give the space to the purchased music.

Downgrading

Once you downgrade, any music that was not purchased from Amazon counts against your space. That space is only at 5 GB now. The good news is that, while you cannot upload any more files at this point, your files are not automatically deleted. Amazon does not specify the length of time before they delete your files, but they do reserve the right to. In any case, you will have a little time to pick which files you want to eliminate.

Size

Files must be under 100 MB. For most songs, that is fine, even for a long, high-quality song. For podcasts, however, that could be a problem. While rare, it is something good to know. I am probably in the minority, but I do have MP3 files that will not fit. Does this mean you cannot load the file? No. It just means that it will affect your space used.

Reminder: The ToS

Amazon’s terms of service are of concern. (They are even worse than Dropbox’s ToS.) They reserve the right to look at your files without notification or reason. That does not make it useless, but it does restrict usefulness. Using the service as a backup for files they know you have does make perfect sense.

Recommendations

I would definitely upload music I purchased directly from Amazon. That will always be free to store. To not use it as a backup for such music makes little sense. What should an audiophile do with the extra 5 gigs? Fill it up with free music from established sites like OverClocked Remix. Anything else would make me uncomfortable (even if I owned the physical tape or CD).

On a side note, a thank you to Amazon’s tech support. The details on what happens if you downgrade your account, while obvious, where not in the product description or FAQ. I actually contacted their support to clarify what would happen.

One thing that has bugged me a little bit for some time now is the mediocre display of product shots. The preview shots are very small, and while it is possible to click on an image for a larger preview, it is placed over the actual page of the item that you are looking at. Plus, you do not get to see hd images in their native resolution on that page. All you can do is click the mouse to enable an unhandy zoom mode.

The Firefox add-on PictureFox improves the default behavior on all Amazon shopping sites. It does not change the way the default Amazon image viewer works, but adds a link to an alternative directly on the page.

Here is an example of how that works. My nephew loves Lego Ninjago and I occasionally check out Amazon to see if there are new sets available.

Here is how the Amazon page looks like after you have installed PictureFox in the browser.

You can move your mouse cursor over a mini image on that page to display a thumbnail of it directly on the page. That’s the default behavior. Notice the HD link on top of the thumbnail image? A click on that loads the image gallery powered by PictureFox.

You can flip through all images on the page with the mousewheel, the cursor keys or the slider at the bottom of the page. Unlike Amazon, it is showing all images on the page directly in the gallery, including customer photos, marketplace photos and products where different colors are available. That simplifies the viewing significantly.

A click on an image loads its HD version directly on the same page, with options to view the image in fullsize in the browser, and to go back to the gallery and to close it completely.

Another interesting feature of PictureFox is that it displays direct image previews on the same page whenever you hover your mouse over an image on one of Amazon’s shopping sites.

This is pretty handy to view a larger preview of an image directly on the Amazon product page without loading a gallery first.

Firefox users can install PictureFox directly from the Mozilla Add-On repository.

Set Up the Double Download

By default, it is an extra step to download files from your Cloud Drive. The settings are easy to find. Naturally, you have to be signed in to get to these settings. You will also need the Amazon MP3 Downloader. This is free software that you can configure to sync with iTunes, Windows Media Player, or to not sync at all.

Step 1: Click on “Your Digital Items” on the top right of Amazon’s home page above the cart and wish list buttons (it may appear on other pages too).

Step 2: Under “Amazon MP3 Store” click on “You Amazon MP3 Settings,” found towards the middle of the page.

Step 3: Finally, you will see two settings, each with two options. Feel free to read through it, but you just have to make sure the first option in each of the two settings is selected. See the screenshot for all the detail.

Now when you aquire a song it will be loaded to your Cloud Drive and the MP3 Downloader will put the files on your computer. A small file that ends in .amz may download to your computer at first. Open it to launch the MP3 Downloader. Please note there is no “Apply Settings” or “Save Settings” to click on the website. You just click the circles next to the options you want and you are done.

Mooch Off Amazon a Full Album at a Time

Grabbing a heap of music from Amazon for free is easy. Oddly enough, I do not know anyone who takes advantage of it (locally at least).

You do not have to follow the steps above to download free music, but I would advise it. It gives you a backup, and free songs are perfect to try-out “double downloading” with. Why backup free music in the first place? Because it will not always be free; these are often limited time offers. You may have to pay to download something again if you lose a song. In case of accidental deletion or a hard drive crash, everything would be saved in a completely separate location, in this case Amazon Cloud Drive. Amazon lets you to download songs from there, for free, as many times as you like.

That said, let’s get to the free music!

Step 1: To get the the general MP3 section start from the main page, hover your mouse over “MP3s & Cloud Player” and then click on “MP3 Music Store” to the right. (Note: “Hover” means to move your mouse to something, but do not click the mouse button yet.)

Step 2: Scroll way down to about halfway down the page. You will see a lot of stuff: albums, information, icons, etc. You are looking for the image below. Click on “Free MP3 Albums” when you find it. You can alternatively use this link to go directly to that page: Free Music

Step 3: While you land at a page with the most popular music, you should consider narrowing it down to a genre you prefer. I recommend the Classical section. I found a number of full albums I liked there.

Wrapping Things Up

Note that you will need the Amazon MP3 Downloader to download full albums. This is regardless of your settings. The downloader has the benefit of enabling you to download multiple songs from the Cloud Player too (but not the Cloud Drive, which can only download files one at a time). That means you can restore all your Amazon music fairly easily, provided a backup was in the Cloud Drive, in the event of a computer problem. That is a nice free feature.

You also need to know that you can only download music from an Amazon store if the shipping address of your account is in the same country as the store.

The Amazon US store is currently offering 197 mp3 albums for free download. The German Amazon store only six albums.

I hope these little tips will save you some time and expose you to some new music. Enjoy!

All of the headlines, features, and promises have caused the public to overlook a disturbing section of the fine print in the lengthy legal agreement. As a part of using the Cloud Drive, Amazon reserves the right to look at your files. They don’t have to ask or notify you. They can even keep files you delete. They can even share this information with others. This kind of clause usually mentions something about courts, subpoenas, or some other legal context. There are no such conditions here.

“5.2.Our Right to Access Your Files. You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law.”

This is in striking contrast to Dropbox, a service similar to Amazon’s Cloud Drive in many ways. You can upload files to Dropbox for storage through a web interface, just like with the Cloud Drive. In the Cloud Drive, files are unencrypted, easy for the company to read. Dropbox encrypts both its connection and its files, leaving only the file names unencrypted. This is to protect your privacy, but it does come at a cost. If you have a problem with a file, and an old version is not sufficient or available, then there is not much that Dropbox’s tech support can do. An IT employee at Amazon would able to take a closer look to diagnose the problem. Security is often a trade off between convenience and privacy, so there is some validity in Amazon’s decision.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Amazon’s 1984 incident shocked the world, and it is in a position to take such controversy to the next level. Anyone could find files missing, information leaked, or embarrassments made public. Alternatively, they could simply delete music you own.

There are some other parts of the agreement that are note worthy, but less than alarming. You are not supposed to share access of your account with anyone else. An unsurprising, and arguably sensible, clause. With no feature to share files, as found in Dropbox, this can create problems. The only way to share a file would be with a joint account, which would not be permitted in the agreement. There also is no way to publicize a file, so you cannot use the service for any kind of web hosting. In contrast, not only can Dropbox do that, but it can generate photo albums that can be shared with just a link.

To use the Service, you must have an Amazon.com account. You may only use the Service in connection with one Amazon.com account, so if you have multiple Amazon.com accounts, you’ll need to choose the account you want to use for the Service. The email address and password for your Amazon.com account are all that is required for access to files you store on the Service. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and preventing their misuse and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account. You may not use a name, username or email address that you are not authorized to use or share your Amazon.com username and password with others for purposes of allowing others to use the Service through your account. If we suspend or terminate your use of the Service or your Amazon.com account, you may not use the Service through another Amazon.com account.

There is one kind of file that makes sense to store in Amazon’s Cloud Drive: any kind you got from Amazon. They already know you have it, so there is nothing for them to discover. Music is a prime example, and they literally have thousand of free songs. Several gigs of files can be loaded into the cloud drive in a single sitting, and new music purchased from Amazon (even for $0.00) never counts against your quota. This solves a problem that exists in other services: re-downloads. There is never a fee to download a song from your cloud drive. It effectively can be seen as an instant off-site backup. Hopefully Amazon will expand this service to other products such as games and movies.

While the privacy concerns limit the usefulness of Amazon’s Cloud Drive, it does not make it useless. It would be inadvisable to store sensitive information on it, but it provides a perfect backup for files you purchased from Amazon.

Every Amazon customer, even new customers without purchases, gets 5 Gigabytes of online storage. US customers who have purchased at least one digital music album on Amazon get 20 Gigabytes of extra space for the first year.

Mp3 files that are purchased on Amazon can be transferred to the cloud drive where they do not count against the storage limitations.

Paid plans are available starting at 20 Gigabytes and up to 1000 Gigabytes. Each Gigabyte sets you back $1 per year with no additional costs (which means no data transfer rates).

Amazon Cloud Drive appears to be browser based at this point in time, with no option to map the storage or access it via third party tools. Upload and download of data is handled via the browser interface. All data transfers make use of HTTPS and authentication.

The cloud storage is folder based with folders for documents, music, pictures and videos available by default. Users can create folders or subfolders to sort and organize files. I was not able to upload using Firefox, switched to Google Chrome and it worked without problems in the browser.

The uploads are handled in the background, it is possible to switch pages on Amazon Cloud Drive without interrupting the uploading or downloading of files.

Files can be moved, copied, renamed, downloaded or deleted once they have been uploaded to Amazon’s online storage.

US users can install Amazon’s Cloud Player for Web or Cloud Player for Android to play the music they have uploaded to the cloud. The web player supports all popular web browsers with the exception of Opera (officially). Both players can play mp3 and aac music files as long as they have no drm. Basic controls are available to select songs based on artist, title or album. It is furthermore possible to create playlists.

5 Gigabytes seems to be the standard free storage size that most cloud based storage services offer. Amazon Cloud Drive looks solid on paper, especially the pricing is attractive when compared to solutions such as Dropbox. Dropbox on the other hand is more flexible when it comes to accessing the storage space and transferring data. It is just not practicable to upload thousands of files, stored in multiple folders to Amazon Cloud Drive. Another missing feature is a file sharing option.

Amazon customers from the US, who purchase mp3 albums regularly are most likely to use Cloud Drive extensively, especially if they own an Android smartphone as they are then able to use the player on the Android phone to listen to music stored online. Plus they can use the Amazon Cloud Player to upload music from their computer more comfortably.

Everyone else is severely limited by the web-only interface. The Terms of Service contain several passages that could convince users not to upload files to the Amazon Cloud Drive.

You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files

We may also restrict your access to the Service if we determine that your use of the Service violates this Agreement or substantially exceeds normal use by other users

While those appear to be common phrases in Terms of Services it is still scary to know that Amazon may access and use the files that you upload.

Here is the link if you want to try out Amazon Cloud Drive.

Amazon’s recently introduced Appstore changes that, at least for Amazon customers in the US. It is likely that the feature will be introduced in other Amazon stores at a later time. For now, US customers of Amazon can test drive a selection of Appstore apps directly on site.

How does the Test Drive Now feature work in detail? Well you visit the Amazon.com AppStore and locate the Test Drive Before You Buy section located on the right sidebar.

Please note that this module is only visible if you are logged into an Amazon account. You do not need to be connected with an IP address from the United States.

A click on Test Drive other apps opens a listing of all Android applications that are available for testing. You can now click on any application listed to be taken to the individual product page. Your IP address will be checked on page load, and only users from the US will see the Test Drive Now button on the page.

Users from other countries will see the same product page sans the Test Drive now button. Test Drive makes use of an Android emulator to give Amazon customers the option to try out the app before they make the decision whether to buy it.

Clicking the “Test drive now” button launches a copy of this app on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute capacity in the cloud for developers. When you click on the simulated phone using your mouse, we send those inputs over the Internet to the app running on Amazon EC2 — just like your mobile device would send a finger tap to the app. Our servers then send the video and audio output from the app back to your computer. All this happens in real time, allowing you to explore the features of the app as if it were running on your mobile device.

The Android emulator opens in an overlay once the Test Drive Now button is clicked on. I was not able to test an app though, even while connected to an US virtual private nework. The message “Please check your connection and try again” appeared every time I tried to launch an app.

How to Test Drive

This trial allows you to interact with the app to get a sense of how it would function on your mobile device.

• Control the app by clicking and dragging your mouse on the device display to the left.
• Features that access device features or hardware (camera, GPS, etc.) may not function as they will on your mobile device.
• Keyboard input is currently not supported at this time.

Making use of an Android emulator to offer customers the chance to test drive an app before they purchase is improves the quality of the appstore tremendously. Not all apps can be tested this way though, but it is interesting that Amazon offers testing for free and commercial apps.

The one thing that is missing is a notification system for price drops and product availability. That’s where the free application Amazon Watcher comes into play. The program can monitor select Amazon items for you, and notify you when they become available or drop below a specified price.

Amazon Watcher is available for the Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X operating system. Both editions are identical in features. The software can monitor products in all six Amazon stores, for instance Amazon UK, Amazon Germany and Amazon US. The stores need to be selected before items can be added to the monitoring list.

It is unfortunately not possible to simply paste an url into the form to let Amazon Watcher sort out to which Amazon shop it belongs. Error messages are displayed if a US Amazon url is pasted into the product form of the Amazon UK shop.

The process is therefor the following:

You select the appropriate Amazon store in the program before you paste the product url into the form on the page. Amazon Watcher does not monitor clipboard entries, which is another thing that’s unfortunately missing.

A product is immediately displayed with its name, availability and current pricing. The lower half of the screen displays item details and the monitoring preferences. Here it is possible to configure the program to notify you when the product becomes available, or when it drops below a certain price. Prices from third party companies can be included in the monitoring.

The program brings up the Amazon product page by default if the selected criteria is met. It is alternatively possible to put x items of the product in the Amazon card and load the checkout, or to receive an email notification of the price drop or availability.

A click on start begins the monitoring of all Amazon items that have been added to the application. The program checks the Amazon product pages every 15 minutes for new pricing and availability information. You can change the interval and other settings in the program preferences. It is for instance possible to configure the program to start the monitoring right after program start, so that it is no longer necessary to press the Start button first.

A sound alert is played automatically once Amazon Watcher has discovered a price drop or product availability for one of the monitored items. The sound can be changed, and it is alternatively possible to disable audio alerts. The program is configured to minimize to the system tray, where it will quietly monitor the products on Amazon for changes.

Amazon Watcher is a nice little program for users who regularly shop at Amazon. The program has a few usability issues that were mentioned earlier in the article. Interested users can download the program from the product homepage. (via)

Not all Amazon accounts are affected by the security issue. According to Heise, only passwords that have not been changed for a long time are affected.

The only information available at this point in time is a test that Heise Online conducted. It revealed that a password that was changed last year was immune while older passwords were not. Some commenters in the forum were able to use password variants on accounts were passwords had not been changed since 2007.

Amazon users can test the vulnerability of their account by logging into Amazon. They could for instance change a lower case character to upper case, or append characters at the end of the password if it exceeds eight characters.

Affected accounts can be protected by changing the account password. Passwords are changed in the Change Name, E-mail Address, or Password setting under Your Account.

Update: It needs to be noted that the flaw still exists on all Amazon properties. Amazon customers who have been with the popular shopping portal for years need to change their passwords at the Amazon website to protect their account from the flaw in design.

It appears as if Amazon has changed the password functions on their sites in past years to protect new customers and those who change their passwords from the issue.

The books can only be loaned once however and for a maximum period of 14 days.  You can read loaned books on a Kindle or in any Kindle App.  These are available for a variety of devices including Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone.

Not all books will be available for lending, this will depend on the publishers providing permission for Amazon to do so.  There’s also precious little information on whether this will be a free service or what charges may be payable, again we can probably assume this will vary depending on the book and publisher.

This is an interesting move from Amazon and, while it was broadly expected at some point, it will be an interesting move to watch to see how it affects eBook sales.  It is widely considered that Libraries have been good for overall book sales in recent years, so will this move do the same for eBook sales?

You can read more at the Amazon website.

Better Amazon is a userscript for Mozilla Firefox (with Greasemonkey add-on installed) and Google Chrome that turns the Amazon product page into a user friendly version. The userscript works with all localized Amazon shops, from Amazon.com to Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de

It only does its magic on product pages. The three most notable changes are the following:

• Displays the average product rating of the product in big letters next to the item name
• Removal of ads on the Amazon page
• Collapsible sections to only display the needed information

Collapsible items can be expanded with a simple click. This way it is for instance possible to expand the customer reviews to read the reviews. Collapsing the items puts them all above the fold or near the fold to access them directly without having to scroll down to the desired section on the page.

Sections can be collapsed again with another click. Firefox and Chrome users find the Better Amazon userscript at the official Userscript repository.

Some Amazon users might prefer that Amazon is not keeping a record of visits to third party sites while some might not want to see personalized ads on Amazon sites and third party sites.

Personalized ads can be problematic when multiple users use a single computer system as the recommendations are then all mixed together (unless each customer has an individual account that is used whenever Amazon is opened).

Amazon offers an opt-out procedure. This opt-out has the following two effects:

• No personalized ads are displayed to the Amazon customer on Amazon first party sites and third party sites that display Amazon ads.
• Amazon will not record the user’s visits to third party sites that display Amazon advertisements.

It is fairly easy to opt-out of Amazon personalized ads and third party information collection.

Open the Amazon website and locate the Your Account link in the top right corner of the screen.

Scroll down on the next page until you see the link “Your Advertising Preferences” in the Personalization section. Clicking that link opens the following screen.

The opt out button on the left can be used to disable personalized ads and information collection on third party websites.

Personalized Ads. We want the ads you see on Amazon.com and its affiliated sites, as well as the ads you see from Amazon or its affiliates on other third-party websites, to be as relevant to you as possible. Often, our advertising is based on personal information about you, such as your purchases on Amazon.com, visits to Amazon Associate web sites, or use of payment services like Checkout by Amazon on other web sites.

If you do not want us to use this information to allow third parties to personalize ads we display to you on Amazon.com and its affiliated sites, or to allow us to personalize Amazon or its affiliates’ ads displayed to you on third-party sites, click the button on the left of this page to turn off this feature.

Please keep in mind that you will still see ads on Amazon.com and its affiliated sites, they just won’t be personalized by third parties. Similarly, you may still see Amazon and its affiliates’ ads on third-party sites; they just won’t be personalized by us.

Information Collection. Like other internet advertisers, Amazon and its affiliates are able to keep a record of third-party web sites you visit that display our advertisements and content links.

If you do not want us to keep a record of your visits to third-party web sites, click the button on the left of the page to turn off this feature, and we will no longer record, store or use this information. However, all previously collected information will be retained by our systems to better personalize your web experience and improve our services.

The opt out button will turn into an opt in button if it is pressed to give the customer an option to activate the feature again.