HP to launch Amazon's cloud computing competitor soon

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is reportedly all set to come up with its cloud computing service in next two months, which is said to be similar to Amazon Web services that delivers a set of services, which together form a computing platform "in the cloud".

According to a report from The New York Times, the cloud computing service that HP is planning to roll out will have more business-oriented features.

The report quoted Zorawar "Biri" Singh, senior VP and general manager of HP's cloud services as saying, "We're not just building a cloud for infrastructure," adding "Amazon has the lead there. We have to build a platform layer, with a lot of third-party services."

However, there are no reports as to how much the computing services would cost, but he opined "we are not coming at this at 8 cents a virtual computing hour, going to 5 cents."
HP's alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been afoot for over a year.

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Amazon Web services into the era of 'utility supercomputing'

Cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services is heralding the era of utility supercomputing, whereby massive computational resources and storage requirements can be accessed on demand.

Speaking at the launch of Intel's Xeon E5 processor family in London this week, AWS technology evangelist in residence, Dr. Matt Wood, said that cloud computing was a utility service like electricity and gas, in that it allows consumers and businesses to pay for consumption of a service on demand.

The cloud's capacity for storing and processing Big Data is only limited by the infrastructure it sits on, explained Wood. While the technology can act as "friction", extending the time it takes to move from an idea to a result, more powerful processors are helping to reduce this lag time, opening up new opportunities for a whole range of industries.

In particular, scientific and financial organisations with massive computational demands will be able to rent resources from the cloud to be able to do their work - whether it happens to be product modelling, simulation or informatics - without having to invest in huge infrastructure.

"We are entering the era of utility supercomputing where anybody can dial up computational resources and massive storage requirements on the fly," said Wood. "Traditionally these organisations would have to provision for 10-15% over the peaks in demand, but the cloud allows for bursty scalability, lowering the barriers to entry and allowing them to spend at least 70% of their time on differentiated work, rather than keeping the light on."

Wood's assertion builds on the ideas of Jason Stowe, CEO of Cycle Computing, who first proposed the concept of utility supercomputing in October 2011. Cycle Computing helps researchers and businesses run supercomputing applications on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure.

"The problem is, today, researchers are in the long-term habit of sizing their questions to the compute cluster they have, rather than the other way around. This isn't the way we should work. We should provision compute at the scale the questions need," said Stowe in October.

"We're talking about taking questions that require a million hours of computation, and answering them in a day. Securely. At reasonable cost.

"Scratch the surface of this idea, and you'll see a world of research the way I see it. No more waiting. No more R&D folks task-switching for days or weeks while compute is run. Only answers at the speed of thought, at the speed of invention, at the scale of the question."

Amazon in November launched a public beta of Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large (CC2), its most powerful cloud service yet. Every CC2 instance has two Intel Xeon E5 processors, each with eight hardware cores, as well as 60.5GB of RAM and 3.37TB of storage. It communicates with other instances - or virtual servers - in a cluster using 10 gigabit ethernet.

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Cheaper iPad2 could be Kindle fire killer

Apple has unveiled its new iPad this week, sparking a rush to pre-order the latest tablet device for its March 16 release date. However, the company has also decided to keep selling the older iPad 2; dropping the $499 price by $100.

Apple's iPad 3 said to be launched in 2012 according to a report.
Some are suggesting that Apple is hoping to make the iPad 2 competitive with the Kindle Fire from Amazon. However, seeing as the Kindle Fire is just $199, even a hugely reduced $400 iPad 2 would not be that attractive to someone really prioritizing finances when buying their tablet device; a user could purchase two Kindle Fires for the reduced price iPad 2.

However, this discrepancy hasn't stopped some media outlets from suggesting that Amazon may still be feeling the heat from the reduced iPad 2 and could be looking to slash prices on its own Kindle Fire.

Amazon could not be reached for comment, but there's enough speculation from various sources to suggest they could contemplate such a move.

The iPad 2 price drop "will put pressure on those who are trying to undercut the iPad on price," said Chris Jones, an analyst with research firm Canalys, according to Bloomberg. "The market has changed in the past few months with the arrival of Amazon."

The Mac Observer noted that the iPad 2 is superior than the Fire on battery life, display, processing power and graphics performance and number of apps - and that the divide between the tablets may persuade those thinking about the Kindle Fire to just invest a bit more and get the more sophisticated product in the iPad2.

"Apple's 20 percent price drop could mean a lot for some price-conscious consumers," the site said.

The price cut "could prove an important move for Apple as it bids to see off the challenge from cut-price rivals such as the Amazon Kindle Fire," said uswitch.com.

The 16 GB version of the new iPad will cost $499, the 32GB one will be $599, and those who want the 64 GB the price rises to $699.

For the top range new iPads that include 4G LTE coverage, those prices shoot up to $629, $729 and $829, respectively.

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Amazon’s Kindle Fire takes the Second Spot after Apple in Tablets For Q4 surpassing Samsung

Amazon’s Kindle Fire has taken the No. 2 spot in tablet sales for the fourth quarter, surpassing Samsung, and coming in behind Apple’s iPad. The Kindle Fire’s strong sales shipped 3.9 million units in the fourth quarter, and took a 14 percent of the tablet market. The 7-inch tablet has defiantly struck a chord with consumers and showed that the form factor is very viable.

Samsung with its Galaxy Tab line of tablets had weaker sales than its competition, only shipping 2.4 million units for the fourth quarter, slipping to 8 percent of the market, down from 10 percent.

Apple shipped 15.4 million units during the fourth quarter, taking 57 percent of the market, down from 64 percent in the third quarter. Android tablets and the Kindle Fire have taken a bite out of Apple, but the company faced even more competition from its own mobile device, the iPhone, according to Rhoda Alexander, Senior Manager of tablet research for IHS.

The tablet market as a whole rose 55 percent to 27.1 million units, according to IHS.

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Amazon to build 3 Million Square Feet office in Seattle

Amazon.com Inc. is purchasing property in central Seattle with plans to construct about 3 million square feet of office space, a move that could have the online retail bellwether owning its corporate headquarters for the first time amid dramatic expansion.

Amazon is buying three large contiguous blocks in central Seattle—a short walk south of where it leases its current headquarters—from Clise Properties Inc.

Real estate developer Seneca Group Inc., which is working with Clise, has filed papers with the city to build three office towers on the properties, each of which could include 1 million square feet of office space.

"I think it's a first, because of the size," said Clise Chief Executive Al Clise. "There are corporate headquarters in Seattle, but nothing of this size."

Mr. Clise declined to disclose the price being paid by Amazon. The deal is expected to be finalized later this year.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment, and a representative from Seneca Group did not respond to a request for comment.

"This is a new direction" for the company, Mr. Clise said. "They're planning for the future." Mr. Clise said Amazon also has options to acquire "significant" parcels of adjacent property in the future to accommodate further growth.

Bryan Stevens, Seattle's industrial permit liaison, said the city has not yet received applications from Amazon with design details.

Current zoning for the properties Amazon has acquired allows for buildings up to 500 feet in height, or about 40 stories, Stevens noted.

Amazon's real estate purchase comes as it finds itself in the midst of a dramatic growth spurt. The company reported recently that it ended 2011 with 56,200 employees, a 67% increase from the prior year.

Amazon's spending on employee additions, fulfillment centers and data infrastructure contributed to a sharp drop in fourth-quarter profit, as the company's normally impressive rate of quarterly revenue growth missed expectations.

It was not immediately clear how many employees Amazon could house within the 3 million additional square feet of office space.

Yahoo Inc. won approval in 2010 to build a 3 million square-foot office campus in Silicon Valley, not far from its current headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. That campus could accommodate roughly 12,000 employees.

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Amazon sells 3.9 million tablets in Q4 2011

Amazon.com shipped nearly 3.9 million Kindle Fire tablets in the last three months of 2011, making the online retail giant the world's second-largest tablet maker in the quarter, market research firm IHS said Thursday.

With the soaring sales of Kindle Fire, Amazon captured 14.3 percent of the global tablet market share in the quarter, surpassing Samsung Electronics to take the No. 2 position, according to a new report by IHS.

Apple remained the dominant player in the tablet market, shipping 15.4 million iPads, but its share dropped to 57 percent in the fourth quarter from 64 percent in the previous three months, said Xinhua.

The debut performance of the Kindle Fire, which hit the market only in mid-November of 2011, played a strong role in Apple's share shift, but it was Apple's own newly introduced iPhone 4S smartphone that proved to be the strongest competitor for the iPad, IHS analysts noted.

"The rollout of the iPhone 4S in October (in 2011) generated intense competition for Apple purchasers' disposable income, doing more to limit iPad shipment growth than competition from the Kindle Fire and other media tablets," Rhoda Alexander, senior manager of tablet and monitor research for IHS, said in a statement.

Looking forward, analysts predicted that Apple will reclaim its tablet market share when it starts to sell the next version of the iPad, which is expected in the second quarter of this year.

As for Kindle Fire, the long-term viability of the product will hinge on the success of Amazon's business gamble, "which depends on tablet sales driving substantial new online merchandise sales at Amazon.com in order to attain profitability", Alexander said.

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Amazon has far fewer Prime subscribers than analysts thought, says report

Amazon may have far fewer customers signed up for its Amazon Prime membership than analysts previously estimated.

The Prime membership costs $79 annually for Amazon customers, who in return get free two-day shipping on most items sold through the retail giant. The service is attractive to customers because shipping fees aren’t factored into individual purchases. And while Prime memberships increase the shipping costs for Amazon, research shows that Prime customers are more loyal and make more purchases. (I’ve got a stack of graphic novels that more or less proves that this is true.)

The total number of Prime memberships ranges from 3 million to 5 million since October 2011, according to a Bloomberg report that cites three anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter. If the information is true, that would mean that the company has less than half of the 10 million memberships estimated by some analysts.

Amazon was unavailable for comment about the membership numbers. (However, if the company does respond we’ll be sure to update the post.)

Amazon’s goal over the next 18 months is to increase Prime membership to the 7 – 10 million range, according to the report. One way the company plans to boost membership is though Prime’s commercial-free streaming video service. The company recently signed licensing deals with Fox, NBC, CBS, and Viacom to increase the variety of television shows available, which makes the Prime video service more competitive with Netflix and Hulu. But, Amazon clearly wants to use the streaming video service as a perk to boost Prime membership far more than it wants to compete with other video services — (making a standalone Amazon streaming video service even more unlikely).

Even if Amazon is successful in boosting Prime memberships over the next year, it’s unlikely that it’ll lessen the fears of investors who are concerned about the company’s future revenue growth.

Last month, Amazon reported revenue of $17.4 billion for Q4 2011, which was nearly $1 billion lower than Wall Street’s estimates. Not only that, but the company stayed irritatingly silent about its other big ploy to gain customer loyalty, the $199 Kindle Fire tablet. That could indicate that either sales of the device were lower than expected or purchases through the Kindle Fire didn’t reach estimates (or both).

If you combine the slow Prime membership growth and Kindle Fire data silence with the recent rumors that Amazon is plotting to open up brick-and-mortar retail stores across the country, it’s no wonder investors are worried about the company’s future revenue.

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Amazon's The Kindle Fire - Audience Review

Amazon's Kindle Fire - Audience Review 

I have had the Kindle Fire for a little over a week now, and I think that is enough time to provide my first impressions on the device. The first and most important thing that should be said is that this is not an "iPad-killer." It is not designed to be. I have seen so many articles and comments comparing this to the iPad, and surveys where people are asked if they will be buying a Kindle Fire over an iPad this Christmas. If you are expecting an iPad, or even a tablet, you will be disappointed. The main purpose of this device is to deliver Amazon content to you more effectively. It is designed for consumption, not creation. That is the reason it is so cheap and why Amazon is taking a loss on it. They are hoping to make up for that loss through sales of videos, music, books, and apps through Amazon's Web Services. You can also use it to view your own movies and media, but will find that it is more limited in that way than a regular tablet. Personally, as someone who has ordered several rentals from Amazon Video, and had to contact customer support for every single one of them due to problems with Amazon's Unbox player or purchases not appearing in my downloads, I can really appreciate this. But if you don't plan on using Amazon at all to obtain your media, you may want to take this into consideration before purchasing the Fire. Additionally, the reason this product is so hyped, and one of the reasons I like it so much, is due to the ridiculously low price. Amazon reviews shouldn't focus on price, but it is hard not to with this device. On price alone, this is a five star device. However when looked at the Fire overall, and when compared with other touch devices (what little there is to compare it to), I have to give it four stars, since there are a few areas I feel could use definite improvement.


FORM FACTOR - The Kindle Fire feels almost the same in my hand as my 3rd generation Kindle but it is a bit heavier. It might be difficult to hold it one handed and read a book for an hour or watch a movie. You're going to need to rest it on something. The display is made of Gorilla Glass, which is a highly damage-resistant. You can still crack it, but I have used a phone with Gorilla Glass for two years on it and it has zero scratches on it despite being kept daily in my pocket with my keys. The back of the tablet is rubberized, so it won't slide around and won't get scratched easily. It also feels good in my hand. Despite all the companies that will be selling them, I do not think you need a screen protector. I have scratched Gorilla Glass before, but it is very difficult to do.


CONNECTIONS/STORAGE - On the bottom are a headphone port (which will accept external speakers), micro-USB (for charging and file transfer), and power button. The Fire doesn't come with an SD card slot, with good reason. As mentioned, Amazon wants you to get content directly from them. It also reduces the production costs. You can transfer your own content to the device through the USB connection from your home computer. The Fire comes with 8Gb of storage, which is enough to hold about 8 downloaded movies, 80 apps, 800 songs, or 6,000 books. I filled mine up right away so I never checked it out of the box, but apparently it is closer to 6.5Gb as the OS is going to take up some of this. You have to really become adept at managing your content through the Cloud. Books won't take up much room, but magazines are around 250Mb and movies are a little under 1 Gb. Free videos available through Amazon Prime cannot be downloaded, only streamed. So unless you buy a movie from Amazon or transfer one of your own, you must be connected through a wi-fi connection in order to watch your movie.


AMAZON CLOUD - If you have not tried out the Amazon Cloud Drive, you will be pleasantly surprised. You get 5Gb (which they will probably increase in the near future) of free online storage to store anything you want, and you can access it from anywhere. This combines very nicely with the Fire. 5Gb isn't much for my collection, so I upgraded to a higher plan (rates are $1 per extra gigabyte per year). I can upload a playlist to it and listen to it on my home computer, then when I get to work the Fire can access it and pick it up where I left off. Any songs you get from Amazon Mp3 are automatically stored on the Cloud and don't contribute to the 5Gb storage space.


E-READER - This was going to be the big determination in whether I should get a Fire or the new Kindle Touch. Ultimately I ended up getting both since I prefer the E-Ink technology to the backlit display of the Fire. If you are the type of person who reads a lot and expect to spend at least 50% of your use on reading books, I don't think you will be satisfied with the Fire over your Kindle 3 or the Kindle Touch, Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display - includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers. It just isn't the same, and after hours of reading, the display would make my eyes hurt a bit (just like with any tablet). However it is nice not to have to use a lighted cover to see my books in the dark. The Kindle Fire is difficult to read in bright sunlight or on the beach. The touch navigation is very nice, but it doesn't function as nicely or quickly as it does on the iPad or even the Kindle Touch. This can be a problem for me, and the main reason I am using the Kindle Touch for reading books. Additionally, the Fire doesn't support real page numbers, even though the Touch does. So you have to use that ridiculous "location 121 of 16077 - 2%" format. A year of that with my last Kindle and I still don't understand what that means. They need to fix this in an update. Being able to touch a word and have it bring up the dictionary is incredibly convenient and takes less than 2 seconds. But still, the Kindle Touch handily beats the Fire for reading.


MAGAZINES - The Kindle Fire can also handle magazines, however the display is just too small to be an enjoyable reading experience. I tried out several different magazines, and the main problem I had was with the formatting. I tried to read an issue of Bon Appetit and my eyes were straining after three pages. There is no way to read a single article without zooming. The Fire handles magazines two ways: with Page View, which shows the original magazine display, and with Text View, which attempts to just provide the text of the article. A lot of magazines these days have several things going on in one page, with multiple columns, little sidebars and boxes everywhere, etc. I couldn't view a lot of this without zooming, the text is just too small. So Page View did not work very well for magazines like this. It is especially tough with magazines like Entertainment Weekly, Men's Health, GQ, etc. I found magazines like that unreadable on the 7" display. Magazines that focused mostly on the article, like Nature, Wired, etc, were handled much better. Some magazines even come integrated with embedded video and audio, which is a very nice feature, and one I can see being very useful for things like Men's Health, but I haven't had as much of a chance to use it yet. Text View is a very nice feature that works mostly well, but seems to get a bit confused with magazines that have complicated formatting, so it pretty much defeats the purpose since those are the ones I need it for the most.


COMIC READER - This is one of the main reasons I purchased the Fire. Amazon has a fairly extensive collection of comic books available for the Fire, including an exclusive deal with DC to publish many of their books. In addition to a proprietary comic reader that comes on the Fire, Amazon also has a Comics by ComiXology app available to purchase issues and subscriptions through. Although I initially thought the 7" display would be too small, it is actually decent enough to serve as a comic reader. I would definitely prefer a 10" version if they came out with one in the future. A 10" tablet is still the way to go for comics, but if you're looking for a cheaper option and portability, the Fire isn't too bad, and definitely beats a smart phone. It has a "panel by panel" feature that lets you scroll through the issue by different panels, which it will then zoom in on. You tap the panel when done, and it moves to the next panel. This is great for getting a larger view and working around the size restriction, especially since some of the text in the comics is just too small to read. I do wish Amazon's comic reader allowed you to scroll through small versions of the pages (like I've seen on another unnamed e-reader), instead of just using a progress bar. Although it is fairly decent, if you are considering the Fire just for comic books, and you are a Marvel fan, you may want to hold off and look at another retailer's device which I think has a few more options. You can load your own .cbr comic files on the Kindle, but you'll need to use a third party app, like Comicat to do it.


AMAZON MP3/VIDEO - Amazon hopes that you will get the majority of your content from them. That is why the Fire is so reasonably-priced. If you currently use iTunes, you will love switching to Amazon Mp3. Unlike iTunes, Amazon music is DRM-free. DRM is copy protection. That means that the record labels haven't locked down the music you buy from Amazon to restrict how you use it. For the most part, music purchased on iTunes can only be played with iTunes-compatible devices. That is why you won't be able to use your massive iTunes collection on the Fire (unless your remove DRM and convert them to Mp3 first). But Amazon MP3 music is playable anywhere, even on your Apple devices. It also has a very high bitrate so you are getting great quality. You don't have to worry about not being able to listen to your music 15 years from now if Amazon goes under. It's yours forever. As far as video, I have always disliked Amazon's Video services. The prices are very reasonable and they now have a huge selection, but obtaining the videos is a huge pain due to Amazon's terrible Unbox player. That changes with the Fire, as everything is native and streams/downloads beautifully. If you make a lot of purchases with Amazon, or if you have several Amazon customers in your household, you should take advantage of their Prime program. In addition to the large selection of free videos now available to Prime members, the shipping advantages are amazing. I once had a 200 lb exercise bike overnighted to my house for only $3.99. Everything I order I get within 2 days. The Prime program seems expensive but it has certainly paid for itself over the years for me, and now is even better that it is integrated more with the Fire. The only problem I have with video playback is that everything I watched did not fully expand to the screen, and was letterboxed. Considering the small 7" display size, this was an annoyance for me. I know shows have different aspect ratios, but some should fit the display, and I think many users will be annoyed that they can't zoom or stretch the display to fit.


WEB BROWSING - This is another feature I was initially excited about. I like the idea of being able to use the Fire as a netbook. Amazon advertises "ultra fast web browsing" using Amazon's Silk browser. It is based off of technology that is designed to increase page loading times by pre-fetching part of the content. Sounds like a great idea, but doesn't work as well in practice. I tried out the Fire on several different connections and compared page loading times with other devices (all connected wirelessly). The Fire was one of the slowest. Amazon's own web page, which has actually recently been optimized to work with the Fire, takes an average of 7 seconds to load. Other major portals took a similar amount of time or slower. My iPad and my Xoom both load pages much faster. It is not slow enough to be a problem, but not fast enough to impress me or be worthy of Amazon's marketing regarding it. This needs to be improved.


BATTERY LIFE - Amazon advertises 8 hours of reading or 7.5 hours of video playback. As an average, that's probably fairly accurate. During testing I got an average of 7.4 hours of continuous reading, and 7 hours of video playback over five tests for each. This is a big change over the roughly 30 days of continuous reading with the traditional kindle, so it may hamper you a bit if you're a voracious reader. I just got into the habit of charging it every night with my cell phone.


VS IPAD - As said, this isn't designed to be an iPad. I have an iPad and there is so much more I can do with it compared to the Kindle. The Fire serves a different (but sometimes similar) function. I just don't ever see Amazon building up the type of app store that Apple has, and that's where you're going to find the major differences. Additionally, the 10" display on the iPad makes a huge difference to me over the Fire's 7" display when it comes to watching movies and TV, and reading magazines and comic books. However, I think there is definitely room for the Fire to steal some of iPad's market share, as many people (I am one of them), will find the functions they want in a tablet can be covered by the Fire.


USER INTERFACE - The Fire uses a heavily modified version of Android. I really liked the interface, however I don't think it works as well on the Fire as it does on a full tablet device like the Motorola Xoom. Occasionally I would try to make a page turn and have it not register on the Fire, or have it register more slowly than I am used to. If you have a lot of experience with the iPad, you are going to notice that the software doesn't respond as quickly on the Fire as it does with other tablets. Although this is an inconvenience and something I definitely feel needs to be addressed, I can accept it given the lower price point. I will have a problem though if this is not resolved through a firmware upgrade in the future. The Fire's custom version of Android is very nice. The most recent applications or files accessed will display in a carousel format that you can rotate through. You can also set up commonly-used applications as favorites.


NEGATIVES:
- No bluetooth and no HDMI. I could really use bluetooth for integration with bluetooth-capable speakers and so I can use bluetooth audio in my car. As a media player, I feel this really should have been included, and I imagine it will with future versions. This is especially important since the audio from the speakers is a bit tinny and weak. I have been using headphones with all my media-playing, which significantly improves the sound. There is also no physical volume button, which is a pain when you need to silence the device quickly. I also would like HDMI output so I can take my Amazon video purchases and watch them on my big screen TV. Another big disadvantage in a device that is made for media. This will also likely be included in a future edition, so at $200, I don't feel bad about possibly having to upgrade a year from now to get it.
- Only 8Gb storage space. As mentioned, this device is mainly designed to integrate with Amazon's Cloud, so 8 should be enough, but it would be nice to have at least 16. I imagine Amazon did this on purpose to force people to use their Cloud service.
- Touch capability can sometimes be sluggish. iPad and other tablet owners may be disappointed with the touch reaction time and some aspects of the software.
- Video doesn't include option to zoom or stretch the display to fit the screen.
- Web "Accelerator" is not as fast as other tablets.
- No Micro-USB transfer cable included with it. Another way for Amazon to discourage you from transferring your own files to the device. If you want to do that, you will need to purchase one separately, like the AmazonBasics USB Cable - 2.0 A Male to Micro B (6 Feet / 1.8 Meters).


SUMMARY: Bottom line, you will not find a cheaper device out there for streaming music, video, and books than the Kindle Fire. The reason that this device is so amazing is not for what it can do, but for what it can do at such a cheap price. The price tag, not the technology, is the story here. Although I definitely feel there is room for improvement and will be interested in seeing Amazon's second generation of this device (which I think will be significantly improved), the Kindle Fire is a solid start. If you can wait a year or more for Amazon to work out the kinks with the Fire (like it did with its 1st generation of the Kindle), you should definitely do that. The next version should fix a lot of the problems that keep the current Fire from being a "Five Star" product. Unfortunately, reviews shouldn't focus on price, so due to some issues with the form factor and touch interface, I can only give it four stars. It is just not "perfect" enough for me to say it is a five star product without taking price into consideration. But aside for that, there is really only one device you can compare the Fire to - The Nook. So for what it is, I would have no problems recommending the Fire to consumers who can take advantage of it. This product more than lives up to what it is DESIGNED to do. If you plan on getting most of your content from Amazon AND you have a Prime membership, I think you will really find this is a pretty incredible device for the money.


Review by Trevett.


Pen down your reviews here !!!

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Samsung to launch Google Nexus powered by Ice Cream Sandwich in Europe on November 17

Google’s latest Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, will launch in Europe on 17 November, Samsung and Amazon have confirmed.

A pre-order page has also appeared on amazon.co.uk, which lists the device for £549.99 (€627, $885). Subsidized versions will be made available on Vodafone, 02 and 3UK with a two-year contract in the UK.

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Is Flipkart deleting Negative reviews on their site and masking it with fake Positive Reviews?

Flipkart is the India's fastest growing e-commerce website. Flipkart was started by two Amazon's ex-Employees and Notably both of them were IIT Alumini. Flipkart's fastest Service and Cheap Price tag made them famous by Mouth Spread without any great Advertisement and Publicity.

Flipkart is sometimes mentioned to be India's Amazon. But Flipkart differs from Amazon in a great Aspect i.e., Their Reviews.

The Product review in Amazon website is terrific and its reliable and it never seems to be made-up fake story.
But on the other hand, The review in Flipkart website is too bad to read and sometimes we might end up in thinking whether the Review is a true legitimate one written by their customers or any automated bot making up fake Reviews.

The issue is now more enlightened with the complaint over Flipkart that it deleted some negative reviews of its users.

From Woikr,

I recommended flipkart.com to a close friend of mine who was planning to purchase a LED TV. Flipkart.com recently launched their TV and video section and are offering heavy discounts. Based on my advice, he went ahead and bought a Samsung 46 Inches Full HD 3D LED for INR 1,07,420. Since flipkart.com is only delivering TVs in certain cities, he had the TV shipped to his relative’s place in Delhi and his dad would come and collect it from them. So far so good.

Here are the issues that he faced in the delivery process:

1. The TV was not delivered on the promised date of delivery. His dad drove all the way from a different city to receive the TV only to find out that the it won’t be delivered that day and that flipkart “was going to” inform them at 6pm that day about it. For the record, the TV was delivered within the time mentioned on the product page, but flipkart.com failed to provide correct tracking.
2. There was a free Shrek 3D Blu Ray scheme going on the TV (from Samsung). Flipkart.com did not deliver the Blu Ray discs with the TV. Instead, he got a call from flipkart.com asking him to specify his choice of Bu Ray discs to deliver. Here is a question – when the offer says “Free set of Shrek 3D Blu Ray titles”, why do you need the user to choose the titles? Just deliver the damn Shrek set!
3. It has been a few weeks since he placed the order and despite complying with their request and specifying his choice of Blu Ray titles, he has not received the Blu Ray titles yet. What he has gone through though, is the harassment of talking to the flipkart.com’s customer service many times with no results whatsoever. In one of his conversations with them, the customer service person did tell him that he wasn’t supposed to specify his choice of Blu Ray titles. But still flipkart.com failed to deliver either the Shrek set or the ones he chose.
4. He posted a review on the product page about his experience, which was later deleted by flipkart. They sent him this email:

Here are my thoughts on the whole episode:

1. People do not go online just to get the stuff they are buying. They are paying the e-commerce site for the product plus the convenience of buying from their home coupled with a smooth delivery process. All of the above are products being sold at the e-commerce site. If retailers think that they are opening an e-shop just to offer another outlet for people to buy their stuff from, they are mistaken. And this is the reason why e-commerce is not picking up in India. And the same reason why amazon.com is hugely successful.
2. In addition to lower prices, the online shops must offer an awesome customer service & effective delivery system. If I have to go through a series of harassing painful calls with the customer service who is not ready to listen to me, I will rather prefer to pay a few bucks extra to buy peace of mind along with the product that I am purchasing from a local retailer. In this case, flipkart.com won in the first, but failed in the second.
3. From the whole episode, it looks like either flipkart.com ran out of Shrek 3D box sets, or Samsung had pulled the offer when my friend made the purchase. In either case, they should have called the customer and politely told him the truth offering replacement titles from their library or store credit. Nobody is going to return a 1 lakh rupees TV set because he got a refund instead of the free 3D Blu Ray box set.
4. I read my friend’s review on the site for the brief amount of time it was there. He clearly mentioned that he loves the TV. He explained what he went through and at no point said anything bad about Samsung or the TV. Infact, he mentioned clearly in the first line that this review is for flipkart’s service. Flipkart.com has to understand that people reading the reviews are not idiots. They could have easily read through the review and decided whether they want to buy the TV or not. Also, when they deleted his review, they also lost any chances of getting a new customer who might have read the part about how awesome the TV is and would possibly have bought it.
5. As mentioned in my first point, people buy both the product and the convenience from online retailers. And if someone has anything to say about either of them, product reviews section is the place to do so. But flipkart.com fails to understand this. If they feel that product reviews is not the correct section for this, they should build a separate section for flipkart.com’s service feedback. Something similar to a seller’s rating on ebay. And if they are really transparent & offer prompt and efficient customer service, they shouldn’t have any problem in doing so.
6. Flipkart.com lost a free advertiser. My friend could have advertised flipkart.com to his friends and family had he received a proper customer service. Instead, he will now be telling this story to everyone over dinner. He purchased a TV worth more than a lakh online. How many people do you know would do that? He is from the very generation that is the target audience of e-commerce sites in the whole world, not just India. Losing him as a customer means loosing his friends as perspective customers.

Flipkart's publicity and popularity is in Stake after this incident. It is well known that Amazon is planning to start their e-commerce Business in India. These kind of issues may help the US Giant to have a big leap in India's Online e-commerce Business.

Courtesy: Woikr

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Touch Screen Tablet PC - Companies started jumping in with Cheap android Powered Tablets - Tablet Wars

Now everyone understands its Mobile Computing which gonna rule the future Era of Computers. So Companies started working on it with Touch screen based Tablet PCs.

Apple Market leaders in Tablet Business with iPad (iOS powered). Now getting  scared by its rival, Samsung's Galaxy Tab(Android OS powered). Meanwhile, Recently Amazon said its plan to launch their Table Kindle Fire(Android OS powered), which is comparatively much cheaper than both Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab. It is well known that Microsoft is working hard on their Tablet which is expected to come with Windows 8 Operating system.

To stun the whole Digi World, Recently Indian Government launched their Dream Tablet Aakash(Android OS powered) which costs just $35 and Commercially available for just $50.

Then, India's one of the leading PC Makers, HCL unveiled its Tablet Series called ME(Android OS powered) which costs around INR 20K.

Amongst this Tough Competition, Now Mobile Phone Producer Fly, launched their first Android Powered Tablet Fly Vision for just Rs.7,299.

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Amazon's Silk Browser in Kindle Fire - 20 times faster But a Privacy threat

One of the most unexpected features of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire was that it shipped with an all-new web browser, Amazon Silk – speeded up ’20 times’ by the power of Amazon’s ‘cloud’ computing servers.

But the processes the Kindle Fire uses to ‘speed things up’ are already setting off privacy alarm bells.


Writing on Naked Security, a blog for British computer security firm Sophos, senior security adviser Chester Wisniewski said:

"All web connections from your tablet will connect directly to Amazon, rather than the destination web page. Amazon will keep this connection between your Kindle Fire and EC2 open indefinitely while you are actively surfing, reducing the latency and connection times to retrieve web pages… Hopefully you can start to see the problem here. All of your web surfing habits will transit Amazon's cloud."

He also wrote , ‘If you think Google AdWords and Facebook are watching you, this service is guaranteed to have a record of EVERYTHING you do on the web.’

 Kindle Fire started getting Critics from Privacy analyst all through the world because of Silk.

Courtesy: www.dailymail.co.uk

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Preorder Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet for just $199 in Amazon.com

Amazon’s Kindle Fire will be coming November 15th for $199. Their preorder page for the device has finally gone live on their website. As with any product shipped, sold or fulfilled (or all of the above) by Amazon, this one doesn’t require you to pay any cash upfront.
Also remember that with ordering you’ll get a free month of Amazon Prime (which will be necessary for streaming all that good video content Amazon’s got waiting for you). And if you already have Amazon Prime, you can have this overnighted to you for about $4. Go ahead and check it out at Amazon’s site here.

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Amazon's Kindle Fire Tablet just for $199 , writes Jeff Bezsos, CEO of Amazon

Jeff Bezos, CEO and Owner of Amazon, in his letter addressing to all Amazon customers mentioned the new shocking price of Amazon Kindle Fire which really gonna fire all the tablets currently in the market.

 Many Analysts feel that this price slashing is just to enter this hard Warfare of Tablet wars with Apple's iPad, Samsung's Galaxy Tab and upcoming Microsoft's Windows 8 Tablet as lead competitors.

Here we present  the Copy of the Letter written by Jeff Bezos.

Dear Customer,
There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp.
We are excited to announce four new products: the all-new Kindle for only $79, two new touch Kindles – Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G – for $99 and $149, and a new class of Kindle – Kindle Fire – a beautiful full color Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games, web browsing and more, for only $199.

These are high-end products – the best Kindles we’ve ever made. Kindle and Kindle Touch have the most-advanced E Ink display technology available, and the 3G Kindle Touch adds free 3G wireless – no monthly fees and no annual contracts. Kindle Fire brings everything we’ve been working on at Amazon for 15 years together into a single, fully-integrated experience for customers – instant access to Amazon’s massive selection of digital content, a vibrant color IPS touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle, a 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand, a state-of-the-art dual core processor, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, and an ultra-fast mobile browser – Amazon Silk – available exclusively on Kindle Fire.
We are building premium products and offering them at non-premium prices.
Thank you for being a customer,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO

Courtesy : Amazon.com

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Amazon Kindle Tablet Technical Specifications as defined by Tech Crunch

Amazon Kindle Technical Specifications :

- 10-inch Display

- Dual-core chip

- 6GB internal storage

- SD card expansion

- Cloud Device

- Wi-Fi , 3G Upgradable

- 10 Hours Battery Back-up

- Micro-USB port

- Speakers

- No Camera

See more : Top 5 Reasons why The Amazon Kindle Tablet a big threat to the Apple iPad

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Top 5 Reasons Why The New Amazon Kindle Tablet Is a Real Threat To The Apple iPad

Amazon is working on a tablet computer—currently called the Kindle Tablet—that will be released later this year. After months of speculation, Tech Crunch got an up-close-and-personal look at the Android-powered device that Amazon has created with the goal of competing with the Apple iPad 2, the BlackBerry PlayBook, and a host of other tablet computers in mind.

But, can the Kindle Tablet really compete with the big boys? In a word: Yes. After reading through the Tech Crunch report, it appears that Amazon has put a lot of time, thought, and effort into making the Kindle Tablet a serious contender in the tablet space. To help you see why, we pulled out the five reasons that we think the Kindle Tablet will make an immediate impact.

1. The Kindle Tablet is slated to cost just $250.

Now, we know what you’re thinking: If it only costs 250 bucks, then it can’t possibly do all the things that the iPad can do! Not true. There are some features you’ll get with the iPad that you won’t get with the Kindle Tablet—for instance, Amazon hasn’t found a service provider that’ll allow you to connect to a 3G network with the Kindle Tablet yet—but, for the most part, you’ll be able to do most of the things you can do on your iPad now with the Kindle Tablet for at least half the price.

2. It will feature an Android operating system that will be completely unique to the Kindle Tablet.

Amazon has worked with Android to create an OS that is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It won’t be anything like the Android OS that you use with your smart phone or one of the operating systems that’s being used on other tablet computers right now. Tech Crunch also pointed out that the interface is easy to use and a sight to see.

3. It will encourage users to utilize Amazon’s cloud services.

Sometime soon, all tablet computers—and all computers in general—will rely on cloud services rather than bulky hard drives to store music, videos, and more. The Kindle Tablet is poised to be one of the first devices to force users to do it. That’s because the Kindle Tablet will reportedly only have about 6GB of storage on it. That’s remarkably small for a tablet, but it’s large when you consider that the Kindle Tablet will come preloaded with Amazon’s Cloud Player for music and Amazon’s Instant Video Player for movies. It means you’ll need a much smaller hard drive for your tablet, which is part of the reason Amazon is able to keep the price of the Kindle Tablet so low.

4. It will reportedly come with a free subscription to Amazon Prime.

The Amazon Prime service—which normally costs $79—gives Amazon shoppers advantages like free two-day shipping and no minimum purchases for free shipping. When you buy the Kindle Tablet, Tech Crunch says the plan is to give away a free subscription to Amazon Prime. So if you’re a frequent Amazon shopper, you’re basically getting a very useful service for free when you buy the Kindle Tablet.

5. Did we mention that it only costs $250?

 At $250, the Kindle Tablet is worth the price of admission and we can pretty much guarantee that you’ll find one of these in our hands when it drops later this year. Sorry, Apple, but Amazon’s got the right idea here. And you’ve finally got some very real competition on your hands. We can’t wait to see how it plays out.

Amazon Kindle Tablet Technical Specifications 

Courtesy : Techcrunch,live.drjays.com

Tags : Amazon Kindle, Amazon Kindle Tablet, Amazon Kindle Tech spec, Amazon Kindle price,Amazon Kindle review,Apple Ipad, Amazon Kindle Tablet vs Apple Ipad.

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