One of the great things about shopping on Amazon is that you can read through dozens, if not hundreds of user reviews. While expert and editorial reviews can give you a sense of whether an item is worth the sale price, user reviews will let you know whether you should expect it to fall apart the moment you unpack the box.
But who has time to sift through hundreds of reviews when you just want someone to tell you whether you should buy this digital camera or that one? That's where Pluribo comes in. This Firefox add-on will read through the user reviews in certain product categories and present you with a concise summary.
The plugin uses some artificial intelligence so you don't wind up with short, choppy, and unreadable reviews. Don't expect Shakespeare, but Pluribo will give you enough information that you might not need to read the individual reviews.
Right now, Pluribo doesn't work with products in every category. For example, digitial cameras seem to be covered, but video cameras aren't.
If you're a subscriber to Amazon's Web Services then you know how important it is to make sure your data is not only safe but accessible at all times. And while Amazon provides a site dedicated to advising you of the status of their network, what if you wanted to know if the issue was with a particular service or if the sky was indeed falling.
CloudStatus hopes to provide just that. Instead of just globally monitoring Amazon's services, CloudStatus deploys their Hyperic HQ agents inside and outside Amazon's clouds to help determine if the slow down you may be experiencing is due to the entire infrastructure going down or just to a particular service.
In addition, CloudStatus also provides matrices so you can see how each of Amazon's services have performed over time. This is particular useful to those that are considering making the jump to cloud computing and want to base their decision off empirical data instead of marketing propaganda.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says the company will be adding a for-pay streaming video option to its Amazon Unbox video store sometime in the next few weeks. Currently if you want to watch a movie or TV show from Unbox, you've got to download your video. Sure, if you've got a broadband connection you can typically start watching a few minutes after you hit the download button, but who's got that kind of time?
On a more serious note, the Amazon Unbox download client and video player only supports Windows XP and Vista. That leaves Mac and Linux users in the cold. A streaming video service could conceivably work on any platform. There's no word on the pricing or launch date. But we do know that the service will be pay-per-view. There doesn't seem to be any subscription plan in the works. Amazon Unbox currently offers a mix of rental and download to own options as well as a limited number of free videos, with rentals typically ranging in price from $.99 to $3.99. We imagine the streaming videos will be similarly priced.
While Borders may be one of the most recognizable bricks and mortar book sellers in the US, the company has been nearly invisible online. For the last seven years, Borders has basically relied on Amazon for its online presence. But now Borders is relaunching its website with a heavy focus on recommendations and recreating the experience of browsing in a book store
While you can certainly use the site to search for books, the most prominent features of the new site are recommendations for books, music, and movies. There are "staff picks," new fiction and non-fiction, and customized suggestions based on your tastes in media.
One area where Borders has the advantage over Amazon is that the company does have bricks and mortar stores throughout the country. That means you can place an order online and have it shipped for free to your neighborhood store where you can pick it up. If you don't have a safe, secure spot for receiving deliveries at your home, this could be an attractive feature.
While Amazon plans to fight New York's recent decision to start collecting, the company has updated its tax collection page to let NY customers know that it willbegin collecting tax on June 1st.
The state of New York recently passed legislation which requires any company with affiliates in the state to collect taxes on any items sold in New York. That covers companies like Amazon which allow individual bloggers and web site operators to add links to Amazon products on their web sites. Amazon doesn't actually have any warehouses or business offices in New York. But thousands of New Yorkers who blog who run part time businesses from their home are considered representatives of the company under the state law, which means Amazon has to collect taxes.
Yesterday, Overstock.com decided that the easiest way to avoid paying taxes was to temporarily suspend its relationships with New York-based affiliates. But Amazon, which has already vowed to fight the new law in court, must be making a fair amount of money from New York based affiliates, because the company will instead collect taxes until the issue is resolved, even if that discourages some New Yorkers from buying products through Amazon.
The state of New York recently adopted a law that requires online retailers to collect taxes for items sold in New York if they have affiliates based in the state. That might sound like a reasonable request if New York shopping malls were littered with Amazon and Overstock.com kiosks. But the affiliates the law refers to are web publishers and bloggers in NY who happen to post links to stores like Amazon and Overstock in exchange for a small commission.
Needless to say, some folks aren't too happy with the ruling, and Amazon has already sued NY. Overstock.com is apparently taking a different approach. The company has begun sending out letters to affiliates in New York, letting them know that the company will, at least temporarily, be ending its relationships with NY affiliates.
In other words, New York doesn't get to collect any taxes from Overstock.com, and the state has probably just ticked off a whole lot of New Yorkers who had affiliate relationships with the company.
The state of New York is set to begin collecting tax from some online retailers who do business in the state. And by some online retailers, we mean the law is targeted pretty firmly at Amazon, and may also affect some others. Not surprisingly, Amazon is none to thrilled, and the New York Times reports that the company has responded with a lawsuit against the state of New York.
Now, here's the interesting bit. Nobody's disputing that New York residents are supposed to be paying state sales taxes for items purchased from out of state retailers and shipped to New York. Even before the law was passed, people living in New York and many other states were supposed to keep track of such purchases on their own and send a check to the state. Of course, nobody actually does this, but it's the law. No, the issue is whether Amazon should be required to collect taxes
Typically you only need to collect state taxes if you have an office or other presence in the state. For example, if Amazon had a New York warehouse or distribution center. And then you need to collect taxes on everything sold to state residents, whether it went through that office, warehouse, or distribution center or not. But the law claims that because New York residents can sign up to be Amazon "affiliates," which means the post links to Amazon products on their web pages and make a commission, Amazon does maintain a presence in the state. Which sounds kind of weak if you ask us. But that's the crux of the law, and it's also the crux of the lawsuit.
As much as Amazon mp3 would like to be a thorn in the side of iTunes, the data indicates that the service has had little effect on iTunes' dominance in digital music sales.
According to a new study by The NPD Group, only 10 percent of all purchasers at Amazon mp3 are converts from Apple's service, while the rest are switching from other services or new to the whole direct-download music scene.
While 10 percent may sound like a lot to us ordinary folks, it wasn't worth the eyebrow raise of a single analyst.
The bottom line is, if Amazon mp3 sees itself as the David to iTunes' Goliath, then their work is definitely cut out for them. Amazon currently sits in fourth place in US music sales, with iTunes and Wal-Mart fighting it out for the top spot, and Best Buy in third.
The troubling statistic for Amazon is that only a tenth of their music sales come from Amazon mp3. The rest come from those archaic compact discs; if you don't know what we're talking about, check out your parent's music collection-maybe they have some laying around.
The question is, my friends, what is keeping Amazon mp3 from biting into sales on iTunes? Is it the poor browsing experience? Is it because Amazon is seen as outside of the iTunes-iPod ecosystem? Are people willing to part with 10 cents more, and put up with DRM, for the sake of iTunes simplicity?
You know how if you live in most states in the US you don't have to pay sales tax on items purchased online? Yeah, that's about to change for about 19 million residents of New York State. Legislators have approved a bill that requires large online stores to collect sales tax for anything shipped to New York.
Technically, the tax isn't new. Consumers were supposed to be reporting these purchases on their tax returns all along, but nobody really does. The law just passes the burden from consumers to retailers.
While the bill doesn't become a law until Governor David Paterson signs it, he's expected to do so soon, as the measure is expected to raise $50 million and help balance the state budget.
Companies that collect less than $10,000 per year from sales to New Yorkers will be exempt. But something tells us that means you'll be paying taxes on purchase from large stores like Amazon.
Update: As we've reported in the past, this law wouldn't require all online stores to charge tax, but only online stores that do some form of business in New York State. And that business can include something as simple as operating an affiliate link program that lets New York residents make a few bucks by linking to Amazon products on their web pages. Former governor Eliot Spitzer had proposed the law late last year, but we had thought it was dead -- until yesterday. While it's possible that one outcome of this law could be businesses pulling out of New York altogether, a much more likely outcome would that Amazon and other companies with affiliate programs could refuse to let New York citizens sign up for affiliate accounts.
Triggit is a service for bloggers that lets you add YouTube videos, Flickr images, and text-link advertisements to your page without editing HTML or even launching your blog post editor. The system takes just a few minutes to set up, and once you've done so, you can add content to your blog in seconds.
We've put together a little video showing how it works. But in a nutshell, you add a bit of JavaScript to your site, and drag a bookmarklet to your browser toolbar. When you click on the bookmarklet, a toolbar will pop up that lets you add content to your site including videos, images, and affiliate ads from sites like Amazon and Wine Zap. You can do everything right from your browser toolbar. No need to launch WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, or any other blogging client.
Content you add using Triggit might load more slowly than other material on your site. That's because your site is basically sending a request to Triggit's servers asking which content to display.
Triggit supports Firefox and Flock. While there's no love for Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer users, at least Triggit picked a browser that works on all the major operating systems.
How often have you been out walking your dog when it suddenly occurs to you that you forgot to order the latest Lemony Snicket book? Well, now you can place your order without going to a store or waiting until you home and plop yourself back in front of a computer for the rest of the day. Just pull out your cellphone and send a text message with an item name to AMAZON (262966) thanks to a new Amazon service called TextBuyIt.
While we don't think anyone expects you to do all of your shopping from your phone (especially if you don't have an unlimited data plan), you can search for items by keyword, or ISBN UPC code. That means you can easily check prices on items while you're in a bricks and mortar store. Want to see if that computer, blender, or video game on the shelf is reasonably priced? Just check it out with Amazon.
Has this ever happened to you? You run out of ink, paper, good books to read, or something else, so you go online to order replacement as soon as humanly possible. You find what you need for a good price, add it to your cart, and then when you hit the checkout button the shipping charges hit you like a 2 ton heavy thing. The truth is while many sites like Amazon promise free shipping on orders over a certain price, it's not always easy to tell if an item qualifies for free shipping.
Free Shipping On is a new service that makes it easier to find free shipping deals. First, the site has a huge database of deals and coupon codes you can use to get free shipping from stores like Newegg, Circuit City, Staples, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Apple. The site is sort of like CouponMountain, Techbargains, or xpBargains, except it focuses specifically on free shipping deals.
But you can also use the service to search Amazon and eBay only for items that can be shipped for free. No more surprises in the checkout aisle... or cart.
Amazon is sending out a survey to a select group of folks asking what changes they'd like to see to Amazon Unbox, the company's digital video download service. At one point, the survey asks what participants think of several possible improvements to the service:
Free video streaming with ads
Paid video streaming without ads
Burn downloaded movies to DVD for playback on a DVD player
Ability to purchase a DVD from Amazon.com and watch a streaming copy of the same movie while you wait for the physical disc to arrive
HD video downloads
Ability to purchase a DVD and get a digital media copy for a small additional fee
Subscription service that would allow you to watch a certain number of videos per month for a flat fee
Subscription service allowing you to watch a certain number of independent films for a flat fee
Ability to watch DVD extras when renting or purchasing a movie from Amazon Unbox
Browse your Unbox library on your TiVo
Now, there's no guarantee that any of these "improvements" are actually on their way. But it's nice to see that Amazon's at least considering them, because we'd kind of like to see one of each.
A job posting on Gamasutra suggests Amazon will soon start a PC game download store to compliment Unbox, its video-on-demand service, and the site's MP3 download store. The job posting asks programmer/engineers to apply to become a part of the Software and Video Games Digital Technology Team at Amazon, which is "responsible for digital distribution of software and video game products from the Amazon website, including the newly launched Amazon Software Download store."
The job posting itself is unsurprising as Amazon recently launched the software branch of its download services, but the job post includes the bit about the distribution of "video game products," which is currently not happening at the Amazon Software Download Store. The only software presently available from the very new service is unfortunately tax software.
But fear not! We're sure a few competent souls will apply, molding the new service into a very happy reality for those of us that hate visiting and supporting major retail stores like Best Buy and Circuit City.
Amazon has launched a trial of a new program called Product Ads. The program allows retailers to purchase ad space on Amazon without selling their products on the site. When a user clicks on the ad rather than being taken to a product within Amazon, the customer will instead be sent to the companies 3rd party site to make a purchase.
Product Ads will show a 3rd party competitor, along with the price they're offering an item at right on the same page as the Amazon item. Reminiscent of PriceGrabber, different sites and their price for a particular item are listed below the item and description on Amazon. Users can see all the prices at the same time and make a decision whether to continue with their purchase on Amazon, or click over to the 3rd party website to make a purchase.
Much like other advertising programs advertisers only pay for their ad when a user clicks on an ad and is taken to the advertisers site. Both Google Product Search and Shopping.com run similar programs, but neither is the selling powerhouse that Amazon is. By combining advertising along with their extensive product catalog Amazon is setting themselves up to be even more of a leader in the online shopping arena.
The new program also forces Amazon to stay extremely competitive in its pricing in order to make users want to purchase items from them, however it also gives them the ability to make money off users who do choose to shop somewhere else. It will be interesting to see if the program survives. No doubt the program is great for shoppers, but how do you think Amazon will do with Product Ads? Do you think it will make it through the trial?
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