Results tagged “amazoncom”

Amazon is getting sued for broken Kindles and promises to replace them at no charge. JP Morgan says there will be no new layoffs in Seattle, where it purged WaMu's operations after taking it over several months ago. More UW scientists are cashing in on their lab work and raising venture capital to go into the biofuel business.

You no longer have to buy a Kindle or give Amazon.com any money in order to access the bulk of Kindle content and features, thanks to a new application (download here) released by the Seattle-based book giant today which allows you to read, highlight, and bookmark e-books Kindle-style on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Just last month, Seattlest got to handle our first Kindle; its owner had to gently inform us that the first-generation version did not in fact have a touch screen after a full minute of watching our grimy fingers scooting along the surface in vain. If you have one of the old Kindles and don't want to invest in a new one just for the touch screen feature, now you have options. iPhone-owning readers: will you be downloading this app? [MvB: Just did.]

If you wanted to buy a few books, a used movie, a car, and a new outfit all in one place—right this very moment—well, you're out of luck. Amazon.com, the internet's purveyor of everything, seems to have crashed. The New York Times is reporting the site failure is an "unplanned event" that had already been happening for an hour when they posted at 10:37 PST. A check-in on Amazon at noon finds the same error message. We've questioned our friends who work at Amazon about the site's troubles, but we figure they are otherwise occupied with figuring this thing out and trying to keep their heads from exploding.

New York recently passed a state budget that requires Amazon.com (and other online retailers) to start collecting NY state sales tax. Amazon doesn't have any brick-and-mortar presence there, but NY argues that because Amazon has affiliates in the state, the company is obligated to start collecting the sales tax on purchases made there.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Seattlest.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Seattlest.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Seattlest.

John Markoff of the NY Times talked gadgets with Steve Jobs.

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

Continue reading "Steve Jobs On the Kindle: "The Whole Conception Is Flawed""

Motley Fool's unwrapped their crystal balls -- and they don't see good things for some of Seattle's biggest companies. They're "unleashing our venom on some of the stocks that your fellow Fools think will tank in 2008."

Generally after the warm, fuzzy glow of our New Year's hangover wears off, Seattlest is left staring into the abyss of January without much to cling to, except our quickly fading memories of the resolutions we made and the knowledge that tax season is fast approaching.

Turns out Amazon.com's customer service department isn't staffed by computers -- just sarcasm-savvy people who use computers. Consumerist broke the story: Amazon Sends "Best Customer Service E-mail I've Ever Received". We'll summarize: One of Amazon.com's Black Friday deals was the chance to win a $1000 laptop for $299. Many people entered; most of them were unsuccessful. Some theorized that Amazon employees had snatched up all the good deals, since no one they knew had won...

We love lists. Which is why we're a little sad that we didn't know about Amazon.com's UnSpun until we read The Paper Noose's post on Georgetown's place in the Top "Hip" Neighborhoods to Live in Seattle, WA. There's nothing we love better than completely arbitrary lists with no discernible criteria beyond kneejerk personal opinion -- except maybe passing them along. According to UnSpun users, the top 10 "hip" neighborhoods are: 1. Capitol Hill (surprise,...

Click-YAY! Click-YAY! Click-YAY!

When Amazon.com announced Amazon Fresh last week, it piqued some bloggers' curiosity, but we didn't spend much time thinking about it. Grocery delivery? Interesting, but we weren't going to dive in.

Once upon a time you could write a book on the typewriter in your attic, bundle the pages together with some butcher paper and twine and schlep it to New York to give to your publisher and then forget about the whole thing until it was time to blow the dust off the keys for the next go round. Or so we imagine it. Then came the critics. And then the book tours. Then Amazon.com and the damned reader reviews. Then the blogs. Now you gotta respond to all that shit. Any critique that goes unanswered, regardless of how obscure the publication or how ridiculous the charge, is out there for the world to see. A criticism of an author's work, floating around out there on the internets somewhere, is indistinguishable from a hard fact until the power of Google puts it in front of the author himself and he responds.

News from a day where we spent hours looking for a two-cent stamp.

How do we know? Amazon.com's running a contest. If your town pre-orders more copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows per capita than any other, Amazon will donate $5000 (via Amazon gift certificate) to a local charitable organization.

Well, we're finished with World War Z, which means we'll finally have time to pick up Jonathan Raban's Surveillance and that some lucky souls at the library will move up a notch on the hold list. Surveillance, of course, is the first book in Seattlest's Book Club. If you haven't picked up your copy yet, don't forget to ask for the Seattlest Book Club discount at Santoro's Books in Greenwood and Bailey-Coy Books on...

We hate this loathsome holiday. And no, not for the reasons most people think. Right up there with Mother's Day, we're sick of the commercialization of relationships, of marketers trying to tug at people's unwitting ability to decide for themselves when and how to tell the people around them that they love them.

That chair, the one with the plaid fabric? Should it go next to the couch, or over by the fireplace?

On the heels of the old news about Amazon and dynamic pricing comes some old news about Amazon's 30-day price guarantee. That's right. Amazon will refund your money if their price on something you buy drops within 30 days of your purchase. We hadn't heard that, either. There's some new news to go with the old news, though. Using Your Accounts, you could manually check on everything you ordered in the last month. Or, this...

--Some people were really happy with Qwest and Comcast after the as-yet-unnamed windstorms last month.

David Streitfield in the LA Times (registration required, regrettably) notes a new experience for him at Amazon.com: books he adds to his shopping cart get more expensive if he doesn't buy them right away. On Nov. 6, seeking to boost my dubious culinary skills, I decided to buy "The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook." I went to Amazon and placed the book in my electronic shopping cart but got distracted and never finished the transaction. The...

--Brandon Roy's expected to return from a heel injury tonight when the Blazers play Houston. If Roy wants to be ROY, he's got some catching up to do.

Speak now before McCain's new bill makes us turn comments off forever.

Fueling speculation that the 2007 Mariners ad slogan may be "Mariner Baseball: Wanna Pitch?", the M's signed the author of the 465,629th best-selling book on Amazon.com to a three-year, $24 million contract tonight.

This item on Amazon.com:

Sometimes we feel that we are taking our home town for granted. We probably focus on the lousy weather, the passive aggressive nature of the people, the ineffective local government, and the selfish NIMBYs who ruin everything.

Can't get enough voting? Ready to combine the excitement of electoral politics with the thrill of holiday shopping and add a soupcon of cool hunting? Head on over to Amazon Customers Vote and vote! vote! vote! (once per week) for one of four deals. Your candidates? 1) An Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for $39.99, down from $49.99 2) A Bell Metropolis Bike Helmet for $74.99 (down -- or up, we guess -- from $73.99) 3)...

Who delivers the best customer service in the country? Amazon.com: According to the National Retail Federation/American Express survey gauging consumer attitudes toward retailers' customer service, which was released Thursday, Amazon topped a number of venerable retailers for best meeting consumer needs. Who came in second? Nordstrom. Seventh? REI. That's right: local companies took 3 of the top 10 spots on the survey. A nationwide survey. "Online consumers are completely changing the definition of service," said...