About one-fifth of global Internet users visited Amazon‘s various websites during June, according to a report from comScore.

Amazon led online retailers with 282.2 million visitors that month out of a total Internet audience of 1.4 billion, comScore estimates. That’s a 27% jump from June 2010, when Amazon got 221.8 million visitors — which was 17.7% of all Internet users. In the new report, Amazon was followed by eBay with 223.5 million, or 16.2% of all Internet users. China’s Alibaba.com got 156.8 million (11.8%).

The report also found that Amazon has an impressive global reach. Just 35.4% of its visitors came from North America in June. Europe was Amazon’s number two market with 31.8% and Asia Pacific produced 24.1%. In contrast, 83.4% of Walmart.com’s visitors came from North America.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Brave New Traveler

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About one-fifth of global Internet users visited Amazon‘s various websites during June, according to a report from comScore.

Amazon led online retailers with 282.2 million visitors that month out of a total Internet audience of 1.4 billion, comScore estimates. That’s a 27% jump from June 2010, when Amazon got 221.8 million visitors — which was 17.7% of all Internet users. In the new report, Amazon was followed by eBay with 223.5 million, or 16.2% of all Internet users. China’s Alibaba.com got 156.8 million (11.8%).

The report also found that Amazon has an impressive global reach. Just 35.4% of its visitors came from North America in June. Europe was Amazon’s number two market with 31.8% and Asia Pacific produced 24.1%. In contrast, 83.4% of Walmart.com’s visitors came from North America.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Brave New Traveler

More About: amazon, apple, ComScore, ebay, WalMart

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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About one-fifth of global Internet users visited Amazon‘s various websites during June, according to a report from comScore.

Amazon led online retailers with 282.2 million visitors that month out of a total Internet audience of 1.4 billion, comScore estimates. That’s a 27% jump from June 2010, when Amazon got 221.8 million visitors — which was 17.7% of all Internet users. In the new report, Amazon was followed by eBay with 223.5 million, or 16.2% of all Internet users. China’s Alibaba.com got 156.8 million (11.8%).

The report also found that Amazon has an impressive global reach. Just 35.4% of its visitors came from North America in June. Europe was Amazon’s number two market with 31.8% and Asia Pacific produced 24.1%. In contrast, 83.4% of Walmart.com’s visitors came from North America.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Brave New Traveler

More About: amazon, apple, ComScore, ebay, WalMart

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

About one-fifth of global Internet users visited Amazon‘s various websites during June, according to a report from comScore.

Amazon led online retailers with 282.2 million visitors that month out of a total Internet audience of 1.4 billion, comScore estimates. That’s a 27% jump from June 2010, when Amazon got 221.8 million visitors — which was 17.7% of all Internet users. In the new report, Amazon was followed by eBay with 223.5 million, or 16.2% of all Internet users. China’s Alibaba.com got 156.8 million (11.8%).

The report also found that Amazon has an impressive global reach. Just 35.4% of its visitors came from North America in June. Europe was Amazon’s number two market with 31.8% and Asia Pacific produced 24.1%. In contrast, 83.4% of Walmart.com’s visitors came from North America.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Brave New Traveler

More About: amazon, apple, ComScore, ebay, WalMart

For more Business & Marketing coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business & Marketing channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, just delivered a terrific opening keynote presentation for LinuxCon. Whitehurst isn’t just a businessman, he’s also a geek. He used Linux and open source before joining Red Hat, and the opportunity to be CEO of the world’s most successful open source company was a dream come true for him. After a quick summary of some of the major milestones Linux has seen over the last twenty years, he jumped into the heart of his keynote: what’s next? Whitehurst wasted no time in answering this question: “I have no idea.”

This is a somewhat uncommon response from a CEO, but it makes perfect sense for anyone even moderately familiar with Linux. Linux has seen so much growth in so many markets that it is almost a foolish exercise to try to make predictions about what’s next for Linux. (Indeed, the Linux Foundation’s Jim Zemlin has been saying “This is the year of the Linux desktop” for the last four years!)

Nevertheless, he had some thoughts about what the OS and ecosystem might soon be enabling. Here’s a quick summary of some of the more salient points from Whitehurst’s presentation:

Linux is a transformational technology. “The technology of Linux empowers advancements and innovations that have nothing to do with the technology of Linux.” That is to say, Linux supports the development of new business models, as well as new technologies.

The freedom to use Linux for any purpose, for free, has spawned many of the things we now take for granted: Amazon, Facebook, Google. Could any of these have succeeded to the extent that they have if they were required to purchase expensive proprietary software before they rolled out their products?

Moreover, Linux allows rapid and low-cost prototyping, making it easier to innovate and evaluate what works and what doesn’t. According to Whitehurst, “when you’re looking for innovation, you’re looking for what’s happening in open source.”

Linux has gone from catching up to commoditizing existing innovation in flexible, open ways, and now is moving on to leading innovation. The leading innovations today are happening in open source first and then big companies are working to productize that innovation for themselves. Hadoop, Cassandra, etc. are all examples of open source innovations that are now being warmly embraced by big companies.

Another leading example of this sort of innovation is everyone’s favorite term, ‘The Cloud’. Why is it that there is no single, solid definition of the cloud? It’s because no single company or vendor pitched it, so they didn’t get to contextualize it. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and other big, complex technologies didn’t have a small group of drivers. Rather, they emerged from a larger collection of technical experts working together.

The open source development model used by Linux has seen some remarkable, and in some cases ironic, collaboration. The US Navy, for example, was in need of a real-time kernel with deterministic performance characteristics in order to develop anti-missile technologies for their fleet. Linux didn’t have such a kernel, so the Navy contributed it. This directly benefited Wall Street, where now 80% of all stock exchanges rely on Linux and the real-time kernel for trading.

The National Security Agency wrote the Security Enhanced Linux extensions which are now a fundamental part of Red Hat and a few other distributions. The work the NSA did made it so secure that Linux is now the most secure operating system certified by the Russian government.

The open source ethos runs deep. Whitehurst shared a recent conversation he had with Facebook’s CTO, in which he was asked “Why do you guys release so much of your infrastructure work for free, when you know your competitors are going to use it, too?” The answer: it’s a moral issue. They feel that that have a responsibility to make the world a better place for everyone — contributors and competitors alike. If they can make someone else’s data center more efficient, or more reliable, then it’s incumbent upon them to do so.

Whitehurst wrapped up with the observation that the principles of mass collaboration are changing the world.

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The focus on the service is flexibility. They provide customizable output formats with variable bit rates to suit both mobile and desktop users, premium access to world-class content delivery networks, and a number of other features.

Many of their competitor video hosting sites use the Encoding.com site themselves for their needs, so the announcement is somewhat ironic. They fill the gap in between YouTube/Vimeo at the low and nearly free end and Brightcove/Kaltura at the higher end. Vid.ly is designed mostly for smaller video producers that don’t want to spend a lot of money but also don’t have lots of technical expertise.

The published pricing schedule is very complex and somewhat akin to Amazon’s Web Services where the variables include the number of videos posted, their size and the number of views per month.

There is a free version, where you can upload one video at a time and get a shortened URL that you can use to link to it, similar to what YouTube et al. does. With Vid.ly Pro, you will have access to analytics (coming soon), ability to control output renditions, CDN choice (Akamai and CloudFront, with more coming later), their own APIs and player customization. Even with the free account, you have unlimited video source file size, unlike some of the other video hosting providers.

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The focus on the service is flexibility. They provide customizable output formats with variable bit rates to suit both mobile and desktop users, premium access to world-class content delivery networks, and a number of other features.

Many of their competitor video hosting sites use the Encoding.com site themselves for their needs, so the announcement is somewhat ironic. They fill the gap in between YouTube/Vimeo at the low and nearly free end and Brightcove/Kaltura at the higher end. Vid.ly is designed mostly for smaller video producers that don’t want to spend a lot of money but also don’t have lots of technical expertise.

The published pricing schedule is very complex and somewhat akin to Amazon’s Web Services where the variables include the number of videos posted, their size and the number of views per month.

There is a free version, where you can upload one video at a time and get a shortened URL that you can use to link to it, similar to what YouTube et al. does. With Vid.ly Pro, you will have access to analytics (coming soon), ability to control output renditions, CDN choice (Akamai and CloudFront, with more coming later), their own APIs and player customization. Even with the free account, you have unlimited video source file size, unlike some of the other video hosting providers.

Discuss

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Is Amazon screwing with Apple? Is Facebook screwing with SMS? Is Google screwing with Facebook? Those are the main points of discussion. We also sort of veer off into a discussion about whether or not Google+ is all one big game in the more metaphorical sense.

And as a bonus, you’ll get to see our awkward transitions between stories.

Here are some of the key stories we talk about this week:

• Amazon’s Answer To Apple’s Terms: A Web-Based Kindle Cloud Reader — Brilliant On PC, Better On iPad
• Facebook Launches Standalone iPhone/Android Messenger App (And It’s Beluga)
• Facebook Just Out-iMessaged iMessage — And SMS Is More Screwed Than Ever
• Google Wastes No Time Putting Games On Google+: Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Zynga On Board
• Facebook And Google Duke It Out Over Gaming (Same Day Announcements, Zynga?)

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If you regularly have to deal with a lot of repetitive data entry or sorting, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The promise is appealing: you can hire workers to complete basic tasks for a relatively small amount of money. And, in theory, everyone wins. You get your tasks completed on the cheap, and your outsourced workforce gets to make some supplementary income from the comfort of their computers.

Unfortunately things are a little more complicated than that. Coordinating these jobs requires quite a bit of effort to ensure you’re getting quality results — you need to choose workers, figure out what price to set, and so on — and it isn’t necessarily easy for newcomers to get started. And then there the concern that Mechanical Turk workers aren’t getting paid enough.

Now a Y Combinator-funded startup called MobileWorks wants to provide an alternative to Mechanical Turk — one that’s as easy to use as possible, with no hands-on management required once a task is submitted. In fact, MobileWorks is promising a service that’s so hands-off that developers can use it as a sort of API — you make your data request, and a human ‘returns’ the result, with no intermediary steps. And they’re promising that its workers will be paid better than they are on Amazon.

Of course, Mechanical Turk and similar services require hands-on attention for a reason: you’re dealing with real people, many of whom are untrained, and aside from their modest pay they don’t have a particularly strong incentive to produce work of the highest quality.

MobileWorks knows this, but it thinks there’s a better solution than micromanagement. The company has set out to build a workforce comprised exclusively of workers who output consistently good results, to the point that users don’t have to worry about managing their tasks.

MobileWorks first got its start in January, when it set out to launch a service for crowd-sourcing tasks that would be completed exclusively by workers on mobile devices (in other words, people would be entering data from their cell phones). The company began approaching mobile retailers in India, asking them to identify and recruit customers who might serve as good candidates. The retailer’s incentive? Anyone wanting to be a MobileWorks worker would need a mobile data plan.

The MobileWorks team says that this worked well to seed its workforce with high quality workers, but that it’s since recognized that there are tasks that are better suited for completion on a computer, so it’s letting workers use computers as well. And it’s also letting its initial workforce organically recruit their friends and family (they say that these workers have an incentive to ensure that the people they recruit are also solid workers). The workforce is now up to around 150, mostly in India and Pakistan.

As for wages, MobileWorks says that the majority of its workers were earning less than $2/day before joining the service, and that after working 2-3 hours per day they’re earning $4/day.

The other key to ensuring quality, says MobileWorks, is that most of these manual tasks fall in one of twenty or so buckets. So the company is doing everything it can to optimize around these common tasks (which currently include data scraping and form entry), to make it easier to both submit a task and for workers to complete them. And the team says it has algorithms in place to ensure quality.

MobileWorks has set the bar very high for itself — if users notice that some of their work is coming back with shoddy results, they’re going to quickly learn to distrust this hands-off approach. And the service’s quality controls won’t really be tested until it starts reaching scale (it gets much harder to ensure high quality jobs when you’re employing thousands of workers rather than 150). But there’s certainly room for improvement in this space, and if they nail it, a large potential market.

We’ll keep an eye on MobileWorks’s progress going forward.

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Google TV hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, and while we could argue all day about what exactly prevented it from achieving greatness, the expensive hardware has to at least be part of the discussion. Logitech bit the bullet two weeks ago and lowered the price of their Revue from $250 to $99 — and it seems Sony has decided they might take a bit of that medicine too.

Their Google TV-powered HDTVs, which debuted in October, are getting hefty price cuts. Sony also made clear that these are not being made cheaper because there are better ones coming out soon — they just want to capture more market. That’s code for “they were too expensive to begin with.”

Here’s the breakdown (according to Amazon, and confirmed by Sony), by display size:

24″: $600 $295
32″: $800 $498
40″: $1000 $723
46″: $1400 $961

The best savings are on the 24″ version — and while Google TV wasn’t exactly a big hit among the TV-watching public at large (they prefer just watching), an internet-powered display like this could be a hit in a dorm room or kitchen.

Google TV will probably be around for a while, so it’s not a bad investment (and not a bad price for a 24″ set anyway), and the platform should be getting an update in the next few months as well, so you could be doing yourself a favor picking one up now.

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The HTML5 Kindle site appears to be optimized for the iPad. It’s accessed from the Safari browser in the iPad, so it routes around Apple’s App Store. That means Amazon doesn’t need to give Apple 30% of an eBook sale. Because the HTML5 site is very close to the functionality of the iPad Kindle app, this is going to have huge ramifications for Apple. Yes, Apple’s walled garden has just been structurally weakened. I’d go as far as to say that it’s a matter of months, not years, before Amazon pulls its iOS Kindle app from the App Store.

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In order to understand why Apple’s walled garden is probably going to go the way of AOL’s walled garden from the dot com era, we first need to acknowledge the sophistication and promise of HTML5.

HTML5 is the latest version of HTML, the browser markup language of the Web. It’s an increasingly popular way to deliver interactive experiences in browsers across devices: PCs, smartphones, tablets and more. We named HTML5 one of our top trends of the first half of 2011, because of the impact it is having on the App ecosystem.

Apple’s iOS platform (for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Apple TV) has the most apps. But Android is fast catching up – indeed, Amazon itself runs an Android app store.

Apple’s App Store is a classic walled garden. Apple controls what apps are approved, just as AOL used to control what content its users could access on the Internet.

Earlier this year Apple took what it probably thought of as the next logical commercial step in its walled garden strategy: take a healthy slice of the action of in-app purchases and subscriptions. After it, Apple likely reasoned, companies are using the iOS platform to make a lot of money – why not take a commission from that?

Apple’s 30% toll may turn out to be a huge mistake, because it looks like it underestimated just how sophisticated HTML5 sites can be.

How Good is Kindle Cloud Reader?

After taking the Kindle Cloud Reader for a spin, my conclusion is that it’s very close to the functionality of the iPad app version. Including being able to read offline. The main issue with Kindle Cloud Reader is that you cannot make new notes and highlights from the site – which is going to affect many readers (myself included, I tend to highlight a lot within eBooks). Jacqui Cheng from Ars Technica did a thorough review and noted some other pros and cons, but they are mostly minor things.

A side-by-side comparison; Kindle iPad app is on the left, Kindle Cloud Reader on the right.

The bottom line is that while the Kindle Cloud Reader isn’t quite as good as the iPad Kindle app yet, it soon will be. The addition of notes and highlights can’t be that difficult. When Kindle Cloud Reader gets on a par with the iPad app, I’m willing to bet that Amazon will pull the iOS app from the App Store.

Some of you may protest that Amazon wants to keep as many options open as possible, because ultimately it just wants people to use Kindle and buy books. But for many users – and I include myself in this – it doesn’t matter what form the Kindle takes on the iPad. As long as it works at least as well as the iPad app version. If Amazon suddenly added the ability for me to create new notes and highlights from the HTML5 version, then pulled the iPad app from the App Store, I’d simply switch to the HTML5 version without blinking.

Most Kindle users on the iPad would do the same. They won’t care about the iPad app disappearing, so long as they have just as good a user experience on the HTML5 version. Judging by the high quality of Kindle Cloud Reader, which certainly surprised me, that day isn’t far away.

Should Apple be concerned about that? You bet. It’s a going to end up being a very large hole in its wall, caused by companies wielding HTML5 sledgehammers. Amazon has struck one of the first blows. Other media companies are actively experimenting too, such as Financial Times and Fortune magazine.

Let us know in the comments if you think Kindle Cloud Reader will soon replace the iOS Kindle app, or if you think the two will continue to exist together.

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Ostensibly, the Kindle Cloud Reader is just another initiative in the “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” strategy that Amazon has with all its Kindle applications. It can do everything that a normal Kindle app can do, with such as synchronize your library, your last page read and bookmarks. Yet, the Kindle Cloud Reader is more of a reaction to the draconian app store rules instituted by the Cupertino giant than it is an dynamic new version of Kindle.

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The Amazon press release for Kindle Cloud Reader has many subtle digs at Apple and its app store.

“To make it easy and seamless to discover new books, we’ve added an integrated, touch optimized store directly into Cloud Reader, allowing customers one click access to a vast selection of books,” said Dorothy Nichols, director of the Kindle in the press release.

There is a list of bullet points in the press release outlining what the application does. It is pretty standard fare from what you would expect from a Kindle app. Yet, buried in the middle there is one line that pops out:

“New Kindle Store for iPad is built from the ground up for iPad’s touch interface.”

Then towards the end of the release, there is this statement: “Without even leaving the app, customers can start shopping in the Kindle Store and will find a unique and immersive shopping experience built specifically for iPad’s Safari browser.”

Amazon said that the Kindle Cloud Reader will be available for other desktop and mobile browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, BlackBerry PlayBook and “other mobile browsers” (see: Android, webOS and Windows Phone) in the coming months.

That is no mistake. After Apple forced Amazon and the other e-reader applications to boot their bookstore buttons from their iOS apps, it was imperative for Amazon to find a work-around for the situation. When it comes to the battle against Apple and the tyranny it holds over native applications, there is no better work-around than to build anHTML5 iOS functional app that functions in Safari as opposed to the native application.

If the rumors are true, then that is what Facebook has been working on with the so-called “Project Spartan” as well – an online application storefront that exists on the mobile browser yet independent of the Apple App Store. Amazon has beat Facebook to the punch, but the revolt against Apple’s rules is coming into focus. The big corporations have the time, money and infrastructure to push out complicated HTML5 apps but it may only be a matter of time before the mid-sized and small app publishers start doing so as well.

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Neato. An in-browser reader. Now I can read my Kindle books on every piece of Apple hardware I own.

Update: @nicjohnson informs me they’ve already got Kindle for Mac in the App Store, while John Gruber explains why a non-native web app is probably a response to Apple’s new rules.

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Much has been made about Apple’s recent changes to the iOS terms. At first, everyone was sure that many big players, would be forced to pull their apps, such as Amazon’s popular Kindle app. But then Apple relaxed the rules a bit, and simply said that Amazon and others couldn’t link to their own stores from their iOS apps. Amazon complied. But at the same time, they were also working on an alternative.

While Amazon hasn’t said anything about it yet, Kindle Cloud Reader is already live. It’s a web-based version of their Kindle eBook reader app. It allows you to read your books from the cloud or to download your books for offline reading thanks to the magic of HTML 5 (or a Chrome browser extension). It looks and works great.

Amazon says that the app officially supports Chrome and Safari. This means it works on PCs, Macs, Linux, and even Chromebooks. This also means that it works on the iPad. In fact, Amazon plays that up on their site. Bullet point three on the Kindle Cloud Reader page reads:

Optimized for iPad: shop the integrated Kindle Store for Tablets

Again, that’s something you cannot do within the iOS apps due to the new terms.

However, while the iPad is supported, the iPhone currently is not. Amazon recommends you check out their free Kindle reader native app in order to read on the iPhone. Something tells me that a browser version for the iPhone is in the works as well.

The iPad version is especially good because the store is fully optimized for the device. And you can easily switch back and forth between the store and your own library. It feels like a native app, but it’s not. You can even swipe back and forth to move between pages (though it is a bit slow).

One thing to note is that the cloud versions (and obviously the downloaded versions) of the Kindle books are still limited to a set number of devices. So if you have your books downloaded to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, etc, you may be over the limit and will not be able to read them in the cloud.

A few weeks ago, after Apple began enforcing the new iOS terms, one eBook reader, Kobo, came out and said that they would work on a web app to bypass the restrictions. But again, others like Amazon and Barnes & Noble remained mum, and changed their apps to remove links to their stores. Turns out, Amazon was quietly doing the same thing. And now it’s ready to go. And it’s very good.

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BitNami is not a cloud provider, but instead makes managing applications on Amazon’s Web Services much, much easier. BitNami Cloud Hosting provides one-click deployment for more than 30 applications, the ability to scale applications automatically, automatic backups and multi-account management.

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BitNami Cloud Hosting offers the ability to run more than one application per server on AWS. Supported applications include SugarCRM, Alfresco, Redmine, WordPress, Drupal, Mantis and many more. Customers can also run supported base stacks on top of Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS.

With the August 9th update, BitNami Cloud Hosting now has support for OpenID so you don’t need to create yet another account to work with BitNami cloud hosting. Sign in using Twitter, GitHub or Google and don’t worry about a new account. (The GitHub combination seems especially useful.)

If you do have a separate password and username for BitNami Cloud Hosting, you can now reset the password if you’ve forgotten it. Sort of surprising that the service didn’t have this before (or maybe I’m the only one that forgets passwords that often) but they’ve got it now. Speaking of passwords, if you don’t specify a password when launching a new service, one is created randomly. This means you can’t launch a service using BitNami with the default password for one of the apps, which is a good thing.

Pricing Feedback

The feature I particularly like about this update is the Free Tier Eligibility feedback and email notifications. BitNami Cloud Hosting now provides a visual feedback that indicates whether a new server would qualify for Amazon’s free usage tier or not. Even better, you’ll get an email each time you launch a server that includes the server specs and estimated costs and an email every week with the servers your running currently. Good stuff for developers that might be playing around with a server and forget that they’ve launched it.

One of the complaints I’ve heard most frequently about AWS (aside from outages, of course) is the complexity of pricing and difficulty in estimating costs at first. Providing tools to smooth over the rough spots here should make BitNami very popular indeed.

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BitNami is not a cloud provider, but instead makes managing applications on Amazon’s Web Services much, much easier. BitNami Cloud Hosting provides one-click deployment for more than 30 applications, the ability to scale applications automatically, automatic backups and multi-account management.

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BitNami Cloud Hosting offers the ability to run more than one application per server on AWS. Supported applications include SugarCRM, Alfresco, Redmine, WordPress, Drupal, Mantis and many more. Customers can also run supported base stacks on top of Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS.

With the August 9th update, BitNami Cloud Hosting now has support for OpenID so you don’t need to create yet another account to work with BitNami cloud hosting. Sign in using Twitter, GitHub or Google and don’t worry about a new account. (The GitHub combination seems especially useful.)

If you do have a separate password and username for BitNami Cloud Hosting, you can now reset the password if you’ve forgotten it. Sort of surprising that the service didn’t have this before (or maybe I’m the only one that forgets passwords that often) but they’ve got it now. Speaking of passwords, if you don’t specify a password when launching a new service, one is created randomly. This means you can’t launch a service using BitNami with the default password for one of the apps, which is a good thing.

Pricing Feedback

The feature I particularly like about this update is the Free Tier Eligibility feedback and email notifications. BitNami Cloud Hosting now provides a visual feedback that indicates whether a new server would qualify for Amazon’s free usage tier or not. Even better, you’ll get an email each time you launch a server that includes the server specs and estimated costs and an email every week with the servers your running currently. Good stuff for developers that might be playing around with a server and forget that they’ve launched it.

One of the complaints I’ve heard most frequently about AWS (aside from outages, of course) is the complexity of pricing and difficulty in estimating costs at first. Providing tools to smooth over the rough spots here should make BitNami very popular indeed.

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The Android Market was and continues to be a work in progress (with more malware infiltrating it every day): difficult to search and with no application filtering process, a la Apple. Amazon was supposed to be the cure for what ails the Android Market and untrustworthy, third-party application stores in general. It was supposed to be a regulated marketplace from a trusted source in the tech community. According to two Android developers, Shifty Jelly and Bithack, the Amazon Appstore experience has been anything but rewarding.

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Shifty Jelly & The Case Of The Missing Revenue

Shifty Jelly is an Australian app maker that has produced the “Pocket” line of apps, mostly for iOS: Pocket Weather, Pocket Casts, Pocket Weather World and Weather Watch. The company’s contention with the Amazon Appstore concerns the feature that makes Amazon stand a head above the rest of the Android ecosystem – the free app of the day. Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and other large titles have had turns as the free app. Amazon claimed when the Appstore came out that it would pay developers 20% of the app’s list price for every unit sold during free day promotions. So, if an app cost a dollar, the developer would still make $0.20 during free day promotions.

That is not the experience Shifty Jelly had. In a blog post earlier today, the company said that Amazon had sent them an email asking them to participate in the free app program, yet, at the bottom of the email, promising no revenue share for the company.

Here is the excerpt from the email:

As you may already know, the Free App of the Day offer placement is one of the most visible and valuable spaces on the Amazon Appstore. We would like to include your app “[name removed]” in our Free App of the Day calendar. We have seen tremendous results from this promotion spot and believe it will bring you a great deal of positive reviews and traffic. It is an opportunity to build your brand especially in association with a brand like Amazon’s. The current price of this placement is at 0% rev share for that one day you are placed.

Note: bolding emphasis added by Amazon, according to Shifty.

Treating Developers Like Unpaid Interns

Amazon is essentially asking Shifty Jelly to place its app in the free day promotion for the exposure. This is a common practice in the media industry, asking a writer to write free or cheap for the exposure or for the “clip.” See: Huffington Post. Yet, in the realm of public perception, Amazon looks like the good guys for helping developers out.

“What makes us mad though is the public perception that Amazon pays developers to be featured,” Shifty wrote in its blog. “Every single person we asked on Twitter or via email thought they were helping developers out, and getting a free application. Amazon does nothing to dispel these rumours, in fact they put really restrictive clauses at the bottom of their emails, saying that no one is even allowed to discuss these back door deals they are doing.”

Shifty says that it “sold” nearly 100,000 apps during its free day on the Amazon Appstore that would have translated to near $54,000. Yet, it did not make a cent and actually has to pay to acquire and maintain more servers to handle the traffic. It has since pulled its app for the Amazon Appstore and will not provide any updates (though it still provides functionality) to those who acquired it through Amazon.

In and of itself, Shifty’s experience is unfortunate. Yet, the company did know what it was getting into when it signed up for the promotion (the blog post says that it is part of the company’s experiment into Android apps as a mostly iOS developer).

Growing Developer Problems

Outside of the free day mishap, developers have had other problems with the Amazon Appstore. Shifty notes that Amazon has lengthy review times before posting an app to the store, sets the price of the app without input from the developers, rewrites the app description, does not provide error reports and pays later than Google.

These complaints are similar to what Bithack experienced and why it pulled its game, Apparatus, from Amazon in early July. Bithack cites the failure of Amazon to filter devices that apps are optimized for (for instance, games designed to work on large screens and robust processors or certain builds of Android). Bithack also complained that Amazon makes it difficult for customers to contact the developers (which is very easy in the Android Market) or respond to comment reviews if the developer is outside of the United States.

The International Game Developers Association warned developers against the Amazon Appstore in April. The organization cited concerns over distribution terms, pricing policies and discounting practices in Amazon’s policies. In a ReadWriteMobile poll in July, 38% of developers said they would not recommend the Amazon Appstore against 18% who said that they would. The rest (out of 99 votes) said maybe (16%) or they do not know because they have not tried it (27%).

Only Apple is Apple

Amazon is a company that does a lot of things right. Its e-commerce platform is unparalleled in the industry and Amazon Web Services will perhaps soon be a billion dollar vertical. It has successfully made the jump into devices with the Kindle and will probably be moderately successful with Android tablets and smartphones when they are released (in theory) later this quarter. Despite all the good things, it appears that Amazon has a developer problem more or less because it is trying to act like Apple.

Yet, there is a big difference between Apple’s Appstore and Amazon’s. Apple controls iOS, has sold nearly 200 million devices and has near 400 million apps within the platform. Developers have no choice but to adhere to Apple’s wishes and whims because not doing so essentially cuts them out of a huge portion of a profitable market. Apple has also had its fair share of developer mishaps. Amazon does not have that same luxury because, at this point, they are essentially a niche store that offers quality applications. Yet, instead of bending over backwards for developers to attract them away from the Android Market (or iOS), it appears that the company is making life difficult.

This may change over time. Amazon is actively hiring Android developers and team leaders for its mobile initiatives that should cut down on review time and maybe institute some new best practices. Yet, as Shifty and Bithack attest, the Amazon Appstore is currently a nightmare for developers.

We contacted Amazon for response to Shifty and Bithack but have not heard back from the company as of 6:00 p.m. EST on Aug. 2. We will update the story if Amazon does get back to us.

Discuss

Go to Source

The Android Market was and continues to be a work in progress (with more malware infiltrating it every day): difficult to search and with no application filtering process, a la Apple. Amazon was supposed to be the cure for what ails the Android Market and untrustworthy, third-party application stores in general. It was supposed to be a regulated marketplace from a trusted source in the tech community. According to two Android developers, Shifty Jelly and Bithack, the Amazon Appstore experience has been anything but rewarding.

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Shifty Jelly & The Case Of The Missing Revenue

Shifty Jelly is an Australian app maker that has produced the “Pocket” line of apps, mostly for iOS: Pocket Weather, Pocket Casts, Pocket Weather World and Weather Watch. The company’s contention with the Amazon Appstore concerns the feature that makes Amazon stand a head above the rest of the Android ecosystem – the free app of the day. Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and other large titles have had turns as the free app. Amazon claimed when the Appstore came out that it would pay developers 20% of the app’s list price for every unit sold during free day promotions. So, if an app cost a dollar, the developer would still make $0.20 during free day promotions.

That is not the experience Shifty Jelly had. In a blog post earlier today, the company said that Amazon had sent them an email asking them to participate in the free app program, yet, at the bottom of the email, promising no revenue share for the company.

Here is the excerpt from the email:

As you may already know, the Free App of the Day offer placement is one of the most visible and valuable spaces on the Amazon Appstore. We would like to include your app “[name removed]” in our Free App of the Day calendar. We have seen tremendous results from this promotion spot and believe it will bring you a great deal of positive reviews and traffic. It is an opportunity to build your brand especially in association with a brand like Amazon’s. The current price of this placement is at 0% rev share for that one day you are placed.

Note: bolding emphasis added by Amazon, according to Shifty.

Treating Developers Like Unpaid Interns

Amazon is essentially asking Shifty Jelly to place its app in the free day promotion for the exposure. This is a common practice in the media industry, asking a writer to write free or cheap for the exposure or for the “clip.” See: Huffington Post. Yet, in the realm of public perception, Amazon looks like the good guys for helping developers out.

“What makes us mad though is the public perception that Amazon pays developers to be featured,” Shifty wrote in its blog. “Every single person we asked on Twitter or via email thought they were helping developers out, and getting a free application. Amazon does nothing to dispel these rumours, in fact they put really restrictive clauses at the bottom of their emails, saying that no one is even allowed to discuss these back door deals they are doing.”

Shifty says that it “sold” nearly 100,000 apps during its free day on the Amazon Appstore that would have translated to near $54,000. Yet, it did not make a cent and actually has to pay to acquire and maintain more servers to handle the traffic. It has since pulled its app for the Amazon Appstore and will not provide any updates (though it still provides functionality) to those who acquired it through Amazon.

In and of itself, Shifty’s experience is unfortunate. Yet, the company did know what it was getting into when it signed up for the promotion (the blog post says that it is part of the company’s experiment into Android apps as a mostly iOS developer).

Growing Developer Problems

Outside of the free day mishap, developers have had other problems with the Amazon Appstore. Shifty notes that Amazon has lengthy review times before posting an app to the store, sets the price of the app without input from the developers, rewrites the app description, does not provide error reports and pays later than Google.

These complaints are similar to what Bithack experienced and why it pulled its game, Apparatus, from Amazon in early July. Bithack cites the failure of Amazon to filter devices that apps are optimized for (for instance, games designed to work on large screens and robust processors or certain builds of Android). Bithack also complained that Amazon makes it difficult for customers to contact the developers (which is very easy in the Android Market) or respond to comment reviews if the developer is outside of the United States.

The International Game Developers Association warned developers against the Amazon Appstore in April. The organization cited concerns over distribution terms, pricing policies and discounting practices in Amazon’s policies. In a ReadWriteMobile poll in July, 38% of developers said they would not recommend the Amazon Appstore against 18% who said that they would. The rest (out of 99 votes) said maybe (16%) or they do not know because they have not tried it (27%).

Only Apple is Apple

Amazon is a company that does a lot of things right. Its e-commerce platform is unparalleled in the industry and Amazon Web Services will perhaps soon be a billion dollar vertical. It has successfully made the jump into devices with the Kindle and will probably be moderately successful with Android tablets and smartphones when they are released (in theory) later this quarter. Despite all the good things, it appears that Amazon has a developer problem more or less because it is trying to act like Apple.

Yet, there is a big difference between Apple’s Appstore and Amazon’s. Apple controls iOS, has sold nearly 200 million devices and has near 400 million apps within the platform. Developers have no choice but to adhere to Apple’s wishes and whims because not doing so essentially cuts them out of a huge portion of a profitable market. Apple has also had its fair share of developer mishaps. Amazon does not have that same luxury because, at this point, they are essentially a niche store that offers quality applications. Yet, instead of bending over backwards for developers to attract them away from the Android Market (or iOS), it appears that the company is making life difficult.

This may change over time. Amazon is actively hiring Android developers and team leaders for its mobile initiatives that should cut down on review time and maybe institute some new best practices. Yet, as Shifty and Bithack attest, the Amazon Appstore is currently a nightmare for developers.

We contacted Amazon for response to Shifty and Bithack but have not heard back from the company as of 6:00 p.m. EST on Aug. 2. We will update the story if Amazon does get back to us.

Discuss

Go to Source

The Android Market was and continues to be a work in progress (with more malware infiltrating it every day): difficult to search and with no application filtering process, a la Apple. Amazon was supposed to be the cure for what ails the Android Market and untrustworthy, third-party application stores in general. It was supposed to be a regulated marketplace from a trusted source in the tech community. According to two Android developers, Shifty Jelly and Bithack, the Amazon Appstore experience has been anything but rewarding.

Sponsor

Shifty Jelly & The Case Of The Missing Revenue

Shifty Jelly is an Australian app maker that has produced the “Pocket” line of apps, mostly for iOS: Pocket Weather, Pocket Casts, Pocket Weather World and Weather Watch. The company’s contention with the Amazon Appstore concerns the feature that makes Amazon stand a head above the rest of the Android ecosystem – the free app of the day. Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and other large titles have had turns as the free app. Amazon claimed when the Appstore came out that it would pay developers 20% of the app’s list price for every unit sold during free day promotions. So, if an app cost a dollar, the developer would still make $0.20 during free day promotions.

That is not the experience Shifty Jelly had. In a blog post earlier today, the company said that Amazon had sent them an email asking them to participate in the free app program, yet, at the bottom of the email, promising no revenue share for the company.

Here is the excerpt from the email:

As you may already know, the Free App of the Day offer placement is one of the most visible and valuable spaces on the Amazon Appstore. We would like to include your app “[name removed]” in our Free App of the Day calendar. We have seen tremendous results from this promotion spot and believe it will bring you a great deal of positive reviews and traffic. It is an opportunity to build your brand especially in association with a brand like Amazon’s. The current price of this placement is at 0% rev share for that one day you are placed.

Note: bolding emphasis added by Amazon, according to Shifty.

Treating Developers Like Unpaid Interns

Amazon is essentially asking Shifty Jelly to place its app in the free day promotion for the exposure. This is a common practice in the media industry, asking a writer to write free or cheap for the exposure or for the “clip.” See: Huffington Post. Yet, in the realm of public perception, Amazon looks like the good guys for helping developers out.

“What makes us mad though is the public perception that Amazon pays developers to be featured,” Shifty wrote in its blog. “Every single person we asked on Twitter or via email thought they were helping developers out, and getting a free application. Amazon does nothing to dispel these rumours, in fact they put really restrictive clauses at the bottom of their emails, saying that no one is even allowed to discuss these back door deals they are doing.”

Shifty says that it “sold” nearly 100,000 apps during its free day on the Amazon Appstore that would have translated to near $54,000. Yet, it did not make a cent and actually has to pay to acquire and maintain more servers to handle the traffic. It has since pulled its app for the Amazon Appstore and will not provide any updates (though it still provides functionality) to those who acquired it through Amazon.

In and of itself, Shifty’s experience is unfortunate. Yet, the company did know what it was getting into when it signed up for the promotion (the blog post says that it is part of the company’s experiment into Android apps as a mostly iOS developer).

Growing Developer Problems

Outside of the free day mishap, developers have had other problems with the Amazon Appstore. Shifty notes that Amazon has lengthy review times before posting an app to the store, sets the price of the app without input from the developers, rewrites the app description, does not provide error reports and pays later than Google.

These complaints are similar to what Bithack experienced and why it pulled its game, Apparatus, from Amazon in early July. Bithack cites the failure of Amazon to filter devices that apps are optimized for (for instance, games designed to work on large screens and robust processors or certain builds of Android). Bithack also complained that Amazon makes it difficult for customers to contact the developers (which is very easy in the Android Market) or respond to comment reviews if the developer is outside of the United States.

The International Game Developers Association warned developers against the Amazon Appstore in April. The organization cited concerns over distribution terms, pricing policies and discounting practices in Amazon’s policies. In a ReadWriteMobile poll in July, 38% of developers said they would not recommend the Amazon Appstore against 18% who said that they would. The rest (out of 99 votes) said maybe (16%) or they do not know because they have not tried it (27%).

Only Apple is Apple

Amazon is a company that does a lot of things right. Its e-commerce platform is unparalleled in the industry and Amazon Web Services will perhaps soon be a billion dollar vertical. It has successfully made the jump into devices with the Kindle and will probably be moderately successful with Android tablets and smartphones when they are released (in theory) later this quarter. Despite all the good things, it appears that Amazon has a developer problem more or less because it is trying to act like Apple.

Yet, there is a big difference between Apple’s Appstore and Amazon’s. Apple controls iOS, has sold nearly 200 million devices and has near 400 million apps within the platform. Developers have no choice but to adhere to Apple’s wishes and whims because not doing so essentially cuts them out of a huge portion of a profitable market. Apple has also had its fair share of developer mishaps. Amazon does not have that same luxury because, at this point, they are essentially a niche store that offers quality applications. Yet, instead of bending over backwards for developers to attract them away from the Android Market (or iOS), it appears that the company is making life difficult.

This may change over time. Amazon is actively hiring Android developers and team leaders for its mobile initiatives that should cut down on review time and maybe institute some new best practices. Yet, as Shifty and Bithack attest, the Amazon Appstore is currently a nightmare for developers.

We contacted Amazon for response to Shifty and Bithack but have not heard back from the company as of 6:00 p.m. EST on Aug. 2. We will update the story if Amazon does get back to us.

Discuss

Go to Source

Not only is Amazon trying to stick it to Groupon, the e-commerce giant has employed the services of its partner and Groupon’s largest competitor, LivingSocial, to be the sales force behind merchant partnerships with the service. The WSJ notes that Amazon plans on hiring its own sales force but it is a clever move by the company to outsource the sales team initially so as to ramp up the service quickly. Amazon has rolled out the service in Seattle, Boise, Los Angeles and Palm Beach, Fla. Groupon is in its six-month quiet period after filing its S-1 for an initial public offering and cannot (reasonably) comment on the proliferation of clones and competitors gunning for large slices of the daily deals pie. Will Groupon be able to withstand the mounting army of competition?

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The short-term answer is yes. Groupon’s competitors are splitting into two groups – above and below. The below group consists of startups focused specifically on daily deals, including LivingSocial, Gilt City, Zozi, BuyWithMe (and others). These are being built from the bottom on up without existing infrastructures of users and consumer communication channels. Groupon is in the same boat as these, it is just ahead of the game with its merchant and user acquisition plans. So far in its history, Groupon has held off the upstarts by being bigger and more aggressive.

The competition coming from above may be harder to handle. Amazon, Google (through Google Offers), AT&T, American Express and other existing large enterprises are coming for Groupon’s business model and they have an advantage over the original daily deals provider – they do not have to pay nearly as much for user acquisition. Their users already exist and it is just a matter of extending an offers channel within their existing framework.

Amazon’s Infrastructure More Mature Than Groupon’s

Amazon is the most dangerous of this group, even with advantages over Google. Foremost, it understands e-commerce and how to treat customers and merchants, something that Google stretches for but is not in its corporate DNA. Groupon has struggled with merchants in the past and will continue to struggle with merchants in the future as it tries to continue its high velocity upward trajectory. Consumers trust Amazon while they are still wary of Groupon.

The daily deals industry was bashed by many when the particulars of the Groupon S-1 came out. Mostly, the ecosystem was appalled that Groupon made so much money yet was not profitable because the company spends so much on user acquisition. Yet, take away most of that cost and it is easy to see how daily deals can be extremely lucrative to a company that does not have to spend nearly as much on user acquisition. Amazon fits that bill.

Amazon has had its sights set on the daily deals market for a while now, investing $175 million in LivingSocial in December 2010. By enlisting LivingSocial as its sales force, Amazon is beginning to make some of that investment back. It would not be a surprise if Amazon just completely subsumed LivingSocial into Amazon Local if the deals sector proves to be a popular new market for the company.

Discuss

Go to Source

Not only is Amazon trying to stick it to Groupon, the e-commerce giant has employed the services of its partner and Groupon’s largest competitor, LivingSocial, to be the sales force behind merchant partnerships with the service. The WSJ notes that Amazon plans on hiring its own sales force but it is a clever move by the company to outsource the sales team initially so as to ramp up the service quickly. Amazon has rolled out the service in Seattle, Boise, Los Angeles and Palm Beach, Fla. Groupon is in its six-month quiet period after filing its S-1 for an initial public offering and cannot (reasonably) comment on the proliferation of clones and competitors gunning for large slices of the daily deals pie. Will Groupon be able to withstand the mounting army of competition?

Sponsor

The short-term answer is yes. Groupon’s competitors are splitting into two groups – above and below. The below group consists of startups focused specifically on daily deals, including LivingSocial, Gilt City, Zozi, BuyWithMe (and others). These are being built from the bottom on up without existing infrastructures of users and consumer communication channels. Groupon is in the same boat as these, it is just ahead of the game with its merchant and user acquisition plans. So far in its history, Groupon has held off the upstarts by being bigger and more aggressive.

The competition coming from above may be harder to handle. Amazon, Google (through Google Offers), AT&T, American Express and other existing large enterprises are coming for Groupon’s business model and they have an advantage over the original daily deals provider – they do not have to pay nearly as much for user acquisition. Their users already exist and it is just a matter of extending an offers channel within their existing framework.

Amazon’s Infrastructure More Mature Than Groupon’s

Amazon is the most dangerous of this group, even with advantages over Google. Foremost, it understands e-commerce and how to treat customers and merchants, something that Google stretches for but is not in its corporate DNA. Groupon has struggled with merchants in the past and will continue to struggle with merchants in the future as it tries to continue its high velocity upward trajectory. Consumers trust Amazon while they are still wary of Groupon.

The daily deals industry was bashed by many when the particulars of the Groupon S-1 came out. Mostly, the ecosystem was appalled that Groupon made so much money yet was not profitable because the company spends so much on user acquisition. Yet, take away most of that cost and it is easy to see how daily deals can be extremely lucrative to a company that does not have to spend nearly as much on user acquisition. Amazon fits that bill.

Amazon has had its sights set on the daily deals market for a while now, investing $175 million in LivingSocial in December 2010. By enlisting LivingSocial as its sales force, Amazon is beginning to make some of that investment back. It would not be a surprise if Amazon just completely subsumed LivingSocial into Amazon Local if the deals sector proves to be a popular new market for the company.

Discuss

Go to Source

The MyHabit app includes all of the functionality a the website, and allows users to view detailed product pages, videos and images, and purchase items directly from their phones In addition, customers can preview the week’s calendar of events and receive start of sale reminders from specific brands before they sell out.

M-commerce is a growing segment of the business for Amazon, and many other e-retailers like eBay. In fact, Forrester estimates that mobile commerce in the U.S. will reach $31 billion by 2016.

As we’ve seen with other flash sales sites, mobile offerings are particularly popular because of the short time-frame in sales. Other recently launched Amazon mobile apps include barcode scanning app Price Check, shopping iPad app Window Shop, and a Gold Box deals app.

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gripNote, “Amazon for College Documents”

gripNote has been one of ten companies chosen for the Plug and Play Tech Center University Start Up Camp. http://www.plugandplaystartupcamp.com/. (an incubator program for University Startup)

About gripNote:

gripNote.com is an ecommerce website for students to buy and sell their lecture notes for their actual classes. Students take great notes, can upload them, and create revenue for themselves. For the students that fall behind for any reasons, they can purchase notes from their peers instantly.

We give students the power to create their own income. gripNote does this by giving them an online profile, the ability to market themselves, and the ability to set notes at their own price. They upload the note once, and can sell it multiple times.

In today’s online economy, users are seeking ways to make money from their own content; examples include; online document sharing and self-publishing. In the academic world, the pressure to achieve high grades is followed by an increasing willingness to pay for study materials. gripNote is the first ever to have a peer-to-peer transactional structure that enables a third party to share revenue quickly.

gripNote makes it easy to gain access to students, set your own price, get paid instantly, and obtain your own financial success, gripNote disruptive technology changes the way students think about their college material and gives them the entrepreneur mindset that is never taught in college.

view more

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Ella’s iOS app opens up a map of your current location that shows you where fellow Ella users have posted a tip and photo of a fashion item or good deal at a store nearby. If you like the tip, you can comment on the share and reward users with one WOWpoint, which is worth a penny on Next Jump’s rewards platform, OO.com. And when you post tips and photos, you have the opportunity of earnings WOWpoints as well. Essentially Next Jump is attaching a reward to the act of liking a shopping tip. Ella also features the top users who have WOWpoints and share via the app.

You can spend these WOWpoints you accumulate on OO.com, which lists millions of products from more than 30,000 merchants including Target, Walmart, Amazon, and Buy.com.

Next Jump says that in the future, Ella will include Facebook Connect so you can access tips from your friends as well. And the company will soon launch similar apps in other verticals, such as travel and restaurants.

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On one hand, it makes a lot of sense. Folding Hulu into its Prime package would give Amazon almost a million more paying premium video subscribers, dramatically increase its content library and add legitimacy to its nascent Instant Video service. Amazon is among one of the few companies that can comfortably afford Hulu and it presents less of a threat than Apple or Google, whose deep pockets and wide reach have been disrupting the networks and studios for years. It seems like perfect match … or does it?

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Hulu Cost Prohibitive for Amazon?

The question that Amazon has to ask itself is if it is cost prohibitive to buy Hulu straight up with a guarantee of content licenses for several years from the networks or continue to license content from the networks and studios piecemeal, the way it is currently doing. The rumored rate for Hulu is somewhere in the range of $2 billion. Would Hulu boost Prime enough that it could be considered a sound investment over, say, the next five years?

From a consumer perspective, Amazon would be the best of all worlds. It is a company that cares about innovation, spends a lot of money on research and development, has a familiar, integrated payments system and is user friendly. Amazon is a better developer ecosystem than a company like Yahoo (which probably makes the most business sense in a Hulu acquisition) and Hulu would be easily integrated into the existing Amazon framework, from payments to cloud hosting.

There is also the matter of devices. Though CEO Jeff Bezos has not come out and said it yet, Amazon Android tablets and smartphones are on their way, probably sometime this quarter. This is where having Hulu would give Amazon a significant leg up on Apple, Google or any of the OEMS – it would be the only device provider with a popular premium video streaming service integrated straight into the device.

Apple has iTunes but it cannot make that claim and Google is in the same boat with movie rentals from the Android Market. Add Amazon’s payment system to the device + content mix and there is significant growth potential there.

A Good Fit In The Ecosystem

Amazon (and to a lesser extent Yahoo and AOL) is a destination for Hulu that the Web ecosystem could be content with. On the other hand, Apple may be the worst place for destination for Hulu. As we have discussed here before, Hulu is a cog in the upcoming battle over net neutrality between the operators and the over-the-top content distributors, such as Netflix.

If Apple is seen as a bully and creating a content monopoly (to augment its mammoth music operation) then there are distinct possibilities that the operators will revolt and start putting hard data caps or selling premium bandwidth to the distributors (Apple could just go and buy an operator if it really wanted). This is especially true considering Apple’s iOS reach and the strain it would put on the operators’ networks.

In comparison, Amazon would not make the same type of impact. It would not solve the problem of carriers missing out monetizing the content that is carried over their pipes, but, in the operators’ minds, at least it is not Apple or Google doing the bullying.

Amazon, or any Hulu buyer, would still have to deal with the content licensing landscape in the long run. That may be how the networks want it, preferring to license content as a source of revenue and develop in-house apps (like XFinity TV or the ABC Player).

For instance, Hulu would have to deal with Fox and its recent “authentication” program and any other such initiatives coming from the studios. Yet, Hulu could also grow in content if it is not strictly owned by the networks. For instance, Amazon reached a licensing agreement with CBS (which is the only major network NOT in on Hulu) last week.

So, it just comes down to whether or not it is fiscally responsible for Amazon to make the move. That is a larger, more complicated question. Yet, from a user prospective, it could not make more sense.

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Original Post: Amazon Strikes Streaming Deal With Universal [Variety Of Universal Movies Set To Land On Amazon's Streaming Service--Should Netflix Be Worried?]

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Original Post: Amazon Tablet Might Have What It Takes To Take On The Apple iPad [Study Shows Consumers Would Get A Non-iPad Tablet If It's Affordable; Amazon Tops List Of Options]

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Original Post: Amazon Tablet Might Have What It Takes To Take On The Apple iPad [Study Shows Consumers Would Get A Non-iPad Tablet If It's Affordable; Amazon Tops List Of Options]

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Amazon, which last week announced a deal with CBS to begin streaming various shows from the network, has now added about 1,000 movies and TV shows from NBCUniversal as well.

Under the agreement, Amazon Prime customers can watch titles including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gosford Park and Babe, among others. Amazon Prime now offers about 7,000 TV shows and 2,000 movies.

The deal comes as Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and Google scramble to provide content to stream while each of them market their competing services.

Amazon rebranded its video-on-demand service Amazon Prime in February. Amazon Prime is a membership program that provides free shipping options as well as the streaming video service for $79 per year. Prime competes with Netflix, which recently initiated a price hike for users who both stream and get DVDs delivered. The company this week predicted that the move will hurt growth in the third quarter, but the effect won’t last until the fourth.

Meanwhile, Amazon also has acquired TV app developer PushButton, according to PaidContent. That purchase, which follows the January acquisition of Lovefilm, gives Amazon a stake in YouView, a proposed Internet-connected TV platform in the UK.

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The iPad has little serious competition right now, but its base price is $499. Retrevo’s study found that 31% of consumers would buy an Android-based tablet for cheaper, even if it cost as much as $400. Unsurprisingly, the cheaper the device, the more respondents said they would buy one: Almost half would buy an Android tablet over an iPad if it cost $300 or less; 79% would for $250.

The news that consumers want a cheap tablet isn’t exactly noteworthy. But the survey respondents were potential tablet buyers who likely knew what features they would miss out on if they choose a cheaper device over an iPad. Back in February 2010, we reported on another Retrevo study that asked people, both before and after its launch, if they would buy an iPad. The numbers weren’t good. Those who claimed they didn’t need an iPad jumped from 49% to 61% after the launch. Obviously, that wasn’t a good indicator of future sales.

But today, the market is very different. Retrevo found that low price is far more important to potential tablet buyers than a high-resolution display or other features like better input methods. And Amazon is a digital media powerhouse. Movies, books, and music on the device could help them make up for other missing features. Their sales could also help Amazon recover some of the costs of selling a cheaper device.

But does all this necessarily mean that Amazon will be the one to compete with the iPad? Well, Retrevo also found that Amazon topped the list of manufacturers, other than Apple, from whom potential customers would consider buying a tablet. This is a tricky statistic, though; Retrevo themselves admit that they’re “not positive” that some respondents weren’t confounded by Amazon’s several businesses, but even if this is just a sign of brand recognition, it’s a good sign for Amazon. We’ve reported on rumors that Amazon will outsource the manufacturing of the mythical tablet to Samsung, and Samsung tied with Dell for second place in this study.

Amazon’s track record with the Kindle shows that they’re not afraid to price their devices to move, and they confirmed in yesterday’s earnings report that their ad-supported Kindle, the cheapest model, is their best-seller. By outsourcing production, and perhaps by using cheaper, simpler new touchscreen technologies, Amazon could give consumers what they really want out of a tablet: A bargain.

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The iPad has little serious competition right now, but its base price is $499. Retrevo’s study found that 31% of consumers would buy an Android-based tablet for cheaper, even if it cost as much as $400. Unsurprisingly, the cheaper the device, the more respondents said they would buy one: Almost half would buy an Android tablet over an iPad if it cost $300 or less; 79% would for $250.

The news that consumers want a cheap tablet isn’t exactly noteworthy. But the survey respondents were potential tablet buyers who likely knew what features they would miss out on if they choose a cheaper device over an iPad. Back in February 2010, we reported on another Retrevo study that asked people, both before and after its launch, if they would buy an iPad. The numbers weren’t good. Those who claimed they didn’t need an iPad jumped from 49% to 61% after the launch. Obviously, that wasn’t a good indicator of future sales.

But today, the market is very different. Retrevo found that low price is far more important to potential tablet buyers than a high-resolution display or other features like better input methods. And Amazon is a digital media powerhouse. Movies, books, and music on the device could help them make up for other missing features. Their sales could also help Amazon recover some of the costs of selling a cheaper device.

But does all this necessarily mean that Amazon will be the one to compete with the iPad? Well, Retrevo also found that Amazon topped the list of manufacturers, other than Apple, from whom potential customers would consider buying a tablet. This is a tricky statistic, though; Retrevo themselves admit that they’re “not positive” that some respondents weren’t confounded by Amazon’s several businesses, but even if this is just a sign of brand recognition, it’s a good sign for Amazon. We’ve reported on rumors that Amazon will outsource the manufacturing of the mythical tablet to Samsung, and Samsung tied with Dell for second place in this study.

Amazon’s track record with the Kindle shows that they’re not afraid to price their devices to move, and they confirmed in yesterday’s earnings report that their ad-supported Kindle, the cheapest model, is their best-seller. By outsourcing production, and perhaps by using cheaper, simpler new touchscreen technologies, Amazon could give consumers what they really want out of a tablet: A bargain.

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Netflix announced this week that it now has 24 million customers across the United States and Canada. Cockcroft says the company is now focused on expanding to 43 countries in Latin America and then to go world-wide. Expanding to 43 new countries means a 43X metadata explosion, Cockcroft says today. Netflix’s impact on the entertainment industry and on the web at large has been widely discussed, but hearing about how the company deals with itself, internally, is fascinating.

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Today Netflix is stuck in a state of Roman Riding, Cockcroft says, where the rider stands on the backs of two independent horses, holding the reins for each at once. A significant amount of the company’s data remains in its own data centers, but it’s quickly moving as much as possible into the cloud. Credit card data, for example, is stored in-house, but Netflix is working closely with security compliance specialists to safely move that data out of its own data centers.

Everything the company does is duplicated in 3 different buildings, Cockcroft says. The videos themselves that Netflix serves up get copied three times and sent to the Content Delivery Networks, Akamai, LimeLight and Level3. Those companies then distribute the videos out to the Internet Service Providers who serve them up to the customers.

World wide placement of cloud data centers for minimum latency, authentication data for customers, data about which test cell each of us are in and what devices our accounts have activated. Bookmarks, personalization, genre preferences. The list goes on and on and none of these types of data are trivial to deal with.

“We’re seeing localization as a space more people are paying attention to, because no one wants to be just US or Europe focused,” says Sarah Novotny, OSCON co-chair. “That leads to a data explosion. Multiple languages, formats, everything multiplies. Looking at ways to localize data is probably a big opportunity, especially if you’re not a big international team. Simply the language space is an enormous challenge, not to mention content, adresses and all the other data. There are all sorts of complexities involved and any update in one space has to be updated in N Spaces.”

Regarding Netflix in particular, Novotny says the keynoting company is up in the front of the pack, innovating, has some fascinatingly complex needs and is clearly interested in open sourcing some of the infrastructure they’ve developed. “It’s been really interesting to watch the amount of data they have and the way they have connected that data over the years,” she says, “that explains some of what we get in return as consumers.”

Next time you hear about the massive data demands that Netflix consumers make on the web and mobile networks, perhaps give pause and consider what all that data requires of the people behind the scenes at Netflix, too. International expansion will require even more heavy data lifting than is required today.

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Netflix announced this week that it now has 24 million customers across the United States and Canada. Cockcroft says the company is now focused on expanding to 43 countries in Latin America and then to go world-wide. Expanding to 43 new countries means a 43X metadata explosion, Cockcroft says today. Netflix’s impact on the entertainment industry and on the web at large has been widely discussed, but hearing about how the company deals with itself, internally, is fascinating.

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Today Netflix is stuck in a state of Roman Riding, Cockcroft says, where the rider stands on the backs of two independent horses, holding the reins for each at once. A significant amount of the company’s data remains in its own data centers, but it’s quickly moving as much as possible into the cloud. Credit card data, for example, is stored in-house, but Netflix is working closely with security compliance specialists to safely move that data out of its own data centers.

Everything the company does is duplicated in 3 different buildings, Cockcroft says. The videos themselves that Netflix serves up get copied three times and sent to the Content Delivery Networks, Akamai, LimeLight and Level3. Those companies then distribute the videos out to the Internet Service Providers who serve them up to the customers.

World wide placement of cloud data centers for minimum latency, authentication data for customers, data about which test cell each of us are in and what devices our accounts have activated. Bookmarks, personalization, genre preferences. The list goes on and on and none of these types of data are trivial to deal with.

“We’re seeing localization as a space more people are paying attention to, because no one wants to be just US or Europe focused,” says Sarah Novotny, OSCON co-chair. “That leads to a data explosion. Multiple languages, formats, everything multiplies. Looking at ways to localize data is probably a big opportunity, especially if you’re not a big international team. Simply the language space is an enormous challenge, not to mention content, adresses and all the other data. There are all sorts of complexities involved and any update in one space has to be updated in N Spaces.”

Regarding Netflix in particular, Novotny says the keynoting company is up in the front of the pack, innovating, has some fascinatingly complex needs and is clearly interested in open sourcing some of the infrastructure they’ve developed. “It’s been really interesting to watch the amount of data they have and the way they have connected that data over the years,” she says, “that explains some of what we get in return as consumers.”

Next time you hear about the massive data demands that Netflix consumers make on the web and mobile networks, perhaps give pause and consider what all that data requires of the people behind the scenes at Netflix, too. International expansion will require even more heavy data lifting than is required today.

Discuss

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Some reports took this to mean that Potter wouldn’t be making his way to the Kindle (or that end-users would have to deal with clunky workarounds to get the book off of Google Books and onto Amazon’s popular device). Fortunately, that isn’t the case: we’ve received word from an Amazon spokesperson that the company is “working closely with Pottermore to make sure Kindle customers will be able to buy and read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.”

That’s important, because even before today’s Google announcement people have questioned if Potter would come to the Kindle. Pottermore is reportedly distributing the books in a DRM-free format, and historically Amazon has only sold its books with DRM. Update: Amazon says that they actually sell lots of Kindle books without DRM, and that the decision is up to the publisher. It’s unclear exactly what Amazon is going to do here, but obviously they’re working something out (and they have a strong incentive to, given that the series has sold 450 million copies in print). One thing to note: Amazon’s statement makes it clear that Potter is coming to the Kindle, but it’s still feasible that there could be different release windows in play.

As for the purchase process itself, it sounds like users will buy the books from Pottermore, then choose which eBook platform they’d like them delivered to.

And while it doesn’t have exclusive rights to the books, Google does have a leg up on Amazon in at least one respect: they’ve been chosen as “the preferred third party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com” — you’ll be able to pay with either Google Checkout, or your credit card. Given how many people will flock to the site, this could well introduce Google Checkout to a lot of people for the first time.

Finally, Google hints that there will be more coming from its partnership: “Stay tuned for more Pottermore and Google wizardry on the web this summer, leading up to when Pottermore opens.”

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