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Amazon boosts investments in China online shopping site

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joyo.jpg Aiming to seize a sizeable share in the world’s 4th largest economy, leading online seller Amazon has announced its plan to increase investments in Joyo, a leading online shopping Web site in China. However, exact figure was not disclosed.

In 2004, Amazon acquired this Chinese company for $75 million despite its negative bottom line. To date, Joyo has been growing fast but still behind its main competitor, Dangdang.com.

“One of the mistakes that many American companies could make is that when they come to China and hire management team in China, the Chinese leader sees it as his or her job to make their boss happy in America instead of making their customers happy in China. We are not going to make that mistake,” said Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos.

According to Analysys, China’s B2C market reached $133 million this first quarter or about 20% increased compared last year.

Originally posted on June 7, 2007 @ 11:03 pm

Alexa launches new and improved web search application

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Alexa Web SearchHere’s something new from Alexa: a developer-friendly version of its service that returns up to 1 million results with just a single query, provides results to complex queries involving thousands of search terms, and gives programmers access to the actual page content of the matching documents. Alexa Web Search is a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.

With this latest Alexa update, developers can now tweak through the Alexa Web Search technology and use their application to create vertical search engines for specific categories. Developers can also create custom web search to start off, for example, a directory of “Paris Hotels”. By getting up to a million matching data for the keyword “Paris” and “hotel”, developers can then process these documents using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), store the results in their Simple Storage Service (S3), and from these come up with a web search that cater to a specific niche.

“The Alexa Web Search Platform that we released in beta two years ago was the beginning of what we are launching today. We learned that developers want even deeper access to the crawl. They want a toolbox, not a Swiss Army knife, and APIs, not GUIs,” said O’Driscoll. “We listened to our developers and the new Alexa Web Search service is the result.”

Originally posted on June 7, 2007 @ 6:08 am

Amazon.com acquires Brilliance Audio

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brilliance.jpgOnline retailer Amazon.com announced that it has acquired Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States. The acquisition will enable Amazon to work closely with the book publishing community to further expand the number of books produced in audio format and provide customers with an even greater selection of audiobooks to find, discover and buy.

Amazon.com subsidiary CustomFlix also announced that it now supports both standard CD and MP3-CD audiobook formats via its Disc on Demand service. CustomFlix complements the acquisition of Brilliance Audio by providing publishers and authors an easy and economical way to introduce new titles on an inventory-free basis, or to keep physical formats of audiobook titles available that may otherwise go out of production.

“Brilliance Audio has been delighting customers for more than two decades with their world-class audiobook capabilities,” said Greg Greeley, vice president of books at Amazon.com. “With this acquisition we can make it more efficient for authors and book publishers of all sizes to expand the number of titles produced in increasingly popular audio formats, offering customers a much broader selection.”

Originally posted on May 23, 2007 @ 11:03 am

Amazon acquires dpreview.com

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dpreview.jpgAmazon.com announced that it has acquired dpreview.com, the web’s most comprehensive site for digital camera information and reviews. Founded in 1998 by Phil Askey, dpreview.com provides unbiased reviews and original content regarding the latest in digital cameras, and offers a host of features and forums designed to make it easy for consumers to find the camera that’s right for them. With its unique voice and in-depth technical reviews, dpreview.com draws millions of unique visitors each month.

“Dpreview.com is by far the most authoritative source anywhere for straight talk about new digital cameras,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We at Amazon.com have been their fans for a long time, and we extend a big welcome to the dpreview.com team.”

“One of the difficulties of operating dpreview.com independently has been the balance between producing content and delivering new site features,” said Phil Askey, founder of dpreview.com. “Now, with the support of Amazon, I’ll be able to devote more of my time to expanding and improving our features – such as product reviews and discussion forums while still delivering the high-quality content that our readers have come to expect.”

Originally posted on May 14, 2007 @ 12:48 pm

Complaints Leveled Against Kindle Paperwhite’s Screen

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Kindle Paperwhite Uneven Backlight
(Photo credit: mrbill)

The Kindle Paperwhite was one of the hot announcements Amazon made a few weeks back. But now that it’s already being sold in the market, it’s been getting some criticisms and complaints about its screen.

Based on comments on online forums and at Amazon, users are complaining about the Kindle Paperwhite producing uneven illumination on the screen that is quite noticeable when viewed in certain lighting conditions. [Read more…]

Originally posted on October 15, 2012 @ 9:02 pm