Amazon reportedly prepping smartphones for 2014

Amazon is reportedly preparing to enter the smartphone market. According to Digitimes’ Ocean Chen, Taiwanese supplier Primax Electronics received orders from Amazon for compact camera modules intended for smartphones that will be introduced in the first half of next year. The phones are rumored to feature floating touch technology and will be integrated with six CCMs for sensing capabilities. We will keep you posted on any updates about the long-rumoured Kindle phone.

Amazon CEO demos delivery drones, promises delivery within half an hour

In a recent interview for a 60 Minutes segment, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos showed off the Amazon Prime Air drone, which is said to deliver packages weighing up to five pounds to locations in a 10-mile radius of Amazon fulfillment centers within 30 minutes. Now, we just have to wait for the company to figure out regulations and how to prevent the packages from falling onto your head before this hopefully lands on our shores and change package delivery industry as we speak.

The service is expected to be in testing for a number of years before it will be deployed and only in arease that are close to an Amazon depot. The stroke of marketing genius here has to be credited to Bezos, who timed this 'announcement' right smack in the middle of the Black Friday sales spike, traditionally Amazon's busiest and most profitablet time.

Source: The Verge

Amazon plans to improve screen and font for Kindle Paperwhite

TechCrunch reported that Amazon intends to update its Paperwhite e-book reader for the spring 2014 release. The tech company plans to improve the screen resolution from 212 ppi to 300 ppi. The weight of the device will supposedly be cut down as well. Amazon also reportedly wants to improve the typography with a customized font, provide “squeezable” buttons for haptic feedback, and add ambient light sensors to improve auto brightness adjustment.

Amazon Kindle Matchbook lets you buy discounted e-books of printed titles

We have to agree with author Marcus Sakey when he says he finds it ridiculous that readers usually have to pay full price twice if they want to buy both a printed and digital copies of books. That’s why Amazon’s new offer can be considered godsend for bibliophiles out there. The Kindle Matchbook will give Amazon customers who have bought print books the option to buy Kindle editions of those purchases for $2.99 or less (some are even free!).

This offer extends to purchases made back when Amazon opened its online bookstore in 1995 as long as the publisher enrolls the title in Kindle Matchbook. The service will be launching in October and expect over 10,000 books to be available from authors like Sakey, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, Jodi Picoult, Michael Crichton, and many more.