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Amazon launches New Kindle Fire HD 8 ‘Reader’s Edition’ w/ better night time reading, case bundle, Kindle Unlimited subscription
Amazon, today, launched a brand new version of its 8-inch Android-based Kindle Fire tablet. The Kindle Fire 8 Reader’s Edition comes with some software and service benefits bookworms will love, and ships with an attractive leather case. It’s available to pre-order for $249 from Amazon now…
Amazon Kindle Fire 7″ down to $35, Kids Edition and HD 6 discounted too
Along with all of its usual wide-ranging discounts, Amazon has slashed the prices of its own hardware for Black Friday. Despite the fact that its newest Android-based tablets were already crazily good value for money, you can now pick them up even cheaper. Prices now start as low as $35 for a Kindle Fire tablet, while the special Kids Edition and HD 6 have seen generous discounts too…
Upcoming 10-inch Amazon Kindle Fire tablet press render leaked
A press render of Amazon’s upcoming 10-inch Kindle Fire tablet has been leaked ahead of its alleged launch. Although we’re light on specs, the renders show the (rather uninspiring) design of the next Kindle Fire. The image comes from well-known and usually reliable leaker, Evan Blass on Twitter.
From the renders, it appears the next Kindle Fire will have a completely flat front and back, with a slightly more angled, metallic frame around the edges. We can just about make out the power/sleep key on the top edge as well as the front and rear camera. Amazon’s branding is expectedly prominent, although the software is a completely different story. If the render is accurate, it looks like Amazon’s new software will be much more in line with standard Android. Or, at the very list, Amazon software disguised as standard Android. Whatever the software is, it’s a far cry from Amazon’s previous efforts.
Previous Kindle Fire tablets have featured a cover flow-like user interface, pushing Amazon apps and content to the forefront, similar to the UI found on the Amazon Fire TV and Stick. If Evan’s leak is anything close to the finished product (which it normally is), it’ll certainly make a refreshing change from a user experience perspective.It almost certainly has something to do with having fewer staff to work on skins after the job cuts recently. Perhaps it’s a lesson learned by Amazon after the catastrophic failure that was the Fire Phone. A shift to a more familiar UI will surely make the product less confusing to regular consumers.
We don’t yet have a release date, price or specs for the 10-inch tablet, but there have been rumors of a $50 6-inch model which is expected to hit the market in time for the holiday season. Both tablets will likely be announced and released at the same time to take advantage of the busy Q4 shipping period.
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Google’s Container Engine for managing software containers now available
Google’s Container Engine, the system through which developers can easily create and manage clusters of software containers, is now generally available. Software containers are isolated environments where individual applications can run separate from any other applications, allowing for more granular resource management and increased security, among other things. A web application might have separate containers for the webserver, cache, and database, for example.
“While containers make packaging apps easier, a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system is necessary to bring your workloads to production,” Google said in its blog post about the announcement. “Container Engine makes it easy for you to set up a container cluster and manage your application, without sacrificing infrastructure flexibility.”
There are two open-source technologies underlying Container Engine’s ease of use and flexibility: Docker for automating the deployment of applications inside software containers, and the Google-built Kubernetes for making these siloed applications work together in unison even when hosted across multiple cloud hosts. Companies can move all their infrastructure needs to Container Engine or just move some and find cost savings if, for example, Google’s solution is cheaper. Whatever the need, another reason you might move some processes over to Container Engine is that it’s fully managed by Google reliability engineers, and comes with a 99.5% uptime guarantee.
Beyond management of clusters, Container Engine also equips them with logging and container health checking tools, and makes it incredibly easy to scale CPU and memory up or down as an applications’ needs change. Define your containers’ needs, such as the amount of CPU/memory each requires, number of replicas, and keepalive policy, and Container Engine will actively ensure requirements are met. This goes back to the mention of granular resource management: siloing applications with Kubernetes into separate, virtual environments allows one to easily limit the resources any one environment gets access to, preventing an app gone haywire from hogging too much of the total available memory, for example.
Google has been able to draw from real-world experience in building Container Engine, as the company says that it packages all of its own web applications — like Gmail and Search — into containers, deploying more than 2 billion instances of them each week.
Android 6.0 SDK and final Android Marshmallow Developer Preview update live now
Right on the heels of Google unveiling the official name for Android M — it’s Marshmallow — the company has released the final preview version of the operating system bump along with the Android 6.0 SDK and access to all the new APIs that Marshmallow includes…
Google opens up data on site search performance with new Analytics developer API
Have you ever wondered what the most commonly searched terms which lead to your site appearing in Google’s results are? Or maybe the top queries on mobile that lead to your site appearing in results? Well, Google has offered a Search Analytics Report in the Google Search Console for some time which provides this exact kind of data (where have you been?), and now it has created an API developers can use to play around with this data in their own apps.
It’s called the Search Analytics API and with it, developers get access to all the data on traffic that has come to them through search, and can sort it by parameters like country to gain insights into, for example, what are the top queries in India that lead to visitors.
The potential here is for developers to create graphical user interfaces to this data, so less tech savvy individuals would gain the ability to sift through their search data without needing prior knowledge on how to use an API.
9to5Toys Last Call: LG G2 (unlocked) $210, Kindle Fire tablets 15% off, Bluetooth speaker bundle $25, more
Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.
Today’s can’t miss deals:
LG G2 w/ 32GB flash storage, factory unlocked for GSM carriers: $210 shipped (Reg. $300)
15% off Amazon Kindle Fire tablets: Fire HD 6 $84, Fire HD 7 $118, Fire HDX 8.9 $322, Fire HD Kids Edition $126
Lumsing 4-port USB wall charger $11, Bluetooth speaker and dual USB car charger $25 Prime shipped
Belkin Secured Wired Keyboard for Samsung Micro-USB Tablets: $10 shipped (Reg. $30)
One-year magazine subs from $5/yr: Architectural Digest, Wired, Dwell, Runner’s World, more
More new gear from today:
Headphones: Klipsch X11 in-ears $100 (Reg. $132+), Sennheiser HD205-II over-ears $25 (Reg. $50)
- New! BenQ 1080p 3D Full HD 2,200 Lumens DLP Projector $699 shipped (Reg. $799+)
- New! Daily Deals: Changhong 55″ 4K $600, iPad Air 2 $400, more
- New! Games/Apps: Kirby and the Rainbow Curse $36, iOS freebies, more
- New! Kensington Clicksafe Combination laptop/device lock $15 Prime shipped (Reg. $25+)
- New! Belkin Secured Wired Keyboard for Android MicroUSB Tablets $10 shipped (Reg. $30)
More deals still alive:
- HDDs: Seagate 5TB desktop $130, Seagate Slim portable 2TB (multiple colors) $85
- D-Link Day/Night WiFi Surveillance Camera w/ iOS or Android Viewing $60 (Reg. $140)
- HDTVs: Samsung 48″ Smart $548 (orig. $848), Samsung 51″ Plasma $348 (orig. $879), more
- Home: Rachael Ray 10-pc cookware set $100, Celestron FirstScope Telescope $34, more
- Stack these two Microsoft promos for 200GB of OneDrive storage for free
- Sony 48″ 1080p Smart HDTV (refurb) $400 shipped (orig. $650)
- Etekcity portable wireless Bluetooth speaker $16 Prime shipped (orig. $46)
- TP-LINK AV200 Nano Powerline Adapter Starter Kit $21 shipped (Reg. $30+)
- Grab Lightroom 5 at a steep discount w/ free external storage
- VIZIO 50-inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz Full-Array LED Smart TV $698 in-store (Reg. $1,000)
- Samsung 50-inch 1080p 120Hz Smart LED HDTV $599 shipped (orig. $1,200)
- Hunger Games: Catching Fire eBook free (Reg. $7), iTunes movie trilogy $30 (Reg. $55)
- Patagonia jackets, shirts & accessories up to 50% off: Down Jacket $137 (Reg. $229), more
- Audio-Technica Pro Headphones: ATH-M40X $79 (Reg. $139), ATH-M30X $55 (Reg. $99)
- BJ’s 1-Year Inner Circle Membership + $25 Gift Card $35 (~$75 value)
- Amazon Fire TV streaming media player $34 w/ Sling TV subscription or $84 w/o
- Mass Effect Infiltrator is IGN’s free iOS game of the month ($4.99 value)
New products & more:
- Bang & Olufsen’s Bluetooth speaker is a must-see with its anodized aluminum gold finish
- Gaming For Couples: Catch up on 9 great video game columns!
- Target turns up the heat on Best Buy/Amazon by slashing its free shipping threshold
- The latest batch of Halo toys: authentic Needler blaster and McFarlane’s new Master Chief
- Rovio releases new matching puzzle game ‘Jolly Jam’ for iOS and Android
- Trendnet’s new 1200 AV2 MIMO equipped Powerline kit is now available
- Ray’s 4.8-inch touch screen Super Remote takes TV watching out of the dark ages
- Marshall’s Major II headphones with updated audio and same iconic style are now available
- Kitchen Tech: Spherification lets you make your own caviar from fruit juice, more
- Make awesome ice spheres, cubes, Death Stars, diamonds and more for only $10
- Take your iPhone 6 Back to the Future with this highly detailed Delorean case
- Truffol’s wood/aluminum USB chargers w/ protection power up to five devices
$50 off Nest Black Friday Now: Learning Thermostat: $199, Dropcams: $99
From 9to5Toys.com where we are rounding up all the best Black Friday deals we have two huge headliners on the almost never discounted Nest product line (that Google picked up along with iPod-father Tony Fadell earlier this year):
The Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd generation) for $199 shipped. That’s $50 below list and the best price we’ve ever seen.
You can find it at Amazon, Best Buy, Lowes and Abt for $199 for a limited time.
- The Nest Learning Thermostat remembers what temperatures you like, turns itself down when you’re away and can be controlled from your smartphone, tablet or laptop
- Auto-Schedule creates a personalized schedule for your home by remembering when you adjust the temperature
- Auto-Away automatically turns Nest thermostat down when there’s nobody home so you don’t waste energy heating or cooling an empty house
- Remote control Nest thermostat over Wi-Fi from your smartphone, tablet or laptop
- Energy History shows you how much energy you’ve used and what affects your energy use most
The Dropcam Wireless HD Video Monitoring Camera can be found for $99.99 with free shipping. That’s $50 below list and the lowest price we have ever seen on this cloud-based camera/recording system.
Available for $$99 ($50 off) at Amazon and Best Buy.
With a 107° degree field of view and 4x zoom, Dropcam keeps you connected with people, places and pets in sharp 720p HD video.
- 60 Second Setup – Use your computer to find your Wi-Fi network, live stream in under a minute.
- High Quality Video – Get into the details with 720p high-definition video.
- Fast and easy setup – online and securely streaming 720p HD video in 60 seconds.
- Field of View – 107 degrees diagonal, plus Night Vision and Zoom, means you don’t miss a thing.
- Cloud Video Recording (CVR) – Review footage and make clips with optional secure offsite recording.
- Stay connected with Two-Way Talk, Intelligent Alerts, Scheduling and Mobile & Web apps.
Head over to 9to5Toys for the Best Black Friday deals on the web. A little more background on Nest:
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Amazon’s Fire Phone is now available for $199 unlocked and off-contract
It seems that Amazon is finally throwing in the towel with its Fire Phone. After the hype leading up to its launch, Fire Phone has been struggling to stay afloat. It’s best to think of the Fire Phone as a smaller version of a Kindle Fire tablet, but with a few extra gimmicks and features thrown in along with a free year of Amazon Prime.
The Fire Phone may have been a disappointment to the market, but Amazon isn’t giving up on its attempt to push it into the hands of consumers this holiday season. The Fire Phone can now be purchased unlocked and off-contract for only $199 (32GB Version)…
CyanogenMod 11 M12 now available for HTC One (M8), Samsung Galaxy S4 and more
The latest monthly build of CyanogenMod 11 is now available to download for several Android devices, ranging from the HTC One (M8) and HTC Evo 4G LTE to the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Samsung Galaxy Note 3. CyanogenMod 11 M12 download links should be added for other smartphones and tablets over the coming days.
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Amazon having Fire Sale on the Fire Phone: $0.99 on contract, $449 off
Is the Amazon Fire Phone simmering out? Recent estimates reached by The Guardian pegged the device at having sold less than 35,000 units and today Amazon and AT&T are bringing down the price to 99¢ on a two year contract less than two months after launch. The device was previously priced at $199 for 32GB with a two year commitment, which many observed was a rather high price point for a not-so-remarkable handset mostly differentiated by its 3D effect and Amazon Prime services…
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Uber introduces API for integrating the transportation service into other apps
The popular transportation service Uber has quickly been growing this year with new features like adding your destination right on the smartphone app when requesting a ride and poaching long time Apple engineering manager Chris Blumenberg who managed the Maps team. The service is even integrated into the Google Maps app on iPhone and Android, and check out the Uber care package the company sends new employees.
Today Uber is taking a major step toward integrating its service into even more apps and services as it introduces an API for developers to use in their own apps and a list of partners already planning to take advantage of it.
As of today, we officially open—to all developers—access to many of the primitives that power Uber’s magical experience. Apps can pass a destination address to the Uber app, display pickup times, provide fare estimates, access trip history and more.
Microsoft’s OneDrive app now available at the Amazon Appstore
Microsoft announced today that its cloud-based OneDrive storage application is now available for the Kindle Fire and Fire Phone via the Amazon Appstore. Similar to Google Drive, Microsoft’s online storage solution lets users share photos, videos, documents and other items with other people directly from their smartphone or tablet.
Amazon testing $10 per month subscription-based ebook service
Amazon is currently testing an all you can eat subscription-based ebook and audio book service called “Kindle Unlimited.” A product landing page spotted by GigaOM revealed that the unannounced service will provide customers with access to over 600,000 titles for $10 a month. While subscription-based e-book services for smartphones and tablets already exist, Amazon has a vast number of resources that could quickly make the company a force in this relatively untapped market.
Appeals court partly reverses ruling on Google-Oracle decision, says Java can be copyrighted
A seemingly drastic turn of events in the appeals court has reversed the ruling on some elements of the Google-Oracle trial.
The ruling enables Oracle to claim copyright ownership over some parts of Java. The crux of the trial was whether API names and constructs could be owned. The initial decision said that it couldn’t, giving Google a landslide victory. However, the appeal court papers now say the exact opposite:
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organiza- tion of the 37 Java API packages are entitled to copyright protection. Because there is an insufficient record as to the relevant fair use factors, we remand for further proceedings on Google’s fair use defense.
Video: Hands-on with Amazon’s Fire TV set-top box
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhKZ0fQhbeg]
Amazon recently surprised us with its Fire TV set-top box, offering a native solution for customers to stream movies, music, and even play games. Fire TV will only set you back $99, and in my opinion, it’s just what Amazon needed. Instead of relying on third-party streaming solutions, Amazon now has the power to take its media services in a new direction. Take a look at our overview video above to see Fire TV in action.
Amazon’s long-rumored Roku-like TV box to launch next month?
Image: digitaltrends.com
Amazon’s TV box, which the company is believed to have been working on for around a year, is to be launched next month, according to unnamed content distribution sources cited by re/code. It had originally been expected to be launched in time for last year’s holiday sales.
People I’ve talked to who are partnering with Amazon believe the company is aiming for a March rollout […]
Sources tell me Amazon’s box will be powered by Google’s Android operating system, which is also not a surprise — Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets use a “forked” version of Android …
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Storage space on your Android phone just got less problematic, thanks to Google Drive API
If you’re finding that app data is using up more and more of the storage capacity on your Android phone, Google has just rolled out something that is likely to help: an API that allows developers to store app data on Google Drive instead of in your phone’s flash memory.
It will also mean that data created by apps using the API will be automatically synced between device.
The change will be completely invisible to users – it will Just Work. When an Internet connection isn’t available, data will be cached locally until it can again reach Google Drive. There will be some impact on data usage, but for most apps this is likely to be trivial.
Via EngadgetAmazon’s ‘record-setting’ holiday season shows Kindle Fire, Chromecast and Chromebooks dominate
Amazon has never been a company to provide specific sales numbers, but their just-issued press release shows us that Android, Kindle and Chromebooks dominated their holiday shopping season. Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprising at all is the Chromecast, which is the best seller in the Computers and Accessories category outselling the company’s own Kindle Fire lineup as well as Apple TV and the Roku 3 Streaming Media player.
Amazon smartphone will launch in early 2014 according to supply chain sources
Amazon’s upcoming smartphone that may or may not truly exist is now set to launch in the first half of 2014 according to Digitimes. The world’s most prolific source of insider information with a track record that hits around 50/50 says Primax Electronics has “obtained orders from Amazon for compact camera modules for use in smartphones to be launched in first-half 2014.”
Amazon offers new payment plan for Kindle HDX shoppers
Amazon is pulling out all the stops to get a Kindle Fire HDX into your hands this holiday season with a brand new payment plan. Amazon unveiled the new plan (as discovered by PC Mag) in the past 24 hours that will allow customers to split the payments across a total of 270 days from the initial date of purchase.
Amazon boosts Kindle Fire with new education features for Kindle FreeTime
Kindle’s Fire tablet lineup is already among the best tablet options geared toward kids and Amazon is boosting that message with some new offerings. The newest update adds more educational and goal-oriented options to make sure kids are getting their work complete before moving to play time.
The Kindle Fire, the true Android gamers tablet? Survey says yes
Far be it from me to pass judgement on which Android tablet is the true “gamers” tablet, but a new survey via AllThingsD suggests the Kindle Fire is the people’s choice for gaming. According to a survey conducted this past June by IDC and App Annie, Amazon’s Kindle tablets received around 12% of the votes, far more than all other Android tablets combined.
Amazon announces two “unprecedented limited-time deals” on two popular Kindle Fire tablets for Cyber Monday
Note: Strangely, Best Buy still offers the best deal on the Kindle Fire 7 HD with it starting at $99.99
Hello Amazon and two very good, no “unprecedented” deals on two of the internet most popular Kindle Fire tablets. Announced late last night, Amazon is taking $50 off the Kindle Fire HDX 7″, down from to $179 and the Kindle Fire HD 16GB now $119. The full deal is listed below along with links to where you should be whipping out your credit cards. If you’re in the Amazon ecosystem like myself, these are some pretty good deals and while its possible Amazon will discount again before Christmas day, why wait?