Amazon is cracking down on a policy that allows blogs and websites to earn money when users download free ebooks through their affiliate links. That means big changes in the ways that some self-published ebooks are promoted online. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon is adding FX’s Justified to Prime Instant Video. It’s the first time Justified has been available on a streaming site, and it won’t be on Netflix or Hulu Plus. Read more at paidContent »
Data portability — the ability to move your information between clouds (or in and out of clouds) with relative ease — is a key concern of companies considering a cloud move. Read more »
Google’s acquisition of Channel Intelligence could give it a big leg up in ecommerce. But Jason Lehmbeck, DataPop, says the search giant has its sights on the offline retailing world, too, Read more »
Microsoft Azure, which started the week with kudos as the best cloud storage service, is down and out on Friday. Read more »
Rackspace, perhaps deviating from its “fanatical support mantra” is cutting prices on its CDN services and rolling out a new tiered price structure for other services Read more »
Business customers who want more support than Google Groups or Stack Overflow for Google Cloud workloads can now choose from four tiers of Google-branded support. Read more »
Fanhattan, which is like a TV Guide for iPad, has launched out a beta web version with new discovery and recommendation features. On the web, it offers more content recommendations from more providers — 29 on the web, compared to 16 on iOS. Read more »
The fact that Amazon Web Services is targeting enterprise accounts is nothing new. The company’s just getting more blatant about it. Read more »
Three independent bookstores have filed a class action suit against Amazon the big-six publishers, alleging that the proprietary DRM Amazon uses on ebooks creates a monopoly. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon forbids third-party merchants that use its marketplace from offering the same goods cheaper elsewhere, and the German Federal Cartel Office is gearing up to do something about it. Read more »
As a major step in its quest to take on Amazon in a federated fashion, the OnApp Cloud platform now includes fully-fledged distributed storage, VMware support and a more useful federated CDN. Read more »
Evaluation of five cloud storage providers showed improvement across the board, but Microsoft leapfrogged the rest — including Amazon S3 — in some criteria, says Nasuni’s Connor Fee. Read more »
Even folks who love using Amazon Web Services admit that it’s difficult to configure and manage them. That application management, some of which was handled by Chef and Puppet till now, is the problem OpsWorks takes on. Read more »
The digital reading revolution is not going to look the same in developing countries as it has in the developing world, but several companies are working on ways to bring digital reading to the African continent. Read more at paidContent »
Days after a documentary alleged the harassment and intimidation of foreign temporary workers at Amazon’s German distribution centers, the U.S. firm has cut ties with security company HESS. Read more »
Amazon is numero uno in consumer appeal, beating out even Apple and Google, according to Harris Interactive. Also, Cloud Foundry gets big backer in NTT and states reconsider sales taxes on cloud services. Read more »
Can Amazon take on the giants of data warehousing and win? Now we’ll be able to find out as its Paraccel-based Redshift service comes online. Read more »
Blogger Maria Popova has come under fire from a number of critics for her use of undisclosed affiliate links on her blog Brainpickings, which highlights how heated the debate over alternative forms of advertising has become. Read more at paidContent »
ProfitBricks, which goes head-to-head with Amazon for the IT budgets of startups with a new promotion, says the time is ripe to disrupt the disrupter. Read more »
Amazon this week cut the prices on multi-availability zone deployments of its Relational Database Service. Read more »
The EU security agency ENISA has released a report on the cloud’s increasingly critical nature. Yes, it highlights the risks associated with the shift to the cloud, but also some notable security benefits. Read more »
Hashicorp was already extending Vagrant into VMware virtualized environments and now it’s adding a connection into Amazon Web Services as well. This is good news for developers. Read more »
Users of Amazon Prime Instant Video will be able to stream more shows from CBS and Showtime, including past seasons of America’s Next Top Model, Everybody Loves Raymond and The L Word. Read more at paidContent »
Oppenheimer analyst Tim Horan says Amazon will have to spin off Amazon Web Services to attain the scale it needs. Read more »
How do you highlight examples of big corporations’ lobbying proposals being copied, word-for-word, into proposed laws? For EU privacy activists, the answer lies in many eyes. Read more »
The Belgian IT automation startup is now trying to address the scaling needs of its users. But before it leaves beta, it also wants to figure out the billing piece of the cloud broker business. Read more »
For big service providers that feel “disrupted” by Amazon’s prodigious cloud, Morphlabs is pitching mCloud Osmium as a way to get up to snuff. Read more »
The long-delayed Bookish, a website backed by Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster and designed to promote book discovery and sell books, launched Monday night and is designed to be a one-stop shop for readers looking for their next book. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon announced Friday that by the end of 2013, Prime Instant Video will be the only paid streaming service to offer episodes of Downton Abbey. Hulu Plus and Netflix will lose access. Read more at paidContent »
A couple of years ago, OnApp was all about helping service providers build their own public clouds. With more than 500 customers now under its belt, it’s drawing on that network in increasingly clever ways. Read more »
Following the opening of data centers, communities in Oregon, Washington and Virginia have made new policies, built many new homes and prompted environmental activism. Read more »
Folks looking to browse or buy on Amazon.com’s site are getting a blank page. Read more »
Amazon Studios has chosen its first five pilots for children’s shows, including offerings from the creators of Blue’s Clues and Rugrats. User feedback will help determine whether the shows go into production. Read more at paidContent »
As the ebook transition moves forward, Amazon should worry that Kindle is not going to be the device leading the revolution. Read more at paidContent »
In order to recommend new events for its members, online event-management company Eventbrite must build what it calls “implicit social graphs.” It’s just one of many approaches to figuring out what content users want to see. Read more »
Lyatiss has come out of stealth mode with $4 million in funding and a product that wants to let developers immediately see problems in the cloud — and then fix them in real time. Read more »
You don’t have to pay for ebooks on your mobile device or your Mac: your local library will lend you ebooks, digital magazine and audiobooks. Here’s a quick guide to getting set up. Read more »
When Amazon launched its Kindle Fire hardware, the market knew it wasn’t making money on the devices. Turns out it doesn’t take that much in content sales for a 20 percent profit margin, according to ABI. Read more »
In an effort to compete against Toronto-based Kobo, Amazon announced Wednesday that it is releasing the Kindle Paperwhite in Canada for the first time and will also sell the basic Kindle there. Amazon launched a Canadian Kindle store in December. Read more at paidContent »
