Kiran Upadhyay

Black Friday, the annual shopping extravaganza which brought in more than $1.5 billion in online sales alone last November, is arguably the single most important day for retailers in the U.S. Now Amazon wants to steal its thunder with Prime Day. The e-commerce giant announced that it will mark its 20th anniversary on July 15 with deals for subscribers of its Prime shopping program in nine countries (the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, and Austria). In a press release, Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime, claims “Prime Day is a one-day only event filled with more deals than Black Friday,” but the company did not specify if that means Amazon will offer more deals on July 15 than it did during Black Friday, if the value of the deals will be worth more, or if it hopes Prime Day eventually trumps Black Friday as each year’s main celebration of consumerism (TechCrunch has emailed Amazon for more information). The latter propositi...

Amazon is apparently enlisting everyday humans in its network of endless online shopping delivery. The WSJ reports that the ecommerce giant is working on an app internally that would allow the average consumer to make a little cash by picking up Amazon packages at various retail locations and dropping them off at their final destination. WSJ’s sources did not have a timeline for the release of this product, internally called ‘On My Way,’ and were unsure whether it would launch at all. Amazon has spent years not only iterating the way it tailors your online shopping experience — the mega retailer has one of the best suggestion engines in the business — but also the way that it gets you your products with speed and convenience. Besides the standard shipping (or two-day for Prime members), Amazon has fiddled with the idea of letting Uber drivers and yellow cabs deliver products same-day, as well as using bike messengers and third-party delivery services for Prime Now and AmazonFr...

Last year, Amazon gave a boost to its Prime members when it launched a free, unlimited photo storage for them on Cloud Drive. Today, the company is expanding that service as a paid offering to cover other kinds of content, and to users outside of its loyalty program. Unlimited Cloud Storage will let users get either unlimited photo storage or “unlimited everything” — covering all kinds of media from videos and music through to PDF documents — respectively for $11.99 or $59.99 per year. And those who want to test drive it can do so for free for three months. The move is a clear attempt by Amazon to compete against the likes of Dropbox, Google, Microsoft and the many more in the crowded market for cloud-based storage services. It’s not the first to offer “unlimited” storage, but it looks like it’s the first to market this as a service to anyone who wants it. Dropbox, for example, offers unlimited storage as part of Dropbox for Business, Google also aims unlimited options currently...

If you’ve been hanging on to those paper books because the idea of having to repurchase them all as Kindle titles is daunting, Amazon has a new option for you: Kindle Convert, a program for Windows that turns print books into digital versions fully compatible with Amazon’s Kindle software, including adjustable font, Whispersync for making sure you’ll be able to go to the furthest read position on any device, and backup in Amazon’s cloud for free, providing access across devices. There’s a price to pay, however, beyond even the initial $19 that the software download costs (it’s also listed as being $49 at full price): In order to get your books into digital format, you’ll have to actually scan them using a standard flatbed or other type of computer scanner, which means doing things two pages at a time at most. As The Ebook Reader notes, it’s also limited to U.S. customers for now. Luckily the hardware requirements aren’t that steep, as Kindle Convert should work with any scanner th...

Don’t have Amazon Prime? Want Amazon Prime? What d’ya know! Amazon Prime is on sale today — a rather rare occurrence. After Prime first launched, it was just $75 a year. In March of 2014, they bumped the price up to $99. Today, in celebration of Amazon’s wins at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards, they’ve dropped the price down to $72 bucks. That’s a roughly 27% discount, and is the cheapest I’ve ever seen Prime go (besides the free memberships they once offered students). It’s a proper Prime membership, too, with all the usual prime perks: unlimited cloud photo storage (as long as you’re a member), access to the Prime Video and Music services, access to Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (assuming you have a Kindle — not just a Kindle app on your iPad), and, the flagship feature, free two-day shipping on most (not all) Amazon items. One catch: technically, it’s only available to new members. If you already have Prime, Amazon wants you to cough up the standard fee. Because, hey, they...

Fresh off the heels of its first Golden Globes win, Amazon is taking advantage of the increased exposure its Netflix-like video streaming service, Prime Instant Video, is now receiving in order to onboard new Prime subscribers at a discounted rate. The company said this morning it will make the TV series “Transparent,” which took home two Golden Globes in January, available for free to everyone this Saturday as a part of special marketing promotion. At this time, Amazon is also offering customers the ability to sign up for Amazon Prime, which includes the video streaming service, at a discounted rate of $72. That’s a 25 percent-plus savings over the usual $99 price of an Amazon Prime membership, the company notes in its announcement. It’s also “72” dollars in reference to the 72nd Annual Golden Globes, which saw Amazon Studios taking home two awards this year, alongside competitor Netflix’s one win (Kevin Spacey for “House of Cards”) out of its seven nominations. “Transparent,...

A few years ago we wrote about something called a Kuratas, a robotic mech suit that allowed the wearer to fire a BB Gatling gun whenever they smile at their soon-to-be vanquished enemies. When it appeared in 2012 everyone thought it was a funny joke. Now it’s available on Amazon Japan for $1 million. The robot is obviously a bit hobbled – the powers that be don’t want us going all Mechwarrior down at the local mall – so it moves about five miles per hour and you can buy the arms separately. Created as more of an art project/Otaku exciter, the Kuratas is a real, albeit expensive, thing and would be an excellent graduation or Bat Mitzvah present. I, for one, welcome our huge Japanese robotic mecha overlords.

If you’ve got more time than money and have a startup idea that you think you have the skills to build, a new partnership between Amazon Web Services and online education portal edX will hook you up with $1,000 in credit for completing one of two courses on entrepreneurship. Unless you’ve already taken some classes on building a startup, you’re not going to be able to completely BS your way through MITx’s Entrepreneurship 101 or 102 on edX. You actually have to pass the course, so expect to put at least tens of hours into the class. But once you make your way through the coursework, you automatically receive $1,000 in credit to spend on processor time and/or storage in Amazon’s cloud. You also get a few more bonuses meant for those more comfortable with code than administrating infrastructure, including credit for instructor-led training and web classes on using AWS, free support at Amazon’s premium tier, and “office hours” with Amazon specialists who can help figure out how to ...

In October, we spotted that Amazon had quietly launched a hidden and functional app store within its main Android application which was available for download on Google Play. Now, according to new reports from varying sources, Amazon’s flagship application’s listing is no longer available via search from within Google Play, though its direct link is still live. Additionally, there’s now a newly launched application called Amazon Shopping which looks much like the original application, but no longer includes the Appstore section. The change was first spotted by German site Caschys Blog who also received a statement from Amazon which claims that this is related to a September update that brought Amazon’s Prime Instant Video to Android users. That update involved having users update to or install the newest version of the main Amazon app, then download the Amazon Instant Video Player app afterwards, in order to watch Prime Instant Video on their Android devices. Amazon has sent us t...

Back in June, we wrote about how Amazon was preparing to take on companies like Seamless, Grubhub and DeliveryHero with a restaurant takeout and delivery service that would sit within its Amazon Local app and website. Now that service is live. The Takeout & Delivery feature was quietly turned on over last weekend — when many were probably still working their way through Thanksgiving leftovers. “The holidays are busy. We can help,” the company notes in the app. We have tried out different addresses in Amazon Local and it looks like for now it’s only live in Seattle, covering around 20 restaurants for delivery and around 110 for takeout orders that you pick up yourself. As with other Amazon services, Takeout & Delivery lets you charge everything to your existing Amazon account. As we and others have reported, Amazon has a bigger ambition to build out its local commerce services into a larger, physical extension of what it has built online. This includes what Reuters has d...

Holidays are a time for families to come together, catch up over great food and drinks, and determine all the technical problems that need solving throughout the house. Indeed, for children growing up in the digital age, the holidays ultimately boil down to free (or more accurately, meal-subsidized) technical support for our most cherished loved ones. Kids: Amazon has you covered. Well, almost. This past week, Amazon publicly introduced an early release of Selling Services, which we had previously mentioned the company was working on a few months ago. Amazon is developing a marketplace that offers after-sale services such as car alarm installation, iPhone repair, and computer hardware setup to consumers buying relevant products. Today, the marketplace is available in 15 early rollout cities, including New York City and Lexington, Kentucky. After-sale services are among the highest profit margin revenue streams for retailers, so it is little surprise that Amazon is jumping into ...

We don’t often see companies announce funding rounds on the weekend, but that’s not stopping Lazada, the Rocket Internet-backed e-commerce firm in Southeast Asia, from revealing today that it has pulled in €200 million (around $250 million) in fresh capital. The round is lead by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, which manages a $100-billion-plus portfolio and this year invested in another Amazon rival: Snapdeal in India. The deal includes participation from a number of existing Lazada investors, including Kinnevik, Verlinvest and Rocket Internet, and it values the company at €1 billion ($1.25 billion). Lazada operates in six countries in Southeast Asia — Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — largely in tandem with Zalora, another well-backed e-commerce service started by Rocket Internet. This new funding round takes Lazada to more than $700 million in money from investors. Its most recent round was also $250 million back in December 2013, which include...

Amazon has already admitted that it priced its Fire Phone much higher than consumers anticipated, and now it’s making a significant adjustment to the device’s price tag: A fully unlocked Fire Phone now retails for $199.00, instead of $449.00. The GSM device is still U.S.-only, which means it’ll work with AT&T and T-Mobile, though not Verizon and Sprint. The $250 price drop puts the Fire Phone into a price range that might be more in line with what consumers were expecting to pay – Amazon’s decision to release a full-priced device, especially when paired with some of its less-than-stellar specs and odd 3D head tracking visual effects, clearly didn’t do a great job of attracting buyers. This is actually the second fire sale for the fire phone, after Amazon reduced the price of the on-contract, AT&T exclusive version to just $0.99 with a two-year agreement. Originally, the retail cost was $199 on a contract, which is ironically now the price for a fully free and clear contr...

Amazon is truly committed to pushing Prime membership to stratospheric heights, and a new expansion that sees it bringing benefits to Prime customers from e-commerce websites beyond its own walls should prove its commitment to the program. Prime members can now get free, next-day shipping on purchases made at British retailer AllSaints’ online store (via Re/code). The arrangement also sees AllSaints bring its products to Amazon.com search results, though clicking through to purchase will still take customers to the AllSaints website. Curiously, Amazon only makes, essentially, an affiliate fee for directing clients to AllSaints.com, though customers use their Amazon logins and payment information to complete their purchases through a partnership introduced in September. But Prime rules all at Amazon: It’s a growing source of revenue and profit for the online retailer, and studies have shown that Prime members end up buying almost double the amount as non-Prime members from Amazon’s ...

Kindle has a new update rolling out to its Kindle e-reader device hardware, which includes new features for the latest Kindle, Kindle Voyage and Kindle Paperwhite devices. The update includes the new Word Wise feature that automatically shows definitions to difficult words above the within text on compatible titles, as well as Family Library, which lets you access not only your own books, but also those of a spouse, partner or family member, and Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, a subscription service starting at $2.99 per month that provides curated access to special selections for kids and beginner readers. The most exciting part of this update for most is probably the Family Library function, which finally makes e-books from Amazon more like paperbacks in that they can be shared freely between family members. You’ll get the chance to link two accounts to a device, which can include a spouse or partner, rather than having to share a single account across devices. The two paired accounts...

At its re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas, Amazon today announced Aurora, a new relational database service the company built from the ground up. As Amazon’s Andy Jassy, the head of the company’s cloud services platform, noted in today’s keynote, the company has been working on this project for over three years now. As enterprises move to the cloud, they also want to move their databases, but in order to avoid having to pay for expensive licenses, they often choose open source tools like MySQL or Postgres. To get those to perform well, though, is hard. So Aurora is a fully MySQL compatible database service that allows you to migrate data into the service easily. Unlike standard MySQL, the service is extremely fast, however, and set up to be highly available and self-healing. Amazon says the service can handle about 6 million inserts per minute, for example. A large instance of Aurora starts at $0.29 per hour, without any upfront cost. That’s 1/10th the cost of the lea...

This morning, Amazon announced a new device called Echo. With a built-in, cloud connected, “always on” microphone, the Echo can listen for your voice “from across the room.” You can ask it about the weather. You can tell it to set an alarm. You can ask it for information about Abraham Lincoln. It’s a personal assistant in a tube! But let’s be clear here on what this thing is beyond that — or what it will be. Amazon is not in the business of telling you whether or not it will rain tomorrow. Nor is it in the business of waking you up in the morning. Nor is it in the business of teaching you about dead presidents. Amazon is in the business of selling you things — and that is why Echo exists. For now, Echo’s shopping-centric functionality is limited to helping you add things to your shopping list. Need some pickles? Cool. Just say “Alexa, add pickles to my shopping list.” (Note: Echo listens for the word “Alexa” by default. You can pick a different name, it seems.) It...

Amazon Prime members are getting another benefit today, the company announced this morning: free, unlimited photo storage. In a new service called Prime Photos, paying subscribers of Amazon’s membership program will now be about to store photos in their original resolutions to Amazon Cloud Drive from any device, including iOS, Android, and Fire phones and tablets, as well as Mac and Windows PCs. These photos can then be viewed on those devices, as well as on the big screen via Amazon Fire TV, the new Fire TV Stick, game consoles like the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, and some models of LG and Samsung smart TVs. To get started with Prime Photos, Amazon Prime subscribers can now visit the homepage for the new service (at www.amazon.com/primephotos) in order to download the Cloud Drive Photos iOS or Android application, if they didn’t already have it installed, or get the Cloud Drive Windows upload app. (The Mac version is in the works, the website tells visitors. In the meantim...

Given that Amazon was tanking the price of the Fire Phone down to 99 cents two months after launch (leading to many a “Fire sale!” joke), this probably won’t come as much of a surprise: the Fire Phone isn’t a success. On the Amazon earnings call today, Amazon noted that the company was taking a $170 million writedown “primarily related” to overcommitting to the Fire Phone. They ordered too much inventory, and made promises to their suppliers that they couldn’t keep. So, just how many Fire Phones is Amazon still sitting on? Any guesses? $5 million? $20 million? The final count on Fire Phone inventory left at the end of Q3: $83 million. Eighty. Three. Million. Dollars. Who would have guessed a phone that existed pretty much solely to sell you stuff from Amazon while relying heavily on a silly gimmick wouldn’t sell well?