bezos

Not to be outdone by "Titanic" director James Cameron, Amazon's Jeff Bezos has just announced that after searching the seafloor, he's located the rockets that thrust Neil Armstrong toward the moon more than 40 years ago and plans to bring them back onto dry land.

Writing on his "Bezos Expeditions" blog today, the e-commerce guru and would-be space explorer said his team had located the five F-1 rockets that lifted the Apollo 11 mission spaceward and then plunged into the Atlantic.… Read more

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told investors today that his company is "building millions more" Kindle Fire tablets than originally planned.

Bezos' boast came during Amazon's conference call with investors to report its third-quarter earnings, which did not thrill the market nearly as much as the Kindle Fire is apparently exciting consumers. The numbers did not live up to Wall Street's expectations, and Amazon's stock price took a big dive in after-hours trading.… Read more

Many of you will have been understandably concerned about the personal safety of Steve Yegge.

He's the Google engineer who, last week, accidentally posted a public disquisition on Google+ about, well, Google's vast and many failures. Its Google+ platform, for example, which he described as "a pathetic afterthought."

Could it be that Messrs. Page and Brin would consider that same phrase for Yegge? Could it be that they would have him thrown off a peak in Mountain View, cackling as his career crashed somewhere down below?

Please fear not. Because after midnight last night, Yegge posted again to Google+ … Read more

A spaceship in not like a book.

When you invest in a book at an online retailer, you expect it to arrive at its destination with all its information intact. But when you invest in a spaceship, you know there's a chance it could blow up, veer off course, float off into space, or simply fail to communicate with you ever again (not unlike some love affairs and lovers you might care to forget).

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos surely knew this when he invested some of his well-gotten cash into a spaceship developed by Blue Origin LLC.… Read more

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET (and elsewhere) for Friday, September 2.

•The saga of the lost iPhone continues. First, a man confirmed someone had searched his home for an unreleased iPhone. Then today, police said they assisted Apple in that effort. "Apple came to us saying that they were looking for a lost item," San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield said, according to a report this afternoon by SF Weekly.

•The Chevy Camaro is popular online with 1.8 million followers. … Read more

Amazon could sell its upcoming tablet for less than it costs to make but still take home a profit in the long run, according to tech industry analyst Tim Bajarin.

Discussing Amazon's expected tablet in a column for PC Magazine last week, Bajarin derived an estimated cost for the device of $300 based on information from various sources. Assuming Amazon then discounts the retail price, consumers could pay as little as $249, projects the analyst.

Though the retailer would take a loss on the initial sales of the tablet itself, the company would more than make up the gap … Read more

Amazon is aiming to launch both a 7-inch and 10-inch tablet in the third quarter and is currently lining up the right suppliers, according to the latest from the folks at DigiTimes.

A number of chip design firms in Taiwan expect to see a healthy bump in sales in the third quarter as they ship parts for the new tablets, said Digitimes, citing industry sources. With Amazon shooting to ship 4 million tablets this year, the company's orders for integrated circuits have become the second largest in the industry, behind  only Apple's iPad, added the sources.

These … Read more

Amazon is prepping a new 10-inch color Kindle tablet that would support streaming video and sell for around $399, according to a report recently released by investment firm Detwiler Fenton.

Code-named Hollywood, the new Kindle tablet would include a promotional video service with Amazon reportedly offering the same movie service that it now offers for free to its Prime customers. The service would be free to Hollywood buyers for a certain amount of time, according to Detwiler Fenton.

The new Kindle would be powered by a more robust processor than is found in the smaller Kindle e-book readers and is expected to debut in time for the holiday season.

E-book readers and rival tablets alike have faced strong competition from the iPad, but Detwiler Fenton said it believes Hollywood's $399 price tag should be low enough to give it some traction against the iPad. This could put pressure on more expensive tablets, such as Motorola's Xoom and RIM's BlackBerry Playbook, each of which is expected to sell around 1 million units this year, said the investment firm.

It comes as no secret that Amazon has reportedly been busy readying its own lineup of tablets, according to various sources and some hints from CEO Jeff Bezos. One of the reports refers to "Hollywood" as the code name for a new 10-inch tablet from Amazon, to be powered by Nvidia's quad-core Kal-El chipset.… Read more

Amazon has shut down its affiliates program in Connecticut and Arkansas over the controversial issue of collecting state taxes.

The company announced the move in letters to affiliates Friday, noting that contracts with all Connecticut residents who participate in the Amazon Associates Program would be terminated effective immediately, while contracts with affiliates in Arkansas will be terminated on July 24.

Affiliates of the Associates Program are typically Web site owners and bloggers who link to Amazon on their sites as a way of driving traffic to the online retailer. In return, they receive a commission if a sale is made.… Read more