amazon.com

OLPC's Give One, Get One program to be rekindled Nov. 17

Starting on Monday, One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop will be available through the Give One, Get One program again, this time facilitated by Amazon.com.

For $400, the nonprofit low-cost laptop program will send one XO to the purchaser and one to a school-age child in a developing country.

OLPC said in September that it wanted to revive last year's successful program, but didn't have the infrastructure to support the program alone.

Although Microsoft has started making Windows available for the OLPC, that extends only to those in developing markets like Colombia and Peru, not folks … Read more

Amazon.com's green idea is brown

Sometimes the greenest technology improvement is going back to the old low-tech option.

Amazon.com announced Monday it's working with retailers to cut back on the packaging you'll need to open to get to your goods.

The Seattle-based company plans to start shipping items in plain brown cardboard boxes, instead of putting a pre-boxed or plastically sealed item inside another Amazon box. The cardboard box will have Amazon, and in some cases the retailer's name, on the front.

Memory cards, for example, are often sold in disproportionately large clear plastic packaging to prevent shoplifting at physical stores. Transcend's memory cards when bought via Amazon will be shipped in a recycled cardboard envelope. Children's toys, such as a Fisher-Price pirate ship set, will be shipped in a plain brown box with cardboard padding and a plastic bag holding the toy people and whatnot.

So, in addition to being less annoying to open, the new packaging will also be more environmentally friendly, according to Amazon.… Read more

Amazon.com snaps up Reflexive Entertainment

Amazon.com has acquired Reflexive Entertainment, adding to its PC, Mac, and online casual game offerings.

Reflexive, which announced the acquisition earlier this week in a blog post by Chief Executive Lars Brubaker, said the deal will provide a larger distribution channel than it previously had.

Reflexive also noted that game developers can still submit their work to the site and will continue to have access to its GameCenterSolution.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Vista laptops not top sellers on Amazon

Computer sales on Amazon.com are not exactly a proxy for the broader retail market. Still, I do think it is noteworthy that of the top 20 best-selling laptops on Thursday evening, just one was running Windows Vista.

That one is an HP mini-notebook that ranked No. 18, trailing behind a gaggle of Macs and Netbooks running either Windows XP or Linux.

On the plus side for Redmond, 10 of the top 20 machines were running some flavor of Windows. And, as I mentioned, Amazon is not a true barometer.

Apple's market share, while growing isn't exactly neck … Read more

Wall Street slices eBay earnings estimates, targets

Investors pushed eBay's stock down for a third consecutive day Thursday, after the e-commerce giant reported third-quarter earnings and reduced its fourth-quarter forecast amid a meltdown in the economy.

Shares of eBay fell as low as $13.69 in intraday trading, down 12 percent from Wednesday's close. But by the market's close, eBay's shares were down a mere 2.35 percent to end the day at $14.97, as the broader markets closed out with gains.

Earlier in the day, eBay's shares were whacked as Wall Street weighed in, with a number of analysts reducing … Read more

IMDB turns 18

You may have heard me say this before, but it's worth repeating: I love the Internet.

From my first forays onto Yahoo in the mid-1990s, to my slow, methodical construction of a perfect rating on eBay to the dozens of times I use Google every day, there is simply no question about it: I am head over heels gaga for the medium.

But no matter how many times I laugh at a YouTube video, read something interesting on NYTimes.com or consult Wikipedia, I think my true favorite online hangout is the Internet Movie Database, or IMDB.

What can … Read more

Tech stocks give up some gains

Shares of Amazon.com sold off sharply Tuesday, and Apple failed to swim against the tide despite rolling out a revamped MacBook line, as the broader markets gave up gains from its stellar performance a day earlier.

Amazon fell 9.93 percent to end the day at $55.86 a share, with little news out on the company. Amazon, however, is set report its third-quarter results on October 22.

Apple, meanwhile, received little love from investors, after rolling out its new MacBook lineup. The computer maker's stock fell 5.6 percent to end the day at $104.08 a … Read more

Amazon tees up content delivery service

Clarification at 8 a.m. PDT: The Amazon.com Web services blog posting was not written by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. He wrote a related blog on the subject.

Amazon.com is in the midst of creating a new content delivery service aimed at developers and businesses that it expects to launch by year's end.

According to an Amazon Web services blog posted Thursday:

This new (and as yet unnamed) service will provide you with a high performance way to distribute popular, publicly readable content to your customers all over the world, with low latency and high data transfer … Read more

IMDb now serves full-length videos

It would make sense that IMDb, the leading provider of movie and TV information on the Internet, would offer video on its Web site. After all, IMDb is a huge point of discovery of new movies for a lot of people, so the instant gratification of streaming that new movie that you just found is a big draw.

Previously, IMDb only offered videos in the form of clips and trailers. On Monday, IMDb took a step in the right direction and launched a selection of 6,000 full length films and TV episodes, available for streaming right now. All users … Read more