amazon.com

Amazon.com to uncork wine sales

Amazon.com customers will be able to buy wine through the e-tailer's Web site as early as this month, a spokesman for the Napa Valley Vintners Association said Wednesday.

Amazon has been working with the nonprofit group, which represents 315 vintners in the Napa Valley, to arrange workshops with wine producers that might be interested in selling wine through the retail giant, said Terry Hall, the group's communications director.

"We have set up a few get-to-know-you meetings with wineries, and the wineries will make their own decisions on what fits best with their business plans," Hall … Read more

Amazon flicks on its streaming-video service

Amazon.com on Thursday made available to the general public its video-on-demand service, through which ad-free movies and TV shows can be streamed on Macs, PCs, and Sony Bravia flat-screen TVs.

The broader release of the Amazon Video on Demand service comes two months after the online-retailing giant began offering the service to a limited number of its users.

Amazon's service aims to enable users to instantly watch movies or TV shows via a Web browser on their Mac OS or Windows machine. The online retailer is also teaming up with Sony to enable users to purchase or rent … Read more

Amazon to acquire book networking site

Amazon.com is buying Shelfari, the social-networking site for book lovers announced in a blog post to its users Monday night. Terms of the deal were not immediately announced.

In announcing the acquisition, Shelfari likened its mood to a spring day:

The rain has stopped, the birds are chirping and the biggest news of all--we are being acquired by Amazon.com.

We've got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon's expertise in building a platform where people come to share ideas, there are a lot of new opportunities in the future that will benefit each of … Read more

Newegg reverses practice of charging New York sales tax

Online electronics retailer Newegg has stopped charging sales tax to its New York customers, according to a posting on the Consumerist.com.

The move by Newegg reverses action the online retailer took in June, in which it began to charge applicable sales tax for all shipments to New York, following passage of a new state law that required certain companies to charge sales tax on shipments to New York state.

Effective August 21, however, Newegg discontinued the practice and is leaving it up to New York residents to pay that sales tax themselves. That policy basically returns the responsibility of … Read more

World's first "record label replacement" service

Most musicians want to concentrate on writing, performing, and recording. The first two are like breathing and eating, and the third has become much easier in the last decade thanks to the ongoing revolution in digital technology--you can set up a decent computer-based recording studio for a few thousand bucks. But once you're done recording, then what? For artists without a record label, promotion and distribution are two of the thorniest tasks--they take a lot of time, and you learn a lot of lessons (and meet a lot of rip-off artists) in the process.

Launched today, HyperDIY attempts to … Read more

Amazon.com invests in another 'cloud'

Amazon.com is taking a different kind of interest in the software companies using its cloud computing services.

On Tuesday, Elastra, provider of a scalable database that's stored on Amazon's Web Services, will announce that it has raised $12 million in a series B round of financing from Amazon, Bay Partners, and previous investor Hummer Winblad.

Elastra plans to use the money to further develop its database software. Neal Dempsey of Bay Partners will join Elastra's board.

This is Amazon's second investment in less than a month in cloud computing. In July, Amazon was among several … Read more

Zappos tries computers on for size

As I made the usual morning slog through my in-box Monday, I was about to skip past a news release touting a back-to-school promotion for Live Search Cashback, when I noticed one of the featured deals was on a ThinkPad tablet PC from electronic shoe retailer Zappos.com.

Thinking for sure it was a typo, I went to harass the person who sent me the release. The funny thing is, it really is Zappos selling that tablet computer. I missed it when Zappos expanded from high heels to high tech.

While the departure sounds strange, Zappos certainly wouldn't be … Read more

Westerberg on Amazon: an exercise in frustration

I'm a Replacements fan. Paul Westerberg's new album, 49:00, sounded intriguing. Like Radiohead and Trent Reznor and others, he's released it as a download first. Unlike these previous experiments, 49:00 is sold as a single album-length track. And while he's not technically giving it away, it costs only $0.49--a bit more than one cent per minute. (Paradoxically, the album is not 49 minutes long, but 43:55. The number refers to his 49th birthday, which occurs on the last day of 2008.)

So I headed over to Amazon.com's MP3 store. The … Read more

Report: TiVo, Amazon team up on sales pitches

TiVo--a company well-known for helping TV viewers skip commercials--is teaming up with Amazon.com to make it easier for consumers to purchase products they see on television commercials and talk shows, according to a report Monday on The New York Times Web site.

A "product purchase" feature on onscreen menus will provide TiVo customers with links to buy products like books, compact discs, and DVDs featured on programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Late Show With David Letterman, and The Daily Show, the newspaper reported. Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo plans to offer the feature to advertisers … Read more