Saturday, February 16, 2013

Kindle News: Kindle Fire worldwide launch not far off? Harris finds Amazon has "best reputation" among US consumers. Kindle Fire leads Android pack while not worldwide yet. Hulu-free streams Criterion Collection free through weekend.

Criterion Collection FREE on Hulu through the weekend

The Hulu app is for HuluPlus, so you'd need to watch this on Hulu Free via the web, either on your PC or Mac.  The web access is not compatible with Android tablets, even though with the Dolphin web browser, you can set it to look like a "desktop" device.  Hulu detects it's Android.  But for those who enjoy watching movies online, this is a rare offering, as the Criterion Collection has some highly-regarded films in it, so if interested, they'll be watchable on your desktop.   Kevin Eagan gave a Google+ alert on TheVerge story's on this.



Amazon gets best marks from customers, putting it ahead of the pack of companies studied.

  Ed Renehan tweeted the story by Wired's Marcus Wohlsen referencing the new survey from Harris Interactive that indicates
' ...the general public respects Amazon more than any other U.S. corporation."

The marketing firm polled 19,000 U.S. residents in deep detail to find out how they felt about the country’s 60 “most visible” companies.  For the first time in the “reputation quotient” poll’s 14-year history, Amazon came out on top.

"Amazon trounced the competition in the category of “emotional appeal,” beating second-place Disney by five points on a 100-point scale – which seems bizarre considering the only contact most of us ever have with Amazon is via a cardboard box."

"Amazon is predominantly a virtual company where you don’t get to see the people. You don’t see brick and mortar,” says Robert Fronk, executive vice-president of reputation management at Harris. “For them to first of all have the highest reputation, but more importantly to be the company with far and away the highest emotional appeal, is amazing.”  Harris defines emotional appeal as trust, admiration and respect..."

Customer Service is the key, but Wired, although it says Amazon's gets "very high marks in the the survey," prefaces this with "Even Amazon's customer service..." but that's the key reason.

To see how Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Best Buy and T-Mobile fared, see Wired's report.  It's probably no surprise that "Facebook suffers badly from lack of trust."

On Kindleworld's new Facebook page (thanks to those who clicked the "Like" button there which gives the blog pages more exposure and therefore makes it more findable on Google), Facebook offers to charge a Facebook page owner anywhere from $5 to $10 to "promote" the page to get more views, but online word is that those views are often largely in other parts of the world not as affected by many of the changes.

  The kicker is that Facebook tells people that members' own Facebook 'friends' may not even see their status reports because there is too much data flowing and not all status reports will show up in friends' timelines and that a paid feature to "promote" your post (if you pay for it) is one way to ensure your 'friends' see the posting you designated for them, then leaving it near the top for a few days.
  First, how can ensuring a status report IS shown to all Facebook friends be justified as a 'paid' feature? and, second, why annoy people's 'friends' who HAVE seen the posting and then have to see it again at the top of their news feeds for a few days?

  And, now we have yesterday's Businessweek report by Peter Coy, that Facebook's first annual eanrings report shows a "multibillion-dollar tax deduction for the cost of executive stock options and share awards.  Even though Facebook (FB) reported $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations in 2012, it will probably pay zero federal and state taxes—and even receive a federal tax refund of about $429 million..."

Back to Wired, on the Harris poll study...
' Forty-six percent of all respondents said they “definitely would trust” Amazon “to do the right thing.”  Only 8 percent said the same about Facebook.  Add in “probably would trust” and Amazon’s total shoots to 91 percent, while Facebook’s reaches 49 percent.

...By Harris’ tally, Amazon is the first company in the survey’s history to score negligible negative results across every category..."

In addition to Wired's report on the study: TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden headlines their article, "Amazon Beats Out Apple For The Best Reputation Among U.S. Consumers, Says Harris; Google Comes Fourth" which adds,
' [Amazon ... also beat out others in the category of products and services. There were some hints of how this might play out back in September, when Apple only just narrowly beat out Amazon for highest reputation ranking for its iPad tablet line versus Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets, based on a similar poll from JD Power. '

Apple, however, has very large margins (I've seen estimates of 22%), while Amazon keeps very low ones (about 2%), and while Apple ranks highest in 'vision and leadership,' TechCrunch writes that Apple's profits and high stock prices were "not strong enough to average out as the overall leader."


Is Kindle Fire going worldwide?
In more good news for Amazon, Localytics found that, as I Programmer reports, "Amazon's Kindle Fire accounts for a third of Android tablets on a global basis, even though it is available in only a handful of countries outside the United States."

  Of more interest to me, though, was the quote that I Programmer has from an Amazon rep:
' Localytics goes on to remind us that to date the Kindle Fire isn't even available in Canada, although at the recent launch event of the Kindle Paperwhite in Canada, Amazon’s VP in charge of the Kindle noted that they are working hard to launch the Fire lineup worldwide which should provide a boost for Android developers. '




Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links.

  NOTES on newer Kindles.
US:
Updated Kindle Fire 2 Basic  7" tablet - $159
Kindle Fire HD 7" 16/32GB - $199/$249
Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 16/32GB - $299/$369
Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G 32/64GB - $499/$599
Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $69/$89
Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi - $119/$139
Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi+3G - $179/$199
Kindle Keybd 3G - $139/$159, Free slow web
Kindle DX - $379 $299 Discontinued
UK:
Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £69
Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - ~£89 Refurb'd
Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB
Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi
£109
Kindle Paperwhite 3G, UK
£169
Kindle Fire 2, UK
 £129
Kindle Fire HD 7" 16/32GB, UK
£159/199
Canada - Kindlestore, CDN-$
Kindle Basic, NoTouch - $89
Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi - $139
Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi+3G - $199
*OTHER International*
Kindle NoTouch Basic - $89
Kindle Touch WiFi - $139
Kindle Keybd 3G - $189
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB
Paperwhite WiFi $139, 3G/Wifi $199

France Boutique Kindle
Deutschland - Kindle Store
Italia - Kindle Store
Spain - Tienda Kindle
Brazil - Amazon Brazil
China - Amazon China
Japan - Amazon Japan


Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
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