Saturday, May 11, 2013

Kindle News: Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app for Apple devices + some info re the Android Cloud Drive Photos app. Amazon working on 3D smartphone?

AMAZON'S NEW CLOUD DRIVE PHOTOS APP FOR APPLE DEVICES

FIRST:
Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app for Android (and for ORIGINAL Kindle Fire) was released November 5, 2012 and described here, in detail, in the blog article for that date.

At that time, the Kindle Fire 2nd Generation tablets were to have these Cloud Drive photo features built in, but as of today, I can download photos from my Cloud Drive to my HD tablet but NOT upload photos from the Kindle Fire HD tablet to my Cloud yet, although I can email them to anyone, including myself, for receipt of these on a different device.
  Oddly enough, photo uploading to the Amazon Cloud works with my Original Kindle Fire.

Amazon Cloud Drive Photos App for iOS, Apple Devices.
As PC Magazine's Angela Moscaritolo points out, the app:
'...lets you securely store thousands of photos taken with your device in the Amazon Cloud for easy access.

  Users get 5GB of storage for free, before having to pay for additional storage. Prices for extra storage start at $10 a year for 20GB. See the iTunes page for the app.

  Once uploaded to Cloud Drive, the photos are accessible from your iPhone or iPod touch, computer, or any Web browser. You can also upload photos to Cloud Drive from your computer and access them on your iOS device.
Photos taken from your iPhone or iPod touch are automatically saved to Cloud Drive whenever the app is running. You can also select photos from your Cloud Drive and share them through Facebook, email, or other apps. '

Re the last point, the Cloud Drive Photos app for Android CAN upload photos directly to the Amazon Cloud Drive even when the app is not open.

Slashgear's Craig Lloyd sees the app as Amazon taking on Apple's Photo Stream iCloud feature, as well as Google and Dropbox cloud-storage-and-access solutions.

GIGAOM's Erica Ogg makes some interesting points about Amazon's strength when it comes to Cloud services:
' Just like Google with Maps, Search and Mail and Facebook with social things, Apple’s biggest and most important competitors are repeatedly besting Apple on its own platform when it comes to producing well designed, popular basic apps that are core to the mobile experience.

But the secret behind Amazon’s cloud-based photo storage is something at which Amazon is verifiably awesome, and something at which Apple is not: the cloud.

  Even with its billion-dollar data center and more on the way, Apple repeatedly struggles with keeping its cloud-based services reliable for users.  And even when things are added to iCloud, like photos, some users still run into problems, as outlined in the link above, with multiple copies or confusing organization. '

Reminder
Free Cloud Drive Space - Three different types
  1) ALL Amazon customers, globally, get 5 free gigs of Cloud Drive space to use for personal photos, documents, music that they didn't get from Amazon, and
  2) Kindle device owners get an additional 5 free gigs of space for personal docs and non-DRM'd books from other sources, for which which Amazon will now provide annotations backup and will also sync the reading of these between one's several devices even though the books and docs don't come from Amazon).

  If you want even more space for non-Amazon items, $10 per year will get you 20 gigs of space, with other options if you want more space.

  3) Anything you buy from Amazon gets automatically-free Cloud Drive space not counted against your space maximums.


Is Amazon really working on a 3-D phone that you control with your eyes?
If you judge this by the number of stories appearing on the conjecture, you'd think so.  There is no confirmation that it is.

MSN puts it this way:
' You may be startled to hear that the online retail giant is actually working on TWO smartphones, and one of them will be a high-end device with a 3-D screen for which no special glasses are required. "Using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone would seem to float above the screen like a hologram and appear three-dimensional at all angles," the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with Amazon's plans. "Users may be able to navigate through content using just their eyes." Whoa. Watch your back, Google '

Wired hopes it's nothing like the Nintendo3DS, described as "the worst reading environment ever after reading in total darkness.”  On the other hand, Jeff Bezos has been pretty fussy about readability and stayed away from color eInk as being a not-good experience for the eyes.

  At any rate, it doesn't seem likely for many reasons.  Who would be the audience for this? Maybe it would be a novelty buy for those who want to see their favorite contacts in 3D, but watching 3D on a small screen phone?  It's not that easy on even a giant screen (though I've enjoyed it).  Maybe someone at Lab126 wanted to try something like this for experimental reasons and that started the rumors.




Current Kindle Models, worldwide 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/$229
Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 16/32GB - $269/$299
Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G 32/64GB - $399/$499
Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $69/$89
Kindle Touch WiFi - $99
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 - $79
Kindle Paperwhite, WiFi - $129
Kindle Paperwhite, 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.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button



Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

No comments:

Post a Comment

NOTE: TO AVOID SPAM being posted instantly, this blog uses the blogger.com "DELAY" feature.

Am often away much of the day, and postings won't show up right away. Posts done to use referrer-links may never show up.

Usually, am online enough to release comments within a day though, so the hard-to-read match-text tests for commenting won't be needed this way.

Feedback and questions are welcome. Thanks for participating.

Technical Problems?
If you're having problems leaving a Comment, Google's blogger-help asks that you clear the 'blogger.com' cookies on your browser's Tools or Options menu bar and that will fix the Comment-box problems (until they have a permanent fix).

IF that doesn't work either, then UNcheck the "keep me signed in" box -- Google-help says that should allow your comment to post (it's a workaround to a current bug).
Apologies for the problems.

TIP: There's a size limit. If longer than 3500 characters or so, in a text editor, make two posts out of it.

[Valid RSS]