Mayday - did it bring down Amazon's servers, as many expected?
No, the Amazon site served well here, although the goal is always a video'd customer representative available on your Kindle Fire HDX tablet within 15 seconds to help you navigate or even navigate for you or draw circles to show where you'd do it for yourselves. Many unique features are found in 2nd layers of menus, so it's not as simple as some expect when their only experience is vanilla Android.
According to Amazon's media releases, their average response time was 9 seconds. While they didn't say how many calls came in, the response time still goes quite beyond what many expected from common sense and experience with Christmas server loads for new online-connecting gifts.
They say they had thousands of reps fore-going Christmas celebrations with family and friends so they could be at our beck and call Christmas Day.
Although Amazon used to be considered "just a bookstore" -- that was eons ago. They now have been providing network infrastructures and services to companies like Netflix for some years and they do the web serving (hardware and software) for a myriad of large companies now, so they were more prepared than practically any other retail company would be.
However, not every call was for help - one group called in to sing Christmas carols to the Mayday rep who got that cushy call :-) ...
Here's a demo of a very long support call about parental-control features via Mayday, recorded by Slashgear.
TechRader: Amazon offers $5 Credit THRU' TODAY to anyone downloading an Android app from the Amazon Android app store. ' The retailers announced that from now until December 28, users who download anything from its app store will be rewarded with $5 credit (about £3.06, AU$5.60) toward a future app purchase.
We confirmed that this deal for Android and Kindle device users applies to customers worldwide by logging into Amazon.com and making any app purchase there.
For our international customers, they can get the $5 credit if they download an app from the Amazon Appstore via Amazon.com,” a company spokesperson told TechRadar today. '
Mashable: "What to do with your New Kindle Paperwhite"
Samantha Murphy Kelly steps her readers through how to get started and goes through some of the features available. It's a good, brief introduction with illustrations. The next one, below, is for those who may wonder if they received what is considered a really good e-reader today (in case someone bought it for them).
Forbes: "If Only Every E-book Reader were this good"
' The 2013 edition of the Kindle Paperwhite is, hands down, the best dedicated e-book reader out there. The display is clear and bright, the available content library covers all the bases, the battery life remains high, and the user interface is easy to use and doesn’t get in the way once you start reading. '
For newcomers to the Kindle or to this blog, here is a repeat of special book deals for December -- where to find them, etc.
DECEMBER 2013's Kindle Books deal, for $3.99 or less (See UK page below.)
I often highlight this monthly deal at or near the beginning of the month for those who don't know about it or might not remember.
For those who want to quickly look first at only the ones that are star-rated at 4 or above, I ran across Amazon's page for exactly tha.
On the main monthly Kindle book deals page, separate categories are highlighted, using Amazon's usual horizontally-scrolling pick-lists, for the following topics highlighted on the main page. They link to "See all" at the bottom of each horizontally-scrolled category row [ I'm adding direct links to the full category listings ]:
1. Editors' Picks used to be one of the categories, but I don't see that this nonth.
2. History and by Avg Customer Rating
3. Biography and Memoirs and by Avg Customer Rating
4. Literary Fiction Deals and by Avg Customer Rating
5. Religion and Spirituality and by Avg Customer Rating
This main monthly deals page also has, on the right, two vertically-scrolling categories:
1. Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense highlighted + more in the linked full list w/ sorting options)
Here's that fuller listing by Avg Customer Rating
2. Romance and by Avg Customer Rating.
THEN, at the bottom of the new main monthly Kindle book-deals page, they offer the FULL current monthly listing, defaulting to sorting by "New and Popular" and there are 119 in all, currently, but the number may vary.
Here is a direct link to that Full-listing (US), sorted by "New and Popular" for the month (and probably for any month, so
it's a good one to bookmark if you just want to jump to that) and
you can choose another sort option for this full listing, such as
Avg Customer Rating or by Price: Low to High
These newer options do make it easier to find books of interest to you.
The pricing for December's group of Kindle books ranges from $0.99 to $3.99, as is usual for this monthly deal.
What you'll see on this special monthly-deals page (UK version is here) are new for December 2013.
FREE KINDLE BOOKS (Non-classics) for December (and November)
I've updated the "Temporarily-free books -- Non-classics" search results to show free contemporary Kindle books for DECEMBER, sorted by publication-date, as of Dec. 1, 2013. There are only a few shown on the first day or two of any month, and these include pre-orders due that month. On the first few days of the month, most of these are listed as "free preview" of whatever chapters chosen, some are short stories, and a few (overnight) not-entire-family-safe titles may show up.
Here, also, are the current Search results for still free Kindle non-classics, by publication date during the last month (November).
The ongoing Kindle Daily Deals page
for any given day usually shows a lot of books since it includes children's books, a couple of genre-specific deals, and the monthly daily deals as well.
DISCOUNTS ON ACCESSORIES Amazon's current pages (some, ongoing) on accessories for Kindle e-Reader and Kindle Fire
1. Up to 50% (higher discount than usual) on cases for Kindle eReaders
2. Up to 50% on cases for Kindle Fire (Gen 2) and Kindle Fire HD tablets but NOT HDX tablets
3. Accesdories for all Kindles, with some discounted.
If that's not enough, there are the Goldbox and Lightning Deals, especially active currently.
And for the remainder of the holidays, Amazon's Year-End Deals
Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links.
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