Kindle tips: 18 Fiction Favorites on one-day deal today (Mar.28) ... Amazon announces new photo storage plan + an 'Everything Plan' ... A really good Amazon Echo video-demo plus a tip to shorten delivery time on a current Echo order.

Today's Kindle Daily deal (March 28 only) includes 18 Fiction Favorites for up to 80% Off
For those who don't check the daily Kindle book deal, there are 18 to choose from today in the Fiction category and they're described as "Favorites."

Amazon Echo - Excellent demo of this creature, on a Youtube video
plus a tip on how to speed up delivery
  (Reminder: Kindle Blog Editions don't do video, but you can view the video on a computer instead.)

There's now a Youtube video that gives a good, somewhat frantic demonstration of what the Amazon Echo can do, as of January 30.
  Since the video is fast-paced vs an earlier one which was narrated in almost slow-motion, quite a bit is covered.
The Deal Guy throws questions at Alexa and interrupts her answers with other questions, and you can hear the general response time.

  If you already ordered it and it won't be delivered for 2 months:
I took a tip from a forum note and changed my delivery speed to one day instead of free 2-day Prime to see if I might get this gizmo earlier than May 27 to mid July as had been noted on my order since mid-January.  I opted for the one-day delivery option to see how much the date would change and, while the charge would be $6, the shipping date range changed to March 24 - April 8.  I went for it, my curiosity driven by the several thousand notes on the Echos already received and discussed.  It's now March 28, and it's not shipped yet.  Amazon normally tends to ship earlier than planned, so these appear to still be relatively backlogged, although my new earlier date range is still to April 8, rather than to mid-July.

  Caution - Someone tried just 'confirming' the order, and this resulted in a later shipping date.
  In any case, there should be no rush for most, but this tip is for those who do want to get it earlier.

Amazon offers unlimited photos storage plan + an unlimited-every-type-of-file plan
Those who are Amazon Prime members already get Unlimited free storage of photos (+ video files smaller than 2 gigs).  I described what's involved in the Prime feature, in detail, in the earlier article on the Prime version.  The free storage is there for Prime members as long as the Prime memberships are kept.
  Many don't know that this is available to them, since November 2014.

  Yesterday Amazon announced another way to get Unlimited cloud-storage of photos ($11/yr) or Unlimited Everything for $59/yr (equivalent of $~5/month).  They're offering a 3 month trial to try either plan.  Here's the key part of their announcement:

• Unlimited Photos Plan (free 3-month trial, then $11.99 per year-- equivalent of less than $1 per month): Store an infinite number of photos in Cloud Drive without worrying about taking up space on phones, cameras, or other devices. Customers can upload existing collections and store all future photos taken. This plan also includes 5 GB of additional storage for videos or other documents and files.
  
  
• Unlimited Everything Plan (free 3-month trial, then $59.99 per year-- equivalent of less than $5 per month): Store an infinite number of new and existing photos, videos, files, documents, movies, and music in Cloud Drive.

Again, Prime members already have the equivalent of the first plan (and even better since videoclips are included).
  Amazon also emphasized that these two new plans allow customers "to securely store their existing content collections and automatically [if wanted] upload endless amounts of new content, including photos, videos, movies, music, and files. ."  So, there'd be "no worry about storage space" ... with an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of ... files in one convenient place."

  To learn more about Amazon Cloud Drive and the Unlimited Cloud Storage plans, visit amazon.com/clouddrive.

  I don't know what the retrieval speed would be like, but I take advantage of the free feature that imports my Facebook photo albums to the Amazon space, and when I access them to view them from the Cloud on a tablet or phone, it's very fast.  At any rate, both plans have the 3 month free trial, so we can try them out before deciding.



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