Soon you can have your student loans serviced through Amazon
Amazon is the best place to shop for Star Trek: The Original Series on Blu-ray at 3 AM as well as a pallet of Surge to down while watching at the same time (not that I’ve done this.) But soon enough it will also be the same place you can apply for student loans.
Through a partnership with Wells Fargo, Amazon is making its debut in the private student loan business by offering a 0.5 percent interest rate discount to all members of Prime Student. The special discount program for students is offered to college attendees at a lower rate than regular Prime. If you’re currently going through Wells Fargo for your own student loans, you can take advantage of the upcoming deal for new loans and loan refinancing as well.
This isn’t the company’s first foray into the world of loans, but it will be the first when it comes to the educational realm. If this is something that interests you and college is in your future, you can go ahead and sign up for Prime Student, which will run you $49 a year in contrast to the regular program’s $99 price tag.
Via: Mashable
Source: Wells Fargo
Whirlpool washer and dryer can order refills with Amazon Dash
If you hate having to swing by the store to get washing detergent and dryer sheets, Whirlpool has you covered. The appliance maker’s Smart Top Load Washer and Dryer can now use the Amazon Dash Replenishment Service to automatically re-order supplies. Once you’ve synced your Amazon account, you don’t have to lift a finger — the machines will estimate when you’re running low and ship accordingly. This is just one part of a smarter design (they already talk to your smartphone and Nest thermostat), but it could make the biggest difference.
Source: Whirlpool
Amazon explores using street lights as delivery drone perches
Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drones already have a glaring problem: how do you keep them charged and sheltered when dedicated facilities are likely to be few and far between? The company has an idea. It recently received a patent for a “UAV docking station” concept that would offer a temporary perch for drones in need. If a drone runs low on battery or needs to take shelter from an impending storm, it would only have to travel to a station on top of a street light, cell tower, church steeple or another high-up location. The drone could even drop off a package for another drone, turning a delivery into an aerial relay race.
This is just a patent, so there’s no guarantee that you’ll see drones sitting on lamp posts like robotic pigeons. Amazon would need to get approval to install these stations. With that said, it’s easy to see the online retailer using them in the long run. Current drone technology faces serious limits on range, and this would let Amazon complete courier runs that would otherwise be too distant or too risky.
Via: PatentYogi, Mashable, Wired
Source: USPTO
Amazon Singles Classics brings stories from magazines to Kindle
If you’re looking for some new reading material on your Kindle or inside Amazon’s reading app, you’re in luck. The online retailer announced Singles Classics: a collection of essays and stories from “well-known authors” that were published in “top magazines and periodicals.” In fact, some of the selections will be available digitally for the first time. The articles are priced at $0.99 and up, but Kindle Unlimited subscribers are privy to the content at no extra charge.
Singles Classics follows Amazon’s Kindle Singles that launched some time ago and features shorter selections of both fiction and non-fiction. For the debut of Singles Classics, expect over 140 essays and stories from the likes of Susan Orlean, Norman Mailer, Gloria Steinem, Lawrence Wright, Margo Jefferson and Gay Talese alongside best-selling authors like John le Carré and Kurt Vonnegut. In terms of publications the articles are pulled from, that list includes TIME, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Atlantic and Playboy. Singles Classics are available to read and download on Kindle and Fire tablets as well as the Kindle app for Android, iOS, PC and Mac.
Source: Amazon
Amazon Video for Android adds support for SD cards
Amazon just pushed a small, but important update to its Android video app: starting today, users can choose where downloaded files are stored. It sounds insignificant, but for heavy users, this is a really big deal — until now, Amazon Video would only store content on a device’s internal storage, severely limiting how much content one could keep on the device. Not anymore. Now, if you have an SD card, you have room for more movies. The feature is rolling out to customers in the US, UK, Germany, Austria and Japan. It’s about time.
Source: Amazon
Sainsbury’s trials one-hour grocery deliveries in London
Since Amazon arrived in the UK and started shipping packages (and groceries) either same-day or next-day, brick and mortar retailers have been forced to step up their game. Sainsbury’s, one of the big four supermarkets, has already taken one big step to boost its presence by acquiring Argos, but it’s now decided to take a page from Amazon’s playbook and begin trialling its own one-hour delivery service. It’s called “Chop Chop” and it costs £4.99 per order.
Chop Chop exists as a standalone iOS app that was developed by the company’s in-house Digital Lab. Right now, it’s only available in Wandsworth, serving within three kilometers from its local store, and offers customers 20 specially-picked products. This trial, Sainsbury’s says, “is part of our strategy to give our customers more options to shop with us whenever and wherever they want.”
Although it’s very limited at the moment, Sainsbury’s CEO Mike Coupe has confirmed that the supermarket sees demand for having a basket of food delivered in a short amount of time. This, of course, would exist alongside the company’s existing home delivery service and its network of local shops and megastores, allowing customers to grab groceries without having to deviate from their schedule.
Via: Reuters
Source: Chop Chop (App Store)
eStories launches an alternative source for audiobooks
After ditching the major labels to go pure indie in 2014, digital music store eMusic and its new parent company TriPlay are now ready to take on Amazon and Audible’s audiobook dominance. Today, TriPlay launched their eStories competitor with 80,000 titles and memberships starting at $11.95 per month.
Audible, which is owned by Amazon, boasts over three times as many titles – about 250,000 total according to TechCrunch – but eStories is hoping their slightly lower price will be enough to win over at least some of Audible’s 55 million global users. For comparison, Audible’s rates start at $14.95 per month for a single title with 30 percent discount on subsequent titles after that. After the monthly fee, eStories offers a 33 percent discount per book if you buy them a la carte. From there, prices go up to $21.99 or $49.99 per month for two or five monthly titles.
The new service isn’t exactly following the eMusic indie-only format, however, and the company has partnered with the audiobooks divisions of major publishing houses like Hachette, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and others to bring some major bestsellers like The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series, The Girl on the Train and Between the World and Me.
Also per TechCrunch, eMusic’s core service will be getting its own relaunch soon. After TriPlay acquired the company last year, the new owners shifted to a cloud streaming model rather than forcing users to go old school (circa 2007) and download purchased audio to their devices.
Amazon Prime Day was 60 percent bigger than last year’s sale
Amazon’s Prime Day ended up being more successful than even the company could have predicted, with customer orders surpassing Prime Day 2015 by over 60 percent worldwide and 50 percent in the United States alone.
The special sale day, which included various deals on Amazon-branded products like Kindles and Alexa-enabled home devices, saw Prime members flocking to the retail giant in droves. It quickly became the biggest day ever as far as Amazon devices went, breaking records left and right.
In all, Prime Day found over two millions toys and one million pairs of shoes purchased by consumers, 90,000 TVs purchased and hundreds of thousands of Kindle e-readers sold along with other impressive numbers. What’s really impressive is the fact that these sales were able to go through considering the torrent of issues customers experienced during the sale, with checkout difficulties and other various headaches to worry about.
Still, the annual Prime Day was another success. It’s likely we’ll see another one next year looking at these numbers. Will you be participating?
Source: Amazon
Amazon’s Prime Day sale is causing headaches for customers
If you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber who’s having issues making a purchase the retailer’s big sale, you’re not alone. The company tweeted this morning that some customers were having issues checking out. Replies to that post indicate that some customers are having trouble adding products to their cart as well. Amazon said it was “working to resolve this issue quickly,” but the headaches are affecting eager customers during one of the site’s biggest sales of the year. Today the company is holding its annual Prime Day sale, discounting thousands of items for folks who have a Prime subscription. We’ve reached out to Amazon for more information on the matter and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
Some customers are reporting difficulty with checkout. We’re working to resolve this issue quickly.
— Amazon (@amazon) July 12, 2016
Via: Reuters
Source: Amazon (Twitter)
Amazon Prime Day 2016: UK deals you need to know about
It’s July 12th. For many, it’s just another Tuesday, but for Amazon, it’s another chance to sell millions of customers gadgets, homeware and lots of other stuff they don’t need. Yes, it’s “Prime Day,” a marketing gimmick where Amazon discounts thousands of products for Prime subscribers. To keep on top of things, you’d normally have to track shopping websites or keep an eye on social media, but we want to help. We’ve listed a number of all-day deals that we think are worth keeping an eye on, but act quick, other deals on the site will only be available for a couple of hours at the most.
- Fire Tablet – £35 (normally £50): We’ve put Amazon’s diminutive tablet through its paces and even at £50 we’d consider taking the plunge. You’ll save £15 if you decide to buy today.
- Fire TV Stick – £20 (normally £35): Amazon’s high-definition streaming stick supports Prime Video, Netflix and a whole host of other apps. If you need a streamer for your spare TV, you can’t go wrong with this.
- Amazon Fire TV 4K – £55 (normally £80): If you’ve already got a 4K TV and are looking for Ultra HD content to watch, the 4K Fire TV can help. It also supports voice search and play games with its smart remote.
- Kindle Paperwhite – £80 (normally £110): With its improved high-resolution 300ppi display, the Paperwhite is the Rolls Royce of Kindles. With a bigger discount than Black Friday, now might be the time to pick one up.
- Lenovo N22 11.6-Inch Chromebook – £100 (normally £160): It’s not an Amazon sale without a cheap laptop, and this year it’s a Chromebook that is getting the discount treatment. The Lenovo N22 comes with an HD display, Intel Celeron N3060 processor, 2 GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage.
- Surface Pro 4 Bundle – £750 (normally £944): Microsoft’s 2-in-1 is also seeing some decent discounts today. The Pro 4 bundles with a 2.2 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD and a range of coloured Type keyboards have been reduced by almost £200 today.
- Xbox One 500GB Bundle: Amazon has a number of Xbox One deals on today. First is the standard Kinect bundle for £210, then there’s the Kinect Bundle plus Overwatch for £230. However, if you want Guitar Hero, that’ll cost you £235. Finally, there’s the Kinect Bundle, Forza 6 and a extra controller deal for £246.
- PlayStation 4 500GB Bundle: There aren’t as many deals for the PS4, but Amazon is putting on an Uncharted 4 bundle that costs £240 and will save you quite a bit of cash. If you want Uncharted 4 on its own, that too is discounted and will set you back £32 for today only.
- Microsoft Band 2 – £129 (normally £200): Microsoft’s fitness tracker is enjoying another big sale.
- Nvidia Shield 16GB – £100 / 500GB – £170: Both boxes are £50 off today (and still come with a free controller).
- 12 Months of Xbox Live plus £10 credit – £31.49 (normally £40): To get the most out of your Xbox One, you’ll need a subscription to Xbox Live. This deal will see you right for a full year and give you some extra cash to spend on games or DLC.
- SanDisk SDSSDHII-480G-G25 Ultra II SSD – £77 (normally £95): If you’re looking for a way to speed up your PC (or even Mac), Sandisk’s Ultra II SSDs will definitely help things zip along.
- Beoplay H2 On-Ear Headphones – £79 (normally £150): Bang & Olufsen’s on-ear headphones are almost half off today and are available in green or silver.
- Anker PowerCore+ 26800 portable charger – £35 (normally £50): Anker markets the PowerCore+ 26800 as the world’s highest capacity portable charger with Quick Charge 2.0 technology. It’ll juice your iPhone 6 over 10 times and a MacBook over three.
Source: Amazon Prime Day
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