TwitchCon made me a Twitch convert
I’m going to admit this right up front: I wasn’t looking forward to covering the first-ever TwitchCon. Sure, I co-host our weekly Playdate broadcasts and absolutely adore talking with our community of regulars who show up three times per week to watch us play games, but outside of that, I didn’t spend time on Twitch. My worry for TwitchCon was that I’d be trapped inside Moscone West in San Francisco with thousands of screaming “personalities” — like the guy I’d watched (for approximately 45 seconds, max) shout and swear his way through Choice Chamber, for an entire weekend. That all changed after attending a number of panels and talking with some of the biggest broadcasters on the service. This first show was one of the best events I’ve been to for work, period. And I recently found myself doing something I never thought: watching Twitch for fun.
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Community is the bedrock of Twitch. Over 20,000 fans made their pilgrimage to San Francisco for a weekend in September without a clue of what to expect from TwitchCon. What they got was an event that catered specifically to them. But somehow, it didn’t seem pandering; it felt earnest. The overt fan focus of the show was all too evident: From the opening keynote where Twitch Director of Programming Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham self-deprecatingly recounted his history of broadcasting to the final moments of Deadmau5’s thumping set at the official after-party.
Flush with cash from Amazon’s $970 million acquisition, Twitch could’ve gotten practically anyone to play its after-party at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Instead, the company hired electronic artists Darude and Deadmau5. The former likely because his 1999 track “Sandstorm” got a second life thanks to feature placement ahead of League of Legends streams, and the latter because he’s an incredibly active broadcaster on the service and a massive gamer in his own right.
Both artists seemed incredibly happy to be there, and the audience responded in kind. Chants of “We love TwitchCon” filled the gaps in Darude’s beats while Twitch-specific emoticons flashed on the massive video screen above the stage. “Way to restore my faith in the gaming community,” Deadmau5 later exclaimed from his LED-packed dais. “Way fucking better crowd than at the Dota 2 International.” Oh, and those tickets? $25 apiece, plus the $85 weekend con pass. Not a bad deal considering festival shows that he plays can cost $70 to get into, minimum.
WELP pic.twitter.com/7fbPEWAJLu
— Timothy J. Sepultura (@timseppala) September 27, 2015
That feeling of gratitude for the community was a running theme throughout the entire weekend. Panels and shows took place on the Kappa stage (the “main” Twitch emoticon), and in the Sandstorm, BibleThump and FrankerZ theaters — each name a heartfelt wink to the Twitch user-base. The talks themselves were largely focused on every facet of how to become a better broadcaster. I showed up a few minutes late to the “Broadcasting on a Budget” panel and had a hard time finding a seat. Near the end of that talk, there were people standing along the sides of the theater and snaking through the doorway.
When the floor opened for a question-and-answer session, six people immediately jumped up to the mic, asking everything from how to stream from a Mac (use Boot Camp), how to get discovered on the service (persistence) and how much to spend on a streaming setup (around $800 for your computer). The “Women in Gaming” panel was even more popular, with BibleThump (one of the bigger theaters) at capacity, and at least 20 folks in line for the open-mic question session.
Even at their most tired, the people I ran into were all smiles. As I sat at San Francisco International Airport at 3AM on Sunday to catch my early flight home, I noticed a small group of TwitchCon attendees draped in the company’s trademark shade of purple. They were parting ways, heading back to their respective corners of the country, hugging, laughing and promising to come back next year. Almost every person I talked to that weekend was friendly and more than willing to give advice or just talk for a few minutes. Hell, I even had a chance to meet up with one of our Playdate regulars, Austin “Yauddle” Busch, take him out for drinks and break his five-year Taco Bell abstinence.
This, sadly, was as close as I got to my scheduled interview with Fred Durst at TwitchCon.
All of this goodwill culminated in the heretofore unthinkable: I now watch Twitch instead of, you know, playing video games myself. For the past few months, Engadget features editor and gaming overlord Joseph Volpe has been raving about a channel called Excessive Profanity. I’d followed the channel a while back, but never actually tuned in for a stream. When the email ping came through indicating the channel had gone live late that Saturday, unlike every time before it, I heeded its suggestion and Chromecasted the show to my TV. The streamer EP (real name: Cody Hargreaves), was playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a game I’ve been miserably stuck in since our own Playdate broadcast.
All of this goodwill culminated in the unthinkable: I now watch Twitch instead of playing video games myself.
A few minutes into his stream, it finally all made sense to me; I “got” why people watched Twitch instead of playing a game for themselves. It was like TV, but something I could participate in, in real time. Having EP give me and around 700 other viewers at the time a guided tour — replete with some seriously funny, curse-laden Australian commentary — was the perfect way to experience a few hours of Hideo Kojima’s latest title.
I got wrapped up in the chat, sharing my glee with everyone else when EP manned a mini-mech and fled the scene as a skyscraper-sized bipedal weapon chased him down. I even dropped a RalpherZ emoticon. I’ll likely never beat The Phantom Pain, or sadly even get past the “Honeybee” mission (I’ve tried multiple times since), but now I know why people love it so much. I don’t have time to devote to beating every game that’s released, but I do have an hour or so to watch others play and comment on them.
I’ve even done some late-night Destiny streaming on my personal Twitch channel since returning home; something that wouldn’t have happened were it not for TwitchCon. And if that was the mission of the show — to bolster the Twitch community and invite others in — it worked. I’m a believer. I’m a streamer. And now, I’m a viewer.
Amazon Fire HD 10 hands-on impressions
Amazon’s making a big break for the tablet market and before its latest endeavours – which include the budget $50 tablet available in a six-pack and the HDX flagships from last year – the company’s forked Android approach certainly seemed to be working.
The company isn’t content with stopping there, as it has announced a few entries into its mid-range tablet portfolio and we went hands on with its largest ever tablet – the Fire HD 10 – to see how good Amazon’s latest efforts are.
Hardware
At a cost of $229, something has to give (compared to more expensive tablets) and in the case of the Fire HD 10, it is the feel of the tablet. Essentially, Amazon’s slate is nothing more than a metal frame with a plastic overcoat, and it definitely shows, with the rear proving to be a fingerprint and smudge magnet. As a result, you’re most likely going to be forking out for a case if you want the tablet to look, well, premium.
The Fire HD 10 is one of Amazon’s thinnest slates at just 7.7mm thick but the large body and 432 grams’ weight means you won’t be using this in one hand often. Yes, the tablet is thin and it’s relatively light, but the chamfered edges and plastic rear mean it’s relatively difficult to keep a grip on the tablet for a long period of time.
As you might expect from a tablet with a low price tag, not everything is as premium as Amazon might claim and an area this is immediately noticeable is the display. The screen resolution of 1280 x 800 is a far cry from other tablets on the market and while it is quite bright – Amazon say it offers 400 nits brightness – the lack of Full HD is likely to be a let down for most people.
Inside the surprisingly slim body, there’s a quad-core MediaTek processor – made up of two 1.5GHz cores and two 1.2GHz cores – along with 1GB RAM and 16GB or 32GB internal storage. A mammoth multitasking powerhouse this is certainly not, but thankfully, you can expand the storage using a microSD card, which is some consolation.
On one side of the Fire HD 10, Amazon has included dual Dolby Atmos speakers, which – while having very little bass – are actually quite loud. On the back, there’s a 5-megapixel camera while the front has a 720p camera and while you could take photos using the Fire HD 10, they probably won’t be images you want to share.
While Amazon’s hardware is certainly acceptable given the price tag, the Fire HD 10 does have a key issue – the 16:10 aspect ratio. Amazon says it stuck with this ratio as it found Fire users watch a lot of movies and this aspect ratio ensures there won’t be black bars when viewing a media file.
The problem with this is the Fire HD 10 feels quite long and tall and can be quite unruly to hold in one hand, especially when reading a book. It’s a small irritation, but one that you should definitely keep in mind. Overall, the hardware isn’t the best on the market but it certainly gets the job done, and, as Jeff Bezos will have wanted, the Fire HD 10 is really a portal in the world of everything Amazon. How does the company do this? Through it’s forked-Android Fire OS approach of course.
Software
The Fire HD 10 runs on Amazon’s latest Fire OS 5 Bellini and the new OS brings an enhanced UI, updates to the platform and of course, even closer integration of Amazon’s various products and services.
The updated interface in Bellini is designed to make discovering new apps and content as easy as possible for users and the home screen comes with dedicated pages to help you discover books, games and apps, video, music and audiobooks. The home screen is certainly interesting and user friendly and it’s a refreshing change from other Android tablets, which look no different to their smartphone counterparts.
Bellini also brings a range of features (dubbed Activity Centre) allowing parents to control and/or limit what children can access, including games, videos and books. Amazon takes it one step further as it also lets parents view exactly what their child have been searching for, reading, watching or playing, as well as see exactly how much time has been spent on a particular activity.
There’s no doubt that the Fire HD 10 is designed to be a one-stop-shop into the world of all-things Amazon and Bellini definitely delivers this, bringing support for Prime benefits in the Family Library, among other things. As far as a comparison against other Android smartphones go, it’s definitely different to the mainstream Android tablets you’re probably more accustomed to.
Final thoughts
Should you buy the Amazon Fire HD 10? This is a difficult one, as there are two parts to the answer: first, if use all of Amazons services frequently, then most definitely, this is a tablet that will simply enhance how you interact with the world’s largest retailer.
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That being said, if you don’t use Amazon services that often, you’re probably better than off buying an Android tablet running the full Google Play suite. Amazon’s forked approach means you get access to the Amazon AppStore and while you can side-load the Google Play Store, the reliance of Amazon’s services over Google’s means things you do on your Android smartphone or tablet, may not be possible on the Amazon Fire HD 10.
As far as tablets go, the Fire HD 10 is one of the nicest tablets made by Amazon, but unless you’re part of the Jeff Bezos clan, it’s quite likely that you’ll find a tablet running full Android (and not Amazon’s forked approach) will be better for your needs.
[Deal] Power A’s MOGA Pro Power controller is discounted at Amazon
Now is the time to get a mobile gaming controller if you don’t already have one. Power A’s MOGA Pro Power controller is available through Amazon for just $32, a discount of 60%. It offers full-size control for supported games and even has a built-in 2200mAh battery so that you can continue gaming even when your phone’s battery is begging for mercy. The controller connects to mobile devices via a Bluetooth connection, but you can place it into the controller’s stand for easy use.
[Amazon]
Come comment on this article: [Deal] Power A’s MOGA Pro Power controller is discounted at Amazon
Amazon launches new Handmade at Amazon store
Amazon announced today the launch of a new store within their ecosystem called Handmade at Amazon. The new storefront features genuine handmade items sold directly from the artisans who create them. All of the products are guaranteed to be factory-free and will be available from artisans in more than 60 countries around the world.
Artisans will be able to sell their goods through several product categories like Jewelry, Home Décor, Artwork, Stationery and Party Supplies, Kitchen and Dining, and Furniture. Amazon says they are providing artisans who sell through the program a profile that describes how products are made. In a statement Amazon says, “knowing an item has a unique story behind it creates a personal experience that customers have told us makes owning handmade items special.”
Amazon customers can access the new store using the Handmade link in the Shop by Department navigation menu. Prime members will find there are already more than 600 items that are Prime eligible and more will be added from the catalog of over 80,000 items offered.
You can read Amazon’s full press release below and if you are interested in checking out what is available, head on over to amazon.com/handmade.
Debuting the Home for Artisans: Handmade at Amazon
Handmade at Amazon items are factory-free, handcrafted
Shop for handmade items from more than 60 countries around the world
Artisans are adding thousands of new items daily
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced today the launch of Handmade at Amazon (www.amazon.com/handmade), a new store featuring genuinely handmade items crafted and sold directly from artisans. With Handmade at Amazon, customers can discover artisans from around the world, and shop local from artisans based in their community with the familiar Amazon experience they know and trust. Handmade at Amazon was designed to provide customers and artisans a tailored store specifically for handcrafted items. All products available on Handmade at Amazon are factory-free and must be made by hand. Handmade at Amazon features a variety of product categories including Jewelry, Home Décor, Artwork, Stationery and Party Supplies, Kitchen and Dining, and Furniture.
“We have designed a custom shopping experience for customers looking for handmade items by bringing together many of the best artisans in the world, and they’re adding thousands of items daily”
“We have designed a custom shopping experience for customers looking for handmade items by bringing together many of the best artisans in the world, and they’re adding thousands of items daily,” said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace. “Knowing an item has a unique story behind it creates a personal experience that customers have told us makes owning handmade items special. Handmade at Amazon offers customers more than 80,000 quality handcrafted items from around the world, and over 30 percent can be personalized by artisans to delight customers.”
Handmade at Amazon offers customers:
- Genuinely Handmade: We only approve artisans whose products are handcrafted. We are factory-free. Customers will enjoy on-trend jewelry like modern earrings, interlocking rings necklaces and tassel statement earrings.
- Explore the World: Shop by country to find products from artisans in more than 60 countries. International items include walnut cufflinks from Australia and handcrafted wooden lamps from Italy.
- Discover the Artisan: Every artisan has a profile that describes how their products are made. Shop locally by finding artisans in all 50 states. Customers can experience music-themed artwork from a New York artisan that’s been playing music and doing art for over 25 years, to adorably cute heirloom quilt, bib and burp cloth baby collections from a Wisconsin artisan initially inspired to make handmade heirloom treasures that would forever remind her of the first precious months with her children.
- Shopping Made Easy: What you love about Amazon, now for Handmade. We’re bringing the friendly experience, convenience and value you love and trust about Amazon to the world of handmade items. To start, more than 600 handmade items are Prime eligible with more being added each day.
Every Handmade product page contains a location icon identifying where the artisan is based, along with a link to the artisan’s profile. To find the Handmade at Amazon store from the Amazon.com homepage, customers can click on the “Handmade” link in the “Shop by Department” navigation or type in terms including “handmade,” “handmade home décor” or “handmade jewelry” into the search bar.
Handmade at Amazon features a growing collective of artisans. Here’s what artisans are saying:
“Handmade at Amazon will change the customer shopping experience because Amazon has made the artisan profile personal, and customers like personal. Feeling like they know who made the item, the process behind how each piece is made, and how much time and effort went into every item will bring customers back to shop for even more Handmade items!” – Carlee, AmazziRoots
“Amazon will know how to do handmade right.” – Chuck, Down to the Wire Designs
“I think that Handmade at Amazon is a really great platform to put our products in front of a big audience, a big diverse audience.” – Eve and Kristen, Bright Beam Goods
To explore products and view highlighted artisan videos on Handmade at Amazon, click here.
About Amazon
Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon.
Come comment on this article: Amazon launches new Handmade at Amazon store
Amazon launches a Handmade rival to Etsy
If you’ve been looking for for a hand-sculpted Gothic dragon weathervane, you now have a new way to find it: Amazon’s Handmade online store. As rumored earlier, the new venture has arrived in response to the success of Etsy, the artisan-goods company that just went public with a massive $3.5 billion valuation. The store is divided into seven categories, including jewelry, home decor, artwork and furniture. That’ll give you a chance to find some one-of-a-kind paintings, along with items like leather magnetic cuffs, walnut rocking chairs and a beer growler holder.
Amazon has 80,000 items in the store already from artisans in over 60 countries around the world. The company told the NYT that “you can think of it as a factory-free zone… we’re going to launch with an experience that’s very different.” The retail giant has promised that every item is genuinely handmade, and every artisan has a profile on the site so you can see how they make their items. Meanwhile, Etsy recently allowed vendors to outsource manufacturing, and has faced questions over counterfeit goods on its site.
However, artisans have expressed concerns over the higher fees that Amazon charges, and think that the corporate vibe doesn’t mesh with craft culture. Either way, Etsy will be in tough against Amazon, which is the largest retailer in world and has over 10 times the customers of its artisan rival.
Source: Amazon
Amazon might be prepping something special for the future
Amazon is done focusing on the past and is moving towards the future. According to Bloomberg, Amazon is said to be exploring the creation of a live online TV service.
Amazon is yet to get involved in the video entertainment industry but that could all change. Amazon has reportedly reached out to TV providers such as CBS and Comcast NBC Universal. But Amazon may not be the only one looking into Internet-delivered TV services. Apple, Sony and Dish are also prospects.
An online based TV service could help Amazon promote its store through advertising. There are many ways in which this could impact the industry. But we’ll just have to wait and see if it happens. Amazon would be directly competing against major companies such as Comcast and AT&T, who have already developed a name for themselves in the sector. What do you think, is Amazon headed in the right direction?
Source: Bloomberg
Come comment on this article: Amazon might be prepping something special for the future
Amazon reportedly planning to enter the live TV streaming business
Amazon has seen some wide success with a few of its original television shows, especially with shows like Catastrophe, Hand of God, and the Golden Globe and Emmy-award winning hit Transparent. To build off of the success of these original shows, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea for the company to make its way into the live TV streaming business. And according to a new report from Bloomberg, Amazon is planning to do just that.
Amazon is said to be exploring the creation of a live online television streaming service that would include programming from major players such as CBS and NBC. Now, Amazon already offers its Prime Video streaming service which is more akin to Netflix or Hulu. This new streaming service, though, would make Amazon a competitor with Dish Network’s Sling TV by offering a host of live content that’s normally only available to those with a cable subscription.
The report notes that Amazon is still in the early stages of creating this service, so there’s a chance that the company has no plans to enter the live TV streaming business at all. With more and more major players entering the live TV streaming space, we’d say this is a logical next step for Amazon. We’ll be sure to keep you posted if we hear anything else regarding Amazon’s plans.
Amazon’s Snowball is a smart box for shipping tons of cloud data
It seems paradoxical that you’d have to ship cloud data, but plenty of companies do — it’s sometimes faster for them to send a courier than to wait days for a massive upload to finish. And Amazon knows it. The internet giant just revealed the Snowball, an odd but unassuming storage device that shuttles up to 50TB of data to Amazon Web Services the old-fashioned way. The box is not only tough enough to survive the bumps and jostles of a courier, but has everything it needs for power and networking. There’s even an E Ink control panel on the side that doubles as an automatic shipping label.
You probably aren’t going to use Snowball unless you’re with a company that uses AWS, and it’ll probably be a big company at that. That’s doubly true when it’ll cost $200 plus shipping every time you want to move terabytes of data across the country. You might notice its impact even if you never see it in person, though. You may spend less time waiting for your favorite cloud service to roll out updates, recover from outages and otherwise keep itself in top shape.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Amazon Web Services
Amazon reportedly plans to build its own live video service
Amazon has found pretty significant success with some of its original shows — particularly the Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning Transparent — and it seems the company’s TV ambitions don’t stop with on-demand programming. According to Bloomberg, Amazon is considering an online TV service that broadcasts live and includes programming from major players like CBS and NBC. It would be the latest service to directly challenge the dominance of traditional cable providers like Comcast and join competitive options like Sony’s PlayStation Vue and Dish’s Sling TV. Both of those services offer a host of live content that has been typically tied to those with a cable subscription.
It’s apparently too early to say just what Amazon’s proposed service would look like — Bloomberg notes that the current discussions are only preliminary in nature. Still, with more and more companies exploring how to get customers TV while cutting out cable providers entirely, it’s a logical area for Amazon to investigate. We can only hope this service comes sooner than later — the more competition, the better things will shake out for consumers.
[Image credit: Diane Bondareff/Invision for Amazon/AP Images]
Source: Bloomberg
Waterstones stops selling Amazon Kindles over ‘pitiful’ sales
Waterstones, the UK’s largest book retailer, surprised many when it put plans for its own e-reader on ice to start selling Amazon’s range of Kindle readers. It’s been more than three years since it began making extra space in stores for one of its biggest rivals, but it won’t for much longer. The Bookseller reports that the company will remove Amazon’s e-ink Kindles from most of its locations as sales “continue to be pitiful”.
That’s according to James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, who told publication: “We are taking the display space back in more and more shops. It feels very much like the life of one of those inexplicable bestsellers; one day piles and piles, selling like fury; the next you count your blessings with every sale because it brings you closer to getting it off your shelves forever to make way for something new. Sometimes, of course, they ‘bounce’ but no sign yet of this being the case with Kindles.”
Space that was normally reserved for Amazon devices will be dedicated to paperbacks and hardbacks instead as Waterstones attempts to capitalise on the slow resurgence of physical book sales. In January, the retailer confirmed that sales of the Kindle had plunged over Christmas while sales of paperbacks and hardbacks rose by 5 percent over the same period.
Source: The Bookseller
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