Amazon’s new Framework Mail for Enterprise: Another Fire dud – or a Kindle? – The Register

Amazon Web Services is touting a cloud-hosted email system to the world of big business.

The web giant hopes to invade the enterprise sector email with a web- based service called Framework Mail, and gobble up companies running Microsoft Exchange.

AWS said the off-premises, cloud-based software willprovide email and shared calendars Desktop users can access it either in a browser or with Outlook, while iOS and Android devices willhave dedicated apps to pull and send messages.

In addition to the integrand rating with Outlook, the Service Will Support Microsoft Active Directory. And AWS Will victims migration tools for companies moving from on-premises servers.

Security is a bullet point in Amazon’s list of reasons to switch to .its new offering. AWS Said Framework Mail Will integrate with the AWS Key Management Service and the AWS Management Console. This Will allow administrators to enforce security policies and remotely wipe data from devices.

AWS Hopes That The Platform fills the crowded gap between on-premises Exchange and webmail services for normal people.

“Customers’ll have repeatedly asked us for a business e-mail and calendaring servicethat is more cost-effective and Simpler to Manage Their than on-premises solution, more secure than the cloud-based offerings available today, and That is backed by the same best- in-class infrastructure Platform on Which they’re Reliably Running So many of Their current (and future) workloads, “argued the AWS Compute Services Vice President Peter De Santis.

AWS HAS SET UP A site where users can Sign up for a preview of the service. We assume the web bazaar hopes Framework Mail will not go the way of Fire Phone, Fire TV, and Wallet. On the otherhand, the Kindles and Cloud Services Are Not doing bath. ®

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Samsung tipped to sacrifice a Kindle kid e-ink Galaxy S6 case – TechRadar

The Samsung is reportedly to sacrifice a specially Galaxy S6 Case That incorporates an e-ink screen, letting it double as a Kindle-style e-reader.

The Samsung is The Master of Adding extra features to .its top phones, and rather than cleaning up the ITS Act in 2015 it’s going sacrifice them as accessories.

One of the most interesting reported about add-ons is a case thatoffers a second e-ink screen, letting the Galaxy S6 work like an e-reader on the side, much like the Yotaphone second

Accessories galore

Also in The Works of according to a Polish Android enthusiast website are a Blood Glucose Sensor Designed to Help Those with diabetes and camera lenses Intended to add flexibility to the rumored 20-megapixel main sensor.

The site compares These lenses to the Galaxy K zoom, an optical zoom Android smartphone from last year, but a solution Roughly based on the Olloclip system that’s been available for years Seems more likely.

OppoClip plaster pieces of ice cream in front of your normal phone camera lens to give it a different view, Such as one more zoomed-in or a fisheye perspective.

Of course the Galaxy S6 ice Unlikely to Be left wanting on the tech front either, with a 20-megapixel camera 64-bit CPU and fingerprint scanner all on the cards.

The Samsung is expected to launch the new smartphone, with of without flashy extras, During The MWC 2015 show in March.

I love Kindle Unlimited – boing boing

If you like self-published fiction or read more than a few books a month, and do not mind giving books Up When You’re done, Amazon’s borrowing service is a great deal.

When Kindle Unlimited was Announced, I was super-excited. I wanted to give it a few months, however, so I could share a real user’s review. The service is wonderful.

Kindle Unlimited ice Amazon’s $ 10-a-month e-reading subscription service. It’s Netflix for e-books. Slightly larger than competitive services Scrib’d or Oyster, Kindle Unlimited HAS morethan 600k books to borrow, 10 at a time, for as long as you’d like. You do not keep the books, but you do keep notes you make while reading after you return the novel. They’ll be waiting if you check the book out again. This is separate from the many Concerns sometime peoplehave Regarding Amazon’s Ability to edit, change or “steal” books in your digital library and the Applies to your notes / highlights, not the content.

This is wonderful-for me. I read books, I prefer to do it on my Kindle, and I read more than ten a month. A quick pass through the Kindle Unlimited’s library suffered me to believe it houses plenty (while Certainly not everything) That I wanted to read. Classic novels, like many of Stanislaw Lem’s better known works are in there. You will not find Lem’s awesome discourse on humanity, Summa Technologiae , though. I ended up with a hard copy.

So, if you want a lot of Polish science fiction from the 70s, you’re covered. If you want more contemporary novels, you’ll find them in Unlimited as well. But current bestsellers-the bread and butter of Amazon’s book business will not be Offered Until They are not current or best-selling anymore.

What I find absolutely wonderful about the Kindle Unlimited, however, is the Thing So many early reviews hated: the Fact That much of the ITS inventory ice village self-published, indie authors.

I love people who sit down and Share Their Stories Because They are compelled to. A few years ago They were easy to find on Amazon as Kindle Singles , but at somepoint Amazon changed That and The Singles Became worthless, foisting Stephen King novellas off on me. During That period of time, the bulk of my reviews on Boing Boing were of Science Fiction Quantity distressed at bookstores. Kindle Unlimited victims Those indie authors a new venue to be found, and offers readers a low-risk way to try lots of Their Work. I feel this Should add some skepticism to the argument That Amazon hates publishers. Maybe They hate the big ones. But The indies, once again, definatley a new venue to Be found.

Now, many of the books I review are self-published. Certainly, They paint the polish of professionally-edited, big-publisher offerings, but I love them. I’ve heard a number of complaints about poorly-edited editions of indie novels, and if bad grammar and creative spelling bug you, Kindle Unlimited May not be for you. Of the 15 or 20 in the check-out in a month, though, Several are good enough to recommend to you here on Boing Boing. There is Certainly a lot of great reading in the Kindle Unlimited Priceline.com More indie publishers, but it is some of the best content out there.

I’m not suggesting everyone needs Kindle Unlimited-the many discussions we’ve All’ve had over the Amazon, the Kindle, DRM and Other Problems with the company are what They are. Clearly, I do not think Amazon is going to steal my library or eat my pets. I’m an outlier. You are reading Boing Boing, though, so there is a good chance you are too. My $ 10 a month is well-spent.

(The links to the Amazon in this post are affiliate links, too, Which help pay for our Continued publication of this website. We appreciate you FollowingHistory Them When You Find An article helpful.)

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited

A Kindle of Kittens – PJ Media

So it’s Book Plug Friday Time (pasttime again, it’s Saturday, dammit! And this is Charlie btw. Sarah is having connectivity problems. And if Peyton Manning had blocking like my Recent writer’s block, he would not have the needed neck surgery and the Broncos would be undefeated going into the Super Bowl.)

(And insert some deflated ball jokes here, I’ve got nothing.)

In any case, I’ve been thinking about the e-Book Revolution. You all Realize It’s Only a few years old, right? I wrote a review of the first Kindle only about 6 years ago. And while we’ve had Several generation of Kindles, what we Have not had ice any real progress in the capabilities of e-readers and Associated Devices.

Well, it’s time. At this point, I’ve got Thousands of books in my Kindle library, and I doubt I’ve got the biggest library. But when i look at my library on my Kindle, I’ve got three choices: I can strip them of according to what I read most recently That one device , I can list them in alphabetical order by title, and I can list them in alphabetical order by author.

Then I can scroll through Those lists. Good luck if I’m looking for books by Roger Zelazny – I can scroll for a long long time to get to the bottom of a 3000 bool long listing.

I think it’s time for the next generation of actual thought about e-books and What Should be done.

To start with, we need a pilot Better Ways to Manage Our own collections. This ought to Be Easy: Amazon Already HAS keywords, Review, and ISBNs as well as Their own numbers – Not to mention the Collaborative Filtering Algorithms That Let Them cluster books so They can make suggestions. And if They dont Already Great Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal Numbers for the books, I’m sure there are APIs That can let someone access them.

Second, the e-book standards – and e -book publishers – Need to Provide Better Typography. Computer and math books in Particular sufferings, with math being just about the worst – Often the only way to put complicated math into an ebook ice by making an image of it. They mostly Manage all right with European languages ​​- I’ve got books in German and French and Spanish That looks perfectly reasonable, but the Chinese and Sanskrit does not make it at all. (My Esperanto books in the figure are just the usual fannish incompetence, Esperanto Does not use any characters Frenchtown Does not Have.)

Aside: It’s not just the readers, though. Baen Books (sorry, Toni) are my Particular annoyance here. For some reason, most Baen Books are set up in Such a Way That They have a leeeetle tiny typeface on the Kindle. I just randomly picked the Beyond This Horizon . At Scale 7, it’s still uncomfortably small; Most everyother book at scale 7 can barely fit 100 words on the screen. C’mon, folks, this was all worked out by Ben Franklin’s time.

This leads to a third point: better e-book apps. It’s not Instantly Obvious to the reader, but all e-book apps are Basically the rendering Part of a Web browser: all the ebook standards are based on magnification HTML with some metadata , like a table of contents.

The fourth thing to come, I think, is to Be Able to access the all your notes in one collection. When I’m researching something, I end up resorting to handwritten notes, Because while I can make notes in the book, I can not remember Which book I made the notes in.

So that’s my wishlist . What’s yours?

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Magic-magic
By JM Ney-Grimm

The North Country spellcasters who wield power Excessive transformed into trolls – potent, twisted, and hungry for dominance.

Prince Kellor, cursed by a troll witch to live as a north-bear, wrestles with The Challenges of a beast’s shape. He sees his childhood friend Elle As The Key to his escape.

but charming Elle Will Be No Easy Task. Traversing That delicate passage between adolescence and adulthood, she struggles to balance family loyalty against her passion for music.

In this epic adventure across a stunning landscape, from cool pine forests to an icy pinnacle of basalt So Real it leaves you shivering, Elle and Kellor must summon the essential wisdom and grit to prevail against a troll witch’s malice into a lethal battle of wills.

Fighting Against a nightmare pales beside fighting for a Dream.

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Perilous Chance
By JM Ney-Grimm

If only Mama werewolf well. If only Papa werewolf. . . note like this.

Clary needs a miracle, but wonders rarely step forth to solve life’s problems. While her mama lies abed wearily and her papa spends the day. . . elsewhere, Clary struggles to look after her younger sister and Their baby brother. And longs morethan making do. If only.

Then, one spring morning, Clary and Elspeth visit the old bramble-grown quarry to pick wild cabbage leaves. Hidden within the rock’s cleft, Clary’s miracle awaits. But this miracle sports razor-sharp talons, world-shaking power, ravenous hunger, and a troll-witch to guard ITS sleep. When it cracks the egg, I will Clary survive?

Something wondrous This Way Comes!

Amazon releases Kindle Textbook Creator for Mac, a cross-platform iBooks … – 9 to 5 Mac (blog)

Apple first released .its iBooks Author Mac App for Creating interactive textbooks for the iBooks Store, back in 2012, and now Amazon is delivering .its own textbook composing the Mac app for publishing to the Kindle Store. Kindle Textbook creator, Announced today, is also available in Beta for Mac and PC bothering with the competitive benefit of publishing to the cross-platform Kindle Store, Which is available on iOS, Mac, Android, and more.

The new Kindle Textbook Creator app is Part of Amazon’s new KDP EDU programs, Which is all part of the ITS Kindle Direct Publishing effort. Specifically, the Kindle Textbook Creator public beta allows educators to upload PDFs of ebooks to the Kindle Direct Publishing System Creating Kindle ebooks Distributing and Enhancing with flashcards, highlighting, and note-taking features. Amazon Explains the Benefits of Kindle Textbook Creator produced books:

• Multi-Color Highlighting -Highlight and categorize key concepts for Easy Reference.
• Notebook -Capture key passages, Images and bookmarks and Automatically add them to the notebook. Students can add Their own notes and moonrise access them from one location.
• Flashcards -Create flashcards and study Important terms, concepts , and definitions in each chapter with a simple, easy-to-use interface.
• Dictionary -Find definition and Wikipedia information for Difficult terms to Improve retention.
• Buy Once, Read Everywhere – Read eTextbooks on the most popular devices student use, Including Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android tablets and smartphones, Mac, and PC.

The Kindle Direct Publishing program overpriced allows authors to earn revenue (up to 70%) from Distributed books without losing rights to the content, and the Kindle Direct Publishing Select the arm of the software allows for more marketing options like “ Kindle Unlimited and The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like the Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotion . “

The News of Amazon’s Entry into making textbook creation from the Mac to the Kindle Store Easier comes a week after Apple revealed .its Gaining 1 million new users a week since bundling the iBooks app on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with iOS eighth

The Kindle Textbook Creator Beta for Mac (and PC) is available for free from Amazon.

like this:

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Amazon’s Kindle Textbook Creator turns PDFs into eBooks – New York Daily News

Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon Announced the Launch of .its new Kindle Textbook Creator whichlets schools turn textbook PDFs into Kindle eBooks.

Students Will Be Able to take some weight off Their shoulders and probably save some money with Amazon’s new textbook creator.

Amazon Announced Thursday That it wont launch .its new Kindle Textbook creator service, Which Will allow educators to turn PDFs of textbooks into interactive Kindle eBooks.

“Kindle Textbook Creator makes it easy for anyone to take any PDF and create a richly featured and Widely available eTextbook, “said Chuck Kronbacj, director of Kindle Direct Publishing, said in a press release.

The eTextbooks Would be accessible for students on Fire tablets, Apple devices, Android devices and computers. Having the textbooks pray highly accessible willmake it Easier for students to ditch the heavy physical copies of textbooks, Which Can Potentially Hurt Their backs.

The textbook creator Will also have Additional Features That Enhance the student’s learning experience. Students Will Be Able to highlight, take clips of passages and save them, create flashcards to memorize concepts or words, and a dictionary.

Although the eTextbooks Will Vary in Price, MOST Will Be Cheaper Than a physical version – if not free. Amazon willalso help self-publishers enter the publishing market and give authors at up to 70% of royalties.

The new feature Will Be Part of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing EDU, Which is Specifically Designed to Publish and Promote educational content for students. Amazon’s new program is currently under open-beta, Which Means it’s open to all users but it’s still being tested.

Amazon goes after Apple with Kindle Textbook creator – Geekwire

Amazon wants to make it Easier for People to craft textbooks ITS e- book platform, so the company just released the Kindle Textbook creator, an app That makes it easy for publishers to create Their own richly-formatted textbooks That Can Be viewed on a wide variety of devices.

Using the creator software, textbook authors can take a PDF file of Their Book and transformed it into an interactive Kindle bookthat They can then sell on Amazon. It’s run through a new education division of the company’s Kindle Direct Publishing Platform, Which allows authors and independent publishers to submit Their books Directly to Amazon.

Creating a Book with KTC overpriced Provides a significant benefit to students, who get access to a number of features like the portability to Save notes in a virtual notebook and create flashcards from content inside the textbook. Those books can be read using Kindle software on Amazon’s Fire tablets, iPhones, iPads, Android tablets, Macs and PCs.

The Tools That KTC offers are similar to Apple’s iBooks Author software, Which Also allows people to create richly-formatted e-books. There’s a big difference between them, though: iBooks Author books can only be read through the iBooks app on Macs, iPhones and iPads, as opposed to the Kindle’s cross-platform reach.

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Amazon Kindle Textbook Creator turns PDFs into e-textbooks – Mashable

What’s This?

Image: Liz Pierson, Mashable

By Rex Santus 2015-01-22 17:02:44 UTC

Amazon on Thursday released a tool Meant To help educators and writers publish e-textbooks.

It’s straightforwardly titled the Kindle Textbook creator, and it makes it easy to transform PDFs into an e-book formats. Plain PDFs are pretty static learning materials, but Amazon says ITS Textbook Creator offers a simple (and free) way to Organize an array of educational materials – graphs, equations, charts or anything else you might find in a textbook.

See also: Why E-Readers Are the Next iPod

Textbooks Created with The Platform willalso give readers a variety of Kindle tools to take ADVANTAGE OF. There’s a multicolor highlighting tool, a notebook feature to capture key passages, a dictionary / Wikipedia lookup function, and flashcards. Once readers buy the Kindle textbook, They can read it on all kinds of devices, like Amazon’s Kindle, of course, as well as iPads, iPhones or Android devices.

This is all part of a new education- oriented spinoff of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Division, Which allows authors to self-publish. Another division of the KDP, for example, ice KDP Kids, Which Helps self-publishing children’s book authors.

Amazon hopes to draw the educators by highlighting the promotional opportunities of using the Kindle Textbook Creator. As Amazon plaster it, KDP EDU users willhave the benefit of “Amazon’s powerful marketing tools and global reach.”

Textbook authors willhave the opportunity to keep up to 70% of book royalties, of according to Amazon, all the while keeping control of the content they’re shelling out. Of course, this is not all altruistic. Amazon is hoping to Attract more self-publishers to KDP so it can get a cut of the profits and bring more users into .its Kindle ecosystem. The overall US textbook industry HAS BEEN Estimated to pull $ 10 billion annually.

The tool works for Mac and PC, but for now it’s only available for download in English.

Amazon in 2014: a look back

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Topics: amazon, Apps and Software, Education, ereader, kindle, Tech

Amazon unveils Kindle Textbook Creator to help educators turn courseware materials … – The Next Web

Today, Amazon Announced it’s releasing a new initiative thatwill make it Easier for teachers and educators to get Their material onto the Kindle Products and apps.

Called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) EDU, it’s Designed to help publish, PREPARE and the promote educational content for students across Amazon’s own reading products, as well as apps for mobile devices and desktop. Educators can moonrise tour PDFs of text books and course materials into ebooks, for instance.

Books Made Using the Kindle Textbook Creator include nifty featuressuch as multi-color highlighting, a notebook to keep track of passages and images and flashcards to keep track of Important concepts from each chapter.

If you’re an educator, you can get started with the beta version of the tool today.

➤ Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Creator [Amazon] | KDP EDU

Amazon’s New Kindle Textbook Creator Takes A Different Approach From … – TechCrunch

Amazon Has a New Tool for ITS Kindle Direct Publishing authors, via a new KDP EDU wing of the Sami Aimed at educators and academic institutions. It’s called the Kindle Textbook creator, and it lets authors PREPARE electronic textbooks for students, for publication across Fire tablets, Android devices, iPhones and iPads, Macs and PCs. It’s kind of like iBooks Author for Apple and iTunes U, but it uses PDFs of Existing texts as a starting point and offers over-the-top digital features for the Kindle-based consumption.

Kindle Textbook Creator Seems Designed for speed, and for Working with the legacy textbook publishing industry, as opposed to iBooks Author Which is more Designed to help educators build digital-native experiences from scratch. Books BuiltWith Amazon’s new tool sacrifice multi-color highlighting for students, as well as built-in notebook, flashcards for review, dictionaries, and of course multi-platform support, in addition to Translating the PDF version of Their document into somethingthat Works On Any reader.

The standard economics of the KDP apply with The New EDU publishing arm, meaning authors earn royalties ranging up to 70 percent depending on options, and keep control of the Rights Related to Their content. KDP EDU titles are overpriced Eligible for Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, as well as marketing features Including Amazon’s free book Orbitz.

The EDU Textbook Creator Seems fairly simple in .its current form, but Amazon says it Will continue to add features as time goes on, so do not be surprised if tools for educators get a lot more sophisticated Eventually. For now, it’s a concession to the Legacy educational publishing industry overpriced That Seems to Want to Encourage more self-publishing Efforts by educational professionals and authors. Apple’s iBooks Author tool tries to convince educators to go digital-first, while Amazon’s says bring whatever you’ve Already got to the table to help us expand our education market reach.

Review: Kindle Voyage – Patheos (blog)

Once, These many moons ago, I bought myself one of the first Amazon Kindle. Truly, it was a strange and wondrous beast, with a peculiar shape, page turn buttons You Could not help pushing the if you held it wrong, an odd thumbwheel cursor for selecting a line, extremely slow page turns, and four shades of gray. I’d been interesting in the notion of e-books for quite sometime, and The Kindle was the first That Seemed To Have The bookselling eco system down pat.

So I tried it, and it was not bath; I rather liked it. And then, Apple released the iPad, and Amazon released the Kindle app, and I passed my first generation Kindle down to one of my kids. (I still have it; I’m making a collection.) And I’ve been using my iPad as an e-reader eversince.

But, you know, the iPad overpriced Runs The Facebook app; and games; and RSS readers; and Twitter; and I’ve discovered that i’ll have trouble staying focussed When I’m reading. I’ll keep popping over to FaceBook like a rat pushing the little red button in hopes of getting a food pellet. Detaching from the constant news feed HAS more and more Begun to seem like a good idea. At the sametime, now I’ll have quite a collection of e-books; and given the number of print books in this house That we do not really’ll have room for now I Do not Want To switch back to paper. In like E-books; I do not need to search the house for them.

And then I heard about the Kindle Voyage , Amazon’s successor to the Kindle Paperwhite. Whiter whites. Faster page turns. Buttons on the faceplate, So THAT You do not Have to tap the screen all the time. A front-lit screen, so you can read in any lighting. Excellent battery life. 300 DPI.

Let me say that again: a 300 dots-per-inch display.

I suppose 300 DPI is common In an era of Color “retina” displays; but for me it’s still a magic number That goes back to the late 1980′s. In Those Days, most people had “dot-matrix” Printers: Functional, yes, but the print was lousy. If You were very lucky, you had an HP Laserjet or an Apple LaserWriter, and then you’ve got 300 DPI print That looked like something from a Printed Book Reviews … and that was very, extremely, amazingly cool.

OK , so I’m old. Still, 300 DPI is a phrase to conjure with.

And as usual, you can get it with just wi-fi or with wi-fi and 3G wireless.

So I’ve got one, and I’ve been using it for a week or so; and I have to say I like it. It’s smaller and lighter than a full-sized iPad, and much Easier to carry about, and I do seem to focus somewhat better using it it. The print is easy on the eyes, and the page turns are much faster than on my old Kindle. And the matte screen Does not Reflect the ceiling lights in the kitchen the way my iPad screen does.

Also got Amazon’s Kindle Voyage , Which oddly folds into a stand for the Kindle. I gather some users do not like the Origami case, but I find it works well for me. When I’m holding the Kindle into my hand the cover folds neatly against the back of the Kindle, and When I want to put it on the table it stands up at a pleasant angle.

On the whole, very nice.

Amazon India offers Rs 1000 discount on all Kindle e-readers – BGR India

Amazon India HAS Introduced a Rs 1,000 discount on all Kindle e-readers. These include The New Kindle, the previous-generation Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, and Kindle Paperwhite 3G variant.

The new Kindle, Which was Launched in India for Rs 5,999 lastyear, is now available on Amazon India for Rs 4,999. This is the same price at Which the previous-generation Kindle ice retailing as well. Whileboth the e-readers are similarly priced, The New Kindle boasts a touchscreen display, 20 percent faster processor compared to the previous-generation Kindle and Twice the Amount of storage as well.

The Kindle Paperwhite variants too are available with a Rs 1,000 discount. The Wi-Fi only variant was Launched in India for Rs 10,999, but is now available for Rs 9,999. The 3G version, on the otherhand, is now available for Rs 12.999 instead of the Rs 13.999 it was Launched at.

While Amazon’s Kindles Are The Popular Choice Among buyers, THERE ARE overpriced alternatives available Including Kobo’s email -readers. They are however a bit more expensive than Amazon’s offerings. The Kobo Touch N905-KBO-B 6-inch e-reader with an anti-glare display is priced at Rs 6,999, while the Kobo Glo N613-KBO-P 6-inch e-reader with a backlit display is priced at Rs 10,999 .