I Like Amazon.com Technology

Most of my readers probably use Amazon.com more than I do. Until recently, I guess I just haven’t appreciated the advances they’ve made to help advance cloud computing in the consumer space. Here’s a summary of my recent experiences.

Kindle Books

I’m don’t read much for pleasure, mostly for knowledge and self-improvement. Recently, I bought some eBooks that reminded me of the power of Amazon’s eBook model: buy once, sync, available everywhere. On my iPad, my Android phone, my Linux browser.

Having my books available anywhere I want it is awesome, something that most content vendors can’t provide (maybe Google, but their book library is no where near Amazon’s). For example, if I was to buy from iBooks/Apple, I could get my purchase on my iPad and in my browser (I assume), but not my anti-Apple Android phone. I just went to my chiropractor for a crack, and while waiting, took out my phone and picked up from the most recent bookmark that I set on my iPad. Awesome.

Cloud Drive and Cloud Player

When Cloud Drive was announced, I mostly ignored it. But recently, I’ve been playing with it. I’ve been taking mp3s from my iTunes library and loading them to my Cloud Drive. Then, I can launch the Amazon Cloud Player in my browser or my Android phone to play my music where ever I am. The Android app lets me download the files to my phone so that if I’ve got no/a poor Internet connection, I can still listen to my music. And I never have to do all this mumbo-jumbo with iTunes syncing. That stuff drives me crazy.

Kindle Fire

This week, Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet was announced. I haven’t played with it yet, but I’m eager to take a look. I’m particularly keen to see whether it will be something that I can buy for my 85 year-old mother and let her trash her Windows PC. All that she ever does is email, surf, and print occasional photos.

I got a good laugh at the recent press regarding privacy and Kindle’s browser, Silk. Privacy, really? Anyone that thinks they have any degree of anonymity on the Internet is naive. Just look at my previous post, and then all 750 million of you get off Facebook and stop using Google.

I have another post lined up about Kindle Fire in a few days.

[Update October 2, 2011: Just read about worker conditions in PA for Amazon workers. Hope that isn't true!]