Amazon’s new WorkMail 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 email sector with a web-based service called WorkMail, and gobble up companies running Microsoft Exchange.

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

In addition to integrating with Outlook, the service will support Microsoft Active Directory. And AWS will offer 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 WorkMail 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 have repeatedly asked us for a business email and calendaring service that is more cost-effective and simpler to manage than their 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 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 WorkMail won’t go the way of Fire Phone, Fire TV, and Wallet. On the other hand, the Kindles and cloud services aren’t doing bad. ®

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Samsung tipped to offer a Kindle-killing e-ink Galaxy S6 case – TechRadar

Samsung is reportedly to offer a special Galaxy S6 case that incorporates an e-ink screen, letting it double as a Kindle-style e-reader.

Samsung is the master of adding extra features to its top phones, and rather than cleaning up its act in 2015 it’s going offer them as accessories.

One of the most interesting reported add-ons is a case that offers a second e-ink screen, letting the Galaxy S6 work like an e-reader on the side, much like the Yotaphone 2.

Accessories galore

Also in the works 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 rumoured 20-megapixel main sensor.

The site compares these lenses to the Galaxy K Zoom, an optical zoom Android phone from last year, but a solution roughly based on the Olloclip system that’s been available for years seems more likely.

OppoClip puts pieces of glass 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 is 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.

Samsung is expected to launch the new phone, with of without flashy extras, during the MWC 2015 show in March.

Amazon Prime Membership Should Come With a Warning – TIME

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Amazon Unveils New Segment of Kindle Direct Publishing – iSchoolGuide

Amazon.com has recently announced a new segment of Kindle Direct Publishing – KDP EDU to help educators and authors in producing contents for students.

(Photo : David McNew | Getty Images News) Amazon

Amazon.com has recently announced a new segment of Kindle Direct Publishing – KDP EDU to help educators and authors in producing contents for students.

KDP EDU was specifically designed not just to prepare contents but also to promote eTextbooks and other contents that can be downloaded or viewed in a wide range of devices like Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, Mac, and PC.

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With the help of Amazon’s new Kindle Textbook Creator tool, the educators and authors can easily turn PDFs of their textbooks and course materials into Kindle books and once the book is ready, they can now upload it to KDP.

“Kindle Textbook Creator makes it easy for anyone to take any PDF and create a richly featured and widely available eTextbook,” said Chuck Kronbach, Director, Kindle Direct Publishing in a press release. “We look forward to seeing how authors use the new tool and getting their feedback to guide us in adding more features to KDP EDU over time.”

Kindle Textbook Creator comes with different features that can help enhance students’ learning experience. Included in the features are the Multi-Color Highlighting, Notebook, Flashcards, and Dictionary.

Author of Full Color Illustrations of the Fourth Dimension Chris McMullen said that he loved Kindle Textbook Creator and commended that it was a great solution for issues he had with converting many of my math-intensive print books to Kindle format.

“Educational content often includes many equations, graphs, and tables. Kindle Textbook Creator made it easy for me to convert the print version of my geometry book to Kindle and reach even more readers,” McMullen said.

What’s more interesting is that with KDP, authors of the books can now earn royalties of up to 70%, while keeping their rights and maintaining control of their content. Authors are now given the option to enroll their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities.

To learn more about publishing textbooks through KDP, visit kdp.amazon.com/edu.

Tags : Amazon, Kindle Textbook Creator, eTextbooks, Kindle Direct Publishing

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KINDLE: A portrait of a struggling artist – East Oregonian (subscription)

Home  »  Community  »  Community News

Published: January 24, 2015 12:01AM

Photo contributed by Nick Jaina

Northwest musician, artist, author Nick Jaina shares stories of self-doubt and success in Pendleton.

Self doubt is a stage of an artist's development that tends to receive little attention. Semi-autobiographical novels like James Joyce's "The Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man" and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn" describe one's life decisions made in bad faith before romantically discovering an almost divinely bestowed creative talent. However, the experience of devastating failures and the loss of faith in one's own abilities after discovering one's vocation is rarely explored. Portland songwriter Nick Jaina's first book, "Get It While You Can," seeks to fill in those gaps.

For well over a decade Jaina has been consistently releasing albums; first with his cult Portland band The Binary Dolls and then under his own name on a variety of Pacific Northwest indie labels. In recent years he has branched out into composing works for modern ballet troupes and even a one-man stage show. Penning a book feels like a natural progression for the multidisciplinary artist. Or perhaps it is a reaction to feeling an unease and dissatisfaction with the progress of his career as a songwriter.

"Get It While You Can" contains all the aforementioned stages associated with an artist's bildungsroman — awkward formative experiences, an epiphanic realization of Jaina's purpose and subsequent artistic triumphs — but the self-doubt, frustration and the measuring of what "success" means to an individual artist versus their audience (as particularly well illustrated in the recounting of a concert performance at Folsom Prison) functions as the book's overarching theme.

In the book, Jaina's life is in thrown into a tailspin after a lackluster show in Tacoma by the theft the acoustic guitar he had played since his teens. From there he re-examines the series of events that led him to pursue writing music and comes to terms with how his career as a songwriter has taken shape. These scenes take place in a variety of locales — from an aborted stint at California State University in Monterey Bay, working a series of mundane jobs in Portland, attending a Vipassana mediation retreat in Washington, embarking on cross-country tours, and finally retreating to Colombia to work on this very book. Occasionally Jaina ruminates on the similar crises of faith suffered by some of his musical heroes (Johnny Cash and Nina Simone) while watching video clips of them on YouTube.

It wouldn't be entirely accurate to label "Get It While You Can" as a memoir. It was originally intended to be a compilation of previously published writings for the webzine Somnambulist entitled "Unsent Love Letters" as well as an assortment of essays. Those essays eventually evolved into the chapters that make up the bulk of the book. Portions of "Unsent Love Letters" are interspersed throughout and, while they are tender and at times humorous musings on romantic relationships, their presence tends to disturb the rhythm of the rest of the book. The story behind his artistic development and coming to terms with success — or the lack thereof — is the more compelling part.

Although most Nick Jaina performances are exceptional concert experiences, his appearance in Pendleton this Friday will stand out from the rest. The performance of his songs paired with readings of excerpts from "Get It While You Can" will provide a rather unique telling of the story behind the music that goes one step beyond the typical "VH1 Storytellers" mode.

Nick Jaina performs at the Great Pacific (403 S. Main, Pendleton) at 7 p.m. on Friday, January 30.

———

James Dean Kindle is a singer-songwriter and musician and part-time Pendleton resident. You can contact him at jamesdeankindle@gmail.com

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Amazon Kindle Textbook Creator lets users create educational content – SlashGear

Brittany Hillen

Amazon has introduced its new Kindle Textbook Creator, a tool that lets users create digital textbooks and related materials that include educational elements, not the least of which are flashcards. Students will then be able to access this content on the same devices other Kindle content can be accessed on, including their Fire tablets. The tool is currently in a beta stage, and as with the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, those interested are able to directly upload their content for others to enjoy.

Amazon revealed the new beta option yesterday, saying it is a segment of the larger Kindle Direct Publishing platform. Under it, users can upload a PDF file with their textbook and have it transformed into a Kindle book. Given the nature of tablets and smartphones, users are able to give readers additional features that aren’t available with an ordinary paper book, as well.

With the Kindle Textbook Creator, the resulting ebooks that are created offer several different features to readers, among them being the aforementioned flashcards, as well as the ability to highlight content in different colors, which also helps in categorizing it; there’s also a notebook for taking notes including copying in passages.

A dictionary is also available to students, letting them more easily look up definitions and information on Wikipedia and elsewhere. As with other Kindle books, users will be able to access the content on whatever devices they have with the Kindle app, such as toggling between a tablet and a smartphone. The same KDP financial terms apply as in other segments of the platform.

SOURCE: BusinessWire

Amazon Kindle Textbook Creator turns authors into teachers (and vice versa) – Engadget

While e-books are everywhere, electronic textbooks never really caught on, despite their potential to bring immersive learning at a lower cost. Amazon is trying to change that with the Kindle Textbook Creator, a free app from its newly formed Kindle Direct Publishing EDU division (KDP EDU). It helps authors rapidly turn dry PDF files into more engaging e-textbooks for use on Android devices, desktop machines, iPhones, iPads, and of course, Kindle Fire tablets. As Techcrunch points out, the app is designed to help educators upgrade existing e-textbooks, rather than create brand new books like Apple’s iBooks Author.

Once you’ve converted an e-book, it’ll automatically have features like multi-color highlighting, text and image capture, memory aid flashcards, and Wikipedia/dictionary definitions. That’s pretty basic functionality for now — Apple’s iBooks Author enables video and other rich content, for instance — but Amazon said it will add more features down the road. Once educators have converted an e-textbook, they can publish it through Amazon’s KDP and earn royalties up to 70 percent, while keeping full rights control. The books can also be enrolled in Kindle Unlimited or Amazon’s Lending Library. If you’d like to give it a go, it’s now available in beta (for English texts only).

Source: Amazon

More Coverage: Techcrunch

Tags: amazon, e book, e books, e reader, e readers, e-book, e-books, e-reader, e-readers, eTextbooks, KindleTextbookCreator

Drop Some Knowledge With Kindle Textbook Creator – PC Magazine

The Web giant is looking to elevate eTextbooks with a new tool dubbed Kindle Textbook Creator.

Living in a digitized world is convenient, yes, but let’s face it — there are still some things that are better in physical form. Textbooks, for instance.

Amazon wants to change that. The Web giant is looking to elevate eTextbooks with a new tool, dubbed Kindle Textbook Creator, which is designed to help educators and authors easily prepare, publish, and promote digitized educational texts.

With this new resource, teachers and textbook authors can turn their PDFs and course materials into Kindle books that can be accessed by students on a range of devices, including Fire tablets, Apple’s iPad and iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, as well as Macs and PCs.

“Kindle Textbook Creator makes it easy for anyone to take any PDF and create a richly featured and widely available eTextbook,” Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Director Chuck Kronbach said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing how authors use the new tool and getting their feedback to guide us in adding more features.”

Amazon says the new platform isn’t just beneficial for authors — it will actually “enhance the learning experience” for students thanks to features like multi-color highlighting and more. Books created with Kindle Textbook Creator also include a Notebook feature, which lets you capture key passages, images, and bookmarks for easy reference. Students can also create their own digital flashcards to study important terms and definitions in each chapter, easily look up definitions of works they’re unfamiliar with, and access their etextbooks across devices.

With Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform, authors will earn royalties of up to 70 percent, and keep the rights to the content. For more, head over to Amazon’s website.

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

Today, Amazon announced it's releasing a new initiative that will make it easier for teachers and educators to get their materials onto Kindle products and apps.

Called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) EDU, it's designed to help publish, prepare and promote educational content for students across Amazon's own reading products, as well as apps for mobile devices and desktop. Educators can easily turn PDFs of textbooks and course materials into ebooks, for instance.

Books made using the Kindle Textbook Creator include nifty features such 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 unveils Kindle Textbook Creator to help educators turn course materials … – The Next Web

Today, Amazon announced it's releasing a new initiative that will make it easier for teachers and educators to get their materials onto Kindle products and apps.

Called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) EDU, it's designed to help publish, prepare and promote educational content for students across Amazon's own reading products, as well as apps for mobile devices and desktop. Educators can easily turn PDFs of textbooks and course materials into ebooks, for instance.

Books made using the Kindle Textbook Creator include nifty features such 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 Launches Kindle Textbook Creator – Business Wire (press release)

SEATTLE – ( BUSINESS WIRE ) – (NASDAQ: AMZN) – Amazon.com KDP Schools Announced today, a new segment of Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) designed to help educators and authors Easily prepare, publish, Promote and eTextbooks and other educational content for students to access on a broad range of devices, including tablets Fire, iPad, iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, Mac, and PC. Educators and authors can use the public beta of Amazon’s new Kindle Textbook Creator tool Easily turn to PDFs of Their textbooks and course materials into Kindle books. Once the book is ready, authors can upload it to KDP in just the last few simple steps to Reach students worldwide. Get started today at kdp.amazon.com/edu.

“Kindle Textbook Creator Makes it easy for anyone to take in PDF and create a richly featured and widely available eTextbook” Chuck said Kronbach, Director, Kindle Direct Publishing. “We look forward to Seeing how authors use the new tool and getting theire feedback to guide you in adding more features to KDP EDU over time.”

Books created with Kindle Textbook Creator offer features for students and other readers That ENHANCE the learning experience, including:

• Multi-Color Highlighting -Highlight and categorize key concepts for easy reference.
• Notebook -Capture key passages, and bookmark images and Them Automatically add to the notebook. Students can add notes and Their Own Them Easily access from one location.
• Flashcards -Create flashcards and study important terms, concepts, and definitions Each chapter in with a simple, easy-to-use interface.
• Dictionary -Find information for Difficult Wikipedia definitions and terms to Improve retention.
• Buy Once, Read Everywhere – Read eTextbooks where students use the most popular devices, including tablets Fire, iPad, iPhone, Android tablets and smartphones, Mac, and PC.

“I’m in love with Kindle Textbook Creator! It’s a great solution for the I Had issues with converting many of my math-intensive print books to Kindle format, “said Chris McMullen, author of Full Color Illustrations of the Fourth Dimension . “Often Educational content includes many equations, graphs, and tables. Kindle Textbook Creator made it easy for me to convert the print version of my geometry book to Kindle readers and reache the even more. “

With KDP, authors can earn royalties of up to 70%, while keeping theire rights and Maintaining Control of Their content. They can also choose to enroll in KDP Select books for theire additional royalty Unlimited opportunities like Kindle and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like Kindle Free Book Countdown Deals and Promotions.

To learn more Through KDP about publishing textbooks, or to download Kindle Textbook Creator, visit kdp.amazon.com/edu.

About Amazon

Opened on Amazon.com 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 phone, Fire tablets, TV and Fire are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon.

Amazon launches Kindle textbook tool to compete with iBooks Author – Gigaom

We often think of digital textbooks as being read on iPads, and Apple rolled out iBooks Author, which lets users create textbooks and other interactive ebooks, in 2012. But Amazon, not surprisingly, wants in on the self-published textbook action, and on Thursday launched Kindle Textbook Creator, a beta tool that lets users convert graphics-heavy PDFs into ebooks.

Authors can also add highlighting, flashcards and some other features to the books. Textbook Creator is available for free download on Mac or Windows here.

The tool is only available in English and, according to the FAQ, "textbooks and other content created using Kindle Textbook Creator can only be sold via the Amazon Kindle Store as outlined in Amazon's Software End User License Agreement." Apple's similar rule caused a lot of consternation when iBooks Author launched.

One thing I'm wondering about here is the revenue split. Right now, Amazon KDP gives authors 70 percent of each sale of ebooks priced between $ 2.99 and $ 9.99. For books priced higher or lower than that, the author just gets a 30 percent cut — and that's been the subject of debate recently. It seems as if this revenue structure could especially create problems for textbook authors of textbooks, which often cost more than $ 9.99; plus, Apple gives authors a 70 percent split on all books sold through iBooks, no matter what they cost.

Amazon confirmed to me that "the normal KDP royalty structure applies" in this situation but said it is looking for author feedback as well.

Kindle VP Russ Grandinetti suggested at the Digital Book World conference last week that Amazon might consider changing its revenue split for certain types of books, including educational titles: "I think there's a good argument to be made about whether we should make models for different categories," he said.

Les Cochran’s book hits Kindle best seller list – Youngstown Vindicator

Published: Wed, January 21, 2015 @ 12:02 a.m.

Staff report

SAN CARLOS PARK, FLA.

Former Youngstown State University President Les Cochran's book cracked the Kindle Best Seller List.

"I got goose bumps as I read the announcement that 'Signature Affair,' my first novel, had made Kindle's Top 100 Best Seller list," Cochran said in a news release. "I had no idea that we were even close."

After ranking 16,600 out of more than a million books on Amazon.com's Kindle list, the 2013 book dropped in recent months.

The publisher suggested the Kindle price be reduced from $ 5.99 to 99 cents.

"He said, 'You won't make any money, but you'll expand the reader list for "Costly Affair,"' which was recently released," Cochran said. "That made sense to me, so we did it. I knew we'd sell a few more books. But I had no idea it'd take off like it did."

"Signature Affair" is the first book in Cochran's trilogy. "Costly Affair" and "Presidential Affair" round out the group. Cochran says the books are fiction, not memoir.

Cochran served as YSU president from 1992 to 2000. He and his wife, Lin, live in San Carlos Park, Fla.

Amazon Kindle Fire 7” HDX vs. Amazon Kindle Fire 7” HD Comparison: Price … – Latin Post

First Posted: Jan 16, 2015 05:45 PM EST

Here’s our breakdown of how the Amazon Kindle 7″ HDX stacks up against the Amazon Kindle 7″ HD. 

Pros and Cons of the Amazon Kindle 7″ HDX: 

First off, the Amazon Kindle 7″ HDX has a higher resolution display with better pixel density. It also has a powerful quad-core processor. Double the amount of RAM, an extra 64GB model, and a later Android version also give it additional advantages. Furthermore, it’s lighter compared to the Kindle 7-inch HD.

The Amazon Kindle 7″ HDX doesn’t really have any con that may put it behind its predecessor, save for perhaps the price. The only real questions is: just how much better is it?

Pros and Cons of the Amazon Kindle 7″ HD:

The Amazon Kindle 7″ HD doesn’t seem to have any features that could give it an edge over the Kindle HDX. It matches the Kindle HDX with the same camera, but lags behind in all other features. It has half the RAM as the HDX and weighs almost 95g more. Even the same-sized display is not as vivid. The 7″ HD doesn’t have any GSM feature, which puts it far behind its successor.

Specs:

The Amazon Kindle 7″ HDX has a 7-inch IPS LCD display with 1200×1920-pixel resolution at 323ppi. It weighs 303/311g and measures 9mm in thickness. It runs on customized Android Jelly Bean and a 2.2-GHz quad-core Krait 400 CPU. Other features include 2GB RAM, 1.3-MP single camera and storage configuration of 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB.

The Amazon Kindle 7″ HD has a 7-inch IPS LCD display with 800×1280-pixel resolution at 216ppi. It is powered by custom Android 4.0 and runs on a 1.2-GHz dual-core Cortex A9 processor. It weighs 395g and measures 10.3mm in thickness. Other features include 1GB RAM, a 1.3-MP camera, and availability in 16GB and 32GB storage capacities.

Talking Points:

The Amazon Kindle 7″ HDX was announced in September 2013 and released in October the same year. Amazon later released a new 8.9-inch larger Wi-Fi model in November. The latest upgrade was released in September 2014 with an even faster CPU and GPU. 

The Kindle Fire HD was unveiled as either a 7-inch or a 8.9-inch tablet in September 2012. The Fire 7″ HD was released in September 2013 with a more powerful CPU and customized Android OS.

Prices:

The Kindle Fire 7″ HDX 16GB model starts at a price of $ 179 on Amazon. The Fire 7″ HD starts at a price of $ 114 on Amazon.

Conclusion:

The Amazon Kindle Fire 7″ HDX is clearly the better device among the two. It has two times the RAM and almost two times as powerful a CPU as in the 7″ HD. Besides, it has a 64GB model, which is absent in the HD. Thus, the Kindle Fire 7″ HDX is the easier choice among the two tablets.

© 2015 Latin Post. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

How St Albans oral surgeon penned a Kindle hit during his daily commute – Herts Advertiser

06:05 17 January 2015

Madeleine Burton

Surgeon Bikram Bal is cutting his teeth on a new career that saw him scoot up the Kindle Books chart soon after Christmas.

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Through Your Eyes cover

Bikram, who lives in St Albans, released his debut novel, Through Your Eyes, in the Amazon Kindle store over the festive period.

And almost immediately it entered the top 40 most popular paid Kindle Books in three genres.

Bikram, 45, a father of two who works full-time for the NHS as an oral surgeon in London and St Albans, is currently finishing his second book and has started on his third.

He taps out his novels on his tablet while he is commuting.

It was a dream on a Sunday morning in August which led Bikram to embark on a writing career. He explained: "It was a little bizarre to wake up with the entire story in my head and it only took just under three weeks to get most of the storyline down."

Set in London, the book is about a man obsessed with movies who is forever in search of adventure although he is a coward at heart.

He has a surreal encounter with a beautiful woman but ends up hurtling through a mind-bending nightmare through time that he could never have imagined in the wildest movies of his imagination – and he is playing the lead role.

The book has garnered glowing reviews on Kindle including praise for it as a 'spectacular debut' and a 'gripping read'.

Bikram said: "It's taken me 45 years to get round to writing a book and then, just like buses, three come along at the same time. I can honestly say, I love writing."

His new career got a boost when he was invited as a guest author to a book club event being held at Hare and Hounds pub in St Albans next month.

Through Your Eyes, by B.J.S Bal, is available to download from the Kindle store at www.amazon.co.uk for 99p.

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A new initiative putting the spotlight on business expertise and knowledge in St Albans was launched last week.

Surgeon Bikram Bal is cutting his teeth on a new career that saw him scoot up the Kindle Books chart soon after Christmas.

The first step has been taken to streamline Freedom of Information (FoI) requests which are costing St Albans council thousands of pounds to process.

A man in his 60s was this morning (Friday) found dead at the McDonald's car park in London Colney