Monthly Archives: July 2013

Amazon Review Tips & Tricks For Savvy Shoppers

Amazon is one of my preferred shopping outlets, mainly because I’m an Amazon Prime member and that means I get free two-day shipping on almost everything I buy there. However, it’s also a great resource for any shopper, even if you ultimately make your purchase somewhere else. This is largely because of the customer reviews, but if your approach to Amazon customer reviews is to merely look at the overall average review rating for a given product and maybe spot-check a few of the most positive and most negative reviews, you aren’t getting the maximum level of helpfulness and guidance from those reviews. How To Use Amazon Customer Reviews Like A Boss: The Little-Known Search This Product’s Reviews Feature Amazon reviews are a particularly great shopper resource when you’re looking at a big-ticket item, such as the Samsung Galaxy Player pictured in this post. You may have heard it’s the exact same hardware as…

Ebooks Settlement Refunds: How To Get Your Share of the Ebooks Price Fixing Settlement Fund

Today Publisher’s Weekly reports: According to a recent filing, publishers have paid a total of $166,158,426 to settle state and consumer e-book price fixing charges, including an additional $3,909,000 to settle consumer claims in Minnesota. In all, the total damages assessed to the publishers came in at $218,883,000…And that figure could jump considerably now that Apple has been found liable at trial. Pending a reversal on appeal, Apple will eventually have to pay to settle the state and consumer claims as well. I wrote an article about this for Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily, Apple Loses in Ebook Price Fixing Case. The article provides more information about the basis of the government’s case against the big publishers who were involved as well as Apple, so if you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about here that may be a good place for you to start. Don’t worry – the link…

Kindle Fire Antivirus: You Still Don’t Need It

Note: Kindle Fire HDX owners, please see this more recent post, which is specific to the HDX line – Kindle Fire HDX Antivirus: Do You Need It? Since a great many site visitors get here via an internet search having to do with virus protection for the Kindle Fire, I’m assuming that many people reading this are gravely concerned about the possibility of their Kindle Fire being targeted by malware. I wrote an entire post on this back in February of this year, Does Your Kindle Fire Need Virus Protection?, and what I said in that post still holds true to this day: The Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD do not need antivirus or malware protection because they are not “proliferation-friendly” devices, run a custom version of Android, and cannot multi-task, and therefore are not (yet) being targeted by hackers. Furthermore, Amazon thoroughly vets apps before allowing them to be listed…