"Kindle for PC" Now Available -- The Free Application for Reading Kindle Books Available

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"Kindle for PC" Now Available -- The Free Application for Reading Kindle Books Available on the PC Today for Readers Around the World

Latest Kindle application brings more than 360,000 Kindle books, including New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases, to the PC

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 2009-- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the availability of "Kindle for PC," the free application that lets readers around the world enjoy Kindle books on their personal computers (PC). The U.S. Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore) currently offers more than 360,000 books, including New Releases and 101 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, which are typically $9.99 or less. The Kindle Store is the only place to find some of today’s most popular books in digital format. Kindle books can now be read on the Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch and PC. Kindle for PC is now available as a free download to readers in over 100 countries at www.amazon.com/KindleforPC.

Kindle for PC features Amazon’s Whispersync technology that automatically saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. Whether you read Kindle books on a Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the free Kindle applications, you can always have your reading with you and never lose your place. With Kindle for PC, you can read some on your PC, read some on your Kindle, and always pick up right where you left off. Whispersync helped make the Kindle for iPhone application the most popular books app in the Apple App Store.

"Kindle for PC is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX," said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. "Kindle for PC is also a great way for people around the world to access a huge selection from the Kindle Store and read the most popular books of today even if they don’t yet have a Kindle."

With Kindle for PC, readers can take advantage of the following features:

* Purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
* Read the beginning of any book for free before they buy
* Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
* Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books, textbooks and graphic novels
* Choose from more than 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
* Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
* View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, and iPod touch
* Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
* Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)

Microsoft demonstrated Kindle for PC for the first time ever at the Windows 7 launch event last month in New York City. Kindle for PC takes advantage of capabilities in the new Windows 7, including Windows Touch technology. In addition to Windows 7, Kindle for PC is also compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Kindle for PC is available for free download at www.amazon.com/KindleforPC.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial.

Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Source: Amazon.com, Inc.

Amazon media hotline, 206-266-7180

Droid - What's In A Name?

LIMON, CO (IFS) It is an ULTRA MASCULINE NAME that TURNS OFF WOMEN is the talk on the town about Verizon's new iPhone clone. It really makes a differences according to the most recent sales debut put at 200,00 plus units sold on the first day. Now comparing that to the iPhone debut -- it was in the millions. They say give it time.

Theodore Alexander Smith - Early Days of Polyfoam Construction

EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK - MAGNET -THEODORE ALEXANDER SMITH

LIMON, CO (IFS) - It was once said, that if it was not for the impossible construction feats of Theodore Smith, many of us would not have a cellphone in our hands, but a tin can and string between us. Smith pioneered many of the construction standards in the early days of wireless tower construction and protocols in the industry that we just take for granted.
But everyone and everything has a beginning, and Smith was no exception.

Wireless Construction's once King of installation setups and Impossible Missions Expert, Professor Theodore Alexander Smith's demostration and Construction of then superstar writer and artist for the Rocky Mountain News building one of his first homes, and he 's having problems, with boulders, water and a mountain. One of the possibilities is using PolyFoam Construction, with great new inovations in the manufacturing process --back in the early days.

Among Smith's other accomplished first's included the new "Radical Design" when working in the engineering department of Boeing as an intern, at the age of 15 years old.

As told by his daughter, Sherry Smith, a retired VP from the Airborne days, ". . . Theodore was not helping.

He didn't know.

No inspiration.

Couldn't feel the spirit.

Spirit or no spirit, time was up.

It was now.

". . . I was told once by our crossing guard, a real gentleman sitting on the park bench in Rosamond, California waiting for the school bus, as a kid around the age of 10 years old. . . I was very late in turning in my class assignment. . ."I don't know what they wanted, or even what I wanted. . ."

No Clue. ". . .My picture was a must -- right now."

". . . We didn't even have enough money to buy thing like crayons, coloring pencils, with six brothers and sisters, from a box, each one of the children got two colors-- it was only once in a while that we got alot of art supplies and other fun stuff. Mother had some old brown shopping bags, that were really big sized. So she sit out a pair of scissors, and one of these brown bags.

The teacher was on her way to deliver them to the Kern County Fairgrounds Committee, and that was 75 mile drive on a two lane blacktop road , in the mountains, the grade at Techachapi Mountains -- The delivery trucks -- before the Eisenhower freeway systems.

The crossing guard was sitting there enjoying the evening sun, and Theodore began telling the elder about this painting he had to turn in. "He said, get you an old shopping bag. Just a piece of craft paper and anything, stove charcoal -- heck just start drawing. . . "

Within some time on it, the paper began to come alive.

As the young Smith got off the bus and walked into the dinning soom, there sit his teacher with cup in hand, and that look. After school came to the house and having coffee with Mrs. Rillie Louise Sellers-Smith, and she began to tell her that Theodore has refused to turn in a drawning. The Principal Dr J.A. Lawson was the Superindent of our small Southern Kern County School District school, and he wanted 100 PER CENT PARTICIPATION. The end.

So with the teacher sitting at the dinner table, drinking coffee, telling mother, that she was headed up to Bakersfield, and she need "Something" from Teddy. As she put it, "NOW!"

As every other family during those times as a kid, when a loaf of bread only costed Eight (8) cents. And a Taco Bell taco was only Fifteen (15) cents.

With two women sitting at the same table with a brown paper bag, some scissors, glue, and some art stuff. Theodore said, the talk with the senior began to play in his head. He said, "So, did you know that a Fool and a Genius usually sit side-by-side. He said, "One carries the books of knowledge in a sack on his back, while the other one is reading the books."

At that instant, the young Smith went to the house stove and dug into the ashes and came across some wood charcoal. He broke off several inches of this semi soft and yet very light and yet firm piece. One of his instructors in the art class was taking about Spain.

So that would be his subject.

With the charcoal, with Mother sister there and the teacher looking down at him, Theodore made several lines on to the cut brown paper bag, and after several shadowings and more curvy, straight lines, more shadowing and he was finished in five minutes.

The teacher had Teddy sign his drawing at the bottom of the picture, and she said that she would place it in a frame.

It's now two weeks later, Rosamond school grade kids had 100 per cent participation. Period.

50,000 grade school entries from every school district in Kern County. And Teddy's painting that he did on the brown paper shopping bag, was now in a frame and sitting out in front of every mom and dad in the county looking at Theodore's drawing.

The first drawing picked the winners from each school distrcit, and Teddy was the winner for the Kern County Schools District to represent the entry to the California State Arts Festival.

On The last day of the two weeks of the State Fair, Theodore's Charcoal painting of a Spanish Galleon took the State's first Prize for this age group. After that, his teacher never asked Theodore for another drawing. He had received an A plus for the school year.

Elected two times from the Kern County School District to the California State band under the direction of Zabin Meta, as the groups conductor.

This film shows Professor Smith at the Home and Garden Show in 1993, demostrating the product. Short film by SDC Pictures.

Gov. Palin Gets It Wrong Again

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Denver (IFS) - Governor Palin just keeps getting it wrong, time after time. Remember she called Canidate Obama a person who "hung-out" with terrorists and all sorts of crazy names during the election. She always wants to exploit both sides of the argument, or at least dominate them to her advantage. Mr. Letterman's joke was about the "nothing" -- but Palin wants to tie it to her youngest kid -- a big stretch Governor!

AOL Spin-Off

Time Warner Approves AOL Spin-Off

By Zachary Rodgers , May 28, 2009

Earlier this year, Time Warner took the first steps toward spinning off AOL. Yesterday the board endorsed that plan and authorized CEO Jeff Bewkes to move forward to jettison its Web advertising and Internet access businesses.

After a separation, AOL would be an independent, publicly traded company. It would consist of a dial-up access business that is still among the largest in the U.S.; the AOL.com portal and other in-house properties such as Bebo and TMZ; and ad network Platform-A, which boasts a greater than 90 percent reach among U.S. Web users, according to Comscore.

"The separation will be another critical step in the reshaping of Time Warner that we started at the beginning of last year," Bewkes said in a statement. "The separation will also provide both companies with greater operational and strategic flexibility."

For advertisers, who were exposed to few if any synergies between AOL and other Time Warner businesses, the changes resulting from a spin-off will likely be few.

However, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is reportedly preparing some significant structural transformations at the company, including the creation of a Ventures unit to house the company's Bebo social networking platform and other recently acquired sites and services. According to BoomTown, the new unit is meant to attract outside investments.

Armstrong stated AOL will leverage its independent status to accelerate its recruiting efforts. "We play in a very competitive landscape and will be using our new status to retain and attract top talent," he said. "Although we have a tremendous amount of work to do, we have a global brand, a committed team of people, and a passion for the future of the Web."

As part of the preparations for a spin-off Time Warner will re-acquire the 5 percent of the AOL business it sold to Google in 2006. The remaining 95 percent of AOL already belongs to Time Warner shareholders. Time Warner said it hopes to complete the legal and structural separation of AOL by end of year.

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H1N1 Upclose

By Tina Hesman Saey Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Components of the H1N1 swine flu virus have been circulating undetected for years, but the virus combines the bits and pieces in a way never before seen, a detailed genetic analysis reveals.

The analysis, published online May 22 in Science, pinpoints the origins of each of the virus’s components. It suggests that current influenza vaccines probably won’t provide protection from the virus, but that the virus is susceptible to some antiviral drugs and will be amenable to new vaccine development. A separate study of the virus’s neuraminidase protein (the N in H1N1), published May 20 in Biology Direct, also shows that the virus is sensitive to some drugs but that parts of the protein important for vaccine development and antibody therapies are already changing.

Pigs are the likely origin of the virus, says Nancy Cox, chief of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a coauthor of the Science paper. But it is still unclear whether the virus jumped directly from pigs into humans or infected an intermediate host first.

In the United States, 6,552 probable and confirmed cases of H1N1 influenza, including nine deaths and more than 300 hospitalizations, have been reported to the CDC as of May 22, says Anne Schuchat, CDC’s interim deputy director for the science and public health program. But public health officials estimate that more than 100,000 Americans may have already been infected with the virus.

Overall the number of new cases in the United States is falling, Schuchat says, but the virus is still active in some pockets of the country and is expected to produce more new cases over the summer. “We don’t want people to think we’re out of the woods yet,” she says. “It could come back in the fall in the worst way.”

CDC is already testing two candidate vaccine viruses and expects to send the viruses to manufacturers by the end of May, Schuchat says.

Genetic analysis of the new H1N1 virus reveals that three of its genes, including the hemagglutinin gene (the H in H1N1), originally came from the 1918 Spanish influenza virus and have been present in pigs ever since. The genes have not changed much, likely because pigs do not live long enough to get reinfected with the same virus, Cox says. Reinfection would have favored changes that could have allowed the virus to evade the immune system. Now that the virus has entered humans, researchers expect it to mutate at the same rate as currently circulating seasonal influenzas.

The new virus does not contain the genetic changes thought to have helped the 1918 flu virus and the H5N1 virus (avian flu) adapt to humans, the researchers report. That means that other genetic components of the new virus must be responsible for its ability to pass from person to person.

Both studies find that the closest relative of H1N1’s neuraminidase gene is from a Eurasian swine flu virus that probably leaped from birds to pigs in about 1979.

The new virus differs in 21 of 387 amino acids from the H5N1 virus and the 1918 Spanish flu (also an H1N1 virus), researchers from Singapore’s Agency for Science and Technology Research report in the study in Biology Direct. Viruses isolated from patients during the first two weeks of the current outbreak already have changes on the outer surface on the neuraminidase protein that could interfere with antibodies against the virus or alter the effectiveness of future vaccines. But none of the changes have altered the parts of the protein targeted by antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu or Relenza.

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