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"La France aura bientôt accès à un service de VOD proposé par Amazon. Le patron géant américain du commerce électronique a confirmé ce projet, sans préciser la date à laquelle la plate-forme sera disponible. Amazon propose déjà des services de VOD au Royaume-Uni et en Allemagne via Lovefilm, un site spécialisé dans la VOD racheté début 2011."

One could argue that Amazon.com has had more impact on the startup community than nearly any corporate venture capital fund, largely driven through the low-cost services it provides via Amazon Web Services. But the venture capital community wasn't always a fan.

Today Amazon Web Services launched AWS Marketplace, an online store that makes it easy for you to find, buy, and immediately start using software and services that run on the AWS Cloud. You can use AWS Marketplace's 1-Click deployment to quickly launch pre-configured software on your own Amazon EC2 instances and pay only for what you use, by the hour or month. AWS handles billing and payments, and software charges appear on your AWS bill.

Everyone knows Amazon's cloud is huge. But many want to know exactly how huge it is. The latest to try is Deepfield Networks, a stealthy startup that worked with unnamed "network provider research" partners to figure out how much Internet traffic flows into and out of Amazon's cloud. It found that 1/3 of all Internet users hit Amazon-based services at least once a day and that 1 percent of all web consumer traffic is moving either into or out of Amazon's cloud.

If you thought the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite e-reader was a great deal at $119, take a look at the Txtr Beagle Read|Only, undercutting it by more than a C-note - it sells for a mere $13. As you might expect, for such a rock-bottom price you're going to have to make some sacrifices. If you just want to read text and you can live without a touchscreen, 3G, a backlight and Wi-Fi - and you don't mind inserting three AAA batteries once a year - this 5-inch, 4.5-oz E Ink device with its 800×600 screen might be the e-reader for you. The Txtr Beagle's 4GB of storage will give you room for a boatload of books, and its 5mm thickness is almost razor-thin enough to give you a paper cut.

Amazon.com, Inc. today announced KDP Select, a new option featuring a $6 million annual fund dedicated to independent authors and publishers. Here's how KDP Select works: if a KDP author or publisher chooses to make any of their books exclusive to the Kindle Store for at least 90 days, those books are eligible to be included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and can earn a share of the $6 million fund. Authors and publishers can enroll a single book, their whole catalog or anything in between. The monthly fund for December 2011 is $500,000. KDP Select launches today, and 31 of the top 50 KDP authors have already enrolled 129 titles. These authors include J. Carson Black, Gemma Halliday, J.A. Konrath, B.V. Larson, C.J. Lyons, Scott Nicholson, Julie Ortolon, Theresa Ragan, J.R. Rain and Patricia Ryan.

Amazon is expanding its retail store offerings to business and industrial clients with its new AmazonSupply online store.

"Roku founder Anthony Wood runs a startup that, along with companies like Apple and Microsoft, sells hardware that's bringing Web video to home television screens. It's no wonder his nine-year-old daughter prefers to watch her favorite Disney shows on Netflix at her whim, rather than surf Disney's own 24-hour cable channel. This is one example of how traditional TV service providers are losing their hold on America's eyeballs. Internet-connected TVs are becoming the norm on store shelves, and today represent 12 percent of those in people's homes, according to a recent survey by NPD Group. These TVs, and devices like Roku's, make it easier for viewers to cut the cord on their expensive cable bills, and instead simply watch content provided by companies including Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Amazon, and Google on their big home screens."

C ities are real-time systems,  but rarely run as such.  Governance models remain  in the 20th century, while citizens  increasingly have access to 21st  century tools predicated on the  increasingly ubiquitous availability of internet, smartphones  and tablets, social media and  so on. A city's operational and  planning decisions are generally  based on snapshots and averages  rather than the ongoing monitoring, insightful visualisations,  and constant feedback loops that  contemporary information and  communications technologies  (ICT) enable. While there are  fundamental differences between  running a city and, say, running  Amazon.com, they are perhaps  fewer than has been assumed. this report outlines many of the  opportunities for cities afforded by these  contemporary technologies, indicating  how the 'smart city' approach might  fundamentally transform the way that cities  are governed, operated, interacted with and  experienced, particularly with the focus on  reducing greenhouse gas emissions and  becoming sustainable in the broadest sense,  including in economic terms, with new jobs  generated in 'green technologies' and ictrelated activities. 

here is a revolution upon us in the Maker community. Use of computer-controlled construction methods, such as CNC machines, laser cutters, and 3D printers is on the rise and the cost to build these machines from scratch or from a kit continues to come down towards the point where your average household will soon be able to readily download and print objects the same way we download and print off a document. A major jump in this trend comes from the creator of the Solidoodle. The Solidoodle is a 3D printer, capable of printing a 6″ x 6″ x 6″ object with a basic price point of $499, and a spool of filament will run you $43. For comparison, there are many high-quality inkjet and laser printers that run for this cost or more on Amazon while the cost of toner cartridges and ink refills run a pretty wide range and can easily cost more than $43. The Solidoodle premiered recently at NY Tech Day and was named the best of NY Tech Day by CNET. I had the chance to sit down and Skype with Solidoodle founder and CEO Sam Cervantes and got some more insight into the printer. He is a very nice guy and talked with me for about 40 minutes so I've pulled the highlights below.

Dans son nouveau livre, Ensemble : les plaisirs rituels et la politique de la coopération (Amazon, extraits), le sociologue Richard Sennett, enseignant à la l'école d'économie de Londres et à l'université de New York, s'est intéressé à la coopération. Pour comprendre pourquoi elle se produit - et parfois, pourquoi elle ne se produit pas.

The world of digital textbooks is more than heating up. It's on fire. Amazon just launched a digital rental option for textbooks. Companies like Chegg are becoming academic hubs that can improve your education experience through more than just textbook rentals. But all of the options to use digital textbooks have cost money. And teachers as well as students simply don't have much. Until now. Boundless just launched the public beta version of its brand new site. What is Boundless? It's a way to easily turn all of the open source information that exists in the world into a simple easy-to-use digital textbook. And it's free. This is one of the most exciting announcements that came across my inbox over the past few weeks. Boundless is shaping up to truly disrupt the digital textbook industry and the newly launched tools are robust enough to do just that. But enough hyperbole and hot air, here's what you should know:

"Meet the workers making $1.20 an hour "microtasking" for billion-dollar brands like Microsoft and Amazon--right here in the US."

Investigating the financial fraud and misguided power plays that brought down the telecom industry Once the foundation of the Dow and NASDAQ, the telecom industry has eaten up more capital than any other industry in recent history and has nothing to show for it. Today, it is by far the worst culprit in the spate of financial dirty dealings that have been splashed across the business pages, and yet the rewards reaped by top executives at many of these failed or failing companies have been inversely proportionate to their decline. Broadbandits takes readers behind the scenes to get the story they won't get in the media. Investigative reporter Om Malik follows the money trail and deciphers the actions and motivations of a generation of new economy "barbarians" that brought down this once lucrative industry. This intriguing book offers an inside look into the telecom bubble, with tales and anecdotes about mavericks who turned simple light and glass fibers into veins of gold, financiers who got greedy and fleeced unsuspecting millions, clueless venture capitalists who thought they'd tapped into the mother lode, hapless entrepreneurs who believed that they were changing the world, and self-proclaimed pundits who were cheering it all on from the sidelines. Broadbandits is a compelling account of the downfall of telecom giants such as WorldCom and Global Crossing, and will show readers how many telecom upstarts and veterans alike became victims of what one chief executive aptly described as "high-yield heroin." Om Malik (New York, NY) is a Senior Writer for Red Herring who focuses on the telecommunications sector. Prior to joining Red Herring in July 2000, he was senior editor at Forbes.com. His work has also been published in newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, Brandweek, and Crain's New York Business. For a very brief while, he was a venture capitalist.

When pay TV options came out in the 1980s the consumer was buying choice - more channels and more options for their prime time or daytime or anytime entertainment. But in today's world, where the choices are infinite and spread between Facbeook, So You Think You Can Dance and Angry Birds, consumers aren't demanding choice. So in today's world what I am actually buying when I buy TV packages, be they from a pay TV provider, Hulu, Amazon on Demand, or Netflix? After thinking about TV in this way, I realize that traditional cable is no longer about choice, it's about access: we have an abundance of choice, but not necessarily what we crave. As an access provider for content, cable has the widest depth of content right now, but it also costs the most. When I thought about what I was actually buying, it shed light on cable's problems but also led to insights about Netflix, content companies and broadcasters, and also helped me as consumer to think about TV in a new way that could help me better spend my money. For example, I don't have cable and this reaffirmed that call.