Amazon’s ad-infused Kindles to be integrated with AmazonLocal daily deals

By Jeff Hughes September 15, 2011

All you bargain shoppers that snatched up Amazon’s ad-infused Kindle earlier this year for the $25 price cut may be thrilled at the e-commerce giant’s latest announcement. In a move that makes sense, Amazon has decided to pair its Groupon clone, AmazonLocal, with both the Kindle and Kindle 3G with Special Offers.

Yes, Amazon’s daily deal service will soon begin beaming local deals to customers’ Special Offers Kindles; these local deals will of course pop up on the screensaver while you’re not reading. The AmazonLocal integration will be delivered in a few weeks within a software update for the Kindle.

The new service will launch first in New York City, and eventually will expand to other cities later in the year. Special Offer Kindles will allow customers to pore through the AmazonLocal deals in the city.

You’ll be able to purchase these deals directly using your Kindle without having to fumble out a credit card, as Amazon will most likely have you’re go-to shopping card on file. Once purchased, customers just need to flash the vouchers—displayed on their Kindle or printed out—to the local merchant. The voucher can also be printed via local.amazon.com/purchases.

“We think customers are going to be thrilled with this new, convenient way to take advantage of AmazonLocal deals – you can view, purchase, and redeem the deals using only your Kindle – no computer, no printer, no hassle,” said director of Amazon Kindle, Jay Marine, in a statement.

Gotta love that synergy. Amazon is most likely thinking that this will give the Kindle a boost over competitors like the Nook this holiday. The Kindle with Special Offers is priced at $114 and $164 for the regular and 3G respectively. The integration decision may also strengthen AmazonLocal, which is now available in 44 locations, but is no Groupon yet.

Some of the offers coming out of the New York City launch include a $7 one-hour bike rental in Central Park, $59 for a month of Bikram Yoga and a $45 lunch at City Winery.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."