Amazon's Game Changer

Ok, I have to admit I am impressed.

Amazon introduced a real game changer called Amazon Prime Music. If you have an Amazon Prime account, the promise is simple : about 1, 000, 000 songs you can listen to for free. As in free beer. As in ad-free. The kicker : you can download the music to your smartphone or tablet to listen to it offline (for when you have no internet connection).

There are, of course, some restrictions : four devices total per Prime account. Only one can stream or download at a time. If you try to stream from two devices using one account, Amazon simply asks what device you want to cut off.

This would be fantastic - one could almost say nearly perfect - for listening to music... except for the pathetically small data caps we have here in Dillingham. If we didn't have caps here, I would probably have already filled up the memory in my iPhone with songs I want to hear.

Even so... Apple is in real trouble here. They are going to have to come up with something to counter. I am thinking an iCloud subscription service for backup / data storage / music would flatten Amazon. I guess we will have to wait and see what the future holds.

Amazon This!

Well, as you may know by now there are only two ways to get in or out of Dillingham. One is by boat, and the other by airplane. Necessarily, this means anything you want to ship here - like items from Amazon - have to arrive in like fashion. I have noticed recently that Amazon is becoming more and more selective about what they will, or perhaps more importantly WILL NOT ship to Alaska. 

At first I understood this, because the US Postal Service is the ONLY way any package gets to Dillingham. It stands to reason if the USPS gets uptight about shipping things like explosives, firearms, or alcohol then retailers who sell those goods will not be able to get them to Dillingham. Again, this is perfectly understandable. I have no beef with the retailers, because the USPS sets the rules.

But this :

I mean, what the hell Amazon? Why in the world can't you ship me a friggin' dust mop? Look, there is no post office restriction against mailing dust mops. I checked. It's not made of lead, so it won't cost $100 to ship it. If it is a matter of shipping costs, I would pay a little more for a Prime account and get it here.

It's not just this item. More and more I am finding the goofiest stuff is now verboten for us at Amazon. In fact, I am pretty sure I could get a lead brick shipped here by Amazon. Sure enough. I just checked. I can get a lead brick shipped here - FOR FREE!

So in light of this new information, Amazon, I am again inspired to ask you : what the hell?!