With seven novels and eight movies, the Harry Potter franchise is one of the most successful of all time. In fact, the Harry Potter books are the most successful series in the history of publishing.

With that in mind, it has always seemed strange that the books were not available at the most popular online bookstore of all time: Amazon. Well, that’s about to change.

That’s right, starting June 19, all seven Harry Potter books will be available to Kindle owners via Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library. According to Amazon, the company “has purchased an exclusive licence from J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore to make the addition of the addition of these titles possible.” Wonder how much that cost?

“We’re absolutely delighted to have reached this agreement with Pottermore. This is the kind of significant investment in the Kindle ecosystem that we’ll continue to make on behalf of Kindle owners,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. Well, Kindle owners who also happen to be Prime members anyway.

Sadly, you can’t actually purchase the books and own them via Amazon’s store. You can only borrow them. Which, to be honest, is kinda annoying.

Still, if you’re a Harry Potter diehard fan who’s always wanted to read the books on your Kindle (that is, via legal methods) then this deal might just be the right one for you.

Click through for the full press release from Amazon.

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With all the fanfare surrounding Apple’s iCloud and the recent debut of Google Drive, let’s not forget another player in the “cloud” story is still around and very much active: Amazon. In fact, they’ve just released a brand new desktop app to help users access all their info stored on the company’s cloud servers.

The app is available for both Mac and Windows desktops and could not be easier to use. Simply drag and drop your files onto the desktop icon for instant uploading to the cloud, then have access to them from any of your mobile devices that have a web connection. Of course, you have to actually go to Amazon’s website to do that.

The app is a good first step for Amazon but lacks many of the features found in other offerings from Google and Dropbox. Of course, Apple doesn’t even have an app at all so at least Amazon is ahead of them.

Still, with all of Amazon’s resources I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they release a revised version fothe app with more features. Plus, they really need to do something about the prices as they seem a bit high.

Keep at it Amazon. Competition is a good thing.

If you’ve wondered why eBook prices always seemed so high even though you were just buying a digital copy of a book, now we might have at least part of the answer. In a move that surprised almost nobody who follows this kind of thing, the U.S. Justice Department has today filed an antitrust lawsuit against publishers including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Apple alleging the companies conspired to fix electronic book prices.

According to the suit, the government wants publishers to let Amazon and other retailers decide what to charge customers, based on the wholesale price of the product. At the moment, publishers decide what price eBooks will be sold for.

This would, in theory, allow for more competition and see better pricing for consumers. Something, if true, most consumers would probably agree is a great idea.

What it will really mean is anyone’s guess at this point. You can bet Apple and other publishers will defend this suit with everything they have so don’t expect this to be resolved anytime soon.

One thing we’ve always supported is independent production of film, tv, comics and games. As an independently operated news site, we understand how hard it is to break through to that next level. It is also great to hear when one of The Flickcast’s supporters gets an opportunity to bring one of their artistic visions to life.

Alex Greenfield is one of those supporters. Alex is best known for being the former lead writer on WWE’s SmackDown brand as well as two TV movies, Street Warrior and Jack’s Family Adventure. Last week, Alex and his writing partner Michael K Eitelman released The Temple through Amazon Studios.

We got the chance to talk briefly with Alex and he told us about both his inspiration behind The Temple as well as a little bit of the creative process.

My dad read me “The Rats in the Walls” when I was like five, literally sitting around a campfire. Let’s agree to ignore the parenting questions that anecdote raises and skip right to the fact that I became a Lovecraft addict before I could read. It was only a matter of time before I would dip my pen in the Mythos well.

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If you’ve ver purchased anything from online retailer Zappos, it’s probably time to change your password. Why? Well, on Sunday the company confirmed that someone (or someones) breached the company’s servers and accessed personal data belonging to about 24 Million of its customers.

The company, which is owned by Amazon and mostly known for shoes, confirmed that intruders were able to gain access to sensitive data including user names, encrypted passwords, customer names, email addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of credit card numbers.

The company insisted that full credit card numbers were not compromised, but it’s probably not a bad idea to keep an eye on your next couple statements just to be on the safe side. that way, if you see something weird, you can report it and take care of the situation quickly.

The company also said in an email to customers that it had reset the passwords of all compromised accounts. The full text of the email can be read after the jump.

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When I first heard about the Amazon Kindle Fire, as a fan of Amazon and its earlier Kindle models, I was hopeful. In fact, I put down my $199.00 as soon as the company started taking orders.

Then, it arrived and with a mixture of excitement and anticipation, I opened the box and got my first real look at the Fire. Sadly, my excitement turned to disappointment as I put the Kindle Fire through its paces. Sure, it has some nice features and makes ordering content from Amazon extremely easy, but in many other ways it came up short.

In the end, even at $199.00, I decided it wasn’t for me and sent it back to Amazon for a refund. Apparently, I am not alone as reports have been coming it hat many others have been doing the same thing.

Fortunately for those still using the Fire, Amazon is set to address some of the concerns with an upcoming software update for the Fire. “In less than two weeks, we’re rolling out an over-the-air update to Kindle Fire,” Amazon spokesperson Drew Herdener told The New York Times in a recent interview.

According to Herdener, the update will improve multitouch performance on the device and will also enable a feature that allows users to edit their usage history on the tablet. That’s all well and good but it won’t address the physical problems I had with the device such as the lack of a volume control and the placement of the on/off switch which, it seems, is designed to be in exactly the wrong place no matter how you hold it.

As a fan of Amazon and their earlier Kindle devices, I’m going to keep an eye out for the next version of the Kindle Fire. Maybe 2.0 will be the magic number.

For you comic book lovers torn between Amazon’s upcoming Kindle Fire and the newly announced Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet — with all its reported Marvel comics goodness – here’s a bit of news to help fuel your debate. Or, perhaps, solve it.

ComiXology has officially announced their app, which features an array of thousands of comics from several publishers, will be included as a built-in with Amazon’s device and will ship with it at launch.

“Launching with a $199 price point makes Amazon’s Kindle Fire a great device for making comics accessible to the masses and the vibrant 7” screen is perfect for our Guided View™ reading system,” said CTO and co-Founder John Roberts.

This is good news for anyone who was worried the Nook Tablet might have the advantage over the Kindle Fire in the comic book reader competition. ComiXology has so many great comics it doesn’t seem like those who ordered a Kindle Fire, and wanted to use it to read comics, have any reason to be jealous of their Nook-using pals.

The Amazon Kindle Fire is available for pre-order now. Although, if you want one any time soon you better hurry as demand has been pretty big.

Check out the full press release from ComiXology after the break.

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It looks like Amazon has thrown down the tablet gauntlet to Apple (and others) in a big way today. During a press event in New York City, the company unveiled its $200 Kindle Fire tablet.

And before you get too skeptical and lump the device in with the recent offerings from Blackberry or HP, let’s check out the specs. The Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display and will give users access to all of Amazon’s services including: AmazonMP3, Amazon Prime, Amazon Kindle Bookstore, Amazon Instant Video and the Amazon AppStore.

It’s powered by a dual-core processor and weighs 14.6 ounces. Customers can pre-order the Kindle Fire today and it will ship in November. Not bad Amazon, not bad.

Also unveiled was a brand new version of the company’s eReader called the Kindle touch. It is $99.00 for the base model or $149 for the 3G one and has an infrared layer on top of the E-Ink display to help avoid with any interference while reading.

It also has Amazon’s EasyReach technology for turning pages by tapping the screen in specific areas. In addition, an X-Ray feature allows users to view where and when certain characters and more take place in a book. Pre-orders for the Kindle touch eReader begin today and will ship by November 21st.

Finally, Bezos announced a new non-touch Kindle for $79. It is available for shipping today.

Well, that’s a lot of info. It will be interesting to see how the Kindle Fire and it’s reasonable price competes with the iPad and its not so reasonable price. The Christmas season just got a lot more interesting.

Check out the full press release from Amazon after the jump.

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Activision announced pre-order bonuses late last week for their upcoming titles ‘Spider-Man: Edge of Time’ and ‘X-Men: Destiny’. Depending on which retailer you choose to reserve your copy (or copies) from, you’ll receive a different and unique bonus item for each game. Web-headed fans will receive a bonus in-game suit, while X-Men players will get an exclusive X-Gene to further develop their arsenal of mutant abilities.

For those pre-ordering Spider-Man from Best Buy, you’ll get the Big Time suit – based on the outfit from the comic series of the same name. Gamers who reserve via Amazon.com receive a code to unlock the alienesque black and white Future Foundation Spidey suit, and lastly anyone pre-ordering with Gamestop will receive a whopping four alternate costumes from the Identity Crisis storyline.

The bonus codes for ’X-Men: Destiny,’ on the other hand, unlock more than just a fancy change of pants. Pre-order unlocks for this title grant you access to otherwise unavailable mutant X-Genes:  from Best Buy come the powers of the unstoppable Juggernaut; Amazon offers Emma Frosts diamond-clad telepathic abilities, and codes from Gamestop will unlock the plamsa-blasting X-Gene of Havok.

Check out the videos below for exclusive footage of these bonuses in action. ‘X-Men: Destiny’ hits shelves on September 27th of this year, with ‘Spider-Man: Edge of Time’ coming shortly after on October 4th.

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At first, Hulu seemed like a great idea and many trumpeted it as a new way to watch TV programming. Now, Hulu is up for auction and looks to be in real trouble.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, bidders don’t seem to be coming out of the woodwork to buy the online network and the deadline for bidders has been extended to this Friday. At the moment, companies like Yahoo, Google and Amazon are among those looking closely at the online streaming video service owned by News Corp, Disney, Comcast and Providence Equity Partners.

However, that doesn’t mean any of those companies have actually decided to move forward with a bid. They haven’t. Still, with bids expected to be as high as $1.5 billion-$2 billion, things may not be over for Hulu just yet.

Although, even if one of the companied does bid and Hulu is sold, that doesn’t mean it wil continue in its present form. Given the current state of its business, chances are it probably won’t. In fact, I would be surprised to see Hulu in existence in another three years.

With all the ways available to be entertained and pass the time, people still like to read. In fact Amazon is betting you’ll want at least one more way to read eBooks you’ve purchased from them and have today debuted a brand new way to do it: the web-based Kindle Cloud Reader.

This new service provides users with access to their entire Kindle library using Chrome or Safari on Mac, PC, Linux and the Chromebook. Kindle Cloud Reader is also optimized for the iPad and offers a caching feature for offline reading, which is nice.

To get started, go to http://read.amazon.com and, when prompted, install the required plug-in. That’s pretty much it. I gave the service a try late last night and liked it. It’s another great way to read your Kindle content if you don’t have your ipad or Kindle handy.

Although, I still prefer the Kindle for reading or, in a pinch, the iPad Kindle App. Still, it’s nice to see Amazon continuing to innovate in this area and also potentially find ways to get around Apple’s sometimes difficult iTunes Store rules. Can’t blame them for that.

For more details, click through for the full press release.

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The online content streaming landscape just got a bit more interesting as Amazon announced late Thursday it has made a deal with NBCUniversal to provide 1,000 Universal Pictures movies to its streaming customers. The new content includes films such as Being John Malkovich, The Jetsons, Flipper, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Billy Elliott. Well, that’s quite a cross-section of content.

This new deal is in addition to the one Amazon recently made for it to offer CBS shows such as Star Trek and Cheers to its customers. All these deals for content make perfect sense if you think Amazon is about to release a tablet in the next few months.

It’s widely been speculated that said tablet would be coming out and give users access to the company’s Amazon Unbox, Amazon Mp3, Kindle, Cloud Music and Cloud Drive services. All of that and a well done tablet powered by Android could, potentially, take a bite out of Apple’s iPad dominance. We’ll see.

Check out the full press release after the jump.

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