Nokia Lumia 900 Tops Amazon's Best-Selling AT&T Phone Chart

Aside from the fact that the Nokia Lumia 900 is already on back-order with Amazon Wireless -- the phone officially went on pre-order on March 30 with an in-store availability date announced for April 8 -- it appears that it is doing quite well.

As you can see in the image above (and at the source link below), we not only have one, but two Nokia Lumia 900 phones on the top spots of Amazon's best-selling AT&T devices. Both the black and cyan variants rule the list and this is just three days after the official pre-orders received the green light. Furthermore, Amazon's list of best-selling cell phones with service plans features the two Lumia 900 phones at five and seven. This is great news for both Microsoft and Nokia fans in the U.S.

Google to Enter Tablet Market With 7-Incher To Challenge Amazon?

A recent report suggests the search giant may release a 7-inch tablet later on this year, a device that would compete (size and price-wise) in the same class as Amazon's Kindle Fire. Analysts at Display Search claim that Google's potential tablet will feature a 7-inch display, 1280 x 800 resolution and should enter production in April, with 1.5 million planned for initial production. It is also expected that the tablet will run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and will be priced around $199.

Now, analysts have been proven wrong before but, given the fact that Mountain View already has a Nexus smartphone line-up, it would be normal to follow-up with "pure Android" tablets. Would you pick one up?

Barnes & Noble To Take On Amazon (Again) With A New 8GB Nook Tablet

Barnes & Noble seemed pleasantly surprised when they announced their Nook Tablet “exceeded expectations” over the holidays, but their 70% year-over-year jump in device sales paled in comparison to rival Amazon’s 177%.
That their flagship Nook Tablet cost a full $50 more than the Kindle Fire certainly didn’t help, but that should change soon — according to a document obtained by The Verge, Barnes & Noble will release a new 8GB version of the Nook Tablet on February 22.
While the original Nook Tablet sported 16GB of onboard memory, the new version will feature the same amount as the bestselling Kindle Fire. A decrease in memory capacity also signals a corresponding dip for the price tag, which means that BN is looking to take Amazon on at their own game. It’s a smart, if possibly-overdue move for BN — Amazon has already been playing up their price advantage with a national marketing campaign, and while it targets the iPad specifically, the message still applies to BN’s slightly pricier tablet.
Still, I wouldn’t expect the price break to be a panacea for the book retailer. If the new model Nook retails at or around the $199 price point, purchasing decisions may well come down to the strength of the ecosystem behind the device, an arena where Amazon has the edge. The Kindle Fire isn’t so much a tablet is it as a portal to the rest of Amazon’s media ecosystem, and the included Amazon Prime trial grants access to faster shipping in addition to streaming video content.
That’s not to say that the Nook Tablet is a slouch — John considers it a better device for handling content and media on the device itself — but BN will have their work cut out for them regardless.
While Amazon and BN continue to slug it out for the low-cost tablet crown, they should also be mindful of their flanks. With devices like the 7-inch Tegra-powered Asus MeMo tablet barreling down the pipeline, the bar for device performance may shift in a way that Amazon and BN aren’t prepared to compete with yet.

Is Amazon Web Services’ ‘SWF’ A New Workflow Manager?

It looks like Amazon Web Services may be launching a new workflow manager called SWF. First spotted by TechCrunch reader Michael Hood, SWF is listed as a service under AWS’ Free Usage Tier. Unfortunately, clicking on SWF takes you to a ’404′ page.
Upon further digging, it looks like SWF stands for ‘Amazon Simple Workflow Service.’ It basically starts, runs, and retains workflow executions, as well as schedules tasks, adds markers, receives signals, and starts timers for those workflow executions. According to the information listed, with the free usage tier, “1,000 Amazon SWF executions can be initiated for free. A total of 10,000 activity tasks, signals, timers and markers and 30,000 workflow-days can also be used for free.”
Amazon’s free usage tier allows users to run a free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance for a year, and use Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and AWS data transfer for free as well. AWS’s free usage tier can be used to run an application in the cloud, including launching new applications, testing existing applications in the cloud, or more. SWF would be included for free in this package.
Obviously, with so little information, it’s hard to determine the exact details of what SWF does or who it will compete with at this point, but it appears to be new. We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment and will update when we hear back.
Update: Amazon has taken all mentions of SWF off of the AWS Free Usage Tier Site; and has yet to comment.
We’ve embedded screenshots below: