Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been one heck of a week for e-readers, with a new $139 touchscreen Nook in town and a $129 finger-friendly Kobo as well. What’s Amazon going to do about the newfound competition? Simply lower the price of its best-selling Kindle 3G to $164. Well, perhaps “lower” isn’t quite the right word, because you’ll simply be paying by different means: the new Kindle 3G with Special Offers will be the company’s second e-reader to feature built-in advertising. If you’re shy on cash, though, we suppose viewing a few ads is a small price to pay for cheaper Whispernet. PR after the break.

Continue reading Kindle 3G gets ad-supported $164 version, basically sells your eyeballs for a $25 discount

Kindle 3G gets ad-supported $164 version, basically sells your eyeballs for a $25 discount originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon will sell you an ad-supported Kindle for $114

Can’t afford a Kindle? Amazon will knock $25 off the price of the Wi-Fi model if you can stomach compulsory ads.

The new “Kindle with Special Offers” costs $114. In exchange for the price cut, Amazon will replace screensavers with ads, and put banners on the home page. The ads will not show up when you’re reading a book.

The initial run of screensaver ads will be sponsored by Buick, Procter & Gamble, Visa, and Chase, and Amazon will also drop its own special offers into the mix. From the examples, Amazon’s offers look pretty good. As for the third-party ads, they will be presented to the public for review before being used as screensavers. This will be done via an upcoming app called AdMash, which will show prospective ads to users and allow them to vote on which ones will make it to the front page.

It’s a curious move, and devilishly clever. It puts static ads onto the screens of potentially millions of Kindle’s when they’re not in use, where they can be seen by any passerby. Even the AdMash app is really a way of showing more ads to those who use it to vote. Amazon, along with its partners, is clearly getting its money’s worth.

And what of the buyers? It’s a curious group of consumers that wants a Kindle enough to pay $114, but can’t spring for $25 more to remove the ads. How are they going to buy books? And is it really worth turning your ebook reader into a mobile billboard for the price of a dinner? After all, the ads will haunt you for the life of the device. And if you are trying to save money, then its likely you’ll be hanging on to it for a long while.

There’s another downside, too. One of the greatest things about the Kindle is that you can read any old junk and nobody will know. All they see is the standard screensaver, when you’re really reading the collected works of Danielle Steel. Now all kinds of embarrassing spam could show up there. Still, I guess anything’s better than that godawful Emily Dickinson screensaver.

Kindle with Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers [Amazon]

See Also:

• Kindle Can Now Buy, Download Audio Books Over Wi-Fi
• Read (Some of) Your Own Books on Kindle for iPad
• Amazon Launches Kindle Singles, Saves Long-Form Journalism …

Here’s a scenario: what if we told you that your next Kindle could be had for $25 less than retail? What if we told you it came from the rear of a nondescript white van? Or what if we told you that you’d first need to sign up for 842 email marketing scams? Thankfully, none of those scenarios are ones we’re looking to tell you about. Instead, we’re here to introduce you to the world’s first ad-supported Kindle, going on sale within Target and Best Buy locations for $114. That represents a gentle $25 savings compared to the price of today’s cheapest Kindle, but those 2500 pennies don’t come free — you’ll be asked to endure “advertisements on the bottom of the device’s home page and on its screen savers.” Furthermore, it sets a new precedent in the gadget arena that could very well carry over to ad-discounted tablets, netbooks, PMPs, and who knows what else. At this point, Buick, Olay and Visa will be advertising, and we get the impression that said list will bloom in due time. It’s hard to say just how intrusive they’ll be, but Kindle director Jay Marine seems to think that “customers are going to love it.”

We aren’t so sure. While it’s crystal clear that the general populace adores coupon cutting, it seems problematic to us to ship a pair of identical products that cost within $25 of one another and expect Joe Sixpack to grok the difference. In fact, we’re guessing that this will inevitably lead to consumer complaints from those who can’t figure out why their “on sale Kindle” isn’t nearly as enjoyable to read as “Bob’s Kindle… that he found during a sale.” At any rate, a demo of the new device displayed a screen saver deal “where customers would pay $10 for a $20 gift card to Amazon,” and while no ads will appear in e-books, there’s still “a clear advertisement” along the bottom of the home screen. All that said, here’s the key feature that Amazon’s seemingly overlooking: an option in the software to pay back the $25 a customer skimped on to do away with the ads on their ad-supported e-reader. Solves the buyer’s remorse problem, at least.

Update: And it’s official — PR’s after the break!

Continue reading Ad-supported Kindle to ship May 3rd: saves $25, includes lot of enticement

Ad-supported Kindle to ship May 3rd: saves $25, includes lot of enticement originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Search for "tilt" on the iPhone version of Google, and you get a tilted search results page. Screenshot: Michael Calore/Wired.com

If you do a search for the word “tilt” on Google, and you’re using an iPhone, you get a nifty Easter egg.

The search results screen that Google shows you is tilted a few degrees off perpendicular, as shown in the screenshot here.

Funny, right?

It only works with the mobile version of Google, and may not work with every phone (we got the trick working with an iPhone and a Motorola Defy, but not a Samsung Nexus S).

But there’s a hidden joke inside this Easter egg. For at least some searches, the results page includes a sponsored ad for AT&T’s Tilt — a smartphone that launched about 4 years ago. If you click on the ad, you get taken to an AT&T page that states “The AT&T Tilt(TM) you’re searching for is no longer available.” Instead, it shows you couple of outdated feature phones and a refurbished 3G modem.

That’s right: AT&T is paying Google when people click on ads for a phone it doesn’t sell any more.

If you weren’t already laughing at AT&T? You will.

Update 4:30pm Pacific: Google confirms that this is an actual, paid advertisement. The ad itself no longer seems to be appearing in search results.

If Amazon were to venture beyond the web in favor of a more tangible medium to peddle its wares, it might consider something like Telepresence Tech’s new telepresence kiosk for the job. We got a surprise demo of the system at a Samsung event today and came away intrigued. The technology renders 2D images that float and rotate in space, giving retailers a way to let customers see their products as if they were actually there, and at a fraction of the cost — about $1.50 per hour — of paying meatbags to man a traditional brick-and-mortar store. A separate touchscreen lets shoppers scroll through available items, speak face to virtual face with customer service, and make purchases. Check the gallery to see more of what our retail future looks like.

TelePresence Tech kiosk to bring virtual shopping to a mall near you, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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