Kindle Fire, Nook, or iPad2: Which Is Best?

The iPad, the heavyweight champ of the tablet world, has summarily knocked out every challenger it has faced since it debuted last year.

The defeated include tablets with names including Xoom, PlayBook, TouchPad, G-Slate and Streak, none of which has grabbed more than a tiny sliver of the $10-billion tablet market over which the iPad reigns.

But now a pair of new lighter-weight contenders are aiming to hit Apple Inc. where it hurts: the price tag.

Amazon.com Inc.’s $199 Kindle Fire and the $249 Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble Inc. retail for less than half the cost of the lowest-priced iPad and are undercutting the prices of nearly every brand-name tablet on the market. If the companies are successful, analysts say, they may be able to put the devices in the hands of millions who have felt that $500 was too much to spend on a tablet.

“These two companies are going to start proving that there’s a media tablet market, not just an iPad market,” said Tom Mainelli, a mobile device analyst at research firm IDC. “Now that some of these devices cost $200, it really throws it open to the mainstream.”

But the lower cost of these devices comes with a series of trade-offs. The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet have smaller screens — only 7 inches compared with the iPad’s more spacious 10 inches — and their speed and handling are more like an economy sedan than the high-performance sports car feel of the iPad. Their batteries don’t last as long as the iPad’s, they have no option for cellular connections, and the catalog of applications they support is substantially smaller than Apple’s.

It bears remembering, in fact, that the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are descended from slower electronic readers — simple devices that do little more than display the text of books that users download from an online store. In that sense, the tablets improve on earlier e-readers, adding access to the Internet and social networks and the ability to listen to music, watch online videos from Netflix and Hulu and send email.

“For users looking to simply read books, watch movies, listen to music and play the occasional game, the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are perfect candidates that will not create a big dent in their pockets,” said Walter Galan, an analyst at San Luis Obispo-based iFixit. “But for those looking for a full-fledged tablet, the iPad is probably a better choice in the long run.”

If you’re considering a tablet, then, it’s a simple cost-benefit analysis: Do you need all the fancy features and screen real estate of the more expensive iPad, or can you get by with a smaller, slightly slower tablet with a palette of more basic functions, and pocket the difference?

So if you’ve been asking the question Kindle Fire, Nook, or iPad2: Which Is Best? you now have the information to make an intelligent choice. So far, my experience is that if I was looking for a Tablet computer, I would choose the iPad2. But if I was looking for a content device for reading and video, the Amazon Kindle Fire wins hands down.

Source

You can get your own Amazon Kindle Fire right here:

Nevada is one of the areas hardest hit by the recession. But today, Amazon.com had a terrific announcement. Amazon Hires Thousands For Holiday Season.

The article published in Marketwatch tells the inside story.

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN -1.19% today announced that it is seeking to hire thousands of temporary positions at its Fernley and Las Vegas, Nevada fulfillment centers for the holiday season.

Hourly openings are available for temporary positions in Picking, Packing and Receiving/Shipping across multiple shifts. Eligible applicants must be able to stand and walk during 8-12 hour shifts and lift up to 50 pounds.

“We’re looking to hire smart and motivated people across the U.S. to help us deliver a great experience for our customers during the holiday season,” said Dave Clark, vice president of Amazon’s North American Operations.

Amazon hires thousands of temporary employees each year to manage variation in customer demand and as a way of finding high-quality full-time employees. Over the past 12 months, Amazon has converted more than 4700 temporary associates into full-time employees.

The fact that Amazon Hires Thousands For the Holiday Season is really good news for the Las Vegas economy. They can really use some good news.

Source

First impression can be summarized in one word. Wow! It feels a bit heftier than my iPad2 and is much smaller -- but don’t be deceived -- this is one great little device. Here’s my video review.

Amazon Kindle Fire: Video Unboxing and Review

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz8SU530bzA

If money is a concern and you’re choosing between the Apple iPad2 and the Amazon Kindle Fire, I’d go with the Kindle.

Don’t wait for Black Friday, order the Amazon Kindle Fire now.

The MacBook Pro MD311LL comes with iLife already installed but you may want to add iWork or MicroSoft Office right from the start. You’ll easily be able to afford these with the money you save with your purchase at Amazon.

Best Price For Apple MacBook Pro MD311LL is At Amazon

Introducing the 17-inch MacBook Pro. The state-of-the-art quad-core Intel i7 processor delivers up to 2x faster performance (over the previous generation of MacBook Pro). New Thunderbolt technology lets you connect high-performance peripherals and high-resolution displays to a single port, and transfer files at lightning speeds. And with the built-in FaceTime HD camera, you can make astonishingly crisp HD video calls.

The 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt technology.
With the revolutionary Thunderbolt technology, you’ll be able to achieve bi-directional channels with transfer speeds to peripherals like external hard drives and servers up to an amazing 10 Gbps–while also connecting to a DisplayPort-compatible high-resolution display.

As with previous models, the MacBook Pro features a precision unibody enclosure crafted from a single block of aluminum, creating a thin and light mobile computing workhorse (less than 1 inch thin and just 6.6 pounds) that’s also highly durable. It includes a 17-inch, LED-backlit glass display as well as a glass trackpad that doesn’t include a button (for larger tracking area) that features Apple’s Multi-Touch technology. And it comes standard with automatic graphics switching that provides performance when you need it and energy efficiency when you don’t. You’ll also get up to 7 hours of battery life while on the go.

This version of the 17-inch MacBook Pro (model MD311LL/A) features a second-generation 2.4 GHz Core i7 quad-core processor, 750 GB hard drive, and 4 GB of installed RAM. Other features include ultra-fast Wireless-N Wi-Fi networking, Bluetooth connectivity, an ExpressCard/34 slot, three USB 2.0 ports, and a FireWire 800 port (see full specifications below).

FaceTime HD camera built into the bezel for crisp, widescreen video chats.

The backlit keyboard–great for typing in low-light settings.

Key Features

Revolutionary Thunderbolt Technology

Developed by Intel with collaboration from Apple, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O (input/output) technology delivers an amazing 10 gigabits per second of transfer speeds in both directions. Built into the MacBook Pro, the Thunderbolt port allows you to connect to new Thunderbolt-compatible peripherals as well as existing USB and FireWire peripherals using simple adapters. You’ll be able to move data up to 20 times faster than with USB 2.0 and more than 12 times faster than with FireWire 800, and you can daisy-chain multiple high-speed devices without using a hub.

And because Thunderbolt is based on DisplayPort technology, you’ll be able to connect to a high-resolution display from the same port. Any Mini DisplayPort display plugs right into the Thunderbolt port, and you can also connect displays that use DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, or VGA connections with an existing adapter. You’ll also be able to include your display into a daisy-chained set of peripherals.

Next-Generation Quad-Core Intel Processor

This MacBook Pro is powered by a second-generation Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, which provides breakthrough digital media management, content creation, and 3D gaming capabilities. With updated Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, the latest Core i7 increases speed automatically for whatever you’re doing, dynamically accelerating performance to match your workload.

Intel’s Hyper-Threading Technology enables each core of your processor to work on two tasks at the same time, delivering the performance you need for smart multitasking. And you’ll enjoy a rich set of new features for a stunning and seamless visual experience with no additional hardware. The Core i7 processor also provides faster access to the installed RAM, with an integrated memory controller to connect fast 1333 MHz memory directly to the processor.

With new microarchitecture, the graphics processor resides on the same chip as the central processor and has direct access to the 6 MB of shared L3 cache–helping your applications run at peak performance. And an integrated video encoder enables HD video calls with FaceTime, while an efficient decoder gives you long battery life when you’re watching DVDs or iTunes movies.

Automatic Graphics Switching

The MacBook Pro offers excellent graphics flexibility with two video processors–the discrete AMD Radeon HD 6770M processor (with 1 GB of GDDR5 video memory) for heavier workloads and an integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor for better battery life on the go. When gaming or using processor-intensive applications like Aperture or Final Cut Pro, you’ll appreciate the power of the AMD Radeon HD 6770M, which lets you see more frames per second and experience better responsiveness. And the automatic graphics switching feature determines which graphics processor an application needs and switches instantly between the processors.

Buttonless Multi-Touch Trackpad

With no button on the glass trackpad, there’s more room to track and click–left, right, center, and everywhere in between. Without a separate button, the trackpad gives your hands plenty of room to move on the large, silky glass surface. It also incorporates Multi-Touch gestures–including swipe, pinch, rotate, and four-finger swipe. And it also now supports inertial scrolling, an intuitive way to scroll through large photo libraries, lengthy documents and long web sites.

Key Specifications

17-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with edge-to-edge, uninterrupted glass (1920 x 1200-pixel resolution).
2.4 GHz Intel Core i7 quad-core processor (“Sandy Bridge”) with 6 MB shared L3 cache for excellent multitasking.
Dual graphics processors with automatic switching between AMD Radeon HD 6770M (with 1 GB of GDDR5 video memory) for demanding applications and integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 (with 384 MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory) for power savings.
750 GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 RPM)
4 GB installed RAM (1333 MHz DDR3; supports up to 8 GB)
8x slot-loading SuperDrive with double-layer DVD support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Built-in FaceTime HD camera for video chatting
Wi-Fi wireless networking (based on 802.11n specification; 802.11a/b/g compatible)
Gigabit Ethernet wired networking (10/100/1000)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) for connecting with peripherals such as keyboards, mice and cell phones
Three USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port
ExpressCard/34 slot
Thunderbolt port with native Mini DisplayPort output plus support for DVI, VGA, dual-link DVI, and HDMI (requires adapters, sold separately)
Multi-Touch trackpad for precise cursor control with support for inertial scrolling, pinch, rotate, swipe, three-finger swipe, four-finger swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities
Full-size backlit keyboard
Stereo speakers with subwoofers
Dimensions: 15.47 x 10.51 x 0.98 inches (WxDxH)
Weight: 6.6 pounds
Up to 7 hours of battery life
Meets Energy Star 5.0 requirements
Rated EPEAT Gold
What’s in the Box

17-inch MacBook Pro, display cleaning cloth, 85W MagSafe Power Adapter, AC wall plug, power cord, software DVDs, printed and electronic documentation

Limited Warranty And Service

The MacBook Pro comes with 90 days of free telephone support and a 1-year limited warranty, which can be extended to 3 years with the AppleCare Protection Plan.

Installed Software

At the heart of every MacBook Pro–and every Mac–is OS X Lion, an operating system that’s both easy to use and incredibly powerful. It’s built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and engineered to take full advantage of the technologies in every new Mac. So everything works together perfectly. And features like Multi-Touch gestures and Mission Control let you interact with your computer in amazing and intuitive new ways.

OS X Lion (includes Mail, Address Book, iCal, the Mac App Store, iTunes, Safari, Time Machine, FaceTime, Photo Booth, Mission Control, Launchpad, AirDrop, Resume, Auto Save, Versions, Quick Look, Spotlight, QuickTime, and more)
iLife helps you do more with photos, movies, and music than you ever thought possible. In iPhoto, you can browse, edit, and share your photos in stunning new full-screen views. Create epic Hollywood-style movie trailers from your home video in iMovie. And GarageBand gives you everything you need to make a great-sounding song–including tools for keeping your song in perfect rhythm and guitar and piano lessons.

iLife (includes iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand)

AppleCare Protection Plan

Because Apple makes the hardware, the operating system, and many applications, the Mac is a truly integrated system. And only the AppleCare Protection Plan gives you one-stop service and support from Apple experts, so most issues can be resolved in a single call. Extend the complimentary service and support on your Mac to 3 years from the original Mac purchase date with the AppleCare Protection Plan. You get direct telephone access to Apple experts for technical questions, and you get global repair coverage–including both parts and labor–for your Mac and select Apple peripherals.

The biggest shock is that you can find even lower prices on Amazon than at the local Apple store. Right now, you can save additional money by shopping at Amazon. But right now, please be aware that even though the Best Price For Apple MacBook Pro MD311LL is At Amazon, supplies are seriously limited.

As of the day of this post, there were only 2 machines in stock. And with Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming, your Apple MacBook Pro MD311LL/A 17-Inch Laptop may not be in stock. You will want to hurry.

For the lowest price for the Apple MacBook Pro MD311LL, click the picture link to the right.

Ipad or Kindler Fire?

As thoroughly presented in All Things Digital early users seem to want the hottest android-based tablet of Amazon more than Apple’s bestselling iPad.

iPad Buyers May Delay Orders Because of Amazon’s Newest Kindle Tablet

With a week to go before its Nov. 16 launch, Amazon’s forthcoming Kindle Fire is driving a lot of preorder demand — more than even Apple’s iPad.

A new survey conducted by ChangeWave and RBC Capital Markets found that five percent of 2,600 respondents had either already preordered or were “very likely” to buy the Fire, exceeding the four percent who said in 2010 that they were very likely to buy the iPad. Another 12 percent said they were “somewhat likely” to purchase the Fire, again surpassing the nine percent who said the same thing of the original iPad prior to its launch.

And of the five percent of “very likely” buyers, 26 percent said they would delay their iPad purchase to buy the Fire.

If those metrics are surprising, they really shouldn’t be. The Fire’s low price, relative to the iPad, is obviously a major attraction — $199 to the iPad’s $499. And — thanks to the iPad — consumers are now familiar enough with the tablet category to be comfortable dropping $199 on the Fire.

That said, the pent-up Kindle Fire demand on display in this survey suggests that Apple may finally have a true tablet rival with which to battle, as RBC analyst Mike Abramsky observes:

“Tablet contenders (Xoom, Galaxy Tab, PlayBook, etc.) have failed to gain appreciable traction against iPad’s estimated 67 percent share, and iPad 2 should be a popular holiday purchase,” he writes. “However, strong early Fire uptake seems likely, raising speculation Apple now faces a real tablet contender.”

Indeed, iPad buyers may delay orders because of Amazon’s newest Kindle tablet. Nevertheless, while these findings might imply a significant bite in Apple’s stable share in the PC tablet market, it appears that Apple stays unfazed by the Fire’s arrival. Apple believes that the entry of another tablet that is highly customized and readily integrated into Amazon’s services will most likely break the platform up even more, and this would work to Apple’s advantage by attracting more users to the reliability of its iOS ecosystem.

Amazon Now Orders 5 Million More Units of Kindle Fire

As emphasized in Tech Crunch techcrunch , Amazon further boosts Kindle Fire supply up to five million units.

Amazon Now Orders 5 Million More Units of Kindle Fire

Emboldened by solid pre-order numbers for their new Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon has bumped its order numbers from manufacturers yet again, this time to a round five million units by year’s end. Presumably they are looking to fulfill as many orders as possible before the all-important holiday rush.

The change isn’t anything like an order of magnitude, as even early reports had Amazon ordering “millions” of screens, and leaked sales estimates were for four million units sold before 2011 ends. Considering the relative unpopularity of even the highest-profile Android tablets preceding it, these numbers appeared optimistic at first; now they appear to have been conservative.

It’s a drop in the bucket compared with iPad sales, but the Amazon board is probably breathing a collective sigh of relief, having spent a huge sum of money developing the device. The Fire will likely be the second-place tablet for some time at this rate, which, when first place belongs to one of the best-selling gadgets of all time, isn’t a bad place to be.

The tablet ships on the 15th (next Tuesday), and is of course still available for pre-order. We’ll have a full review up after we get our hands on a device.

Reports show that Amazon originally ordered approximately 3.5 million units of its Kindle Fire tablet; but the number was changed to four million during the third quarter. And to date, Amazon now orders 5 million more units of Kindle Fire as the CEO and founder of the online retailer behemoth, Jeff Bezos, proves what it claimed a month ago that its company is “increasing capacity and building millions more than we’d already planned.”

Steve Bezos Amazon CEO

As thoroughly presented in Ibtimes there are a lot of ways in which Bezos manoeuvred his website towards excellence.

Jeff Bezos Brings Amazon To the Summit of Digital Retailing

Amazon is red hot. The company’s stock is surging on the same day Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled its first tablet — the Kindle Fire — at an event in New York.

But it’s not just the Kindle Fire hardware, which Amazon will sell at $199, that has both the consumer tech world and investors buzzing over Amazon, sending the company’s stock price up almost five percent on Wednesday.

Some have said Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has become one of the most competitive business models ever built.

It all began with a dream by Bezos, who founded the company in the 1990s. Less than two decades later, Bezos has arguably become the hottest tech CEO in the world, while pushing the online retailer to greater and greater heights.

Here are 10 reasons the 47-year-old Bezos, a Princeton graduate who was named Time magazine Person of the Year in 1999, is a hot tech CEO:

1) Bezos created with Amazon a smart, customer service online retail system that knows its customers better than most brick and mortar retailers known their customers from face-to-face interaction and database collection. That’s why Amazon has evolved with arguably the most competitive retail business model ever built. He didn’t just launch a retailer — he launched an entire new way of selling and interacting with customers. Bezos founded the company in 1994, when most people didn’t use email, yet he knew the Internet must become more than a point-and-click fulfillment tool for retailing.

2) He is trying to launch space tourism as a business through Blue Origin, a company focused on building a spacecraft that takes paying individuals for a trip into space. Although Bezos’ space tourism dream was dealt a setback last week after a spacecraft funded by the Amazon chief was lost during a recent test, his dream still lives.

“Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we’re signed up for this to be hard, and the Blue Origin team is doing an outstanding job,” Bezos wrote. “We’re already working on our next development vehicle.” Bezos founded the human spaceflight start up company in 2004.

3) Bezos filed a patent this year for a new smartphone protection product — tiny airbags that will be deployed from a phone if a built in-accelerometer detects the unit is falling. Most everybody that owns a smartphone has had a moment of panic when the drop it — but Bezos is attempting to do something about the problem, inventing an mini-airbag system which includes a laser or radar to determine distance between the ground and the phone.

4) He is responsible for the Kindle, Amazon’s industry-leading ereader, and he effectively shaped digital book publishing the way Jobs shaped digital music downloads. Go most anywhere, and look around. You will likely see a Kindle nearby. Perhaps even a few. They are everywhere, but it’s not just the hardware that makes Bezos and Amazon special. Kindle Direct Publishing is now the leading global tool for self-publishing books and other materials.

5) Bezos and Amazon are launching a tablet to compete with Apple’s iPad. The Amazon Fire tablet will likely run on Google’s Android operating system, developed with a special Amazon touch. While HP couldn’t compete against the iPad many industry observers think Bezos and Amazon can. The company has announced what it hopes will be a pricing sweet spot — $199. Bezos, after all, is smart enough to sell the hardware initially at a loss to grab customers for the company’s content and make sure the Fire tablet wins.

6) He can write a business plan from the passenger seat of a moving Chevy Blazer — and he did for Amazon in 1994 while his wife, Mackenzie, drove from Texas to Seattle — and run a new business from home, as he did with Amazon. He later coded the Web site himself, getting some 300 friends and acquaintances to test it out before launch.

7) Bezos understands that technology finds its highest mark when it creates affordability and useability for mass consumers. He set out to create “the world’s most customer-centric company” by creating one place that had everything, but also knows its customer. He also challenged the company to yield the best prices, and now Amazon has a decided competitive advantage, not just among traditional products like books, but also in its signature electronic devices like the Kindle and soon to be tablet.

For instance, when Apple launched its iPad tablet last year, threatening to take market share from Kindle — Bezos and company moved fast to slash Kindle pricing and get new models into the pipeline.

He single-handily changed publishing. Once upon a time, self-publishing was a losing proposition for 99 percent of all authors. Most couldn’t get bookstore distribution and they had to risk money on printing books that likely wouldn’t sell just to get a work in print. Now, Kindle Direct Publishing has leveled that playing field, as anyone can upload a book for free, price it, and start selling. Already two self-published authors have sold more than one million books through Kindle, and thousands of others are selling books every day without a publisher.

9) Bezos can stand his ground when he has a conviction and a vision. For instance when Wall Street pressured the company approaching the time of the dot com bubble bust in the late 1990s to quickly reach profitability, Bezos was undaunted. So while some argued that he as the company’s leader was burning up cash too fast to get-big-fast instead of focusing on profitability, he didn’t listen. “We’re going to be unprofitable for a long time,” Bezos told Inc. magazine in 1997. “And that’s our strategy.

Incidentally, profitabiilty is not an issue for Amazon any longer.

10) He’s a risk-taker. Most any entrepreneur is a risk taker at one level or another. But it’s not just that Bezos walked off a job on Wall Street to start Amazon when the Internet was still in its infancy. It’s that Bezos hasn’t let up since, founding a space tourism company, and converting Amazon from the world’s largest online retailer into what is soon to be recognized as one of the world’s leading tech companies. Bezos isn’t afraid to place the big bet, and he’s not afraid to place more than one big bet at a time.

With more than $ 34 billion sales and almost 35, 000 employees, there’s no wonder that the Amazon CEO and founder now becomes one of the most influential people in e-commerce. Jeff Bezos brings Amazon to the summit of digital retailing as the company becomes the largest internet retailer in the US, with some branches operating well in Europe and Asia.

As clearly seen in Csmonitor Amazon nominates its best books for 2011 with The Art of Fielding as the number one.

Amazon Reveals the 2011 Best Books of the Year For Black Friday

It’s a virtually impossible task, but the little elves at Amazon have done it again – compile a list of the Best Books of 2011. Their list includes works by bestselling veterans, award-winning authors, and debut novelists alike, spanning the gamut of genres from literary fiction to young adult to thriller. Your best bet for a holiday gift or the perfect book to curl up with on a winter evening? Start here, with Amazon’s Top 10 Best Books of 2011.

1. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Sure, it’s about baseball, but like Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball,” it’s about a lot more than baseball. Harbach’s fiction debut, The Art of Fielding centers on a single baseball error that sets into motion a series of events – an accidental affair, a derailed academic plan, a ruined marriage – that explore how failure can change the course of our lives.

2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

It’s no wonder he’s been nominated for countless literary awards. Monitor reviewer Kevin Hartnett calls 1Q84 Murakami’s “most ambitious novel yet – an unstoppably readable, deeply moving love story that cements Murakami’s reputation as a uniquely compassionate and imaginative novelist who’s among the leading voices of his global generation.”

3. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes

A Marine lieutenant and platoon leader in Vietnam, Marlantes (the author behind the bestselling “Matterhorn”) knows firsthand the horror and exhilaration of battle. He uses that experience to give an unflinchingly honest account of war and grapples with the complex moral questions involved in armed conflict.

4. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larsen

In his latest work of nonfiction, the bestselling author behind “The Devil in the White City” paints a picture of life among the social and political elite in Berlin as Hitler ascends to become chancellor. Monitor reviewer Erik Spanberg calls it “a disturbing but highly compelling account of the life of the American ambassador to Germany and his family during Hitler’s rise to power.”

5. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Eugenides’ third novel and his first after the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex,” “The Marriage Plot” follows the lives of three college seniors at Brown in the 1980s as their lives form a sort of literary love triangle like that of the 19th-century love stories the narrator studies.Writes Monitor critic Yvonne Zipp, “[S]peaking as a lover of 19th-century novels, it’s impossible not to be charmed by Eugenides’s defense” of the genre.

6. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

This young adult novel by National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor tells the story of 17-year-old art student Kalou whose demonic parents send her on strange errands, one of which changes her life. With such an irresistible opening line as this – “Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.” – this just might be the next young adult fantasy/reality hit.

7. Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

“As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me.” So begins Christine’s story, a thriller about identity that is as suspenseful and chilling as it is profound.

8. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

“Over the course of roughly 30 years, Jobs transformed the way people create and consume entertainment and information while conjuring a cult of personality as the turtleneck-wearing oracle from Apple,” writes Monitor reviewer Erik Spanberg. Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” is “a nuanced, balanced portrait that is sure to become mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in big business and popular culture.”

9. Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff

“Shangri-La” tells the WWII adventure story of three Americans who survive a plane crash and struggle to survive in the mountainous jungle of Dutch New Guinea among enemy Japanese and primitive natives. They’re rescued in a daring mission carried out by Filipino-American paratroopers.

10. The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

In her extraordinary debut, Croatian native Obreht tells the story of a young doctor seeking answers about her grandfather’s death. “While her novel has a modern frame, the heart, meat, and sinew of the novel are the tales a grandfather tells his granddaughter,” writes the Monitor’s Yvonne Zipp. “Obreht uses the tales to create a climate of wonder and horror right out of a fairy tale.”

With the help of the online retailer giant’s editors, Amazon reveals the 2011 best books of the year for Black Friday. The editors apparently spent considerable time in reading, gathering, deliberating, and selecting the bests; finally trimming the list down to ten.

How many of these books have YOU read? And if you’ve read them already, please share your comments below.

Amazon Makes Money On Kindle Fire Online Merchandise Sales

As thoroughly revealed in Isuppli Amazon seems to be pushing its new Kindle tablet at a considerably low profit margin in order to prop up its online product sales.

Amazon Makes Money on Kindle Fire Online Merchandise Sales

An IHS analysis reveals Amazon’s business model for its new Kindle Fire tablet, with the company willing to settle for a razor-thin margin on sales of devices and digital content in order to achieve the larger goal of promoting merchandize sales at its online store.
A preliminary virtual estimate conducted by the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service places Kindle Fire’s bill of materials (BOM) cost at $191.65. With the addition of manufacturing expenses, the total cost to produce the Kindle Fire rises to $209.63.

When further costs outside of materials and manufacturing are added in—and the $199 price of the tablet is factored along with the expected sales of digital content per device—Amazon is likely to generate a marginal profit of $10 on each Kindle Fire sold.

However, the real benefit of the Kindle Fire to Amazon will not be in selling hardware or digital content. Rather, the Kindle Fire, and the content demand it stimulates, will serve to promote sales of the kinds of physical goods that comprise the majority of Amazon’s business. Amazon doesn’t make a substantial profit on sales of Kindle hardware and content such as e-books and music. Instead, the Seattle-based online-retail giant generates its profits on sales of shoes, diapers, and every other kind of physical product imaginable. Similar to Walmart and other large brick-and-motor retailers, Amazon’s content business is designed to lure in consumers to buy such everyday goods as well as other money-making items.

The importance of this strategy cannot be underestimated. So far, no retailer has managed to create an umbilical link between digital content and a more conventional retail environment. With Kindle, Amazon has created the most convincing attempt at this yet, and it is doing so by using established retail tactics: deploying content to get shoppers in the door, and then selling them all sorts of other goods. This is exactly how Walmart, Target and others use a similar weapon—in their case, DVDs. If doing this means that Amazon must take a loss on the sales of digital content and tablet hardware, it will be well worth it in the end.

This business model is unique to Amazon. No other tablet brand or e-book reader operates such a broad retail service, which generated $34 billion in revenue in 2010. Conversely no other retailer can offer a tablet specifically designed to promote sales of its goods.

With its use of the Android operating system, the Kindle Fire is a multifunction device. Therefore, while its main use is as a color e-book reader, it also has a browser for surfing the Web and the capability to load apps. Such capabilities put the Kindle Fire in the tablet category—although it is more a “super e-book reader” than a low-cost tablet.

This is a critical difference in the perception of the customer and in setting their expectations. While some say the super e-book reader approach of the Kindle Fire means it falls short of the iPad’s capabilities, IHS believes it actually represents an enhancement of the e-book reader, which will serve to expand both the e-book reader and tablet markets. Because of this, IHS believes the Kindle Fire will be a successful product.

With its lower pricing than the iPad, and its positioning as a super eReader, the Kindle Fire may serve in fact to expand the tablet market beyond current expectations. As such, the Kindle Fire potentially could become the No. 2 selling tablet after the iPad.

The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet likely leverages design elements and component selections from the Playbook tablet from Research in Motion Ltd. Both the Kindle Fire and the PlayBook are manufactured by Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc. Because Quanta engages in product design, it likely is repurposing much of the expertise it gained from developing the PlayBook for use in the Kindle Fire.

The preliminary virtual teardown of the Kindle Fire estimates that display/touch screen is the most expensive subsystem of the device, at $87.00.

The applications processor in the Kindle Fire likely a dual core device, priced at $15.00.
The IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Team plans to conduct a complete physical teardown of the Kindle Fire when the product begins shipping.

Without a doubt, the online retailer giant appears to be flipping its business strategy onto its head as Amazon makes money on Kindle Fire online merchandise sales rather than the sales generated from the device itself. With the Fire’s extraordinary price point, Amazon embodies, at the moment, the most believable threat to the ever-dominating Apple.

As further emphasized in Fastcompany, Amazon is obviously unafraid despite the millions of dollars lost in producing its Kindle Fire.

The Lowest Price For An Apple iPad2 Is At Amazon

I’ve ordered Apple iPad2 several times. Each time I ordered it from Apple and had to wait for it to ship from China. So Apple charged me sales tax on each item and I had to wait for it to be delivered. But Amazon’s multiple vendors can deliver an iPad2 much faster than Apple can -- and at a lower cost.

You may be wondering if you are losing anything by not buying it at the Apple Store. Well, you are. You’re missing the crush of the crowds, waiting on line, and frequently finding the model you want is not available. I’ve learned that when I walk into an Apple Store for an iPad2, I ask “what’s in stock?” And I have to settle for what they have.

But if you go to Amazon to order your iPad2, you’ll be pleasantly delighted to discover that not only to you get the lowest price, but you save on tax as well.

I just priced an Apple iPad2 with 16 gig of memory and wireless internet (perfect if you’re going to give a gift) and it started at $499 at the Apple store. But by the time you finish with tax, I found The Lowest Price For An Apple iPad2 Is At Amazon.

Check out the commercial Apple released for the iPad2.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_d6_gbb90I

This is precisely the reason many retail stores are frustrated with Amazon. Obviously, the iPad2 is going to be one of the most highly desired Christmas gifts this year. And when you realize that The Lowest Price For An Apple iPad2 is At Amazon, you may want to place your order there.

Here’s a shortcut link to checkout which model you want.