Amazon Kindle Price Reduced to $359, Now Back In Stock

From Gizmodo -

The Kindle is back in stock and it's now available for a reduced price, dropping from $399 to $359.


Amazon website here.

Laptop Pillows Are Expensively Cool For Your Thigh Hairs

From Gizmodo -

Laptop pillows from Intelligent Forms are pillows soft enough to keep on your lap for an extended period. They come in three flavors, Log, Button and Terrapin and will cost $160 US/CDN when released.

Colombia to buy 65,000 OLPC Laptops

Cambridge, Mass., May 29, 2008 - One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization focused on providing educational tools to help children in developing countries "learn learning," announced today that the State of Caldas, Colombia, has signed a purchase agreement for 65,000 XO laptop computers to be distributed to children in one of the country's most important coffee-growing regions.

Upon signing the purchase order, Caldas's Governor Mario Aristizabal, said, "My government and our State legislators are fully committed to giving each and every child of primary school age the same opportunity to access knowledge as the most privileged children in New York, Berlin or Tokyo. The One Laptop per Child program is the right vehicle to reach that goal and its potential socio-economic impact cannot be under-emphasized."

"We are very pleased that Colombia has committed to working with us to in order to bring a modern education to their primary school children," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. "OLPC is now gaining good traction in signing up countries to undertake significant deployments."

The first wave of 15,000 units to be deployed later in 2008 will be in Caldas's smaller towns and rural areas. For the capital Manizales, a separate agreement is being discussed so that total coverage of the State is achieved. Governor Aristizabal is spearheading a local team that will provide support and implementation capabilities to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project. The remaining 50,000 units will be deployed in 2008 and 2009.

HTC Dream Android Phone Shown Off at Google Conference

MS on track to release Win 7 multi-touch SDK in Oct

From Engadget -

Microsoft is reportedly on track to release its multi-touch SDK at its Professional Developers' Conference in October. Details on the SDK are still sketch. However, with the company only going so far as to say that its session at PDC will "highlight the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explain how you can leverage them in your applications."

June 29 Might Be Like Y2K for U.S. Airlines

From Gizmodo -

The U.S. airline industry is switching flight plans for all domestic flights over to the international standard on June 29. So you might want to be prepared just in case the switchover ends up with some Y2K-effect and screws up flight schedules.

The Inkjet Refill Racket

Came across an old but rather informative article at Popular Science on inkjet refills. To summarize it, at up to $8,000 per gallon, inkjet ink is by far among the most expensive liquid in the consumer market today - far far more expensive than gasoline even with the huge increase of recent days.

Basically, inkjet printers are the new razors of today. Printer manufacturers practically give away the printers - heck, they are being bundled for free with computers. Then they gouge you every time the ink runs out. Since ink cartridges are not universally compatible, you are pretty much stuck shelling out the equivalent of $3,000 and $5,000 per gallon of ink whenever you buy your printer's manufacturer's cartridges. (That's how HP's imaging and printing group accounted for 40% of HP's USD2.63 billion profits from the last quarter alone.)

It is not surprising therefore the printer manufacturers has taken the offense against low-cost generic refill cartridges via lawsuits and installing chips on both their printers and cartridges that prevent the use of other brands. Similarly, the manufacturers have also made it much more difficult for consumers or third party service providers to refill their cartridges using generic ink.

The article does put things in sobering perspective, doesn't it?

Source article here.