It has only been a few days since Apple announced its new iPad mini tablet device and Amazon has decided to put a damper on the iPad mini’s introduction to the world. The company today is advertising its Kindle Fire HD tablet and compares it against the new iPad mini. It doesn’t look like the company is going to simply let Apple roll right by and take over the mini tablet market.
If you take a look at Amazon’s website, you’ll note that the Kindle Fire HD is selling for $199 while being stacked up against the iPad mini, which starts at $329. In a typical marketing strategy, Amazon has listed the advantages of its tablet device while also so eloquently pointing out the shortcomings of Apple’s.
To make it more interesting, it has elected to use a quote from gadget publication Gizmodo to highlight the difference:
This is the latest move by Amazon since it told All Things D that last Wednesday was the biggest day for sales since the Kindle Fire HD launched and was up three times week over week.
See also: A piece of history: Is this the very first book bought by an Amazon customer?
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The best demo at CES involved a hard drive, a 1M volt tesla coil and punked journalists
The guys at ioSafe set up a pretty impressive demonstration of its rugged hard drive line at CES, which it just added a Thunderbolt connector to. The demo involved applying a 1M volt tesla coil to the casing of the drive.
Unfortunately, some of the sensitive electronic boards of the drive were fried by the lightening, but the demo is saved by some slick tech support under pressure by Moore. But the best part of the demo comes when the guys decide to punk the group of journalists that came to the presentation, just watch it through to the end.
Neowin Editor Brad Sams was at the demo ( their vid is here ) and told me that it was pretty convincing:
The guys at ioSafe said that a lot of cussing and threats were edited out, I bet. We have one of the Firewire 800 models of the company’s rugged portable hard drives in the labs now and we’re putting it through its paces. The Thunderbolt model will be rolling out in Q2 of this year.
Deutsche Telekom gives wrong number, Germans trying to pre-order iPhone 5 call adult dating hotline
Deutsche Telekom users just wanted to preorder a new iPhone 5 . Instead they got phone sex. Nope, it’s not April Fools’ Day. It’s just a Friday. You can’t make this stuff up.
Since Deutsch Telekom is Apple’s partner for Germany, the company was able to offer customers a voucher which would guarantee they could buy Cupertino’s latest and greatest. Germans with the carrier called the number provided to them via a text message. What they didn’t know was that Deutsche Telekom had royally screwed up, no pun intended. The number was one digit too long and thus resulted in connecting callers with an adult dating hotline advertised as “hot dating fun.”
“We really regret what happened and have already apologised to our customers,” a Telekom spokesman said in a statement to Die Welt (via The Local ). Once it realized its mistake, the German telecommunications company sent out a second text with an apology for the mistake and the correct preorder hotline number.
Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. No, I’m not talking about that; get your head out of the gutter! Since a call to any 0800 number is free, the customers were not charged for Deutsche Telekom’s faux pas.
If you’re lucky, preorders made today will ship on September 21, when the device will also go on sale in Apple Stores and other retail stores. Unfortunately, that date will likely be pushed back as Apple is having trouble dealing with demand. The craziness isn’t as high in Germany as it is in the US (where the iPhone 5 reportedly sold out in an hour), but Deutsche Telekom did say that customers had to call an average of three times just be connected with one of their employees.
Read also: Apple’s iPhone 5 now available to preorder in select launch countries
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