Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

It turns out the earlier reports were indeed accurate, and the ‘Give One Get One’ program will be making a return later this year, and it will be handled by none other than Amazon.com.

This information comes courtesy of Matt Keller who is the director of Europe, Middle East and Africa at OLPC and he has confirmed that Amazon will begin selling the XO laptop in late November with sales running through the end of December. Keller also went on to clarify their reasoning behind Amazon handling the sales, stating that they are just “a small group of people,” which hopefully will put an end to the shipping issue complaints that we saw last year.

MORE »

Buried in all the Bill Gates-Steve Ballmer coffee talk at the All Things Digital conference is a semi-interesting nugget from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who was first to take the stage with the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg. When the discussion moved to web video, Bezos let slip that his company will be launching a new for-pay video streaming service “in the next couple of weeks.”

That’s about it for the details, except that you’ll be able to pay a la carte vs. subscription. And while some bloggers have added that the service will offer movies, none of the early coverage has a quote from Bezos specifically saying that this will involve Hollywood studio offerings. Amazon already plays in the downloadable movie space via Unbox and it’s not a smashing success so far.

Most of the talk revolved around Amazon’s new e-book reader, Kindle, although Bezos is still hesitant to give up exact sales figures. But it was clear from his answers to Mossberg’s questions that the Amazon CEO is giving laser beam-like focus to the Kindle and that it will end up accounting for a better slice of company revenue. Which begs the following questions from this corner: will the Kindle have a role in the new streaming video service? If not “in the next couple of weeks,” then when? And if the current version doesn’t have the specs to handle video, what about Kindle 2.0? Does Amazon even want to play in this arena?

Read [All Things Digital]

Wow you guys got some great presents this holiday season. Not only were the electronics flowing but so were clothing, books, movies, music, and more. On December 11th, Amazon customer orders exceeded 4 million items, the highest ever, and the Amazon Customers Vote promotion had the store selling 1,000 Xbox 360s in 29 seconds and 1,000 Axion portable DVD players in 34 seconds.
Did we forget to mention that users like you and I, gunning for the 360, actually crashed the “world’s largest online retailer.”

Here are some Amazon holiday facts:

• One of Amazon.com’s most remote shipments was Mission Impossible - The Complete First Season (1966) shipped to Wainwright, Alaska.


• Amazon sold enough orange flavored Airborne health supplements to supply every passenger on 192 Boeing 747s.


• Enough coffee pods were sold to make coffee for everyone in Austin, Texas.


• Amazon’s Electronics store sold its most expensive MP3 player to date in 2006, the $19,999 Trekstor i.Beat Organix Gold 1GB MP3 player.


• The last Prime order placed on December 22nd in time for Christmas delivery contained a Bogen-Manfrotto Classic Tripod (Silver) delivered to Norman, Oklahoma on December 23rd.

And now onto the top Gadgetell related items sold this holiday season:

• Tops in video game hardware were the Nintendo DS Lite available in white, pink and black as well as Play Station 2 and the Xbox 360.


• Top sellers in Consumer Electronics include Apple iPods (various), Canon Powershot Digital Elph Cameras and Garmin GPS Systems.


• Top Software titles include World of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade (not yet released), The Sims 2 Pet Expansion Pack (Windows Me, 98, XP, 2000) and Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 (Windows XP).


• In PCs, the top sellers were the Apple MacBook 13.3” Notebook PC in white and black and the Sony VAIO 15.4” Notebook PC.


• Headsets led the Wireless Accessories top sellers including the Logitech Mobile Express Bluetooth Headset, Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset and the Motorola H700 Bluetooth Headset.

Read [IHT] Read [Blogging Stocks]

The Zettabyte zBox isn’t just a networked storage device. Every piece of information you put on the drive gets sent to Amazon’s S3 storage cloud. This way if there were ever a flood, hurricane, or any other natural or unnatural disaster, you can rest easy knowing all your media is safe at the Amazon batcave. For this ease of mind you pay about a buck per gigabyte, monthly, for as long as you want to keep your data safe. It costs $50 for 30GB, and plans go all the way up to $300 for 690GB. The device itself is powered by a 266MHz PowerPC processor, and has 128MB of RAM. This is probably one of the best backup devices you can get, yet I still wonder how killer my bandwidth bill would be.

Read [Ubergizmo]

Gamers rejoice, the most anticipated game of all time has begun to show some light. BestBuy.com has a product page and pre-order option available for the long awaited Halo 3, for Xbox 360. It is currently listed at $59.99 with a release date of 3/1/2007. Valid sources have told Gadgetell that we can expect the game much sooner than that, possibly even this fall, assuming the release schedule does not change.

Here is the hype:

The much-anticipated final chapter has arrived. Master Chief returns to finish the fight once and for all in order to finally end the epic conflict between the Covenant, the Flood and the entire human race. Experience a heart-pounding, dramatic climax to this popular video game franchise.

Next-generation graphics and technological advances, such as an enhanced artificial intelligence and an advanced real-time lighting engine, make the story come to life with stunning realism. Experience all-new weapons and characters as you struggle through tough challenges. You can even log online with Xbox Live and battle in exciting multiplayer action.

Update: Amazon also lists Halo 3 available for pre-order for $59.99 but for release on March 31, 2007. Why do I have a feeling that Halo 3 will be released way before these two dates…

Halo 3 [Best Buy]

After 10 years Mr. Bezos has seemed to have enough with books, music, movies, games, furniture, clothing...and has moved Amazon.com into a new direction: food. Today Amazon unveiled Amazon Grocery where you can buy more than 10,000 non-perishable items (and growing every day). All items are eligible for free Super Saver Shipping and Amazon Prime and the prices seem great too. So what do they sell? Check it out:

At Amazon Grocery, you’ll find longtime staples, from Kellogg’s to Jiffy Pop. You’ll find new entries, such as Kashi cereals and Kraft Easy Mac microwavable snack packets. And when we carry a brand, we’ll try to carry every flavor available: not just the most popular flavors of Jell-O, but all flavors, from apricot to wild strawberry and the 70 flavors in-between. We’re also making regional favorites like Andy Capp Hot Fries available nationwide, and making hard-to-find specialties like Zico Pure Coconut Water a standard part of our mix.

We also have an extensive selection of natural and organic products. If you haven’t heard of Immaculate Baking Company or Bear Naked, let us be the first to introduce you to these earth-friendly brands and their fantastic products.

If you have never been to a beta grocery, now is the time.

Read [Amazon]