Haven’t got your Nook yet? You may actually be in luck. For people who pre-ordered early enough to expect a pre-Christmas delivery, Barnes & Noble is promising a $100 B&N.com gift card if it misses December 24th — which is apparently distinctly possible. Of course, if you’re one of the lucky / unlucky ones to have this on offer, you’ve probably already seen the email, and if you’re a different sort of hapless pre-orderer that won’t be seeing a Nook until next year, this is just another reason to curse your lot in life. To think: not only are you not ushering in 2010 from an economy suite in a space hotel, but you’re going to wrap up this year reading paper books, without $100 to show for it! Can’t we do better as a civilization?
It’s not every day we get to cite an official US Department of Justice news release, so it’s with a certain glee that we can announce the US taxpayer was last week enriched by another $220 million courtesy of the not-so-fine folks who swindled him out of that money in the first place. Joining the ignominious ranks of LG, Sharp, Hitachi and Chungwa Picture Tube, Taiwanese manufacturer Chi Mei is refunding the US state for the pecuniary impact of its collusive practices, which were primarily related to keeping prices artificially high and profits proportionately inflated. US companies directly affected by these ignoble activities include HP, Dell and Apple, but don’t you worry, AT&T has already started the inter-corporation scuffle, with Nokia piling on for good measure. Man, it almost seems like crime doesn’t pay.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen the iPhone used as an experimental means of education, but a London school’s recent announcement of its plans has caught our attention. The Gumley House Convent School — a small, Christian School for girls ages 11 to 18 — in London has laid out its plan to use give Apple’s smartphone to a select group of 30 students as a test educational measure. Previous efforts we’ve seen to rope the iPhone into modern education have been mostly at the collegiate level, but Gumley’s plan is still a bit vague. The girls will have free access to all of the phone’s features with the exception of actual calls, and the trial will last until the end of the school year. Like we said — the school’s not given out details as to what the actual rules of use will be — but we have a feeling this will all end in some wild bout of texting overload.
