Amazon Releases $199 Kindle Fire Tablet

But amid the excitement amongst consumers and fierce tension amongst tablet manufacturers, Amazon buried the news that two of the new tablets would only be available in the U.S. market thus leaving the U.K. and European consumers out in the cold.

The new Amazon Kindle Touch, the touch-screen e-ink powered e-book reader (left), and the new Amazon Kindle Fire tablet (right), the 7-inch colour display, Android-powered tablet, will only be available in the United States when the two devices go on sale.

Movies, apps, games, music, reading and more, plus Amazon's revolutionary, cloud-accelerated web browser

18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, e books and e reader Amazon Appstore - thousands of popular apps and games Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle Fast, powerful dual-core processor Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

It is rumored, however that the new Kindle e reader tablet will still go on sale outside of the U.S. soon with the retail price of £89.

Apple sends invites for October 2011 event: "Let's talk iPhone"

Apple Inc. has formally announced it's upcoming media event after months of rumors and speculation. The event will take place on Tuesday, October 4 at 10am Pacific Daylight Time on Apple's campus in Cupertino and will be led by Apple's new CEO Tim Cook.

Apple's invitation graphics include four iOS app icons (Calendar, Clock, Maps, and Phone) along with the quote "Let's talk iPhone."

Usually, Apple doesn't get this specific when sending out its invitations, but apparently it's trying a new, more direct approach this time around. The calendar says October 4, clock says 10:00, map points to Apple's campus, and the phone icon shows one phone call.

Still, Apple fans are left wondering exactly what may come out of this iPhone announcement. At the moment, it's widely expected that Apple will make iOS 5 available to the public and possibly even roll out an all-new iPhone 5, a slightly modified iPhone 4 in the form of the iPhone 4S, with a working antenna or both phones at the same time.

There's also some talk of a new white iPod touch. A relatively minimal detail that reminds us that the fall event was originally about iPods.

America’s Internet Service Slips to #25 Worldwide

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the United States has sunk to 25th in a global ranking of Internet speeds, just behind Romania.

Why? Because the nation's regulators abandoned an earlier commitment to foster competition in the marketplace for Internet access providers.

After the signing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, lobbyists working for powerful providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon pressured a compliant FCC to tear down all of the important safeguards established by Congress.

Under the Bush administration, the FCC tossed out competitive broadband safeguards such as open-access requirements, which opened lines to other providers.

Back in 2002, the agency declared that cabled high speed internet service would no longer be considered a telecommunications service that opened the network to competitors, but rather an “information service” that did not. Following a 2005 court decision, the FCC also reclassified broadband delivered by the phone companies as an “information service.”

These were radical policy shifts that went against the long-held assumption that open communications in competitive markets were essential to economic growth and innovation.

While the U.S. blindly followed a path of "deregulation," other nations in Europe and Asia beefed up their pro-competitive policies. The results are evident in our free fall from the top of almost every global measure of Internet services, availability and speed.

About this my Free Press colleague Derek Turner writes:

"When price and speed are considered together as a measure of value, we see that Americans pay more per megabit per second than consumers in many other countries. The value of U.S. connections is some four times less than that of countries like France, and is only slightly better than the value of connections in Hungary, a country with a per capita GDP nearly two-and-a-half times lower than the United States."

This lack of competition has turned America into a broadband backwater. In the aftermath of the FCC’s verdict, powerful phone and internet access providers legislated and lobbied their way to controlling 97% of the fixed-line residential broadband market thus leaving the vast majority of consumers with two or fewer choices of land-based providers in any given market.

Portal is free on Steam

From now until September 20, you can download Portal for absolutely free for your desktop pc or notebook.

In case you're not familiar with it already, Portal is regarded by many pc gamers to be one of the best games of all time. GameSpot awarded it a 9.0 and an Editors Choice while IGN said it is "quirky, clever, polished, and presented with a spark of a subtly evil humor."

Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	89.15%
Metacritic	90/100
Review scores
Publication	Score
1UP.com	A
Eurogamer	9/10
GameSpot	9.0/10
GameSpy	4.5/5.0
IGN	8.2/10

The game primarily comprises a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using "the handheld portal device", a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell, is challenged by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed.

The game was originally part of Valve's The Orange Box bundle that also included the now F2P Team Fortress 2, before later becoming a $20 standalone game for the PC and Mac computer system. The sequel of the game, Portal 2 is priced at $29.99.

Apple wins German court ruling against Samsung PC tablet

The resemblance is uncanny

It appears that Apple is the only company that can make minimalist rectangular pc tablet design in Germany.

A trade court in Dusseldorf, Germany has found Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd.'s (SEO 005930) guilty of violating Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) patented design, which is featured in the iPad.

The latest hearing went in Apple's favour and means the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is again banned from sale across Germany.

The "minimalist, modern form" of the two products gave a "clear impression of similarity".
- Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hoffmann

By contrast, a Dutch court ruled last month that it found no infringement for Samsung's pc tablets. 

Apple repeated its usual statement saying that: "This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."

Samsung has indeed confirmed it will appeal the decision and warned the ruling "severely limits consumer choice in Germany" and "restricts design innovation and progress in the industry."
 
In a global intellectual property battle, Apple has claimed the Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad and has sued the Korean company in the United States, Australia, Japan and Korea as well as in Europe.

Samsung, whose tablets are based on Google Inc's Android software, has counter-sued Apple.

On Thursday, Apple had also filed a suit against Samsung in Japan, seeking to ban sales of some of its gadgets there.

HP resurrects TouchPad to challenge iPad again.

When HP said they were done with its WebOS Touchpad two weeks ago, then sold off the remaining stock at $99 a pop, it seemed the tablet would be dead for good.

Nope. The TouchPad tablet is entering an odd state of zombie-hood as HP is making one last batch to meet "unfulfilled demand."

There is no exact date on when that will arrive or for how much ( expected much cheaper than Apple's iPad ), and HP won’t guarantee it will be enough to meet demand, but there are more on the way.

If you didn’t get in on the first round of the sales, HP has announced that it will be making more HP TouchPads available in the coming weeks. According to The Next Bench:

“A limited supply are coming and it will be a few weeks before they are available. As we know more about how, when, and where TouchPads will be available, we will communicate that here and through email to those who requested notification. We can tell you that HP’s Small and Medium Business team has sold out of HP TouchPads and will not have more inventory.”

Experts are saying the reason HP is doing this one last run of TouchPad is because there are tons of HP TouchPad components still in their supply chain. Regardless, the hype around it is great and HP can really milk it good for a dead OS.