Amazon’s released a third Kindle into its line-up. As reported in TUAW, the $189 3G and $139 Wi-Fi models are joined by a ‘with special offers’ edition. It costs $114 and the discount is supported by adverts that appear on the screensaver and home screen, but not inside books.

The decision is interesting. Amazon’s one of the few companies able to rival Apple in terms of experience. If you’ve unboxed and used a Kindle, it’s rather like doing the same with an iPad. Despite the relatively low price of the gadget, it feels like a luxury item, and so adverts might place it in a rather different category, cheapening the experience.

Also, arguments are currently raging online that the adverts should have resulted in a much greater discount. Ian Betteridge counters this argument on Technovia:

I think that $25 is a fair reflection of the value of the ads. Remember, these ads are home-screen only, and not in the books. Pundits constantly over-estimate the amount of revenue that ads can bring in, and the expectation that Amazon could price a Kindle at $99 based on these kinds of ads is wrong.

Ian’s right: people often massively over-estimate the value of advertising. It’s pretty clear that Amazon will have reduced the price of the ad-supported Kindle by the same amount of money the adverts are bringing in—while Amazon’s happy to operate on razor-thin margins much of the time, it’s not a company keen to make a huge loss, especially on a top-selling item.

But this leads me to wonder whether Amazon should have bothered at all. I don’t see many people avoiding buying a Kindle but saying they’d be tempted if it was 25 bucks cheaper. In order to get this version of the Kindle flying off the shelves, it really needs to be at an impulse price—$99 would be the sweet-spot in the USA.

The thing is, Amazon knows what it’s doing in retail, and I suspect this new Kindle price-point is nothing more than a test-run, to see if the model works. If it sells, Amazon can up the price of the adverts, and, if it wishes, drop the device’s price accordingly. This could be the long-run to an end-game of a free ad-funded Kindle, supported and subsidised by advertisers, enabling Amazon to continue making huge piles of cash by selling many more eBooks than it otherwise would have.

According to TechCrunch, OMG IPAD KILLAH Kno is dead. This will come as a huge shock to crazy people, who genuinely thought the massive 14.1-inch stylus-operated tablet (available in expensive $599 single-screen version or WHAT WERE THEY THINKING $899 dual-screen) would topple Apple’s iPad, despite Apple’s device working rather well in an education environment.

Still, the Kno guys aren’t fussed, because, apparently, it was always about the software and platform-agnosticity. CEO Osman Rashid said:

We have accelerated our 2012 strategy to 2011. Our long-term plan was always to support multiple platforms.

“No, really—honest,” he didn’t add, unless you read between the lines—lines positively bulging with sadness and delusion.

Still, it’s early days yet, and there’s loads of room in education for strong software. So what’s Kno’s next move?

Although Rashid wouldn’t confirm which platform Kno would support first, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be the iPad.

Because supporting the leading tablet would be really stupid.

Kno’s software centers around using a stylus, not your fingers. “There is no real concept of a stylus on the iPad,” says Rashid.

This is probably because humans by default come with ten perfectly reasonable styluses attached. That said, there are things like the AluPen. Of course, you’re pretty much screwed if you’ve based most of your software around stylus (read: fiddly) input, eh, Kno-guys?

“The current iPad is mant [sic] for the finger.”

Actually, it’s meant for direct manipulation of content, without any abstraction layer. The mouse cursor was always a nice idea but a terrible concept from an intuition standpoint, since you have to be taught to use it. But even a stylus is a poor content manipulation tool compared to a finger—again, because you need to be taught to use it.

He hopes this will change. “We hope Apple over time sees the value of a stylus in education because kids do need to learn how to write.”

Rashid favours teaching kids to interact with content rather than manipulating content. By contrast, I think writing is overrated, and is something fewer and fewer people bother with. I don’t debate that it’s a skill that children need to learn, but I’d sooner have a child immersed in solving maths puzzles rather than first having to grasp manipulating a pencil and laying out the sums; I’d sooner have a child immersed in finger-painting (real-world or digital) than battling with a fiddly paintbrush.

They can sort out their penmanship later.

Bloomberg reports on Acer’s “Windows PC for the iPad generation”. It’s very exciting:

You’ve never seen a personal computer quite like this one.

Ooh. Exciting!

Acer Inc. (2353)’s new Iconia 6120 Touchbook has many of the features you would expect from a full-sized laptop: an Intel Corp. (INTC) i5 microprocessor, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows 7 operating system, a 14-inch display.

Ooh. Exc– Actually, less exciting, because no-one cares about specs these days, but, hey, Windows 7 and a 14-inch display, so I’m sure for a cutting-edge competitor to a long-lasting iPad, NOTHING CAN GO WRONG HERE. (SPOILER: Something will go wrong.)

It’s also missing one feature you would expect: a keyboard. In its place is a second 14-inch touch screen. Need to type something? A full-sized virtual keyboard, complete with touchpad, appears on the bottom display when you lay your palms on it, to be used and then dismissed when no longer required.

Translation: Acer saw the Nintendo DS and thought “man, that really needs to be a whole lot bigger and run Windows”. But, hey, the DS worked. It worked really well. So this dual-screen thing might not be entirely stupid, and a 14-inch screen’s certainly big enough to get a full-size virtual keyboard under your fingers. Clearly, NOTHING CAN GO WRONG HERE. (SPOILER: Something will go wrong. Quite soon. Just wait a bit.)

The computer, which is available for order now and shows up in stores later this month, costs $1,199.99.

Ah. Well, I guess if we ignore the iPad’s price-point being a fraction of that and even the MacBook Air being $200 cheaper, that’s not too bad.

It weighs a hefty 6.2 pounds

And 2.2 pounds compares very favourably with Apple kit.

It weighs a hefty 6.2 pounds

Oh. So twice the 13-inch MacBook Air and more than four times heavier than the iPad? THINGS HAVE STARTED TO GO WRONG!

Typing on the glass takes some getting used to, though it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had expected […] My biggest problem wasn’t with the keyboard but with the trackpad, which is so small that my finger kept sliding past its virtual edges.

IT’S GOING WRONG! WE CAN’T STOP IT!

While there’s no tactile feedback when you land on a virtual key, as there is on some smartphones, you can hear an audible “click.” It’s a nice idea, except that there is a noticeable lag between hitting the key and hearing the sound.

IT’S LIKE NO-ONE’S EVEN LISTENING ANY MORE! IT’S ALL GOING WRONG!

The biggest drawback is the battery. The two touch screens suck power like a vacuum cleaner, and even Acer’s claim of three hours on a full charge may be on the high side if you’ve got the screens set to bright and are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Moreover, the battery isn’t user-replaceable, so you’ll tend to find yourself tethered to an electrical outlet.

IT’S ALL GONE WRONG!

A pretty funny report on TechRadar. Apparently, the UK price of the Xoom has just been updated. Dixons and Carphone Warehouse—who’d cunningly set the pre-order price of the Xoom to the same as the original equivalent iPad—have both realised the device isn’t entirely competitive since the iPad 2 came out. So what have they done? Clearly, sensible companies would realise that there’s still no really compelling answer to “why should I buy something other than an iPad?” and price accordingly.

Dixons has knocked 20 quid off the 32 GB Wi-Fi Xoom’s price, so you can pre-order your “real tablet” now for just £479.99. Meanwhile, Carphone Warehouse has dropped the price of the 3G model to £579.99.

I racked my brain for almost a microsecond before coming up with how they decided on these new prices. On the Apple Store, you’ll be shocked to see the 32 GB iPad 2 come in at £479 and the 3G model at £579. Which still means the Xoom is priced slightly higher, the idiots. But even in a direct comparison, if we ignore the piffling 99-pence extra, it’s effectively the same price for a device offering the vast majority of users an inferior experience, the double idiots.

Personally, I hope Apple changes the price of the iPad 2 three times over the next week, just to fuck with these guys.

David Friedman gets excited about a new save icon on his blog. His thinking: the floppy disk is archaic and many current computer users have likely never used or seen one. Therefore, he creates something new.

I’m not really sure the floppy disk save icon is a problem anyway, for two reasons. First, as iOS has shown, the very concept of manually saving files will soon be obsolete. Mac OS X Lion will soon enable devs to make apps regularly autosave (and provide versioning) on the Mac desktop; other systems will rapidly follow suit. Secondly, popular icons and icon concepts transcend technology and time. As journo chum Chris Brennan wryly pointed out on Twitter:

In the UK the sign for a level crossing is a steam train. I’m not so sure a floppy disk as a save icon is the end of the world.

The difficultly in replacing such icons is two-fold. First, you have to essentially override what’s in people’s heads, icons that are recognised in an instant. Secondly, you have to create something that’s at least as recognisable as what you originally had. This is where Friedman failed, in using a baseball home plate.

The “safe” icon is pointy on one end like an arrow. This can be used to indicate where your file is saved. If the latest version of your file is saved locally, it points down. If the latest version of your file is saved on a server somewhere, it points up.

I’m sure if you know baseball, that all makes sense. But I don’t really know much about baseball—it’s not really a worldwide sport. Similarly, replace the save icon with some kind of football (as in soccer) icon and you’d have Americans scratching their heads. And anyone else who doesn’t know or care for football.

To be fair, it’s very clear that Friedman was only experimenting and playing around, but his article shows how tough it can be to replace existing and popular icons with something that can and will be recognised almost universally. In the meantime, he jokes:

But I still like my idea and urge it to be adopted by anyone writing software for Americans who are baseball fans without internet access or a modern operating system.