Google hase just opened its first store within another store in the UK. The store is located inside a PC World store. Google is going to be leasing small parts of PC World’s stores to promote Chromebooks and ChromeOS.

These spaces are called “Chromezone”. Similar to the Apple spaces you find at Best Buy. This space gives potential customers a chance to see what a Chromebook looks like.

Google’s sales stats support this step, since 90% of sales from the Chromezone are to people who bought in store and not online.

Business Insider’s Steve Kovach writes that Amazon will hold a press conference on September 28, at 10AM Eastern, it will be at the Stage 37 in NYC.

The last large press conference of this type was for the Kindle 2 which was then released February 2009.
May be Amazon will unveiling the rumored tablet. Maybe a Kindle 4 e-Ink? May be both?

Recently the New York Times errected a pay wall for its website. Web readers who aren’t already NY Times subscribers will get 20 article views per month for free and have to pay, if they want to read more. Except when they where send to the NYT by a search engine or a social network. And of course there are other ways around this pay wall, since it seems to be implemented with JavaScript only. There is even alread a free New York Times Twitter autofeed. So Times publisher Arthur Sulzburger did mention that there would be daily limits on links from search engines.

Popcorn anyone?
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According to gamertell.com Best Buy is going to sell the Nook for just $99,99 instead of $149,99 on black friday.

If you want to root your Android phone for any reason, and there really are some good ones, you no longer need to fiddle around with complicated how-tos risking to brick your device.

The new app Z4root from RyanZA, available in the Android market, does exactly this with one click. The app contains just one button that will essentially do everything for you.

If you want to do even more, like applying a speed-fix to your device, the One Click Lag Fix also from RyanZA does exactly this plus can also root your device. Tried this on my Samsung Galaxy S (JP0, official Froyo) and it is now running like the road runner! There was only one problem, the description says the fix works with APP2SD activated, but it did not for me! So I temporarily moved all apps back to the phone memory, applied the patch and later moved them back on the SD-card. The phone works like a charme now, really the difference is amazing.
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The Hanvon Windows 7 tablet is a new competitor to Apple’s iPad and will hopefully arrive till the end of this year. Until then you can whatch this video where it competes directly with the iPad. And the Hanvon kinda busts the iPad and it might become even better when it becomes available.

The iPad clearly wins when it comes to zooming in the browser. Typing on the keyboard, and web page rendering is slightly faster than on the Hanvon, but the Hanvon comes really close. Not much difference there. But with Windows 7 you’ve got Adobe Flash support of course. So your YouTube experience is infinite better than he would get on the iPad.

Other than the restricted iPad the Hanvon Windows 7 tablet comes with an quite open operating system and is packed with a front-facing camera, three USB 2.0 ports, a SD card slot, and even a trackpad.

But see for yourself:

Plastic Logic has announced that it will not ship the Que. They even are refunding pre-orders. A new shipping date hast not been announced.

A spokesperson for Plastic Logic told Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog: “Plastic Logic wants to make sure that the product they deliver is the right one for their target business customers in the rapidly changing marketplace. They are continuing to refine the product, technology and features, and are anxious to get in the marketplace as soon as possible.”

Seems that Plastic Logic just is too late, since the iPad set a rather low price border for tablet devices, they will by no chance make the money they’ve dreamed of. It seems the Que is just another piece of vapor ware and Plastic Logic will never manage to come out with anything.

So if you want an eInk reader that is suitable for reading PDFs and similar documents, it seems the only reliable choice will be the Kindle DX from Amazon with its 10″ Display.

Amazon just officially released firmware version 2.5 for Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. It will be delivered automatically via Whispernet but if you do not want to wait any longer, you can download and install the update manually.

Just go to www.amazon.com and follow the instructions.

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My Kindle DX just updated from version 2.5.2 to version 2.5.3. So far I can not tell any differences. Since the .bin file had only a size of about 57kbyte I guess it was just a minor bug fix. Will keep track of that

Today Amazon announced in a press release that, in the near future, Kindle software will come pre-installed on many ASUS models including the 1005PE line of Eee PC Netbooks and their UL Series of notebooks.

There is no doubt that preloaded software is not an entirely new concept. But the implied partnership strengthen rumors that the upcoming Eee Pad tablet device will be unveiled by the end of this month.
In spite of the shortcomings compared to an e-Ink display, these devices are useful as reading tools.

Thus, Amazon is simply following its strategy of countering Apple’s iPad and iBooks through ubiquity. Kindle Reader software is available for nearly every big OS or smartphone platform. So buyers are able to easily buy and read e-books on nearly any device. Since netbooks are the most obvious competitors for the iPad, getting Kindle on the Eee PC out-of-the-box makes a great deal of sense for both Amazon and Asus.