Amazon Fire Phone Gets Another Fire Sale: $199 Unlocked

Amazon has already admitted that it priced its Fire Phone much higher than consumers anticipated, and now it’s making a significant adjustment to the device’s price tag: A fully unlocked Fire Phone now retails for $199.00, instead of $449.00. The GSM device is still U.S.-only, which means it’ll work with AT&T and T-Mobile, though not Verizon and Sprint.

The $250 price drop puts the Fire Phone into a price range that might be more in line with what consumers were expecting to pay – Amazon’s decision to release a full-priced device, especially when paired with some of its less-than-stellar specs and odd 3D head tracking visual effects, clearly didn’t do a great job of attracting buyers.

This is actually the second fire sale for the fire phone, after Amazon reduced the price of the on-contract, AT&T exclusive version to just $0.99 with a two-year agreement. Originally, the retail cost was $199 on a contract, which is ironically now the price for a fully free and clear contract-free piece of hardware, just about four months into its lifetime.

No matter how you look at it, this is a sure sign that the Fire phone flopped in a very big way for Amazon. The high price tag at launch likely reflects Amazon trying to recoup the huge amount of R&D spend it put into developing the phone’s glasses-free 3D interface effects, but the fact is that what customers expected from an Amazon device was something cheap and basic, much like its Kindle Fire line of tablets.

Even at $199, reviewers found a lot of basic problems with the device that might make other options, like the Moto G or even some of last year’s flagship hardware discounted a better option, but it will be interesting to see if this helps Amazon move some inventory during the holidays.

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Kiran Upadhyay

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