Amazon announced today that the new range of Kindles is coming to over 16,000 U.S. retail stores. The usual big-box and medium-box outlets will carry Amazon's whole family of media devices.

The basic new Kindle - which sells for $79 with ads and $109 without - has been available in stores since just after launch on September 28. Now the $99/139 Kindle Touch and the $199 Kindle Fire tablet will appear on physical shelves.

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The announcement was timed for the day after Barnes & Noble revealed its new Nook Tablet, an upgrade and rebranding of its Nook Color with boosted specs and a nice $249 price point ($50 more than the Kindle Fire).

Barnes & Noble has 705 stores of its own and operates 636 more college bookstores. The special stores get their own sales nook for Nooks. With the holidays approaching, Amazon and B&N are jockeying to sell their new readers by putting them directly into consumers' hands.

Amazon's Scale Advantage

Barnes & Noble may have more control over its in-person retail experience than Amazon does, but Amazon is bigger in several key ways. Its Android app marketplace is broader, for one thing. But it's Amazon's massive cloud computing scale that gives it the real edge. Amazon is able to accelerate its Silk Web browser and stream Amazon Prime video to the Kindle Fire thanks to its scale. It can also offer high-bandwidth, digital-only services like a lending library for the Kindle.

Barnes & Noble's only response to that is that the cloud is "unreliable." If B&N turns out to be right about that, the Nook's bigger internal storage will turn out to be an advantage. But it will be a hard sell to consumers that all Amazon's on-demand content is actually a disadvantage.

Amazon's move to bring the Kindles into 16,000 physical stores will give it some brick-and-mortar scale as well. Then the Kindles and the Nooks will only have features left on which to compete.

Remaking Retail

Amazon is doing things the old-fashioned way by putting the Kindles on retail shelves, but it has always been aggressive towards brick-and-mortar stores. Other recent developments at Amazon don't look kindly on the retail experience.

Last week, it launched Amazon Flow for iPhone, an free, augmented-reality shopping app that scans products and finds them on Amazon.com. When the Amazon price is lower than the in-store price, which are consumers going to choose?

Amazon's retail interests are best served by temporary partnerships like the ones announced today. To sell a new device in the traditional shopping season, and to compete with the last brick-and-mortar media giants left, Amazon will put Kindles into big-box stores.

But the whole line of new devices is built around digital-only media. Amazon's push in physical retail is only to sell a device that will keep its ideal customer from buying a CD at Best Buy - or a book at Barnes & Noble - ever again.

Are you buying a new tablet this holiday season? Which one appeals to you and why?

Mobile payments company Square has landed a big coup—sales placement on Apple’s online store. And we’ve just confirmed with Square that the startup has a deal for in-store sales as well. Apple will start selling Square devices in all of its U.S. retail stores starting this week.

Square offers both an iPhone/iPod Touch and an iPad app which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack. Apple has shown some love for Square lately, so it’s not entirely surprising that the payments startup has forged a deeper relationship with the Cupertino-based company. Most recently, Apple CEO Steve Jobs showcased Square’s technology at the debut of Apple’s iPad 2. But to be featured on Apple’s online store and in its brick and mortar operations is a big deal.

This is Square’s first large-scale in-store retail promotion and it landed a huge fish. Millions of consumers visit Apple’s retail outlets each day, and this will certainly translate into more sales and exposure for Square. The device will be only payments product featured in the store, and while display location may vary by store, we hear that Square will be included in the store area where main consumer-oriented accessories are displayed. Apple and Square will also be partnering to host educational seminars at the stores, where consumers can learn how to use the device.

Square’s device is selling at the store for $9.95 but users get a $10 square credit when they sign up for an account and the apps are free. It’s important to note that when sign up for Square on its website, the device is free, and the company only charges merchants 2.75 percent per transaction. You can also purchase the device in black or white (previously the Square devices were only sold in White).

Clearly Square is taking a bit of a bath on the device sales here. Apple is probably taking some sort of cut from the transaction, and Square is giving merchants a $10 credit, so effectively, the company isn’t really making any money. In fact, it appears that Square could be losing money on this. But an endorsement and placement from Apple could boost sales and usage for the payments device so perhaps all will even out in the end. Also, Apple managing distribution and shipping of Square devices means that the startup will be able to give users access to quicker and more efficient delivery operations.

Interestingly, Apple doesn’t use Square in its stores for transactions but perhaps this could change as Square gains more traction and expand with international support.

Square, which was co-founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, has been on a roll of late. The startup just raised $27.5 million in new funding, and is gaining a lot of a lot of buzz, most recently debuting a fairly large billboard in Times Square and announcing that it is processing $1 million in payments per day. Square also announced that it dropped the $0.15 per transaction charge for businesses using the mobile payments service.

COO Keith Rabois told us in January that the startup is expected to process $40 million in transactions in Q1 of 2011 and is currently signing up 100,000 merchants per month. That’s compared to 30,000 monthly signups last Fall.

I think there’s no doubt that with its latest deal, those numbers should multiply pretty quickly.

Netflix and CBS have announced a two-year non-exclusive licensing agreement that will bring more current and catalog content to the Netflix streaming service. The new partnership will commence in early April, and hit shows like Frasier, Medium and Cheers will become available to Netflix subscribers. In December, Netflix signed a similar deal with Disney-ABC Television as part of its ongoing commitment to expanding its content library.

The CBS partnership means that content from all four major broadcast networks is now available on Netflix. CBS is the only major U.S. broadcast network not involved with Hulu and the Hulu Plus premium offering, which makes this Netflix deal a particular coup.

CBS.com and TV.com do offer streaming episodes of various current and catalog shows, but Netflix is the first subscription offering to gain access to the network’s swath of shows. Because the partnership is non-exclusive, it is possible that some of this content could wind up on other streaming subscription services in the future.

For now, the CBS win gives Netflix an advantage over its competitors like Hulu Plus and Amazon’s new Prime Instant Video service.

One of the best things about the growing number of streaming media services is the competition amongst the offerings to provide the most content, first. For consumers, that means more content is coming to more services along with more competitive price points.

More About: cbs, hulu plus, netflix, streaming media, television, tv

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When the Libyan government pulled the plug on the country's Internet access on Friday, many outside the country were concerned about the implications the shutdown would have on the country's top level domain (TLD). After all, the .ly domain is a popular alternative to the .com, used by a number of companies, but arguably most commonly associated with its usage as a URL shortener.

No surprise then, John Borthwick, CEO of Bit.ly was quick to respond to an inquiry on the Q&A site Quora that asked if .ly services would be interrupted with Libya offline.

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There'll be no interruption, according to Borthwick. "For .ly domains to be unresolvable the five .ly root servers that are authoritative *all* have to be offline, or responding with empty responses," he writes. "Of the five root nameservers for the .ly TLD: two are based in Oregon, one is in the Netherlands and two are in Libya."

Borthwick's response should serve to reassure users of Bit.ly, at the very least. He says that the company will keep the service running, including "offering options around which top level domains you use." Try .mp, for example (that's the TLD for the Northern Mariana Islands).

Or, Maybe We Should Worry

However, Kim Davies cautions against a "sense of false confidence" and says we shouldn't think "that country-code domains are impervious to these kinds of government-mandated Internet shutdowns." He agrees that the effect of an Internet shutdown may not be immediate, but the effects can still be "devastating."

Davies points out that the servers outside of Libya are still reliant - eventually -on obtaining updates from the .ly registry within the country. "If they are unable to succeed in getting updates, at some point they will consider the data they have stale and stop providing information on the .LY domain." Davies pegs that at 28 days.

Unlike Egypt, which was offline for a week, Libya has had intermittent Internet access. The Next Web posits that the shutdowns in Libya echo some sort of nightly curfew - off at 11pm and on again at dawn. This makes it likely that other DNS servers will update their records and the .ly domains will continue working.

Nevertheless, it's worth noting that this isn't the first problem that those outside of Libya have had with the TLD. Last fall, the Libyan government shut down Vb.ly, the URL shortener run by sex writer violet blue. The domain was yanked because of its content - as it "fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law."

All this should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone obtaining a domain - in Libya or, frankly, elsewhere, as TLDs fall under government scrutiny and seizure, no matter the country.

We got wind of these new Facebook Photos features some months ago around the end of September. And while some users have had this feature for a while, we were beginning to wonder why Facebook was delaying a general roll-out.

However, Facebook did confirm yesterday that the new photo viewer was on its way to all users soon; and tonight, we’re seeing this new interface from several accounts.

One major benefit, from Facebook’s perspective, is that users will be able to browse through many photos in the lightbox layer without disrupting the underlying page and “losing their place.” Other features include hi-res photos, photo-download links and bulk tagging options.

In fact, as we noted last fall, many of these feature upgrades strongly mirror recent changes to Flickr’s own UI during the summer of 2010.

Along with Tag Suggestions, a.k.a. nascent facial recognition technology, Facebook’s photo offering, which has long been a distinguishing factor of the social network, is remaining strong and competitive.

Check your Facebook account to see if you have the new interface; if you don’t have it tonight, expect it to come over the next couple weeks.

In the comments, let us know what you think of the new Facebook Photos. Are these improvements more welcome to you than other changes Facebook has made in the past?

More About: facebook, New, Photos, trending, UI

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Earlier this week we posted an extensive preview of Android Honeycomb, the tablet version of Google’s mobile OS that will start shipping on devices later this month. But we saved one more tasty bit of Honeycomb for the weekend: the OS’s bootup screen.

It looks like something out of Tron, and it’s a nice departure from the boot animation seen on the Nexus One and Nexus S, which features swirling strands of color coming together to form the Nexus ‘X’ symbol (you can watch it below).

Apologies for the glare — this wasn’t shot under ideal circumstances.

We’re on the verge of hearing how Microsoft performed in the last quarter of 2010 – the general consensus seems to be that the world’s largest software maker is set to report a dip in earnings.

We’ll be covering the quarterly earnings release, which is scheduled for after the market closes, and we’ll be zooming in on Microsoft’s online businesses in particular. But before we do, I wanted to address something else.

I’ll start with a rundown of mergers and acquisitions announced by major Internet and tech companies since the beginning of this year, which, notably, is less than a month ago:

Google acquired eBook Technologies (12 Jan), SayNow and fflick (25 Jan)

Facebook acquired Rel8tion (25 Jan)

Amazon acquired LOVEFiLM (20 Jan)

Skype acquired Qik (13 Jan)

Yahoo7 (a joint venture between Seven Media Group and Yahoo) acquired Spreets (21 Jan)

Groupon acquired SoSasta, Grouper, Twangoo (11 Jan) and GroupsMore (26 Jan)

Zynga acquired Flock (5 Jan) and Area/Code (21 Jan)

LinkedIn acquired CardMunch (26 Jan)

Salesforce acquired DimDim (6 Jan)

LivingSocial bought a majority stake in Let’s Bonus (13 Jan).

Dell acquired SecureWorks (3 Jan)

Concur acquired TripIt (13 Jan)

I could go on for a while, but by now you see where I’m going with this.

Since October 2010, Microsoft has announced exactly zero acquisitions, joining struggling companies like Myspace and Nokia for that dubious honor (Twitter acquired Fluther and AOL acquired About.me right before year’s end, while Research In Motion recently acquired The Astonishing Tribe).

Oracle, HP, IBM and Cisco have also recently announced significant acquisitions, as far as the enterprise software part of the equation is concerned.

Then there’s of course Apple, which has been notoriously non-acquisitive ever since the company was founded back in the seventies.

In fact, for the full year of 2010, Microsoft announced only two acquisitions of small companies, namely Canesta and AVIcode. The contrast with rival Google’s M&A activity (roughly 25 acquisitions in 2010) was particularly staggering.

My question is: what on earth is holding Microsoft back?

Look, acquiring companies is just one way a technology company can grow, recruit and develop new or strengthen existing revenue streams. It’s arguably not even the best one.

For all we know, Microsoft evaluated thousands of deals last year and decided not to pursue any of them for the right reasons. Perhaps Microsoft is saving up all its cash to make a giant move that will propel it into a positive innovation and profits spiral again.

Or maybe Microsoft has actually acquired some stellar startups in the past few months but has simply opted not to disclose any of those deals, however unlikely that may be.

Or maybe not.

Microsoft lost out on some big deals in the recent past, which inevitably happens to all companies, but it could be a sign that its M&A strategy is simply not working out the way it should. The software company is sitting on top of mountains of cash, and finds itself in a challenging position with regards to preserving its dominance in the technology industry in the next 10-15 years. It has every reason to become way more acquisitive, and fast.

It’s time to lift up your sleeves and get more aggressive, Redmond – the clock is ticking.

It looks like 2011 will finally be the year where near-field communication (NFC), a short-range communication technology used for mobile payments and information transfer, will finally make a splash.

Apple is apparently integrating the technology in the iPhone 5 and iPad 2, following Google’s release of the Nexus S with NFC built-in, Bloomberg reports.

The news, which has been rumored for months, comes from analyst Richard Doherty, director of the consulting firm Envisioneering Group, who cited engineers who are working on the upcoming Apple devices. Apple is specifically interested in letting consumers use the iPhone 5 and iPad 2 to make purchases — for example, by paying for a restaurant bill with your phone — and will potentially revamp iTunes to take advantage of NFC. Apple is also testing a payment terminal for small businesses utilizing NFC, according to Doherty.

The technology could also be used to improve targeted advertising, according to Richard Crone, head of the financial industry advising firm Crone Consulting. It would allow ads to know exactly where you are and potentially fetch higher rates in the process. Since NFC requires close contact to transfer information it could be much more useful to targeted ads than relying on GPS alone — which notoriously has trouble locating users in busy cities and indoors.

AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are collaborating on their own NFC-based mobile payment network dubbed Isis, and Google likely has something planned as well. I suspect we’ll see many NFC-enabled devices this year, but it will likely take mobile payment operators, as well as small businesses who would best take advantage of the technology, months to get a handle on it. By 2012, with NFC handsets common and more mature mobile payment networks available, I suspect the technology will explode in popularity.

Tags: iPad 2, iPhone 5, mobile payments, NFC, smartphones, tablets

Companies: Apple, AT&T, Google, T Mobile, Verizon

People: Richard Crone, Richard Doherty

In fact, the pedigree of investors speaks to the grandiose vision of the still very early stage startup. Eduardo Saverin, Facebook’s reclusive co-founder, joins YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim and Juniper Networks co-founder Pradeep Sindhu as individual investors leading the round.

Saverin anticipated the evolution of the social graph and recognizes that the information experience engineered by Qwiki could be just as significant, says Imbruce.

Control of the Board

Instituational investors Lerer Media Ventures, Tugboat Ventures and Contour Venture Partners also participated in the round, but Imbruce was quick to note that the majority of funds were raised through individuals instead of institutions, which was by design. Qwiki hopes to usher in a new era of search, and it’s a long-term vision that the startup wants to make happen.

Imbruce reports that Qwiki has already fielded a number of acquisition offers. The concern was that should an institutional investor assume control of the board, the startup might be coaxed, or cornered into, taking an early exit. With this round, Saverin and Pejman Nozad join the board as observers, allowing the Qwiki team to retain control of the board, and its future by association.

A Whole New World

“The reaction from the public at large is beyond our largest expectations,” says Imbruce. Imbruce speaks of receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback from technologists and users alike. School teachers and handicap individuals have reached out in droves, he says.

This morning Imbruce also awoke to an inspiring email from his cofounder and CTO Dr. Louis Monier, who previously founded AltaVista and is often credited as the father of search.

Imbruce shared the following snippet from Monier’s private correspondence:

“I use my bag of superlatives quite rarely, but this is one of these moments when I need them. I have seen this kind of tidal wave of positive interest, and it was 15 years ago. I haven’t felt it since… We don’t have a me too product we want to trade in for free lunches at Google. We have a proposition that grabs most people by the throat and doesn’t let go. We have a new brush and new colors to paint anything we want. We have complex technology (and you ain’t see nothing yet) that delivers magic and will be hard to imitate. We are the first to explore a whole new world.”

What’s Next

Qwiki’s immediate road map includes a public alpha release in seven to 10 days. The new version aims to make Qwikis more relevant by allowing users to submit content. Soon after that release, the startup will roll out its iPad and iPhone apps. Also in the works is an API and publishing environment which, according to Imbruce, should be made available in six months time.

In the meantime, Qwiki will use its newly acquired funds to hire engineers and designers capable of transforming information experience into a platform. Imbruce recognizes the challenge ahead, but feels confident that the capital will make his goal of building a generationally significant company a reality.

More About: Eduardo Saverin, funding, qwiki, series a

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