Pandigital's New Tablets are Under $200

Pandigital is the latest company hoping to cash in on the budget tablet market. It just announced three new Android tablet devices, all are going to retail for $200 or less.  The tabs are boldly dubbed Planet, Star, and Nova and will feature 7-inch touch screens, Cortex A9 CPUs, plus 3D graphics.

While the new tablets sport similar size displays, some differences separate them. Specifically the Planet and Nova ($189) will use 800 x 600 resolution screens and have both front-facing and rear digital cameras. The less expensive Star ( $159) is expected to feature a lower-res 800 x 480 pixel display, a front camera only, but a thinner design. One drawback is all three slates will use outdated resistive touchscreen technology and not modern (and typically more responsive) capacitive solutions.

Additionally the Planet and Star will come with 2GB of internal storage and run Android 2.2 Froyo, while the Nova ups on-board memory to 4GB and uses Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Sorry, no Android Honeycomb here. A microSD slot, which accepts memory cards of up to 32 GB, will be included on all three tablets.

Here's the Pandigital Planet, available on Amazon.

Amazon to grow textbook rental business

It's back-to-school season, and Amazon.com is offering a service sure to help students’ wallets with e-textbooks.

On Monday, Amazon said that it will begin renting digital textbooks viaKindle Textbook Rentals

The e-textbooks should go a long way toward reducing students’ monstrous textbook bills each semester. Renting a digital text can save as much as 80 percent over the price of buying a dead-tree book, according to Amazon Kindle vice president Dave Limp.

Kindle Textbook Rentals allows students to pay based on how long they want to use textbooks, with periods ranging from 30 to 360 days.

And you don’t have to own a Kindle to use the service. Rented Kindle Textbooks can be read on many devices, including all of the iPads, smartphones, PCs or Macs, iPod Touch devices, and Blackberry, Windows Phone, and Android-based devices.

Kindle Free Pick of the Week: The Beatles, 50 Fabulous Years

If you are a Beatles fan, this appears to be a must have.

It has been fifty years since John, Paul, and George named themselves the Beatles and soon after recruited Ringo Starr. The Beatles: Fifty Fabulous Years includes fascinating and little-known stories, never-before-published

The Beatles: Fifty Fabulous Years is an interactive e-reading product that captures John, Paul, George, and Ringo like never before. Released for the Amazon Kindle App and Kindle Store, the product features fascinating and rare clips, little-known stories, amazing interviews, and photographs. The pandemonium of Beatlemania is brought to life, from madcap movies, interviews with each of the Fab Four, and footage of delirious fans.

Best of all is it's free!  So, "Let it Be"

Kindle Free Pick of the Week: The Friend Request

A thriller from Alex Ford.

Have you accepted a 'friend request' when you should have clicked ignore? Do you really know all the people listed as 'friends' on your Facebook page?

What if somebody from your past assumed the identity of someone from your present, so they could get close to you?

What if they wanted to get close to you, just to hurt you - again.

David Andrews’ life is going well.

With an imminent promotion at work he’s content in his job. His girlfriend is gorgeous and looking at the amount of friends on his Facebook page he’s very popular too.  So, when he sees a friend request from a Barry Taylor, he doesn’t understand why it makes him so nervous, he’s not sure he even recognises the name.

Eventually he forgets all about it, until the day he is forced to remember a past that was erased from his memory by a terrible accident.

Little does he realise that all the information on his Facebook page might make him a little too vulnerable, especially to a sociopath like Barry Taylor, who is intent on destroying David’s life – for a second time.

With a little help from his friendly shopkeeper David embarks on a journey of revenge and self-discovery.

Kindle Free Pick of the Week: Thread Words

Thread Words is a word search game for Kindle. 

The goal is to find words in a 5 high grid of letters. Find words by selecting one letter from each column. On each level there are ten pairs of shapes. Make words matching each shape on the left with the same shape on the right to unlock the next level. After matching all shapes you can continue to find the rest of the words for a higher score or immediately move on to the next level.  This game makes you think.

The game progresses through 4 levels of difficulty, with grids that increase from 4 to 7 letters across. Each word you find is worth 20 points per letter, and if you find all of the qualifying words you get an 800 point bonus! Try to beat the clock or take your time in relaxed mode. The game tracks separate high scores for each mode.