If you are a billionaire looking for that perfect guest book for your upcoming  July 4th  party, I do not think you can find a finer one than the one below. Of course you may need a bit of help from your good friends Bill Gates and Warren Buffet - as this little gem is just a bit over $95 billion but luckily well under their combined net worth. Hope your guests are worth it ! And while there, don’t forget to grab a couple more great bargains - the Kodak banner paper for $44 billion and the Sanus TV speaker shelf for just $1.1 million.   They are all on Amazon and available for 1-click ordering !

Here  is a description and screenshot of the original listing on Amazon.com (since most likely it will be removed after the error is discovered). Click on it to view it full size.
Butterfly Wishes Precious Jewels Traditional Guest Book, only $95 billion approx; $95,452,009,310.40 to be precise.
[ Plus $14.17 in shipping. Sorry, it does not qualify for free shipping ! ]

Just for fun, I added these items to my cart - but surprisingly Amazon did not blink or display any error messages. Clearly these are inadvertent data-entry errors (hopefully) - not surprising on a website with millions of items. And in fairness to Amazon - all of these items appear to be from third-party sellers and are not from Amazon. What is surprising, however, is that Amazon’s advanced e-commerce software let these errors slip through to the site and as far as the shopping cart. One would have expected validation routines to trigger an exception if the price of a listed item was over several billion dollars; or if a customer’s shopping cart was at $140 billion !

Here is my shopping cart :

And here is a link to the individual items on Amazon :
(and if you plan on purchasing these, yes - please do use these links - it would be stupid to pass up on Amazon’s affiliate commission on a $140 billion sale ! :))

There is a post on TechCrunch today about the Top 10 Reasons The Apple iPad Will Put Amazon’s Kindle Out of Business

Certainly the iPad will give some competition to the  Kindle - especially the $489 model - but put it out of business ?  Highly unlikely.    Here are the top 10 reasons why the iPad will NOT kill the Kindle :

1) Price: The price point to compare is the $269 Kindle vs the $499 iPad.  The $269 Kindle works pretty well for reading books. And if  Amazon drops the price to $199 - there is no competition.

2) e-Ink : Makes reading a pleasure. Enough said.

3) Glare :  The backlight on the iPad makes it difficult on your eyes for extended periods of reading. Plus you can read a Kindle in broad daylight with no problems. Try that with an iPad.

4) 3G connectivity: is built in and free for life on the Kindle - with  no monthly fees, ever ! And anywhere in the world. First the iPad will cost  $130 more for the 3G option.  Second it  requires you to shell out  $30 (or $15) per month to AT&T to be able to use 3G.   Three negatives right there for the iPad  - the hassle of signing up, the cost  and AT&T’s awful connectivity.

5) Amazon vs iTunes : You can download almost any book on Amazon - and are not locked perpetually into the Apple/iTunes jail.   Apple hates giving up control on anything -  and that is not likely to change in the near future.

6) Size : The Kindle is smaller and more portable than the iPad.  Makes it easier to carry it around just like a book. The iPad - though portable -still feels like you are carrying around a tablet or a laptop.

7) Weight : It is only 0.6 lb compared to the 1.5 lbs for the iPad - another plus that makes it easier to carry around.   And you can therefore  hold the Kindle for extended periods with one hand without your hand getting tired.  Try that with the iPad.

8) Battery Life : You can easily use a Kindle for almost 2  weeks with a single charge.  That makes it the perfect device for reading books on long airplane trips  or vacations.  The iPad claims 10 hours for the battery life - we all know that the actual battery life  will be probably half that.

9) Touch : The iPad is a touch device, which means you will need to constantly wipe the greasy fingerprints  on it resulting from all that page turning when reading books.  No such problems on the Kindle.

10)  Fragility : Finally, I  could easily give the Kindle to a five or ten-year old child without worrying that they may drop and break the screen. Not so with the iPad’s expensive and fragile panel.  In fact, the Kindle may be the perfect replacement for all the heavy school textbooks that kids have to carry these days.

So what do you think ? Your comments and feedback are welcome.