This is Amazon's new Kindle ad, which showed up just today on Good Morning America. Argue all you will over its direct attack on the iPad's glare-plagued LCD display. I'm more worried about the maniacal cackling at the end. UPDATED:
There are a few possible explanations: maybe it's dubbed in! Maybe it's supposed to be some clever sound effect that just happens to resemble an evil overlord! Maybe it's a warning about what'll happen if we don't all run out and buy Kindles right this instant! UPDATE: An Amazon spokesperson has clarified that it is, in fact, a dub job. The unadulterated, totally not creepy spot is above.
As for the ad itself, well, this isn't the first time Amazon's touted how well the Kindle handles direct sunlight, though it's the first direct assault on iPad. Of course, the two are entirely different classes of device! The Kindle is an e-book reader. The iPad is a tablet that happens to come with proprietary e-book reading software. But it's actually a little bit brilliant, on Amazon's part, to compare the two directly. It puts their product—which is the best at what it does—in the conversation with competitors that do a whole lot more.
So maybe the laughter would have been appropriate after all: to go after big game, you have to be a little unhinged. [CrunchGear]