AT&T's one-iPhone-per-customer rule
lasted only one day before the company went back to its three-per-customer policy. Apparently they found some more iPhones in the back. [Information Week]
Fertilizer prices have shot upwards in the past five years as manufacturers have been unable to keep up with demand. The demand is driven by an increase in biofuel production, and a growing appetite for red meat in developing countries. The end result is that it now costs an extra $1.00 now to get a slice from my the pizza place around the corner from me. [
NYT]
food
The
NY Sun says that Costco has resorted to "rationing" bags of rice in California and flour and oil in New York due to limited supply:
The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.
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There's a tragic shortage of special kosher-for-Passover margarine going on... which reminds us that we need to buy some delicious kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola. No corn syrup, only delicious cane sugar. Mmmm. [
WSJ]
rip-offs
Georgia state inspectors closed two large Cisco gas stations just across the state line from Florida last week in what the Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture described as "
one of the worst cases of shorting gas customers he's seen since he took office back in 1969." (Why Ag? Why not?) An inspector found that a five gallon test pump turned up over a quart short at the Cisco Travel Plaza off Interstate 95's Exit 6, and a similar test revealed a suspiciously similar shortage at another Cisco Travel Plaza off Exit 1.
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video games
Bundling may be a popular tactic retailers employ to force customers to spend more money, but Nintendo of America's celeb-President Reggie Fils-Aime has come out against it, finally: "Retailers have already been given feedback that we are not big fans of that," he
told Reuters this week. Is the pre-purchase deal with GameStop one way Nintendo is preventing that from happening this December? If anyone actually buys one of those
empty DVD cases, let us know if they try to upsell you to a bundle.
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video games
Not even Nintendo anticipated how the market would react to the Wii, which is
why they're still hard to find a year after launch, even after Nintendo almost doubled production of the console from 1 million to 1.8 million units a month, writes Wired. "Last week was Nintendo's best since the Wii's launch, with 350,000 sold in the United States alone. In comparison, Microsoft sold about that many Xbox 360s last
month."
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supply and demand
We know that May isn't the month you want to start hearing about the holiday shopping season, but analysts are predicting that the Wii shortage will last through this year's shopping season and possibly longer. From PC World:
"Demand still appears to exceed supply, and we believe that shortages could persist through the remainder of the year, including the key holiday period," said Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets, in a report by Next-Gen.biz.
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nintendo
Didn't feel like standing in line for a Wii? No worries. Nintendo says they're ramping up production. Could the Wii drought be over?
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wii
According to the Globe and Mail, Canadian Best Buys are holding back part of their shipment of Nintendo Wiis. Why are they doing this?
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Consumerist
walmart
