8 . The simplest smartphone ever

The Jitterbug^® Smart2 from GreatCall^® is the simplest phone with a simple menu, large screen and particular health and safety services.

Easy Everything you want to do, from texting and taking pictures, to emailing and getting directions, is organized in a single list on one screen with large legible letters. Plus, voice typing makes writing emails and texts effortless.

Smart Turn your Jitterbug Smart2 into a personal safety device with GreatCall’s 55tar^® Urgent Response Service and particular health apps.

Affordable GreatCall has a variety of plans with data starting as low as $17.48 per month. Compared to other cell phone companies, you could save over $300 per year.

25% off of $149.99 MSRP is only valid(有效的) for new lines of service. Offer valid 11/12/2020 through 1/2/2021. Monthly fees do not include government taxes or assessment surcharges and are subject to change. Plans and services may require purchase of a GreatCall device and a one-time setup fee of $35. $300 savings calculation based on market leaders’ lowest available monthly published fees. JITTERBUG are trademarks of Best Buy and its attached companies. © 2020 Best Buy. All rights reserved.

They like using the Internet. They have lots of pocket money to spend. And they spend a higher proportion of it online than the rest of us. Teenagers are just the sort of people an online seller is interested in, and the things they want to buy — games, CDs and clothing — are easily sold on the Web.

But paying online is a tricky business for consumers who are too young to own credit cards. Most have to use a parents card. They want a facility that allows them to spend money.

That may come sooner than they think: new ways to take pocket money into cyber space are coming out rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic. If successful, these products could stimulate online sales.

In general, teenagers spend huge amounts: $153 bn (billion) in the US last year and £20 bn annually in the UK. Most teenagers have access to the Internet at home or at school — 88 percent in the US, 69 percent in the UK. According to Jupiter Research, one in eight of those with Internet access has bought something online — mainly CDs and books.

In most cases, parents pay for these purchases with credit cards, an arrangement that is often unsatisfactory for them and their children. Pressing parents to spend online is less productive than pressing on the high street. They’re more likely to ask “Why” if you ask to spend some money online.

One way to help teenagers change notes and coins into cybercash is through prepaid cards such as IntenetCash in the US and Smart cards in the UK, Similar to those for pay-as-you-go mobile telephones, they are sold in amounts such as £20 or $50 with a concealed 14-digit number that can be used to load the cash into an online account.

10 . To describe the sorrow of bookstores is to join the dirge-singing chorus. Everyone knows the tune: sales at bookstores have fallen because buyers are ordering books online or downloading them to e-readers. Bookstores may be great places to browse and linger, but online is where the deals are. In the latest chapter in the Borders legend, the bookstore chain has agreed to sell its assets（资产）for $215m to Direct Brands, a media-distribution company owned by Najafi, a private-equity firm, which would also assume an additional $220m in liabilities（债务）. This will serve as the opening bid for the company’s bankruptcy-court auction（拍卖），scheduled for July 19th.

Whatever happens at the auction will decide the fate of the bookseller, which has already closed more than a third of its stores. Because Direct Brands is an online and catalogue-based distributor of music. DVDs and books, some think that a deal with Najafi will do little to keep the remaining bookstores open. Rather, the company will probably see value in the Borders distribution network and liquidate（清算）almost everything else. Regardless, the story doesn’t look good for store employees and their shrinking customers.（The company, which employs more than 11,000 people, has racked up more than $191m in losses since seeking bankruptcy protection in February, according to the Wall Street Journal.）

Nashville, Tennessee, is still facing several bookstore closings, including a Borders and the more beloved Davis-Kidd. The result, as reported in the Nashville Scene, is an“object lesson in how truly awful it is to live in a town where used bookstores and the pitiful offerings of Books-a-Million are all we have.”The problem, however, is that no one seems willing to buy full-price books anymore. Campaigns to get people to buy books from their local bookstores—such as“Save Bookstores Day”on June 25th—miss the point. While there is a demand for real bcicks-and-mortar places to gather, drink coffee and read new books, such places can’t exist if the market can’t accommodate them.

Besides coffee, access to Wi-Fi and yoga mat, what will people pay for to enable a bricks-and-mortar bookstore? Could independent stores charge membership fees, which grant access to books at slightly lower prices? Would a corporate-sponsorship model work? Perhaps bookstores could become tax-subsidized（补贴税收的）places where people can browse and linger, but only borrow the books for limited periods of time—what the hell, let’s call them libraries.

At any rate, the market is squeezing out a meaningful public space. It will be interesting to see what fills the void（真空）these bookstores leave behind.