When it comes to innovation in electronic gadgets, a new kind of glass is not especially sexy.

But when that glass is built into millions of touchscreen devices, and could potentially make them thinner, lighter and more responsive to your finger, consumers may take notice.

Corning Inc. says Gorilla Glass 2 is thinner and more touch-sensitive without sacrificing toughness or resistance to scratches. The company showed off the glass Monday at a gadget-showcase event at the International Consumer Electronics Show here and is showing live demos of its enhanced qualities at the Corning booth throughout the four-day show.

The new glass is not any less resistant to breakage than the current Gorilla Glass, which may be disappointing news to anyone who has had to put up with a cracked screen after dropping a phone.

“It’s not scratch-proof. And if they drop it on granite, it can be broken,” said Corning general manager Clifford Hund. But he added that Corning has managed to make the glass 20% thinner but just as strong — a key advancement at a time when smartphone and tablet makers are trying to produce ever-thinner devices.

The second generation of Gorilla Glass will debut in Windows-based PCs this year. Other manufacturers also are weighing how and when to add the glass to their upcoming devices, Hund said.

Because it’s thinner — about 0.8 millimeters instead of 1 millimeter — the glass allows users’ fingers to be closer to the touch interface, creating a screen that responds more quickly and accurately, said Gorilla Glass program director Jaymin Amin.

The glass also has been engineered to let more light through, creating a brighter display screen, Corning executives said.

Due to customer nondisclosure agreements, Corning cannot name all the devices that use Gorilla Glass — including Apple products. But according to multiple other sources, including Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, the product’s first consumer application was the original iPhone in 2007.

A passage from Isaacson’s book details how Apple had originally planned to use plastic display coverings for its iPhone before Jobs approached Corning CEO Wendell Weeks about ordering glass instead. Weeks told him Corning had developed a tough form of glass, made extra strong by a chemical process, but couldn’t find a market for it.

Weeks didn’t think Corning could manufacture the glass fast enough to meet Apple’s timetable for the iPhone launch. But at the prodding of Jobs, who wouldn’t take no for an answer, Corning did it in six months.

After the iPhone hit the market, Jobs sent Weeks a note that said, “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Gorilla Glass also is part of touchscreens in electronic devices by Acer, Asus, Dell, HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony, among other manufacturers.

Amin demonstrated its toughness Monday by placing a small square of the original glass in a lever press, then applying more than 100 pounds of pressure onto it. Despite looking like he was truly exerting himself, he couldn’t break it. Amin then tested the new glass the same way and got the same result.

Dealnews.com just took a look at things that will probably cost consumers either more or less in 2012. Mobile devices featured most prominently on the site’s list of 12 Things That Will Be Less Expensive in 2012.

Here’s a roundup of their findings, from a mobile-tech perspective:

Tablets

On the tablet front, writer Louis Ramirez says the Kindle Fire has, “ahem, ignited a fire among tablet manufacturers as they scramble to match Amazon’s $199 price tag. For consumers, the competition translates to better tablet bargains in 2012.”

Smaller, cheaper Android-based e-reader tablets aren’t really meant to compete directly with fully featured tablets such as the iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tab. They are very different product types that appeal to different market niches — and as such have significantly different price points. The Dealnews tablet deals page regularly lists special offers on new or refurbished tablets, both large and small, and fully featured or limited, on every mobile operating system.

Will the iPad be cheaper in 2012? Maybe, if you don’t need the latest model.

Ramirez predicts that the iPad 2 will see a significant price drop in 2012.

“The [widely anticipated] iPad 3 will not feature a significant price drop (if any at all), but one thing is guaranteed — Cupertino’s forthcoming tablet will most certainly bring down the price of refurbished iPad 2s, as the iPad 2 did for its predecessor,” he wrote. “The iPad 3 may even cause resellers to offer more deals on new iPad 2 models as they try to move yesterday’s tech to make room for Apple’s latest and greatest.”

E-readers

Dedicated e-reader devices such as the Amazon Kindle and the Kobo (which focus mainly on displaying books and long-format content, rather than Web-based services and apps) are likely to reach all-time low prices in 2012.

According to Dealnews: “Each new generation of Amazon’s Kindle reader has chipped away at the e-book reader’s price tag, sometimes by as much as 61%. Assuming there’s a new Kindle in 2012 (rumor has it that an e-ink update with video support will debut), we expect to see continued price cuts on Amazon’s popular e-book reader.”

As I wrote last year, it’s even possible that Amazon might start giving away the Kindle — maybe in 2012.

Notebooks

Notebook laptops are also a popular type of mobile device. According to Ramirez, 2012 might yield some especially good deals on refurbished Apple MacBook Air models.

“In 2011 the price of a refurbished, fourth-generation 11-inch MacBook Air dropped from $849 to $699 (17%). Not bad for a notebook that’s single-handedly changing the laptop industry. Apple is bound to refresh its MacBook Air in 2012, and the new model (which would be the sixth generation) is guaranteed to drive refurb prices down even lower. Don’t care for a refurb unit? In 2011, we also saw aggressive deals on new, current fifth-generation MacBook Airs with prices dropping from $999 to $850 (14%).”

GPS units

As consumers get used to using GPS-enabled smartphones and tablets for navigation, Dealnews predicted that standalone GPS units (such as those sold by Garmin) will get cheaper than ever. “In 2011, units that were once fetching around $160 reached price-lows of just $70.”

In fact, Ramirez wrote, “No gadget is as close to extinction as the GPS unit.”

However, if the recent National Transportation Safety Board recommendation to ban cell phone use by drivers in cars is implemented by any states or municipalities, sales of GPS units might see a resurgence — since the recommendation exempted devices specifically “designed to support the driving task.”

What will get more expensive

What will cost mobile users more in 2012? The Dealnews list of 11 Things That Will Be More Expensive in 2012 contained only one reference to mobile: data plans.

As I wrote last year, perhaps the most important development in the U.S. mobile landscape in 2011 was that all but one of the major carriers have abandoned unlimited data plans in favor of tiered service. This comes as the carriers are rolling out high-speed 4G networks, and U.S. mobile users are developing a strong taste for data-intensive services like streaming media.

If you’re on a tiered plan and start using a lot more data, you could end up with a large surprise bill — or throttled service.

Determined price-conscious consumers have been trying to find tricks to get unlimited data on tiered plans. But the carriers can catch on to this — Verizon recently closed a loophole that allowed this.

In October, the Federal Communications Commission said it might issue new rules to prevent bill shock. The major U.S. carriers said they would voluntarily start issuing text alerts to customers who near their phone plan caps.

However, it’s unclear how fast or consistently this alert feature will roll out, and whether it will include alerts related to data consumption. So to control your costs, if you use data-intensive mobile services, your best bets are to use Wi-Fi whenever possible and to install apps or other tools that allow you to keep a close eye on your data usage.

The accusation comes in court papers filed by BP Monday in federal court in New Orleans as part of a lawsuit aimed at having sanctions imposed on Halliburton Energy Services Inc., which was a contractor for BP on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. An explosion on the rig on April 20, 2010, killed 11 people working on the rig and injured 16 others. The explosion led to more than 200 million gallons of oil being released into the Gulf.

BP alleges in its filing that Halliburton destroyed evidence on cement testing and violated court orders by not bringing forth “inexplicably missing” computer modeling results.

“Halliburton has steadfastly refused to provide these critical testing and modeling results in discovery. Halliburton’s refusal has been unwavering, despite repeated BP discovery requests and a specific order from this Court,” the documents state.

“BP has now learned the reason for Halliburton’s intransigence — Halliburton destroyed the results of physical slurry testing, and it has, at best, lost the computer modeling outputs that showed no channeling. More egregious still, Halliburton intentionally destroyed the evidence related to its nonprivileged cement testing, in part because it wanted to eliminate any risk that this evidence would be used against it at trial,” the BP papers say.
Is Gulf seafood unsafe to eat?

When reached for comment Monday, Halliburton spokeswoman Beverly Stafford said the company was reviewing the details of the motion.

“However, we believe that the conclusions that BP is asking the court to draw is without merit and we look forward to contesting their motion in court.”

The BP documents state that two Halliburton employees testified under oath about destroying notes and samples related to analyzing the stability of a similar cement mixture that was used in the failed oil well.

“[D]id you take down any notes about the slurry?” Halliburton Global Advisor in Gulf Cementing Rickey Morgan was asked during a deposition detailed in the court motion.

“No, ma’am,” Morgan responded.

“You didn’t take any pictures?”

“No, ma’am.”

“And then you said you dumped out the sample?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you mentioned that the reason that you didn’t document the test and you threw out the sample was because you were worried about it being misinterpreted in the litigation?”

“Yes, that’s part of the reason, yes, ma’am,” Morgan testified, according to the BP papers.

BP is seeking to have a “third-party specialist” examine a Halliburton computer, saying “such an examination might well recover the missing modeling results, or shed light on the circumstances of their apparent disappearance.”

BP and its two contractors — Halliburton and Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig where the explosion occurred — have been locked in legal battles since last year.

In September, the final federal report on the spill said BP, Transocean and Halliburton all share responsibility for the deadly explosion and ensuing oil spill.

The three companies “violated a number of federal offshore safety regulations,” according to the report, which was issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The report concluded that a key cause of the explosion was a faulty cement drilling barrier at the well site.

“The precise reasons for the failure of the production casing cement job are not known,” the report stated. But the disaster was “the result of poor risk management, last minute changes to plans, failure to observe and respond to critical indicators, inadequate well control response, and insufficient emergency bridge response training by companies and individuals responsible for drilling” at the site.

BP was “ultimately responsible” for operations at the site “in a way that ensured the safety and protection of personnel, equipment, natural resources, and the environment,” the report concluded.

But Transocean, as owner of the rig, also was “responsible for conducting safe operations and for protecting personnel onboard.”

Meanwhile, Halliburton — as a BP contractor — was “responsible for conducting the cement job, and … had certain responsibilities for monitoring the well,” the report said.

A spokesman for BP said in September that the company agreed with report’s conclusion.

“The Deepwater Horizon accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple parties, including Transocean and Halliburton,” Scott Dean said. “BP (has) acknowledged its role in the accident and has taken concrete steps to further enhance safety. … We continue to encourage other parties to acknowledge their roles in the accident and make changes to help prevent similar accidents in the future.”

But in response to the report, Halliburton continued to deny any responsibility for the tragedy.

The report “incorrectly attributes the operation decisions to Halliburton,” said Zelma Branch, a Halliburton spokeswoman. “Every contributing cause where Halliburton is named, the operational responsibility lies solely with BP. Halliburton remains confident that all the work we performed with respect to the … well was completed in accordance with BP’s specifications for its well construction plan and instructions.”

Besides the oil, hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemical dispersant went into the water. At the peak of the crisis, in June 2010, 37% of Gulf waters — a total of 88,522 square miles — were closed to fishing due to contamination.

UPDATE 2:30 p.m. ET: Gowalla has confirmed in a blog post that its service will wind down by the end of January.

So what does that mean to those of us who use Facebook or Gowalla?

If you’re a Gowalla user and love the service the way it is, it’s almost certainly bad news. When Facebook acquires a company, it rarely keeps the original product intact. Instead, it voraciously devours these smaller startups to get to the talented developers housed within.

Beluga, a recent acquisition, is in the process of shutting down while Facebook works instead on Facebook Messages, a similar service. The initial report suggests this will be the case with Gowalla: Some of the Austin-based team will move to Palo Alto, California, to work at Facebook, while a few will stay behind in Austin.

The move also technically means that Facebook owns the data you entered into Gowalla. I’d bet against Facebook importing this information into your Facebook profile without your consent — they’re likely aware that this would result in another privacy scare — but I do think Facebook will provide time to export your Gowalla data if they do shut it down.

Why is this a likely outcome? Because it’s exactly what they’re doing with Beluga. Existing users can download an archive of their Beluga messages until mid-December. Who knows, they might even provide a way to add your Gowalla check-ins to your Facebook Timeline — but only with consent.

What about Facebook users? Is anything likely to change?

One conclusion you could naturally jump to is that Facebook wants you to share your location more often — and the Gowalla team will build features into Facebook to do so. This would be logical: Facebook already launched a product, Facebook Places, for doing just that — but they later scaled it back and merged the features into your status updates.

Maybe Facebook wants to take another shot? To some extent, perhaps.

My guess is that the integration won’t be completely literal. I don’t foresee Facebook providing “stamps” for checking in to certain locations, for instance. I don’t think it will generate city guides for major metropolitan areas, either.

We know from the initial report that Gowalla employees will work on Timeline, Facebook’s new scrapbook-like layout, and I’d guess that their skills will be used more generally, rather than working solely on location-based features.

We also know that a source with knowledge of the deal thinks that there’s a broader similarity between the two companies. “Gowalla’s vision is about people telling stories, and Facebook’s vision for Timeline is about stories about important moments in life,” said the source.

So don’t expect Facebook to suddenly launch a wave of new location-based features. I think the fusion of the companies will be less visible than that.

What does all this mean to you? If you’re a Gowalla user and the deal is confirmed, you may want to switch services. I don’t think Gowalla will be around for much longer if this Facebook deal closes.

If you’re a Facebook user, meanwhile, you probably won’t feel a thing. Facebook just bought another group of talented developers and will continue to dominate the world of social networking for years to come. Your Facebook experience may even improve, thanks to the influx of talent into Facebook’s ranks.

Jobs even got directly involved in customer service, which was a part of Apple’s business for which he exercised a great deal of attention and patience. He fielded e-mails about broken laptops and intervened on support calls.

By comparison, a representative for AT&T, Apple’s longtime carrier partner for the coveted iPhone, threatened a customer, who had twice e-mailed company CEO Randall Stephenson complaining about price hikes, with a cease-and-desist notice.

“I don’t think even Steve Jobs can spin 2 GB for $25/month as a good thing for the consumer,” the customer, Giorgio Galante, wrote in his recap, as reported by Wired, which is a CNN.com content partner.

Unlike other leaders, Jobs was not only handling an unusual number of his company’s own basic customer service inquiries, but he also fielded some of Stephenson’s, since AT&T and Apple were conjoined on various business interests relating to the iPhone and iPad.

When a customer asked Jobs via e-mail in 2008 why BlackBerry owners could tether their phones to their computers for wireless Internet access but the same could not be done with an iPhone, Jobs wrote, “We agree, and are discussing it with ATT.” The feature eventually came.

Asked about tethering an iPhone to an iPad on AT&T, Jobs replied only, “No.”

Jobs consoled another AT&T customer, Mark Trapp, who expressed his frustration over his cell carrier’s plans to discontinue unlimited data plans. “I think its (sic) going to work out just fine for almost all customers. Try it,” Jobs wrote, but he was less supportive in a message to another customer, Dennis Wurster, about the same matter: “It’s between you and ATT.”

Steve’s proclivity for responding to e-mails, and the reputation that came with that, made his inbox a prominent target for customers looking to overstep rows of supervisors to get broken computers replaced and generous credit for service outages. This approach intensified as his legendary reputation and Apple’s customer base grew.

Apple took notice and repurposed the messages to be used as data points for internal use, evidenced by a graph charting customer complaints about the ill-fated Internet service, MobileMe.

Long before that, however, Jobs was extraordinarily embedded in handling customer complaints. On October 11, 1999, not long after Jobs returned to a dying company and took on the title of interim CEO (or iCEO), he fielded an inquiry from a customer named David about iBook laptop shortages.

“We are doing the best we can with a limited supply (which is finally now increasing). Please remember that some of the first pre-orders came from CompUSA,” Jobs wrote.

Dozens of stories have floated around the Web about the times when an e-mail to Jobs yielded a phone call from an executive support team and an outcome that far exceeded reasonable expectations. In 1999, a customer got his G4 Tower desktop repaired after an e-mail to Jobs resulted in a phone call from the mysterious Executive Relations team.

In 2001, a student software developer was told by Apple support that, despite his sob story about dropping the hard drive connected to his laptop causing damage, they couldn’t resolve an issue that resulted from physical abuse. After writing to the CEO, he got a call from one of Jobs’ associates who asked him several questions and then tempered his expectations by saying similarly that he did not meet the standards for a comped repair.

But a month passed after he took his computer in for repairs, and there was still no charge from Apple. The customer recalled on an Internet message board: “I contacted the support people, and they said the charges had been waived by ‘someone higher up.’ Uncle Steve must be smiling on me.”

Jobs would not always grant customers’ wishes, and he certainly did not buy into the adage that “the customer is always right.”

For example, a customer complaining about Apple not honoring its warranty for his computer received the following response from Jobs in 2008: “This is what happens when your MacBook Pro sustains water damage. They are pro machines and they don’t like water. It sounds like you’re just looking for someone to get mad at other than yourself.”

Jobs didn’t often pick up the phone to go back and forth with customers, but at least one Apple customer, Scott Steckley, recalls a time when an e-mail to Jobs, explaining how there seemed to be no end in sight to his wait for a computer repair, was met with a phone call.

“Hi Scott, this is Steve,” Steckley recalled hearing from the other end of the phone.

“Steve Jobs?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Jobs said. “I just wanted to apologize for your incredibly long wait. It’s really nobody’s fault. It’s just one of those things.”

“Yeah, I understand.”

Then Jobs explained that he expedited the repair. “I also wanted to thank you for your support of Apple,” Jobs said. “I see how much equipment you own. It really makes my day to see someone who enjoys our products so much and who supports us in the good times and bad.”

The National Weather Service called the storm moving into the state off the Bering Sea “a powerful and extremely dangerous storm of record or near-record magnitude.”

Are you there? Send an iReport.

[Updated at 10:04 a.m. ET] A Twitter user says their mother’s house in Kotzebue, Alaska, is shaking so hard in the wind that the woman fell down.

[Updated at 9:53 a.m. ET] The storm is pushing water in to Norton Sound and flooding is anticipated in communities along Alaska’s western coast, National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Berg, told CNN Wednesday morning.

Water has moved up to the base of some buildings in Nome and is expected to continue to rise, Berg said. The weather service also has reports of roofs being torn off buildings by high winds in Nome, he said.

The highest gust reported in the storm so far is 89 mph in Wales, Alaska, Berg said.

The weather service has not reported any significant snow accumulation so far, but it has been snowing continuously in some areas since Tuesday, he said.

“When the snow is flying sideways, it’s kinda hard to go out and see how much is falling,” Berg said.

The center of the storm is pushing northward and will turn to the north-northwest later in the day, he said. Communities including Kivalina and Point Hope will see worsening conditions, according to Berg.

[Updated at 9:34 a.m. ET] The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center reports the storm is generating waves as high as 40 feet in the Bering Sea. Wind gusts up to 83 mph in Cape Lisburne, Alaska, and 76 mph in Wales, Alaska, the agency said.

[Posted at 6:32 a.m. ET] Early Wednesday, Twitter reports said wind speeds in Nome in northwestern Alaska had reached 100 mph. That would be the equivalent of a category 2 hurricane if it occurred in the tropics. Twitter postings reported structural damage in Nome, including the roof blown off a building. Landline phones were down, according to a Twitter post.

“These things get named hurricanes down south and get a category. It’s that magnitude,” said Jeff Osiensky, regional warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the Anchorage Daily News. The storm’s scope was also hurricane-like, he said, covering 750 to 1,000 miles in breadth.

Chip Leeper, incident commander with the Nome government, told CNN that people in low-lying areas and on along the town’s sea wall had been advised to seek shelter elsewhere.

National Weather Service meteorologist Steven Kearney told CNN that Nome could endure sea levels up to 8 feet above normal as well as 10-foot waves.

Other coastal and island villages were preparing evacuations if surf became too high.

Inland, the storm was expected to produce blizzard or near-blizzard conditions across western Alaska, the weather service said. Snow accumulations of up to 14 inches were possible. A Twitter poster reported winds gusts of 50 mph in the inland village of Aniak early Wednesday.

The revelations come as part of an in-depth interview between PBS’s Charlie Rose and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The extensive interview covers all of the bases, such as whether Facebook will ever build games (no, Zuck says) and what Zuckerberg thinks of Google+ (he calls it “their own little version of Facebook”).

However, the most interesting part of the interview comes when the trio starts discussing Zuckerberg’s relationship with Steve Jobs.

“I had a lot of questions for him on how to build a team around you,” he says in response to one of Rose’s questions. “That’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are. How to keep an organization focused, right, when I think the tendency for larger companies is to try to fray and go into all these different areas.”

Zuckerberg professes respect for Apple because, like Facebook, it is out to build a company that will change the world rather than fatten the bottom line. Rose then asks Zuckerberg whether or not the two companies had ever talked about an acquisition.

“No. I don’t think it ever really got there,” he says. “I mean, nor would I have wanted to sell it.”

Sandberg and Zuckerberg then start talking about how Jobs never raised the issue because he understood that Zuckerberg had no interest in selling. We here at Mashable have heard conflicting stories about whether Apple has ever tried to acquire Facebook, but we find it hard to believe the two companies never talked about the issue at some level, whether seriously or just in passing.

Sandberg ends the interview with a strong message for women. “If you survey men and women in college today in this country, the men are more ambitious than the women,” she says. “And until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men.”

The closest approach will occur at 6:28 p.m. ET when the asteroid passes within 202,000 miles of our planet, NASA said.

Follow space and science news on Light Years

The space agency classified the asteroid as a “potentially hazardous object.”

If the asteroid were to crash into Earth, it could cause a 4,000 megaton blast and a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, according to scientists at Purdue University. If it fell into the ocean, it could cause a 70-foot high tsunami within 60 miles of the crash site, the experts said.

However, the space rock, called Asteroid 2005 YU55, poses no threat of an Earth collision, according to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program.

NASA plans to study the asteroid with the Goldstone radar antennas in California’s Mojave Desert. Goldstone antennas are very sensitive radio telescopes used to investigate quasars, radar mapping of planets and comets.

Astronomer: No need to worry about this one

Scientists plan to reconstruct the shape of the asteroid with a resolution as fine as 13 feet (4 meters) using the antennas. Several days of high resolution operations are also scheduled at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

The USGS says dozens of aftershocks from the temblor, and a 4.7-magnitude foreshock, have been recorded since the 5.6 quake hit at 10:53 CT Saturday night.

The Oklahoma Geological Survey says the quake was the largest ever to strike in the state, topping a 5.5-magnitude temblor that struck on April 9, 1952.

Saturday’s quake was centered about four miles east of Sparks, in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. The USGS says on its website that it has not been able to determine what fault line the quake occurred on, but scientists are focusing on the Wilzetta fault, which they describe as one of a series of small faults that formed in the area about 300 million years ago. If the Wilzetta fault did rupture Saturday, it would be the first time a surface-rupturing quake has been recorded on it.

All previous surface-rupturing quakes in Oklahoma have occurred on the Meers fault, in the south-central portion of the state, the USGS says.

Damage from Saturday’s quake was slight, with The Oklahoman newspaper reporting minor damage to 12 homes and a buckling of U.S. Highway 62 near the epicenter in Lincoln County.

But the quake was anything but minor to one couple whose home sits near the epicenter. The chimney of Joe and Mary Reneau’s home came crashing through their roof in Prague, Oklahoma, CNN affiliate KJRH-TV reported.

“Wham! It wasn’t just a sudden bang,” Joe Reneau told KJRH. “This house was rocking and rolling.”

But it wasn’t just people that the quake stirred up. Birds and bugs were so rattled that they took to flight in massive numbers, enough to show up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather radar, CNN affiliate KTUL-TV reported.

The new Nook Tablet is the next-generation evolution of the Nook Color device that Barnes & Noble (BKS, Fortune 500) unveiled last year, which also carried a $249 price tag. It will compete head-to-head with Amazon’s Kindle Fire, a $199 tablet that begins shipping next week.

B&N’s Nook Tablet will be available in its stores on Nov. 17, two days after Amazon begins shipping pre-ordered Kindle Fires. The 7-inch tablet offers a more powerful processor and twice the storage capacity of Amazon’s rival.

“Kindle Fire is deficient for a media tablet,” B&N CEO William Lynch proclaimed at the Nook Tablet’s launch event Monday in New York City. “Content will render better on Nook than on Kindle Fire.”

He also took a potshot at Amazon’s all-virtual empire, saying that B&N’s 700 retail stores would be able to offer customers tech support and aid with their Nook devices.

“Where will you go for Kindle Fire, Amazon in Seattle?” Lynch quipped.

B&N also on Monday slashed the entry-level price for its Nook line of digital readers to $99 — a price point analysts have long predicted would fuel widespread adoption of the gadgets. Its year-old Nook Color dropped in price to $199.

B&N and Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) have been locked in a price war to offer the cheapest e-reading devices, but for now, Amazon still has the edge. Its least-expensive, black-and-white e-ink Kindle sells for $79 for an ad-supported version. Amazon’s ad-free version costs $109, or $10 more than B&N’s comparable Nook Simple Touch Reader.

The fight between the two bookselling giants has grown fierce, with each angling for exclusive content and other advantages. Amazon scored a coup recently when it convinced DC Comics to hand over digital rights to some of its comics for Kindle exclusive editions. In retaliation, Barnes & Noble stripped the print editions of those comics from its stores last month, and said it would not resume stocking them until it too had rights to sell a digital edition.