Friday, November 18, 2011
Amazon Kindle Fire Review: So Much More Than an Ebook Reader
Amazon Kindle Fire Homescreen Dan Nosowitz
People throw around a lot of big phrases when they talk about the Kindle Fire -- "iPad killer" being an oldie but goodie. But after spending some time with the 7-inch Fire, one thing is abundantly clear: this ain't no iPad killer. This right here is something else entirely. Less a "tablet" in the sense we've come to think of it than a content-delivery device, the Kindle Fire is a window to serious, non-stop entertainment consumption. And Amazon shopping. Lots of Amazon shopping.
WHAT'S NEWRight off the bat, let's agree on one thing: the Kindle Fire is not an "Android tablet" -- not in the way the Xoom and all its Honeycomb successors have been, at least. The Fire is Amazon's closed-platform media viewer, a Kindle with the power of color and touch, a screen on which you can watch, read, and listen to just about anything Amazon has to offer. If you buy the Fire from Amazon, when it arrives at your doorstep, it'll be linked with all your Amazon accounts (Cloud Player, Kindle, Prime, App Store) and allows access to all that content either streaming from the cloud or downloaded to the device itself.
WHAT'S NEWTo start at the beginning, Amazon has rendered setting up the Fire more or less moot; when I first powered it up, it was already linked with my Kindle books, Prime subscription, and one-click payment settings. The selection of music I'd uploaded to my Cloud Player appeared on the Music area, and albums transferred to the device's internal storage with a click apiece.
But syncing isn't just about mirroring content from device to device; it's about making sure all your devices are on the same page, whether or not there are any pages involved. I rented, downloaded and started watching Horrible Bosses on my commute home, left the Fire in my bag, and picked the flick right back up on a Roku box's Amazon app over dinner. That's thanks to Amazon's WhisperSync, which tags your place anytime you're connected to the Web. Video quality was excellent, and the screen is especially good for video: the widescreen display has almost as much screen space as the much larger iPad when watching widescreen video, and it's very clear, bright, and colorful. The debate about reading on an LCD like the Fire's, versus an e-ink display like the other Kindles, rages on, and it's mostly a matter of personal choice.
Physically, the Kindle Fire is nondescript, but not unattractively so. It's just a black square. Perhaps a little chunky, but a comfortable size for carting around, for sure. If you're thinking "what could be the difference between a 7-inch tablet and a 9.7-incher like the iPad, really?" just hold one in your hands. It is significantly smaller, which is better for some things (like reading books) and worse for others (like web browsing or reading magazines).
I realize now that I completely skipped over any discussion of the Fire's user interface -- and with good reason. I didn't even have to think about how to use the Fire; I just kinda...used it. The custom skin Amazon has built over Android is as akin to browsing flesh-and-blood books, discs, and magazines as any I've ever seen. Everything is organized on faux-wooden shelves, as you can see in the top picture. What I was looking at last is on top of the pile -- just as it is on my desk or the floor in front of the nightstand -- and my faves are never far out of reach.
On the homescreen lie two shelves. The first and largest, which Amazon calls the "carousel," is a chronological list of the last places you've been, be they Web pages, books, movies, or tunes. Below that, you pin your favorites (a long press on an item on the carousel offers the option to save things on one of these "shelves"). These can be anything, so I chose my current earworm album, a Prime streaming series I'm working my way through, a book I've been plugging away at, Popular Science, and the New York Times.
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How Kinect Changed Gaming, Art and Even Medicine
Kinect Hacks Click here to get a bigger view of this amazing image.
In November 2010, Microsoft released Kinect, a motion-sensing accessory for its Xbox 360 gaming console. Kinect could measure depth by sending out thousands of small infrared dots to create a 3-D map of a room, and its microphones could pinpoint sound in space. Such hardware would not be confined to gesture-based videogames. Within a few days, engineers strapped the $150 device onto a robot vacuum and wired the machines together to allow the robot to see and hear. For developers and hackers, Kinect’s promise proved irresistible (and affordable): It could give machines sense. And in the seven months following its release, the device inspired a flurry of development as it became a tool for art, leisure (see
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Amazon Kindle Touch Review: Should You Touch Your Books?
It's got 3G and a touchscreen, but are those worth the price bump over the stocking-stuffer $80 Kindle? By Dan Nosowitz Posted 11.16.2011 at 5:10 pm 3 Comments
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Testing the Best: The Jawbone Jambox, the Best Tiniest Wireless Speaker
Jawbone Jambox in the Kitchen Here you can see the diminutive Jambox on my kitchen side-table, next to my iPhone for scale (though I usually have it in my pocket while cooking) and in front of my vaguely racist chef caricature kitchen timer. Dan Nosowitz
To get a full spectrum of viewpoints on the Jawbone Jambox, a tiny--seriously tiny--portable speaker, we asked two separate writers to scrawl down their thoughts. The first comes from Michael Berk, an writer at audio/videophile publication (and PopSci sister pub) Sound
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Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
The Best New Gear at PhotoPlus 2011
Zeiss 25mm F/2 Distagon Lens PopPhoto
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Our good friends over at Popular Photography headed to the PhotoPlus expo yesterday to check out the best new camera gear first-hand. This year's crop is a good one, including a photographer's jacket reinforced with Kevlar, the awesome 3-D Sony binoculars we wrote about this summer, and this brand-new Zeiss lens, a manual-focus, wide-angle job that looks amazing. Check out the gallery over at PopPhoto.
Previous Article: Archive Gallery: The TelephoneNext Article: Video: How to Turn Two iPads Into a Gory, Gaping Hole in Your Torso 0 CommentsTo comment, please Login. Popular TagsGadgets cellphones iPhone Apple computers Android photography cameras music Regular Features The GrouseView the Original article
Archive Gallery: Improving the Telephone
IMAGE 1 OF 10 > Coiling the Cord: June 1916
Gadgets IMAGE 1 OF 10 > Read the article: Archive Gallery: The Telephone More Photo Galleries
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In the infancy of the telephone, discerning businessmen had not the time to deal with getting tangled in its cord, and innovators hadn't yet come up with the coiled cord solution. They came close, though, with this cord reel that keeps the cord wound up and out of the way without dragging the telephone off the desk.
Read the full story in Cord Reel is Telephone Convenience
TagsGadgets IMAGE 1 OF 10 > Read the article: Archive Gallery: The Telephone More Photo Galleries
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Video: How to Turn Two iPads Into a Gory, Gaping Hole in Your Torso
(we’re calling it relatively expensive) yet technologically elegant solution to your Halloween wardrobe woes. All you need is two iPad 2s, some fake blood, and a shirt that you no longer care for.
The motif is
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