Don't expect Kindle sales to rival the iPod Touch any time soon... As has been reported, Amazon did not enable Wifi capability for the latest Kindle.
The ongoing delay of Kindle availability in Canada therefore seems (if not logical) at least somewhat understandable. After all, the complexity of finalizing such a deal clearly depends on some sort of Amazon negotiations with 1 or more Canadian wireless carriers. As reported in the Financial Post:
Amazon's Kindle goes global -- but not to Canada, Matt Hartley, Financial Post, 2009-10-07
"Amazon.com Inc.'s popular Kindle digital book reader is now available to literary enthusiasts outside the United States, but Canadians hoping to get their hands on the device are still out of luck...
On Wednesday, the Seattle, Washington-based Internet retail titan announced it was trimming the price of the Kindle ebook reader from US$299 to US$259 while simultaneously introducing a version of the device designed to work in more than 100 countries and territories around the world.
The new international version of the Kindle costs US$279 and will begin shipping on Oct. 19 to countries such as Bolivia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Hungary and Japan...
Canadians, however, are still unable to purchase Kindle devices through Amazon or download Kindle content, such as digital books and newspaper subscriptions."
Additional observations re: Amazon Kindle vs. Sony's Reader in Canada [the latter is already available in Canada] via: Bonfire of the Banned ITs: Why you can’t get the Kindle in Canada, Omar El Akkad, Globe&Mail, 2009-08-08:
"...Part of the Kindle's popularity lies in the massive number of titles Amazon has leveraged to create the Kindle store. There are now more than 350,000 titles available at the store.
Other e-reader manufacturers are also getting in on the game. Sony, for example, has a product currently available in Canada. However, the Kindle's combination of name recognition and huge title support have given it most of the headlines – akin to the iPod and iTunes store for Apple in the world of online music. "
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Why didn't Amazon Wifi-enable Kindle?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
“If a computer can figure it all out, we can get lazy”
A cool application, connecting learning, nature, and mobile computing:
Novelties - Foliage Field Guides for Cellphones - NYTimes.com:
'The traditional way to identify an unfamiliar tree is to pull out a field guide and search its pages for a matching description. One day people may pull out a smartphone instead, photographing a leaf from the mystery tree and then having the phone search for matching images in a database.
A team of researchers financed by the National Science Foundation has created just such a device — a hand-held electronic field guide that identifies tree species based on the shape of their leaves, said Peter N. Belhumeur, a professor of computer science at Columbia and a member of the team.
The field guide, now in prototype for iPhones and other portable devices, has been tested at three sites in the northeastern United States, including Plummers Island in Maryland and Central Park in New York, said W. John Kress, a research botanist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, who is also on the research team. The computer program compares the leaf snapshot to a library of leaf images.
“We believe there is enough information in a single leaf to identify a species,” he said. “Our brains can’t remember all of these characteristics, but the computer can.”
With a nicely written conclusion:
"...Matthew Brown, supervisor of the soil, water and ecology lab at the Central Park Conservancy, thinks that ID programs can be useful. “If people are walking through the park and they come upon a tree that’s not in their field guide,” he said, “they can snap a photo, send it in, and get the name back and find out more information.”
But he believes in traditional education, too. “People don’t have to take botany for four years, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the value of learning information. If a computer can figure it all out, we can get lazy.”
Monday, February 2, 2009
Official Gmail Blog: Tasks Continue to Evolve ( + iPhone demo)
An interesting update to Google's Tasks, focusing helpful improvements to mobile access*: Official Gmail Blog: Tasks: Paper vs. iPhone
A major step was already announced on the Official Gmail Blog in December , which explained the simple and intuitive capability to copy a Gmail message to a Task .
Still apparently not mentioned, are the wishlist features I had suggested last year, namely:
In any case, it is nice to see Google working on the Tasks mobile interfaces, which are clearly critical for making it easy for users to ensure their Tasks are kept up to date. Easy maintenance of one's "todo list" of activities and tasks is a basic concept of the GTD philosophy (see e.g. David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
).**at least for iPhone and Android, though apparently not with the same full Task edit capability for other "xhtml-enabled" devices such as Windows Mobile... Here is Google's 46-second YouTube demo of the new iPhone Task interface, courtesy of the aforementioned Official Gmail Blog:
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Why BlackBerry users will love the Storm (and iPhone users won't) - DVICE
A common-sense and informative summary of what to expect (and not to expect) from RIM's new Storm blackberry device [available in US, but still a ways off in Canada].
DVICE: Why BlackBerry users will love the Storm (and iPhone users won't)
"We've had a couple of days to play with the BlackBerry Storm, Research in Motion's answer to the iPhone. It's the first all-touchscreen, no-keyboard BlackBerry. And let's be clear: It's no iPhone. Its web browser is slow, and you can't pinch to zoom (as with the T-Mobile G1, the Storm doesn't have multi-touch). It doesn't work with Macs (though it does have an application that lets it talk to iTunes for non-DRM songs on PCs). And though it may have some great games to download when its app store opens sometime in the future, it doesn't strike us as the kind of device that you'll use to drink an iBeer.
But that doesn't mean this phone won't be a huge success. The now-cliched term "crackberry" got coined for a reason, and we've found the BlackBerry Storm to be just as addictive as RIM intended. <...> within months, this phone will be in the pocket of every lawyer in the country.
It's All About Typing
iPhones are hard to type on. They just are. That's why the first Android phone has a slide-out, Sidekick-style keypad. Instead imitating a Sidekick or having a haptic feedback (that's when a touchscreen vibrates back at you when you press it), RIM has done one better: The BlackBerry Storm's entire touch screen is a button. It feels just like the mouse button on any laptop
If you're used to a BlackBerry already, the typing experience on the Storm is the closeSt you'll get to having a keypad with real buttons on a touchscreen phone.
Why would BlackBerry addicts want to give up buttons for a touchscreen typing system that is almost, but not quite as good? The trade-off is for the big, beautiful screen that you get when you're not using the keypad. It's far better for reading emails, using GPS or playing BrickBreaker than any BlackBerry that's come before
If you've used a BlackBerry before, you'll get the Storm's menus, symbols and buttons immediately.
Instead of comparing the Storm to the iPhone and whining grumpilly about the Storm's lack of multi-touch, consumers will compare it to other BlackBerries. And when they do, they may find that they like what they see: A big, fun to use touchscreen, a 3.2MP camera that takes video and has a bright flash, a respectable Web browser and a typing system that really works."
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Google Earth for iPhone (Google LatLong blog)
It will be interesting to see whether RIM's upcoming Storm (with touchscreen) will also be able to have the same type of touch-screen Google Earth interface as mentioned below on Google's LatLong blog (and related youtube demo)...
Google LatLong: Google Earth now available for iPhone: "...Not only is having Google Earth on your iPhone convenient, but the touch interface is a very natural way to interact with the Earth. Just swipe your finger across the screen and you fly to the other side of the globe; tilt your phone and your view tilts as well. You can pinch to zoom in or out, or just double tap with one finger to zoom in and two fingers to zoom out. We also integrated the My Location feature, so with a touch of a button, you can fly to where you are in the real world on your phone..."
Demo:
