Where is the Amazon Kindle App Store?

Amazon has built a beautiful app store for Android, a device (type) which they don’t (yet) offer. So you think surely the app store for the Kindle which they do offer exclusively is amazing, right? No such luck. There literally is no app store for Kindle. In fact you can’t even search or browse to a complete list of the apps available.

Don’t worry, there are a couple of ways to list at least some of the apps:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/2534114011/
(Try to find that link anywhere on Amazon’s site!)

And an even skimpier list can be found as follows:
Start at the Amazon home page. Choose "Kindle" then "Kindle Store", from the "Shop All Departments" link (top left). Then choose "Games & Active Content" from the end of the line of text under all the top headers.

P i t i f u l!

Garmin Mobile 10 GPS receiver no-go on iPad 2

I have a Garmin Mobile 10 GPS receiver from 2007 kicking around that I used to use with Windows Mobile. It’s not a GPS like the one you use in your car. It has no maps or even a software or a screen for viewing location. It simply connects to GPS satellites and passes the information back to a user’s device over Bluetooth.

https://static.garmincdn.com/en/products/010-00579-00/g/cf-lg.jpg

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=420

My version 1 iPad had GPS built right in. You got that option only if you picked a model that had the AT&T 3G functionality. Which is kinda weird because I never turned the 3G on the whole time I had it, and the GPS always worked fine without it (over WIFI/Mifi).

When I got an iPad 2 I decided to forego 3G (and thus internal GPS) as I never ended up using the 3G on the first one. I decided I could live without the “big-screen” GPS.

Not long ago I ran across some indications on the web that the iPad actually supported Bluetooth GPS. This was possible before with jail-breaking but I wasn’t interested in that. But there are actually 3 bluetooth GPS receivers that seem to work with the iPad:

• Bed Elf   http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Elf-Receiver-iPhone-66-channel/dp/B0035Y7ZJ2
• GNS 5870   http://www.amazon.com/GNS-5870-Receiver-WAAS-Enabled/dp/B004289ZW0
• XGPS 150   http://www.amazon.com/Dual-Electronics-XGPS150-Universal-Smartphones/dp/B004M3BICU

There’s some good info on all 3 here:

 http://aviationmentor.blogspot.com/2011/02/gns-5870-bluetooth-gps-for-ipad.html

However all references also mention an Apple certification program.  I can’t find any information about the certification program on Apple’s site, but I did find a document listing bluetooth profiles supported:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3647

Since I had the iPad 2 without GPS and I had the Garmin 10, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try and see if they could connect over Bluetooth. It’s not clear to me if the built-in “Maps” app could actually use the Bluetooth GPS, but I could at least see if I could get the Bluetooth pairing to happen, then worry about map software later. Unfortunately they do not pair. I tried various resetting and rebooting options, and nothing helped. I’ve used the Garmin 10 with multiple devices in the past including phones and laptops and PDAs, so I know it is somewhat complaint with the Bluetooth spec. Thus I’m guessing that Apple is the villain here, and the certification involves proprietary extras. Bummer. But I thought I would post it here to help others avoid wasting time or money on this. And hopefully if something changes or somebody finds a way around the issues (which doesn’t involve jail-breaking) I’ll hear about it as well.

iTunes goes green

Seems like today, for the first time, iTunes recognizes that I have multiple devices of the same type that would presumably take the same big honking OS update. I downloaded the most recent iOS update for one iPhone, and when went to update the second device (which is the same version of hardware) iTunes skipped the download and went right into extraction. Never happened before (and I’ve been watching for it). Way to conserve global bandwidth Apple, which must somehow save some oil and greenhouse gases somewhere, right?

Firefox won’t run, Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/762202

If you are running the version of Ubuntu that just came out with Unity replacing Gnome, and can’t get Firefox to run from the new launcher, check out the link above with goes to an Ubuntu bug report. The workaround is to press Alt+F2 and type in firefox. This worked for me.