Kindle app development – your app gets free cellular data service?

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/02/kindle-more-than-an-ebook-reader-its-a-development-platform.html

Thinking about developing a Kindle app, say 20 seconds after thinking about developing an iPad app, is kind of disheartening. The Kindle makes a great book reader, and was the hottest item in tablet town, however all that changed with the iPad announcement.

The thought of an app on the grayscale screen, with the incredibly slow and clunky controls, is frustrating. But I just noticed that it appears in the sdk that your custom apps might have the ability to use the free “Whisper-net” (cellular data connection). That is attractive. Some kind of lightweight forms-driven database client app, with great free connectivity back to a central server, with really good battery life, and that could finally make the hardware keyboard look like more than a mistake, that really has a value proposition.

It’s still not an iPad-killer, but this angle might provide the Kindle a second vector of business and interest and ROI in addition to their lead in the book reader business. They’re going to need it as the book prices get equalized and the iPad onslaught gets underway.

Strange musical mashup

I don’t know how to feel about this – my favorite computer parts store is now selling my favorite musical instrument -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882084022&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL020410&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL020410-_-MusicalInstrumentsAccessories-_-L4C-_-82084022

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=8%2050011978%2040000689&Manufactory=11978&SubCategory=689&SpeTabStoreType=10

I’m strangely conflicted, rather than getting the “two great tastes that go great together” vibe. NewEgg is really good at selling tech goods. I’d hate to see them expand to become an Amazon. Amazon is great , but they never match Newegg’s prices, shipping speed, or service.

Whispernet – the real deal

I had always heard that Whispernet (the wireless cell service built into the Amazon Kindle ebook reader that is free (no additional service contract) was on Sprint. Lately I have been hearing that no it’s on ATT. Well I finally got to the bottom of this (thanks Leo Laporte). It turns out Kindle 1 is on Sprint and Kindle 2 is on ATT. Mystery solved!

Mac Mini to HDMI with HDCP and digital audio

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10428&cs_id=1042802&p_id=6331&seq=1&format=2

This is great, a solution for connecting your newer Macs, including the Mini, to your TV, without losing the HD video and surround sound audio.

There have been other solutions for connecting Mini DisplayPort, which is the video port connector for newer Macs, to your TV. You could convert to VGA, DVI, or even HDMI. However most of the adapters available cost you HDCP, the content protection mechanism required to pass true HD video to your TV. Even if they did support HDCP, Mini DisplayPort does not pass analog or digital audio, so no audio was passed over the HDMI connection. You were stuck with PC sound, or certain adapters might pass in analog (stereo) audio via USB audio. But this adapter actually uses the TosLink connector (same as the analog stereo connector but a digital connection) to get the surround sound audio and patch it into the HDMI connection to your TV. Wild! And if you know monoprice, you know that this is rock-bottom cheap to boot!

Disney World Mobile Apps and Sites

After research, I’ve purchased two apps for this year’s trip to Disney World.

One is eTicket, for the iPhone, which has been created by two of the key Disney World websites, WDWInfo and Disboards.

The other is “Walt Disney World Maps Box Set UPinPoint LLC” for Android, which basically is just a box set of the UPinPoint maps I already have for the iPhone. They are great, lots of info and GPS enabled, very similar to the handout you get at the gate of each park, but with a little dot to show where you are, and lots of pop-up info.

I still have some more research to do on mobile websites, but here is one I expect to depend on a lot:

Touring Plans - Lines
http://m.touringplans.com   

 

Iliumsoft eWallet

Caveat Emptor unfortunately. I was all in on eWallet on the recommendation of a friend, enjoying the synchronization between PocketPC, iPhone, and Windows PC for the last year or so. I had to pay for each one, I think with a package deal for PocketPC/PC. It seemed like a lot for a utility, but it was highly-rated and seemed best able to meet my needs.

You should know the Mac and web clients have been promised for years, and there are lots of good free solutions on the web side they need to compete with now.

Today I went to synchronize my iPhone to my PC, and was told the versions were incompatible. It turns out there was a major version upgrade across all platforms.

Now like many folks I would think, I take all free iPhone app software upgrades/updates, period. I just select update all and truck on. iLiumSoft took advantage of that pattern to whack us with a forced upgrade on the PC platform for $10. That’s right, you update your iPhone for free without even thinking about it, and then are held ransom when you go back to your PC. I should note that there is a 30 day trial of the new PC software, so you could do the synch, and then manually export every bit of info by hand out of eWallet, and then dump them. I paid them their ransom to give me time to survey the market again, but I am not a happy customer.

iPad

Something I wrote to one of my Facebook friends..

Rewind to before Microsoft defined personal computers and imagine a computer modeled on the toaster or the microwave or the tv (but not the vcr), a device that got out of your way and let you do what you got it for. You push one button to turn it on and instantly you're surfing the internet. No booting, no hourglass. You flick your finger and you are reading your email, like changing the channel. No loading drivers, hiccupped virus updates, hours lost trying to get your sound card or printer working so you can just type a letter or play a song. Another flick and you are watching a movie. This device is a disruptive sea-change, that has the potential to reset what we think of as a computer, and pown the whole decade. The price point is half of what was expected. The battery life is twice the expected. They built their own cpu.

Also note the timing - people are in the process of moving their computing experience online and mobile, as proved by the success of Facebook, the iPhone, and the netbook (which only has enough power to run browser-based apps). Note the branching out and away from the desktop pc, with the rise of laptops, smartphones, and readers. How about the overwhelming importance of media in consumer computing - books, music, pictures, movies, rather than spreadsheets and word-processing. Apple has nailed a convergence of vectors driven by the rise of the prevalence of the Internet in computing. The Internet is the computer, and that thing in your hand, be it kvm (keyboard video mouse), laptop, smartphone, or tablet; is no longer your computer, it's just the way you communicate with your world-wide-web, which by the way, resembles Google more and more every day.

You are going to want one of these.

A reason to switch to the Palm PRE

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/palm-intros-mobile-hotspot-app-guaranteed-to-make-your-router-j/

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/01/20/review-palm-mobile-hotspot-pre-pixi-plus/

Wow another game-changer roaring down the mobile phone lane! The Palm PRE will be able to act like a MIFI – offering it’s 3G broadband to 5 clients over Wifi! All of a sudden I am interested in this also-ran. Verizon has signed on for this – with the usual high fee and 5G cap, but with clear guidance on what overage costs for once.

Write a bootable ISO to USB Flash Drive

http://sourceforge.net/projects/unetbootin/

This is a great find if you need it. The scenario is you have an ISO (or a CD/DVD that you can rip to an ISO) for Linux or Windows or some kind of utility, for instance an OEM rescue disk, something you need to boot from to use it. But you want to put it on a USB flash drive instead of a CD/DVD, say because you have a netbook without such a drive. This free open source utility puts the ISO files on the USB thumb drive and makes it bootable.

Google is now a cell-phone vendor

https://www.google.com/phone/choose?locale=en_US&s7e=

With the advent of the Nexus, Google now sells it’s own (and other’s) cellphones from it’s website.