Amazon Becomes The New Apple
On September 12th, Apple took to the stage and did two things. They made several key product announcements, and seemed to lose the very essence which gave the company their unique place in the technology space. On September 6th, Amazon presented themselves as a company with the ability to 'Think Different,' taking that same value from Cupertino and superseding their ambition.
Amazon Now Confirms You Can Opt-Out Of Kindle Fire HD Ads, For A Fee
Forget the hype and premature praise for the Kindle Fire HD for the moment, because the past couple of days has been quite the storm for Amazon, and not for reasons it would have hoped. A backlash has since followed Jeff Besoz's so assured presentation, with many criticising Amazon's decision to make the HD an ad-supported device, with 'Special Offer' ads set to adorn both lock and home screens.
Worthy Companions: Amazon Reveals Kindle Fire HD And Paperwhite Kindle
As Jeff Bezos stepped out on stage at Amazon's press conference in Santa Monica last night, two things were apparently certain. One, Amazon would finally see it fit to unveil the Android-based smartphone it had be cooking up. And second, the successor to mid-level tablet the Kindle Fire would finally be on its way.
The Descriptive Camera Turns Images Into A Text Description
We've seen camera innovations in the realm of increases in aperture, megapixel count, and improvements in the backside illuminated sensor. But Matt Richardson has taken this in a somewhat different approach, creating a device that outputs text describing the image it can see.
Apple Fires Back At Amazon For Acting Like Apple
On Thursday, two days after the Justice Department launched a lawsuit against Apple and various big book publishers for alledations of ebook price fixing, the tech company have responded saying they have done nothing wrong, and slammed Amazon for their "monopolistic grip" on the market at the same time.
Hypocriticism? Yes.
The 'OnaCon': TechArts 3D's Masturbation Stat-Tracking Gaming Peripheral
The world of videogames isn't averse to adult-orientated games – as our run-down of the best games to 'enjoy' over valentine's day no doubt proved, aroused 8-bit caricatures and all – nor indeed is it of frankly absurd add-on peripherals, such as Nintendo's Vitality Sensor (still yet to see a release) and bowling ball attachment for the Wii. Really. But even so, we struggle to come up with the words to describe what Japanese adult game studio TechArts 3D have come up with.
Amazon’s Kindle ‘Most Unused’ Christmas Gift
Despite surging in popularity throughout 2011 – a year that included Amazon announcing we would be seeing an array of new models, including a quite impressive tablet, the Kindle Fire – Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has topped an online discount website’s survey revealing last Christmas’ most ‘unused’ gifts. This comes after it was announced in late-2011 that Kindle sales were expected to be around the 5 million mark for the year.
Editorial: Apple's Post-PC vs Amazon's Post-Web computing
So Wired published an insightful interview with Amazon's Founder Jeff Bezos, discussing all things content consumption, cloud computing, consumer culture disruption and an odd side-track about his financial pledges into public space travel. The bit that formulated opinion is where he starts to discuss the Kindle Fire as more than just a competitor to the iPad.
This pushes forward the two competing concepts of how computing should be done, aforementioned in the title. The Post-PC device, as predicted by Steve Jobs and the general trend of products from Apple is to be the new "car" when Personal Computers become trucks. On it's lowest base: Post-PC devices rely on new input / output methods and allow a new population of non-expert users to use the product more cheaply and simply. There is a focus on the OS, the experience is centralised around the device, and content is downloaded to the device.
The Post-web device is something that is best demonstrated by the Kindle Fire: a culmination of the services that Jeff has accrued over his illustrious 15 years. Taking the concept of computing up into the cloud, streaming media, taking the focus off the OS and the hardware, instead forming a more literal definition of a window to your content.
This has presented two interesting concepts for the future of computing, both have a bright future for sure; but which would be of preference in a world where many only choose one?
Google Engineer posts apology for "Great-Granddaddy of Reply-All Screwups”
“Last week I accidentally posted an internal rant about service platforms to my public Google+ account (i.e. this one),” Google engineer Steve Yegge writes in his apologetic blog post. “Bagging on the company, even in an internal memo, was uncharacteristically unprofessional of me. So I’ve been feeling pretty guilty for the past week.”
So what was this muck up of sorts? Not too long ago, he posted a 5000 word update on his G+ account (intended for internal employees which ended up going public) which really slams Amazon on it's flaws and Google's inability to understand platforms.