Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. One of the conundrums facing device makers today is how to add wireless connectivity to their products. E-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook use internet access primarily for selling you more content, so it can be completely … Read More

Back on the 21st of January when Amazon announced that it would release its Kindle Development Kit , A/K/A KDK, we heard it would begin rolling out in limited beta this month, with a wait list of people getting access to the kit as space was available. Well, that moment has arrived, and you can … Read More

Admit it: you’re crying a little bit now, aren’t you? Now, here’s the thing: this ad, from Google’s “Search Stories” YouTube channel, is from back in November, but John Battelle says he’s got a source telling him that ‘Parisian Love’ is the one that will air tomorrow night, during the third quarter of the SuperBowl. … Read More

Blippy , the Twitter-like service that lets users publish the details of all their purchases, is just a couple of months old. But it already got Stephen Colbert’s attention (thumbs up). And now it has Amazon’s too (thumbs down). Cofounder Philip Kaplan first mentioned that Amazon had turned off Blippy’s access to the service on … Read More

Filed under: Hardware , Multimedia , Cult of Mac , Books In my post yesterday I touched on the likely long faces at Amazon H.Q. in Seattle. The iPad is something I’m sure they wished hadn’t happened, but of course it did, and I thought I’d take a closer look at the competition between the … Read More

You know, it’s rather cute of Active Media Products to have a range of 1.8-inch PATA ZIF SSDs , and today it’s added a precious 128GB model to its ferociously named SaberTooth ZX family. Like its 32GB and 64GB siblings, this new addition does sequential reading at up to 80MB/s and writing at up to … Read More

Multi-platform note-taking app Evernote is getting a significant distribution deal with Sony. A special customized version of the software will come pre-installed on the extensive Vaio series of desktops and laptops starting this spring. The special version of Evernote includes a feature that takes advantage of the Vaio line’s built-in Motion Eye web cam. Web … Read More

The Kindle — Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ “iPod of reading” — has seen a similar (if scaled down) explosion of accessories, peripherals, add-ons and adornments as the Apple MP3 player. Finding great products to compliment your e-book reader can be a bit of an up-hill struggle, however. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list … Read More

If you’ve been doing some last minute Amazon holiday shopping on Wednesday evening, you’ve probably noticed that Amazon ’s web site was sluggish and, at times, completely down. The same fate greeted Wal-Mart , Expedia , and a number of smaller sites. The reason? A severe DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the servers … Read More

In my hate-post against ereaders last week , I claimed that Amazon’s protecting itself with its iPhone Kindle app, as the ereader market won’t last as long as people think. I’m not sure the rumored BlackBerry and Mac Kindle apps will do much for the Kindle or ereader industry as a whole, either. It’s still … Read More

Filed under: Multimedia , Freeware , Beta Beat , iPhone There were two minor video plug-in related updates last night. First Adobe released a new beta of their Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 (this on the heels of a set of security patches for the stable release version last week). Flash 10.1 is introducing a … Read More

When we first caught wind of Barnes & Noble’s Nook — a device clearly positioned to give the Amazon Kindle and Sony’s options a run for their money — we were understandably interested. As voracious readers and lovers of fresh gadgetry, a new contender on the e-reader scene is more than welcome. When we discovered … Read More

According to our sources at Citysearch , Twitter is opening a new Sign-Up API. Citysearch wrote us to say that the API will “allow local businesses to integrate their existing Twitter presence or create a new account directly from the Citysearch business profile and tweet from their Citysearch profile page.” How does this new API … Read More

A definite repellant of the unsubsidized Nokia N900 is its skyscraping $649 price tag. Even when considering the phone’s considerably exceptional capability, the price still doesn’t cease to prevent purchase. But, as of today, Amazon is abating the quantity of customers fleeing from committing to the plan of no commitment with the Nokia N900 by … Read More

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