Ad Supported Kindle

In their drive to make the Kindle cheaper Amazon is trying something new; an ad supported Kindle that will be sold at a $25.00 discount. The advertisements will be displayed on the users home screen and as screen savers but no advertisements will be displayed while you’re actually reading a book. This was a smart idea because displaying ads while somebody is reading would probably destroy the image of the product. If you get sick of the ads you can also pay Amazon an additional $25.00 to turn them off which was the smartest move they could make. At least that way you don’t have to worry about buyer’s remorse.

Overall this move was better than what I was expecting. The system I figured Amazon would create would involve periodically display ads between page turns. I though they would go with a system where every ‘x’ (x being an arbitrary number most likely higher than 10) page turns would display a full screen ad similar to magazines. Thankfully they didn’t go this route because it would be annoying to anybody who purchased the discounted device.

With all of this said $25.00 is not enough to make me put up with ads so I’ll continue to buy the more expensive model (with 3G because I like being able to download books anywhere). For those of you who don’t care though this may be a way to save $25.00.

Sprint to Get the Nexus S

It looks like Sprint is finally getting another decent phone, the Nexus S with WiMax capabilities:

Recently, we introduced Nexus S from Google, the first phone to run Android 2.3, Gingerbread. In addition to the UMTS-capable Nexus S, today we’re introducing Nexus S 4G from Google, available for Sprint. Nexus S 4G is part of the Nexus line of devices which provide a pure Google experience and run the latest and greatest Android releases and Google mobile apps.

When Google released the Nexus S I was pretty ho hum about it and still am. But the fact of the matter is Google provides frequent updates for their developer phones which means it’s the only platform that you can expect bug fixes with any consistency. Likewise having WiMax on a phone with stock Android would be a huge plus over the current 4G offerings (nothing like HTC Sense to help ruin a perfectly good phone).

It will be nice having an Android development platform available for Sprint.

The iPad 2

Well Apple announced the iPad 2 yesterday and honestly it’s about what I expected, and evolutionary change to the current device. Apple added a front and rear facing (because taking pictures with a 10″ device is going to be so practical) camera, thinned the device down, and tossed out AT&T and Verizon models. The new iPad also utilizes a dual core processor which I will admit is pretty neat.

Beyond what I’ve mentioned little has changed including available storage which still maxes out at 64GB (I was hoping for a 128GB model). The price, display, and claimed battery life have all remained as they once were. I’d mention the HDMI out adapter but that works on current iPads and iPhone 4s so it’s not really an iPad 2 only accessory.

In the end not enough has changed for me to want an upgrade from my current iPad. Honestly the entire announcement was a bit lackluster as noted by the fact that Apple actually took time to talk about their little magnetically attached cover. Positively exciting.

Slow News Day

It’s a slow news day so that means I’m going to toss in some filler material. The current filler material is going to be speculation on Apple’s new iPad 2 which is going to be announced today at noon (for those in the central, and therefore only one that matters, time zone). I have a current generation iPad and like it quite a bit so some of this speculation is going to be wish list while other is just stuff I feel is rather no-duh.

First I don’t think we’re going to see a retina display on this thing. We may see a new higher resolution display but not nearly as high resolution as the current iPhone 4 screen. Why? Because it would cost too damned much money. The higher the pixel density that higher the cost when you talk screens.

There will likely be a GSM and CDMA iPad for those people who need the 3Gees on their tablets. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple had a single 3G model which worked on both Verizon and AT&T’s network, in fact that would make a lot of sense. Apple is a company that likes to have the bare minimum number of models available for each device. Having a separate AT&T and Verizon iPad 2 would be slightly confusing and it would make sense that Apple would rid themselves of the hassle.

Currently available cases for the iPad 2 almost guarantee a front and back camera. I’m betting the back mounted camera will be equal or just slightly better than the one found on the iPod Touch but will remain far less capable than the iPhone 4 camera. Likewise currently available cases point to a redesigned speaker grill.

We’re likely to see 512MB of RAM on this new device. Shocked? Didn’t think so. In fact a bump in RAM would sum up what I think the iPad 2 will be; an all around improved iPad with no real revolutionary features. I doubt we’ll see anything super ground breaking with the new iteration of the iPad simply because Apple’s style is to slowly increase the capabilities of their devices over time instead of make large jumps. I would be willing to bet money that we won’t see any 4G capabilities on the new iPad.

Don’t Get a Drobo

Since I have a massive amount of data on hand I’ve been spending a lot of time looking for an external multi-drive enclosure that either had RAID capabilities or something similar. Due to reading enough positive recommendations that had the Drobo been a person it would be nominated for sainthood I decided to go with one. A bit before Christmast I ordered a standard FireWire 800 four-bay Drobo using a $100.00 discount. I was going to run it for six months and determine whether or not I could recommend the Drobo has a solid backup device. The damned thing didn’t even make it two entire months and I’m going to advice anybody looking for a solid backup device look elsewhere.

For those of you who don’t know a Drobo is nothing more than a fancy four-drive enclosure that loads all of the contained drives into a common pool with redundancy. This means all of the drives are seen as one to any computer you attach the Drobo to. Having redundancy means you can lose any single drive without losing the data on the Drobo, at least in theory. This is similar to RAID although unlike RAID the Drobo doens’t require each drive to be the same capacity in order to work. This sounded ideal to me since I could simply drop in larger drives as they were needed instead of dropping in four new drives every time I wanted to add space.

I had problems right from the start, namely with the included software called Drobo Dashboard. What’s the problem? The software won’t install on my Mac Pro. Why? I haven’t a clue. When I try to install the software I’m informed at the end that the software couldn’t be installed but am given no error message and no entries are made in the system logs that could inform me of what’s going on. Basically I haven’t a Thor damned clue what’s going on and no message is ever displayed that could clarify the problem. This means I had to setup my Drobo on my laptop where the software installed without any trouble.

Setup is easy enough and once the Drobo was initialized it was detected by my Mac Pro without any trouble. From there I started using the Drobo as a Time Machine backup destination and it worked OK until an undetermined time when it failed. Why do I said an undetermined time? Because it was completely undetermined.

The problem with my Drobo is the fact it’s been stuck in a state where it claims everything is running correctly but my computers can’t mount the Drobo. The drive lights on the Drobo are all green indicating everything is working as expected. According to the Drobo Dashboard software my Drobo’s data is great and everything is running in tip-top shape. The problem is when I plug it into any computer it will not mount. Yes Disk Utility can see it will not mount the infernal device.

I’ve tried everything recommended by Data Robotics Inc. (the makers of this piece of shit) including unplugging the Drobo, shutting down the computer, letting them sit for a while (overnight in my case), replugging in the Drobo to the computer, and starting the computer back up. Nothing works. Basically I’ve got a several hundred dollar paperweight that serves no purpose other than to piss me off by it’s existence.

When looking for a backup device the first and foremost thing the device must be is reliable. The Drobo is not reliable and from doing searches online I’ve found I’m not the only person who’s ran into this exact problem. I share with each person who has written about this problem something else, nobody has managed to get the damned thing working again without doing a full reset which includes erasing all the data on the Drobo. My advice is to stay clear of Drobo and any Data Robotics Inc. products. Their software is shit and doesn’t even tell you why it can’t install, their device is shit and reports itself as working perfectly even though it’s in paperweight mode, and the only way to get the device out of paperweight mode is apparently resetting the device which destroys the data and defeats the purpose of a backup device.

If anybody has any recommendations for a good multi-drive (four or more) enclosure that does redundancy (RAID is find by me) I’d love to hear them. At this point I’m looking around again for a proper solution but just wanted to inform everybody to steer clear of Drobo devices. They’re headaches and not at all reliable.

Thunderbolt I/O

I’m kind of a gadget whore. I love new and shiny devices and honestly the MacBook Pro line hasn’t really had anything shiny added in a few years. This year Apple finally lifted a few fingers and added something new, Thunderbolt. I should first note that Thunderbolt is the new marketing name for Intel’s LightPeak technology which doesn’t actually run on anything fiber (hence the need for a name change).

I want to talk a bit about Thunderbolt because it looks fucking awesome. Apple’s implementation uses the mini DisplayPort connector which I find a bit odd but at the same thing it’s a pretty nice sized connector so I’m not going to argue (unlike the giant plug for FireWire 800). I would say Thunderbolt is Intel’s answer to USB 3.0 but it’s really not. Thunderbolt has a maximum read and write speed of 10Gbps which is pretty damned impressive. Currently it’s only used to connect to monitors but any peripheral should be capable of plugging into a Thunderbolt port including USB 3.0 hubs and even graphics cards. How? Well underneath everything Thunderbolt uses good old PCI Express as it’s transport mechanism. This is what makes Thunderbolt more than a simple USB competitor, it can act like a faster PCI Express slot on any laptop built by somebody besides Apple.

The other nice feature of Thunderbolt is the fact devices can be plugged in sequence. This means even through this is only a single Thunderbolt port you can plug in another Thunderbolt device to the primary one much like SCSI or FireWire. This means you could have a Thunderbolt capable monitor at home with an external Thunderbolt hard drive plugged in. When you plug in the monitor both the monitor and the hard drive will start up and connect to your laptop.

Honestly Thunderbolt is pretty impressive technology to say the least. I can’t wait to have a computer with it equipped in a few years (as that’s how long it will take before any peripherals come out that use Thunderbolt anyways).

Do Want

Everybody has strange esoteric things they like to collect and I’m not exception. I like to collect wrist watches with unique functions. My day-to-day watch is a Tissot T-Touch which has gadgets upon gadgets inside including a barometer, thermometer, compass, and altimeter. Previously I wrote a Fossil write PDA that ran Palm OS 4. Well somebody pointed me to a watch that is probably ungodly expensive but functions as a dosimeter.

A wristwatch that can detect radiation? I want one! I don’t expect to ever find it useful (although walking through the TSA’s back scatter scanners while wearing one could be interesting) but it has a stupid feature built into a wristwatch so it’s on my to-get list. If anybody has any idea what the going price of one of these things is please do let me know (and if you can tell me where to get one if the price is reasonable that would be appreciated as well).

Full Motion Video on an E-Ink Display

It’s not secret that I love E-Ink displays. Comparing reading on my Kindle to reading on my iPad always comes to the same conclusion, the Kindle is far superior for reading. Not only do E-Ink displays cause less stress on the eyes but they also consume far less power. The downside of E-Ink displays is the lack of color and the slow refresh speeds. It appears as through Bookeen may have found a solution to the latter problem and have demonstrated full motion video running on an E-Ink display. Bookeen claims that the display running in this mode sucks no more power than an LCD screen… that isn’t back lit.

Before anybody bitches that it’s not in color I realize that (believe it or not I can see color). Color E-Ink displays are in the works already. If we can get E-Ink displays to the point where they look comparable to modern LCDs we could increase the battery life on our mobile devices by a good margin (the main power sucker on modern smart phones and laptops are the displays). Likewise we’d actually be able to use out device in direct sunlight. Honestly I’m all for replacing current LCD technology with E-Ink displays once the technology has fully matured.

My Developer Palm Pre 2 Arrived

Yesterday was just a day of receiving crap. Not only did my PK-01 V arrive but so did my Palm Pre 2:

If you read this site yesterday you know that I received this phone for free from HP/Palm. They’re looking for developers for their WebOS platform and have 100 99 phones available to send out to developers gratis. I haven’t had the phone in my possession long enough to give a detail review but I will give my initial thoughts.

First the phone has almost the exact same form factor as the original Pre. The back covers are the same and the batteries are the same meaning upgrading from an original Pre to a Pre 2 will allow you to keep using your already purchased accessories. Sadly this means the screens are also the same and honestly 320×480 isn’t a lot of space to work with when you’ve been using an Evo 4G and an iPhone 4.

The Pre 2 feels a bit more solidly built that the first Pre. Much of this is due to the fact that HP/Palm replaced the plastic curved screen with a flat glass one. I can’t tell you how much of a difference this makes in how a device feels (also the glass screen doesn’t attract finger prints as much as the plastic one). The entire outer casing is also covered in a soft rubberized finish meaning the phone doesn’t feel like it’s going to slip out of your hand.

The slider mechanism still has some noticeable play in it. If HP/Palm wants to continue making slider phones I’d appreciate a solid slide mechanism with little to no play in it. It’s not a deal breaker but it does make the device feel more like a quality product.

The used Pre I obtained a few months back was an original Sprint model meaning it only has 8GB of internal memory. The Pre 2 has double that giving you 16GB to work with. Honestly I wish HP/Palm would offer a model with 32GB so they could match my iPhone. I never thought I’d use so much memory but honestly I’m filling my iPhone up fast. The files I like to carry around with me on my phone is already beyond the 16GB barrier. It seems HP/Palm will copy Apple on refusing to have a microSD card slot but won’t copy them on the amount of memory internally.

One thing HP/Palm hasn’t copied Apple on is the battery compartment. Yes the Pre 2 has a battery compartment meaning you can actually swap the battery. This is such a novel concept that I wish every phone manufacturer would do it. Then again you almost have to have this ability on the Pre 2 as the battery life isn’t very good (I’d rate its battery life akin to my Evo’s which will get you through a day unless you use it a whole lot).

Having a hardware keyboard just kicks all sorts of ass. I was using a Treo so long that the keyboard layout apparently became ingrained as muscle memory since I was able to pick up the Pre 2 and type just as fast on it as I did my Treo. I would like an on-screen keyboard available for times when I’m holding the phone in landscape position but HP/Palm doesn’t seem to keen on doing that right now.

The Pre 2 also has your standard stock of built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G (only on AT&T though as T-Mobile uses a different chunk of the wireless spectrum for their 3G). I have to say I really like the fact that I can take my SIM card out of my iPhone, insert it into an adapter that allows it to fit into a normal sized SIM slot, and insert it into the Pre 2 and start using it. I love your coverage CDMA but I love having a swappable SIM card even more at the moment.

WebOS 2.0 is pretty awesome. I’ll be honest, I still think WebOS is the best mobile operating system out there at this point. Not only is developing for it dead simple but it has real multi-tasking with an interface that makes working with multiple applications easy. One thing I don’t like about WebOS 2.0 is the fact HP/Palm removed the Palm OS 5 ROM from WebOS meaning the Palm OS emulator, Classic, no longer works. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if WebOS had most software available for it (which is why HP/Palm is looking for developers).

The card interface is innovative enough that RIM in stealing it for their PlayBook table device. With a simple swipe up of your finger you will be shown every currently running application. Speaking of swiping the Pre uses gestures for tons of things and this makes using the operating system very easy. If you want to move back in an application swipe your finger from right to left in the gesture area. If you want to copy something it’s as simple as highlighting it, holding a finger in on the gesture area, and tapping the ‘c’ key. Need to bring up the launcher? That’s as simple as moving your finger from the gesture area up to the screen. Doing almost everything in WebOS is quick and easy which is why I really like it.

WebOS 2.0 also added VPN support… which I’m still unable to get working. Maybe I’m misconfiguration something or maybe VPN is broken as it is in Android. I’ll let you know when I come to a conclusion. Apparently WebOS 2.0 also includes Wi-Fi hotspot functionality but I’ve not found it leading me to believe it’ll be coming in a future update.

So my initial impressions are good. I can’t wait to start really delving into WebOS development in the coming days. Although I don’t see the Pre 2 replacing my iPhone as a day to day phone as this point.

A Truly Useful Gadget

Dvorak Uncensored has a post about a truly useful gadget. It’s a noise canceling device that plugs into your MP3 player and apparently blocks out the sound of dental drills. Frankly dental drills are one of the most annoying sounds in the universe, probably because they are always associated with pain and misery. It would be nice not having to hear them.