Amazon have just announced three new Kindle e-readers and a new version of its base model. This will come as a major blow to all the small time players out there who have sought to penetrate the ebook market, with Amazon’s new generation Kindle selling for only US $79! Of the new Kindle e-readers there’s the Kindle Touch which as the name suggests, has a touch screen for you to navigate the device. It too sells for under $100. The Kindle Touch 3G is the always-online version which allows you to download content without paying any monthly data fees or contracts (you still have to pay for content though). And of course, what we’ve all been waiting for, the Kindle Fire was announced which features a 7-inch touch screen, ultra-fast Amazon Silk web browser, dual core processor, free cloud storage and access 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books.

continue reading "Amazon Announce The Kindle Fire – Sells For A Measly $199"

Our friends at Brighthand have reviewed the new Amazon Kindle 2 and their opinion is that it is the best eBook reader out there in the market:

The Amazon Kindle 2 is an impressive piece of technology, and Amazon should be proud. Much like Apple’s success with the iPod, Amazon is crafting a successful brand by not only offering good hardware, but by supporting it with a software backbone.

It has succeeded where others have failed by sheer effort; even though Sony has been at the effort a longer time, their store doesn’t offer as much content, and it’s typically more expensive. Moreover, no other e-reader can offer such expansive wireless connectivity, at least at this point in time.

Despite the overall positive tone of this review, the Kindle 2 isn’t perfect. I’m not a huge fan of the 5-way joystick, as it’s slippery and at times difficult to use, and there are still some user interface bugs that need ironed out. Moreover, when you flip the power switch to turn wake it from sleep mode, it can take up to thirty seconds before it’s fully responsive; until then it can take more than a second for pages to refresh.

continue reading "Amazon Kindle 2 Review"

Seems like the industry is not really impressed by the recent announcement of Amazon’s Kindle 2. Despite the enhancements, many pundits expected a lot more from the online giant – most importantly a price drop; its sale price will remain the same as the previous version, US$359.

I mean take a look at the improvements:

The battery life’s been improved by about 25 percent. The Kindle 2 is much skinnier than its predecessor, slimming down to 0.36 inches in thickness from 0.7, but it’s only a tenth of an ounce lighter. The storage capacity has jumped from 256MB to 2GB, or about 200 to 1,500 books, and the electronic ink display has improved from a 4-shade to 16-shade grayscale.

Given that most units were snapped up quite quickly last year, I believe Amazon is employing good business practice with their pricing strategy, especially in these tough times.

Would you pay the extra for augmentations?

For those who don’t know what a Kindle is, read this Amazon Kindle product description page.

Via CNET

Alexa has just updated their web-ranking system! Mr.Gadget got bumped up another 20K up! (now 48,747) Our highest ever Alexa ranking was in 2006 – 28,000+.

Alexa is a web-traffic company owned by Amazon which ranks websites all over the world. If you haven’t used it before (www.alexa.com) I highly recommend it as it gives good insight to a particular website’s traffic, reach and range. Also useful if you are buying from that website or looking to invest into it. Many websites brag about web traffic when in reality, they do squat.

In general if they’re not in the Alexa top 100,000 websites, they’re not very popular nor receive many visitors.

For example, here’s our Mr.Gadget site pitted against Harvey Norman and Harris Technology. According to Alexa we are higher ranked than these websites and get more traffic. If this is accurate, it just goes to show that you don’t have to spend millions and millions of dollars to have a powerful website…

Alexa Announcement

If you’re looking for help to get your website into the world’s top 100,000 list email top100k@mrgadget.com.au.