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I just saw an interesting post on Amazon.com’s Kindle Forum. Someone asked about how they can watch a movie on their Kindle Fire from Amazon.com. In the course of the discussion, someone mentioned that there is a product that can provide you with private access to your library of videos, regardless of where you are.
It can hold more than 300 HD movies–500GB of storage capacity.
It can stream media to 3 tablets.
It can sync media and other data from your computer
The battery lasts up to 5 hours–enough for three 1.5 hr movies! It can go 25 hours in standby.
WiFi range is more than 30 feet.
Basically it can work with any WiFi device (your tablets and even smartphones) using a web browser.
For fast transfers of media from your computer, it uses USB 3 adapter. It comes with a power adapater/charger and a 3 year limited warranty.
At the time of this posting, Amazon retails this for less than $199.
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I can just imagine the possibilities! If you have a Kindle Fire, or any WiFi capable device with an Internet browser, you and a couple of other friends or family members can be viewing the videos of your choice at a camping trip, or anywhere for that matter.
In these modern high tech times everyone has high expectations of games–especially computer games. With computer games, high resolution and fancy 2D or 3D graphics is the norm. Why then is the game Choice of the Dragon getting such high ratings for a text-based RPG?
On Amazon.com it is getting a 4.5 star (out of 5 start) rating–from over 160 reviewers. That isn’t bad for that many raters.
Here’s the gist of what the game is about:
Choice of the Dragon is a free text-based game of multiple choice. Dominate the local kingdom, loot and pillage, and inspire terror in the hearts of your enemies. Play as a fire-breathing dragon who sleeps on gold and kidnaps princesses for fun.
Although the game is text based, it does an excellent job at using our innate urge to know what comes next to its advantage. The result? Addiction. It is like reading a good book. You want to know what happens next. The main difference is that you as the reader has choices to make for the main character; and the choices you make have consequences, resulting in a very unpredictable chain of events.
Here is one review comment from Amazon.com:
Very entertaining and humorous! I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy a text based rpg but I loved it! If you’re not sure, just download it and give it a try; you won’t be disappointed.
Having played this text based RPG, I have the same basic sentiment. You won’t be disappointed. This game is free, if you can handle in-game ads. You can however upgrade to ad-free version for a price–$4.99. Even for this price, it is worth the price of a good book.
If you are using Evernote and was wondering how to add on-the-fly sketches or doodles to your notes, then you are in luck. This article will show you how to do this using a separate app called Skitch–also from the makers of Evernote.
As the name imply, it is a sketching tool, and it is specifically designed to help get your point across. Anything you make with Skitch (can be based on sketches you make, a photo you take, or an existing photo/image), can easily be embedded into an Evernote note.
On an Android based tablet, all you have to do is tap the save icon (). Once you click that, the Skitch work is automatically saved to Evernote, just like a note. You will see it in Evernote, along with your other recent notes.
You can also tap the share icon () and share your work to an Evernote note where you can add more notes to your “skitch”.
Since the main purpose of a “skitch” is to get your point across using fewer words, most likely you will share it with another person via an email or message.
Like Evernote, Skitch is available on almost all portable or mobile devices. So you could be Skitching anywhere.
If you don’t have Evernote or Skitch yet, just look for the Android Market icon on your tablet ().
You can also get it through the Amazon.com. They are free:
Netflixwas born in 1997. It started as a mail DVD rental business which also signaled the decline of Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and other similar brick and mortar businesses. They touted no late fees because you can return the DVDs at any time. Their digital content subscription began in 1999, and by 2009 it was offering over 100,000 DVD titles. By that time they gained over 10 million subscribers. By 2011 they reached a whopping 23.6 million subscribers!
Today, not only do they stream movies, they make available many TV show episodes. This was the beginning of the move away from cable TV. There is no need to have a TV guide in a sense that you can watch whatever you want whenever you want.
Not only can you watch everything on Netflix via your game console (like Xbox, PS3, or the Wii), but you can also now watch them on your tablet. Provided you have WiFi signal, you can watch TV or a movie almost anywhere on your WiFi-capable tablet.
Although it doesn’t give you that big screen feel, combined with a good headset, watching on your tablet can be a very comfortable and enjoyable experience. This trend will continue, and the prevalence of tablets will not help the cable TV companies any. According to a Deloitte survey, 9% of people who had cable TV have already cut the cord, and 11% plan to do so (see reference 1).
If you haven’t done so, you should consider Netflix or other streaming service such as the one from Amazon.com or Hulu. And guess what? You can watch all these at the comfort and convenience of your tablet computer.
Online news has been around for some time; and it has placed the hard copy newspapers towards a path of extinction.
Tablet technology has been around also, but it hasn’t evolved to its full potential until their recent explosion into the tech scene in 2010. On top of that, tablets didn’t start coming into the mainstream until Apple introduced the iPad; and just last November 2011, Amazon.com introduced the Kindle Fire, which really brought the tablet technology within reach of almost everyone.
The combination of tablets and online news have really made it very convenient for someone to take online news and handle them like they do regular newspapers. Just do the restroom test. Traditionally people have taken newspapers into the restroom while they do their business. Except for the truly desperate, not many people take their laptop in the restroom to read the news. However, today people do take their tablets like they used to do with news papers.
The reason? Tablets are smaller and lighter than laptops, and can pretty much be handled like a little notebook. In addition, you can manipulate pages using your fingers against the tablet screen while the other hand hold the tablet. Next, the low power consumption of tablets make them perfect to take along almost anywhere, especially where ever there are WiFi hot spots–be it at home, at Starbucks, McDonalds, or even your local public library. The battery simply lasts much longer than what we’ve seen with laptops, or even net books!
Most recently, a news reader–called PULSE–has really done a good job at consolidating sources of news and categories of news. When you install Pulse, you have the option to customize the news you see by selecting the various news feeds. It is almost like creating your own newspaper with its various sections, such as world news, sports, science, comics, and so forth.
The presentation of the news and their arrangement is interesting as well because you can simply scroll the tablet screen horizontally to see more news from a category. If you scroll vertically, you can see the various categories of news you’ve programmed into PULSE. When you select a particular news item, it opens it on the right panel, providing the details of the news.
The interface is simple, and the pictures and text they use for headlines work to keep the readers’ interest up. It is simply amazing. Once more and more people discover tablets and PULSE, we will see the ultimate extinction of the hard copy newspaper. That time is almost here, if it isn’t already here.
Do you use Pulse to read your news? If so, what do you think? If not, check it out for yourself.
Every year, immediately after Thanksgiving, my wife listens to Christmas music. She can’t wait for it because there is always a radio station that plays them 24/7 immediately after Thanksgiving day. During that time and until Christmas is over, she would enjoy music from that radio station, giving us that nice Christmas season and atmosphere feeling.
Well we only have one radio in the house, and it is in the bedroom. During the long two-week break I had from work, we spent most of our time on the first floor of the house, around the family and kitchen area. We didn’t have any radio there, but we did have her iPod which contains hundreds of songs, most of which aren’t Christmas songs. I’m sure we could have created a Christmas playlist, but I didn’t know how to do it, and I wasn’t about to spend time trying to figure that out on a device I wasn’t really familiar with.
That’s when I decided, to bring down my tablet computer and install the Pandora app. I already had an account from when I experimented with it months ago, adding my personal stations. Anyway, I created a new station and all I did was provide a key word–”Christmas”–and Pandora effortlessly created a personal Christmas radio station for us.
From then on, I set up my tablet computer to run Pandora using the “Christmas” station I created. It’s amazing how this little app can figure out a variety of Christmas music to play. You can also use the Thumbs Up or Down button to help Pandora fine tune your musical preferences.
Here’s the funny thing…
I though many people already knew of Pandora, but come to my surprise, the top executive at the place where I work didn’t know of Pandora. He was aware that there are streaming radio stations on the Internet, but he didn’t know of applications or sites on the Internet that can be customized to one’s music preferences. When I showed it to him, he was amazed. Note that this happened before Christmas. He too wanted to listen to Christmas music, but he wanted to listen to Elvis Christmas music. So I showed him how he could create a custom radio station by simply using the key words “Christmas” and “Elvis”. Low and behold, we had created an Elvis Christmas Internet radio station!
If you use your tablet regularly and you like to listen to music, you can run Pandora in the background while you do what ever it is that you do on your tablet. Pandora is simply an amazing app. I’m sure there are others out there, but by far this is a pretty easy app to use. Check it out if this is new to you!
I’ve recently installed a product called Skitch on my tablet. What is it and why would you want it? Because sometimes you need to get your point across with fewer words, and Skitch is just the tablet app to do it. Here’s a YouTube video that explains what it is:
Here are the highlights:
Evernote's Skitch: get it at Amazon.com
It is easy to use: the interface is simple; no need for a manual
You can easily annotate your doodles, sketches, photos, or images.
Make your point by sharing in various ways (e.g. as an Evernote note, Facebook, email, etc.).
Annotation symbols stands out; you can’t miss them.
Text font stand out as well and are extremely easy to read.
Best of all, it is FREE! Everyone likes FREE.
If you want to get the Skitch app, just go to Amazon.com or look for it on your device’s Android market.
1 comment - What do you think? Posted by
admin -
January 13, 2012 at 6:57 am
The one thing I hate about some apps that run on android, is that they don’t have an EXIT or CLOSE function. I guess the developers assume that you want their program running all the time, sucking battery juice from your tablet device 24/7.
Well, if you still like the app, but still want to close it, then there is a solution for you. Amazon.com offers the Advanced Task Killer Free. This little app will help you close those apps that don’t close. You can even make exceptions for those apps that you do want to keep open.
Educational programs on computers aren’t new. What’s new is the platform upon which they now run–the tablet computer!
I’m not sure whether this has hit you are not, but developers have been very aware of it since at least 2010. The tablet is the new learning platform for kids. this article will explain and illustrate.
I was recently playing with my grandson–who has just turned 3–and he wanted to play a game on my laptop computer. I was thinking that this would be a challenge even if the game he played was purely mouse point and click based. He did pretty good, but his motor skills were still pretty limited considering his fingers were just just to small and short to properly manipulate the mouse. Besides, I could tell that he needed to coordinate his mouse control with what he sees on the screen. This effort is relatively complex considering how old he is.
Now, take the same scenario with a 10 inch screen tablet computer. My grandson loves this device. He can use his little pointer fingers to point and control games. The beauty of this is the interactivity and direct relation of what he wants to do with what he sees on the screen–completely intuitive and no training required!
Is your child at home learning with a tablet computer at home? If not, it’s time to catch up. Your child will love it; and it can keep them occupied for hours. What else can you ask for now that you have the ultimate educating baby sitter!
Just be watchful, the screen on these devices is made of glass, and can break easily if any sharp pressure is placed on it or if the tablet is dropped.
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. This little app will help you close those apps that don’t close. You can even make exceptions for those apps that you do want to keep open.
and now 
, tablet computers–as a learning platform–is now mainstream.