It has been almost three weeks with the Kindle 3…

I used to read alot. In Clementi there is a rental bookstore, and pre-distracting internet, I used to read the entire bookshelf every month and finish up a book in 2 days max. But I always rented from the bookstore, because old books smell funny after a while, and then silverfish start to climb in and out of the pages, and all the dust gather. I just love to read, it’s like you are in this immersive environment when you read, and the author brings you almost everywhere you can imagine.

So, now I’m officially kindled. I love the Kindle, unlike my iPhone which I charge everyday once at least, my Kindle’s battery has not ran out yet – fantastically!

So since you know I already love this product, I should probably say that I hate about it.

(1) I keep accidentally buying books. This semi annoys me and the reason is because when you buy an app on the iPhone you have to put in a password first. For the Kindle, it’s one-click payment, which literally means anyone can use my Kindle and start buying an entire library of books. And then, the buttons to get a sample and to buy a book are so close together I’ve bought a couple of books already.

(2) Price of Kindle books. Still good, could be better. I don’t really understand how this works honestly, and I would prefer a more standardized price as all my books I’ve bought so far range from 3USD to 14USD. Even the trilogy of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” had its three books listed at three different prices.

(3) Availability of books outside of the US. I live in Europe, and some books are unfortunately not available on my Kindle, which sux. Of course there are currently about 700K books to be bought thus far at the Kindle store, but definitely not all are available for International customers.

(4) Unknown possible downloads of your bought item. According to Customer Service reps nobody really know how many times a book can be downloaded. So say, ten years later I still want to read my “Breakthrough Imperative” it may already have been expired. Or does Amazon keep a record and in ten years it is possible to download 200 books? Who knows.

I got my first iPod in 2005 in Cupertino, at the WWDC bash where it was still possible to get tickets as students, it was still held in the Cupertino campus and it wasn’t so rock star cool.

It was a pink iPod mini (Of course) and I bought under peer pressure of my equally fanatic Apple fans (Yes, I’m talking about you – Robert, Christina, Thomas and all you other WWDC student scholarship lets live in the HI hostel although it seems pretty dangy people – I seriously miss being a student then).

As promised, I decided to review the Kindle 3 after ordering it for my birthday. It’s sleek alright, but here goes. I bought the Kindle 3 WiFi version with the leather bounded case from Amazon US. I found it really weird that I had to order this in from the International Store instead of the UK Store since I was obviously nearer to the UK. The nice thing was, that Amazon included all the taxes up front, so I paid approximately 150EUR for the Kindle itself, inclusive of BTW. As part of my pre-selection, I also went down to MediaMarkt to check out the other eBook readers, to find out that Sony’s eBook readers are more expensive, the iRex just didn’t look appealing enough, and the iRiver only came along with the Story touch version and was out of my range. So I just decided to go-Amazon anyway.

The Kindle 3 arrived speedily, approximately 3 days after dispatch from the US. And it arrived switched on and registered to your Amazon account. If you’re like me, and don’t get public WiFi at work, then you can manually transfer books into the Kindle via your computer in a very unprofessional drag and drop way. The screen is fantastic, it looks exactly like a piece of paper and do not expect to read in the dark at all. ePaper is indeed like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but this is obviously the best screen I’ve ever seen on any eBook reader, with a very fast refresh rate. A nice touch also, is that you can send PDFs to the Kindle, via email, and it will automatically convert these into your kindle during the next update. What I didn’t like too much, was how clumsy I was with the UI in the beginning, and how it takes a short time to figure out what to do. But I’ve handled the Nook before as well, and I think it all works this way.

Under experimental settings, you get a host of random things, one of which is the web browser. Note that even if you take a 3G version of the Kindle, you are only allowed to use the Wikipedia function. The web browser isn’t awesome. But still, looking at the New York Times and thinking this looks like a freaking newspaper, was kind of cool.

What I like most probably about the Kindle is its size – yes it is that light, about the size of a paperback. The design is also very sleek, and totally unlike the other eBook readers in the market. Like I said, since I already own an iPhone, I didn’t see the need to get an iPad which costed 3 times as much with all the additional features when work uses PowerPoint the most.

Should you get it? Well, if you read a lot – yes. With the exception of weird issues like not all eBooks are available, some only in the US market, etc. The Kindle store is great – and probably the reason why I bought a Kindle. The design and the look of the Kindle was a secondary issue to me. So say if I were to rate this I would say: 8/10

I did it! I made the plunge –  and I bought a Kindle after months of deliberating Kindle or iPad.

Honestly, I was quite happy with the price even post VAT. It seemed that Amazon adds the tax on top of the price of the kindle – makes things much easier. Victoria’s Secret does the opposite, and the last time I want is to wait for the TNT post to figure out how much taxes which I need to pay over my package, and then you wait 2 months for a package which is supposed to come weeks ago.

I think what did it for me was definitely the price. When Kindle went from 259USD -> 189USD, I wavered a little. Then it went to 139USD minus the WiFi. I don’t need Whispernet or the possibility of getting internet everywhere – the kindle is not a webbrowser, and I had my semi-working iPhone with me. And the geek inside of me (which I occasionally show) just wants to see – e-ink, e-paper, e-whatever. Anyway, the kindle shipped today! So I’m waiting to get it so I can review it!

I’ve blogged a bit about Kindle, but right now, Amazon has released Kindle for International Wireless. I really want an eBook reader – I admit, I have a huge manifestation of books which I need to put… somewhere.

The issue now? Price. Color. New releases.

Still, we’re on the right track.

There’s this crazy store called Yodobashi Camera in Osaka in which drew out all the energy out of me in a couple of hours. Its somewhat like the Japanese consumer electronics galore with every single section of the place screaming at you to say: Buy me! Anyway, I did take a whole bunch of pictures starting with the calorie monitor, somewhat like DirectLife. I’m trying my best to do my own version of Japanese-Chinese translation on whatever I was actually seeing…

Wireless fire alarms connecting the house together – I think.

Very cute earphones. That said, it seems that shopping in Japan is solely catered for women. 11 levels of shopping centers with one floor for men. And everywhere is full of thigh-high socks, thigh-high boots, sparkling stuff, dresses, clothes, makeup, and pink electronics.

Handphone chargers so cute it must be illegal!

Solar panel handphone chargers! I wonder how long would it take to charge one since it is really tiny. Sanyo had its own large sized ones though, but Japan has every single thing forseeable!!!

Was at IFA 2009 (Consumer Electronics Unlimited) in Berlin last weekend. Its been a while since I attended these trade fairs so I personally thought it was awesome!

I’ll blog more about it once my brain has recovered from the massive lack of sleep I’ve done over the past few days…

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Since a very long time, IFA 2009 was the first trade show I ever attended in Europe. I’m so into Berlin right now that I’m definitely going to be at CeBIT 2010 in Hannover! Since you have all your favorite gadget blogs to talk about the highlights about IFA, I’ll just say a few things which struck me.

Samsung was a massive sponsor obviously. Flags all around the main entrance and a host of televisions which well, definitely astounded. Sony also had a fantastic looking Make. Believe. booth which had the next wow factor. But since I had way too little sleep the night before, by the time I was at Sony examining the new e-book readers I was ready to throw in the towel.

Philips and Toshiba also had really nice clean looking booths.

There was a 21:9 television, as well as many connected televisions. In fact, there was so many televisions at the IFA I was half believing it to be a television exhibition.

Even more televisions, but super sleek this time round.

Well, obviously I’m not in a mood for blogging too much. Nonetheless, Berlin is famous for its techno music, so obviously that was the plan for the night of IFA. That, and of course, Starbucks!!!

Heel lekker!!!

Till next time!

xoxo, Summer

Why should we even need the 3G Dongle so that we can connect up our laptops to the Internet? Unless you (like me) live in a place where iPhone thethering is non-existent, perhaps the new Nokia mini booklet would suffice?

Well, I think the concept is awesome – plus there is a 12 hour battery life! Thats the way a laptop should last! The only issue? Well really is that it uses Microsoft and there is a special Apple announcement coming on 7th September 2009… Apple Tablet anyone? It would change everybody’s life. Including mine.

Zii is one of the most exciting thing to come out from Creative after a while. After working there for almost a year and leaving for my M.Sc, the company has been churning out half hearted OEM-branded goods for a while now.

So Zii, is Android based. It also comes HD ready, Dual Cameras, Multi-touch… and the closest possible competitor to the iPod except… well except it is marketed towards OEMs? And the Zii is currently only available as the developer edition?

Then again, the marketing behind Zii is slick. In fact, it is rarely associated to be coming out of Creative Labs even on the Website. Very nice branding and marketing. Possibly Creative would be releasing a bunch of Zii based stuff soon?

Its promising but lets wait.

Today I was shown a Poken distributed at a Logica Conference. The concept is very similar to “My name is E”… it allows you to swap social network details with anyone else with a Poken.

Well, things are slightly different with the Poken. For starters, when I was shown it I was like Oh….. this is soooo cute. Super cool. It was really well made, and well you really wanted to plug it in your computer to figure out what it actually did.

There are 100K Pokens distributed all around the Netherlands as of this moment. I can imagine if you distribute more at conferences (Like how G2s were distributed for free at the Google I/O Conference!), this sort of idea could really pick up…