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…

Everyone knows that females are possibly the best impulse buyers in the world. And with that you find everything catering for the female market kind of overpriced even though they are offering to the guys the same thing!

But please tell me if anyone (of you) would actually use a compact-lookalike trying to be a mobile phone? Even though admittedly it is quite okay on the casing.

As unfunctional as I usually like my gadgets I find it even hard to accept it.

Foundation cases should just contain pretty powders!

I say Microsoft has screwed up alot. But it doesn’t mean that they are not innovating. There’s a bunch / series of videos going around on the future imagin-ized by Microsoft, I like this two, they are worth a look at… even though they were created by Microsoft.

World according to Microsoft
Healthcare Vision

I like business cards.

However, recently a dutch company called “My name is E” has come up with a neat idea.

Basically it does away with business cards and allows you to exchange stuff like social networks, numbers, everything. So far it comes with a Web Interface, as well as a dongle which you can buy in order to exchange contacts.

I like this idea in general, however, the One Billionth Downloaded App Bump is Free, and it has the same features as well. Plus the fact that these ideas often only catch on if someone out there is using it as well. Nokia has tried a few times (and failed), Lovegotchi has tried, and so on so forth… Similarly, I deleted my “Bump” on my iPhone when there was absolutely nobody to bump into.

So, the app is already free. What’s stopping people from using it.

I say:

1. “My name is E” is a neat idea, although the name speaks of nothing. Hence I’m using a kitty thumbnail and it could mean anything!
2. Is there a way to exchange contacts in a better E way? Or is there a launch party where you distribute E tags/gadgets to A-listers or someone who wants to promote your product?
3. Is E able to connect up with other sorts of contact exchangers? Or could it be integrated to say.. when someone gets information and it immediately downloads it to their contact file. For Macs, it could be Address Book. For PCs, it could be Outlook.

If anyone owns an E, I would be interested to just know!

The Kindle DX must have been one of the tech world’s worst kept secret. Because every respectable tech blog was talking about it, pictures were leaked, and we kind of all knew it was coming. And reiterating my lust list, I STILL want a Kindle 2.0. But Kindle DX kinds of brings the ballgame to universities, schools and people who just like it bigger.

Of course it is pretty fantastic, they’ve done away with less buttons which I’m not for, and kept it almost like the Kindle 2. It has tie ins with major textbook publishers, as well as newspapers (of course) because when a picture stays on the screen, we don’t want just three lines of text. We want more like.. three paragraphs – at least.

Naturally we could see how could this tie in with schools when the small, compact “net-book” was the way to go for schools. Uh huh… Internet? Chatting? IM-ing? Twittering? Not exactly total focus, plus having to read it on the small laptop screen (tiring on the eyes) as opposed to straight, direct, electronic ink. Since I was a relief teacher once in ACS (like middle school 12-16 years), well, for all the Fujitsu tablet pcs open during class, only 50% was actually studies.

Well, Amazon is doing seriously great with the Kindle. If not for Whispernet and its tie in with only US. I really want one. And the thing about Amazon stocks – its cheap (for now). Because Amazon is creating many kickass products which once they stop being so localized to the US, will be a great hit.