Kindle Fire

Mashable reports that some Google Marketplace apps are installable on Kindle’s new Fire tablet. A user simply needs to head to the device settings pane and enable the “Allow Installation of Applications From Unknown Sources” option. Then, the user needs to install GetJar.com. The Kindle Fire won’t appear in the GetJar options for app downloading, so the user just needs to select another Android 2.3 tablet. Not all apps will install, and Mashable uses the example of the Nook app. Quite the irony.

We’re playing with Google Maps right now (below).  FYI Launcher apps don’t seem to work. It appears that the Kindle is about to be opened up bigtime for hacking in the next 24 hours….
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As promised, Hulu Plus just hit the Amazon Appstore.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be able to be downloaded for any devices (including my Galaxy Tab 7) besides the Kindle Fire (check Android market for full compatibility list).  Strangely, even after “Whistper-synching” it over to the Kindle Fire, it hasn’t shown up.

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Amazon just announced in a press release that the Kindle Fire is shipping today — a day early — to users who pre-ordered. Amazon is already touting the Fire as their best selling item. For users who didn’t pre-order, they can order the Kindle Fire now for $199. For those that did, expect to be seeing your Fire soon, but in the mean time check out our review roundup.

Amazon.com today announced it is shipping Kindle Fire, already the bestselling item on Amazon.com, one day early. Kindle Fire offers more than 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, books, magazines, apps and games, as well as free storage of Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync for books and movies, a 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand, a vibrant color touch screen, a powerful dual-core processor and Amazon Silk – Amazon’s new revolutionary web browser that accelerates the power of the mobile device by using the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services cloud – all for only $199. 

In a separate press release, Amazon announced that the $99 Kindle Touch Wi-Fi and 3G will be shipping tomorrow, six days earlier than originally intended.

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The $199 Amazon Kindle Fire lands this week and the embargo on reviews was just lifted.  Besides a well-timed gem of an interview of Jeff Bezos by Steven Levy, here are some of the bigger Kindle Fire reviews from around the web:

Fortune:

The Kindle Fire isn’t a revolutionary device, but it is Amazon’s most important product ever. [It] takes Amazon’s wildly popular services and presents them in a solid piece of hardware with a responsive, easy-to-understand interface that works. It doesn’t have the iPad’s extra layer of polish and sheen, but with the Amazon brand, a wide ecosystem of services at its disposal, and that $199 price point, it doesn’t really need it. In that sense, Apple’s tablet just met its first real competitor.

NYTimes

The Fire deserves to be a disruptive, gigantic force — it’s a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, a more compact Internet and video viewer at a great price. But at the moment, it needs a lot more polish; if you’re used to an iPad or “real” Android tablet, its software gremlins will drive you nuts.

Gizmodo:

(The iPad finally has serious competition). If you like what Amazon Prime has going on in the kitchen, the Fire is a terrific seat. It’s not as powerful or capable as an iPad, but it’s also a sliver of the price—and that $200 will let you jack into the Prime catalog (and the rest of your media collection) easily and comfortably. Simply, the Fire is a wonderful IRL compliment to Amazon’s digital abundance. It’s a terrific, compact little friend, and—is this even saying anything?—the best Android tablet to date.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opnJA3FoCis]

Well, the advantages of the Nook Tablet are falling by the wayside as Amazon signs up more and more content partners at this late hour for its Kindle Fire.  Today Amazon announced that the Fire will also have Hulu Plus and ESPN ScoreCenter apps.

With Hulu Plus, Amazon Kindle Fire users can instantly watch thousands of TV episodes – including the entire current season of popular shows like Modern Family, Glee, Saturday Night Live, The Office, House, and Grey’s Anatomy – from top networks including ABC, Comedy Central, The CW, FOX, NBC, MTV, VH-1, and hundreds more.  Hulu Plus also offers entertainment fans access to classic TV favorites like Lost, Ally McBeal, and Battlestar Galactica and hundreds of popular and award-winning movies for $7.99/month with limited advertising. ESPN ScoreCenter brings Kindle Fire customers scores, news, and standings from hundreds of sports leagues around the world. Never miss another goal, pitch, basket, try, touchdown or wicket. Whether you follow the NFL or the Premier League, the Ashes or MLB, MMA or Formula One, ScoreCenter offers the most comprehensive global sports coverage available.

How are people going to pick competing 7-inch Androids when they don’t even have Hulu Plus?
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Starting at Midnight PT tonight, Amazon will give every new purchaser of a new Hotspot device some Amazon Credit – hopefully enticing them to pick up a Kindle Fire.

With a hotspot-ready smartphone, you can access the Internet on your Kindle Fire or other Wi-Fi devices anywhere.

Beginning at midnight PST tonight and for a limited time, customers who buy hotspot enabled smartphone will receive a $100 Amazon.com Gift Card. Also, those that purchase a mobile hotspot device will receive a $50 Amazon.com Gift Card (Note: for new lines of service and upgrade customers. Hotspot feature for smartphones must be activated at time of purchase to qualify.)

This promotion extends to some of the most desired phones out there, including the new Motorola Razr releasing tomorrow, Samsung Epic Touch 4G Android Phone (Sprint) , Samsung Galaxy S II 4G Android Phone (AT&T)  and even the HTC DROID INCREDIBLE 2 Android Phone (Verizon Wireless) , which is available for only $0.01!

Additionally, we’ve heard that Amazon is having a special on the RAZR Launch for $111.11.  If the above deal works on that, you are looking at $11 for one of the sickest phones on the market when bought with a tethering plan.

Tune into Amazon in a few hours.

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Interesting move here by Amazon.  By dropping the nicely-specced Vizio VTab eight inch tablet to $199, they’ve created a competitor to their own Amazon Kindle Fire tablet which at 7 inches is also priced at $199.

The VTab runs Android 2.3, has 4GB of built in storage and an SD card slot for additional storage and 512MB of RAM.  It bests the Kindle Fire with a bigger, higher resolution 1024 x 768 display, front facing camera for video conferencing (with Google Talk and Skype), built in IR blaster, an SRS 3 speaker sound system as well as an internal GPS.

It lacks the Kindle’s Dual Core processor.

For my money, this beats a Kindle Fire.

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As discovered by Fusible, Amazon has made the unexpected move of spinning its recently launched Kindle Fire (tablet) brand into a seperate company. Found in a filing with the U.S. Patent Office, Amazon has registered patents for both the Kindle Fire and Amazon Silk under the company Seesaw LLC. Both Amazon and Seesaw have the same patent lawyer.

Now what would be the reason? As Fusible points out, Amazon will probably be able to get the necessary investments for the Kindle Fire, and any other mobile/tablet brand they plan to launch.

All major Android backers are now paying royalties to Microsoft for using Android in smartphones, even the likes of Samsung and HTC. Goldman Sachs estimated the Windows maker could rake in a whopping $444 million this year alone from Android patent pacts, easily exceeding Windows Phone licensing revenues. Now that the $199 Kindle Fire tablet has come into full view, the question arises whether Amazon, too, will run to Microsoft’s arms seeking Android patent protection.

The two companies last year had cut a cross-licensing agreement. However, the Seattle Times notes that the 2010 deal covers the existing Kindle e-readers but not Android, which powers the Kindle Fire tablet. TechCrunch’s MG Seigler, who saw early prototypes of the Fire tablet, described  a forked Android version which is at the core of the Kindle Fire experience:

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Just as we’re sorting through Amazon’s announcements related to their Kindle e-readers and the new Fire tablet, we spotted a press releasementioning Newsstand, an online store dedicated to the digital magazines and newspapers which have been optimized for the Fire’s seven-inch display. It’s pretty much like Apple’s upcoming Newsstand in iOS 5, only Amazon’s has more content. The company explains:

Hundreds of magazines and newspapers – including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Wired, Elle, The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan and Martha Stewart Living – with full-color layouts, photographs, illustrations, built-in video, audio and other interactive features are available from the new Kindle Fire “Newsstand.” Kindle Fire customers will enjoy an exclusive free three-month trial to 17 Condé Nast magazines, including Vanity Fair, GQand Glamour.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUtmOApIslE]
Kinda neat. The voiceover quotes French writer François-Marie Arouet Voltaire.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes property of all.

And then, Amazon adds its own cheesy part: From Kindle, the Fire is born. Talk about pun intended.

The new Kindle Fire tablet costs $199 and ships November 15.

Also, amazon.com/kindlefire.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u7F_56WhHk]
Amazon has just unveiled at a press conference in New York its inaugural seven-inch tablet and a new family of Kindle e-readers that now include the $99 Kindle Touch and the low-priced regular Kindle which retails for just $99. Seth Weintraub is on the scene and the latest information includes the news that Amazon will be rolling out its own brand new browser for the Fire tablet, named Silk.

The company set up a new blog for the Silk team and their first blog postexplains that Silk is “an all-new web browser powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available exclusively on the just announced Kindle Fire. According to a promo clip included above, a “split browser” architecture (kinda similar to Opera’s Turbo mode) taps the Amazon cloud which caches files (limitless caching) and does the heavy-lifting, depending on workload. It’s a smart approach which offload page rendering to Amazon Web Services, resulting in faster page load times. And here’s what’s so smart about it, according to the Silk team:

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