What is the Kindle Fire?
Here is some blurb on it.
The new Kindle fire builds on the success of the Kindle e-reader and now allows the user to engage in full colour on a 7 inch screen.
It has -
* 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
* Amazon Appstore - thousands of popular apps and games
* Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk
* Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
* Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
* Fast, powerful dual-core processor
Is it a challenge to the IPad 2?
The $199 (£128) colour touchscreen tablet called the Kindle Fire was unveiled at a press conference in New York with all the secrecy and prerelease teasing Apple usually sprinkles on its launches.
The new Kindle is far less advanced than the iPad. It doesn't offer a mobile connection, working only with Wi-Fi; it doesn't have a camera or microphone; and its screen, at 7 inches, is smaller than the iPad, at 9.7 inches.
However, at half the price, analysts said it presents the first serious challenge to the iPad's dominance of the tablet market, as Bezos tries to build on the success of his company's Kindle book reader with a colour-screen, multimedia offering for US consumers. In Britain, buyers will have to wait until next year at the earliest.
However it really is a threat. The Kindle fire is enabling the book reader to do more and yet still trust the name "kindle".
Will this change the way we interact with books?
I think in time this will. Look around most homes. How many new CD's or Dvd's are on the shelves? Many people know have most things stored on their computer and can watch through their wide screen TV. Books look nice but there will be less need to have a physical book.
This all has implications for communication and for word based teaching. How will publishers get on board with this? I suspect that like CD's there will be still a market for people wanting the physical product but in time there will be less books on our shelves.
0 comments:
Post a Comment