Oneupweb Reviews: Amazon Lights My Fire With Their Own Kindle!

During this last week’s break out of e-ink and e-social conventions, Amazon’s e-ink reveal took center stage.  They revealed their Kindle Fire, the Kindle Touch 3G, The Kindle Touch with the original Kindle still in the Kindle family line-up.

Forgive me, but I’m feeling a little fired up! After some research on the product, I have come to the conclusion the little 7-inch device is smokin’ hot! Not to mention its awesome price tag, which is a good 50% cheaper than the Playbook and $300 cheaper than the iPad!

Hot! Hot! Hot!

I am a mega reader and writer (I know, shocker).  But, I don’t own a pad or a tablet yet. I haven’t been fully won over by these devices, but after this reveal from Amazon I am honestly SOLD!

Why am I sold?  Let me share with you the Kindle Fire’s features and you will understand.

  • Obviously the price tag is one feature I appreciate about this little sizzler item.  Check out this great chart from Ken Sena of Evercore Partners. It shows how the price undercuts the tablet/pad market. I’d be shaking in my boots if I were the other brands.

Sena predicts that by 2016 the CAGR of the Kindle Fire will decline by 6% to $149. That’s awesome, but I won’t be waiting until then for that sales price – it’s already on sale for me. I’m ready to run out and buy it now!

  • This next feature! I melted from its amazing heat! Of course, this Kindle has the WhisperSync technology to automatically sync your library, last page read, bookmarks, notes and highlights across your devices that its predecessors had.  But, now it’s synced with more devices out there from Amazon’s instant video feature. If you own or have access to one of these compatible devices, like the Samsung LN40C560 40-inch 1080 60 Hz LCD HDTV for instance (could be mine – maybe), then all you have to do is sync up the two devices and watch the video on the bigger screen now.

Sync to your TV, HDTV, Blue-Ray, or DVR

  • I have a library of not just books, but magazines as well. As much as I LOVE to have my library of books and mags I won’t lie, I have been feeling a little guilty about the trees these days.  And so, reviewing the Kindle Fire’s picture quality on a 7″ vibrant color touchscreen that delivers 16 million colors in high resolution was a definite selling point for me.  Between watching movies and reading my favorite mags, I am sweltering with delight on this feature.

  • The Kindle Fire has an intuitive interface, so it makes it super easy to use and go back to my most visited and most interested links.
  • Amazon’s Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows. Basically, I can pull the little sultry device out of my purse at break time and watch a quick episode of my favorite shows, like Spartacus or Stargate SG-1.
  • It has a fast, dual-core processor, meaning I can do things like read a chapter in some book I need to get down for work while uploading a video to go along with that research. I can listen to tunes while I surf the web too. It’s a little multi-tasker like me!
  • It has its OWN cloud feature! I don’t have to worry about memory uptake on the device – slowing it down like molasses, because Amazon has its own cloud via the net where I can store all that.  No matter where I am or what I am doing. I can access it.

The Amazon Cloud

  • You can stream music from your Amazon cloud drive online or download the driver and go offline. They have 17 million songs in the Amazon MP3 Store. I could see myself on my treadmill able to have it sitting in front of me while I walk or run. In fact, I could be listening to music while reading AND walking!  Just hope they don’t make a law akin to the ‘walking and texting’ deal.
  • It’s strong! The screen is chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic. Honestly, how many times have you all out there dropped your iPhone or Android and cracked the screen – Right? … Exactly!

So, there you have my review on the new Kindle Fire tablet.  What do you think of this new device? What would you consider to be the pros and cons of utilizing such a spicy device?

Categories: Mobile, Tools, Video
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  • 1/21/2011
  • Post By: admin

Oneupweb Reviews : Quora

Quora.com was founded by two former Facebook employees: Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. D’Angelo is the former Chief Technology Officer of Facebook and Cheever oversaw the creation of Facebook Connect, which has since become part of the social network’s Open Graph. According to Quora.com:

Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know the answer.

After spending a few days using the service, I’ll admit I’m not very impressed. The interface is not user-friendly and it’s quite glitchy.

For example, Quora users follow topics. One of the topics I follow is titled:  “Roller Derbies.” This doesn’t really make sense; it should just be “Roller Derby.” What’s frustrating is I can’t easily edit the topic or add a topic titled “roller derby.”

You can search for topics that you are interested in, but that list is quite limited. There were several topics I was interested in that were not listed, like ping pong.

What’s annoying is that it doesn’t give you the option to add “ping pong”—not very user-friendly in my opinion.

The reason I found it glitchy is because Quora users are supposed to receive a “notification” when someone answers or comments on a question you asked. I asked the question below but was never notified when this nice man named Christian answered the question for me:

At this time, I think asking questions on Facebook or Twitter is more user-friendly. However, I understand the premise behind Quora—ask a question, and get a good, quality answer.

Perhaps once Quora gets a few of the kinks worked out it will become more of a reliable source, but as of this moment I give it a Oneupweb: thumbs-down.

What do you think of Quora? Do you agree with my review? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Categories: Social Networking, Tools
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  • 1/13/2011
  • Post By: admin

Oneupweb Reviews : Groupon

I’ll admit that I really have not caught the Groupon fever that seems to be running rampant in the online world. It has a lot to do with the fact that Groupon has not had any deals in Traverse City—until now.

A colleague sent me an email this morning titled “Suhhh weeet”, containing a link to a Groupon offer for a local ski resort. I clicked on it, and was instantly drawn in.

Perhaps I should backtrack right here. For those of you who don’t know, Groupon is an online service that provides “deals of the day” to different cities. The site partners with companies around the country to offer discounts and limited specials to people, provided a certain number of people sign-up for the deal. The merchant can set the number that has to be reached for the deal to be active, and a deadline for the deal to be taken offline. The idea is for others to spread the word about the deal (and therefore the merchant) to their friends and family, and the one-day deadline that usually accompanies these deals compels people to buy now.

A few months ago I read a Facebook post about a small coffee shop that had tried out Groupon. The owners were extremely unhappy and almost went out of business because they felt Groupon mismanaged their account—too many people purchased the deal and it was too much for the coffee shop to be able to sustain.

Now I’m not sure who’s really at fault here—Groupon for not stopping one of their merchants from making a poor business decision, or the owner of the coffee shop for not thinking this through. But either way, ever since reading that post, I’ve been a little leery of Groupon. But my co-worker was so excited about this ski resort deal, I decided to approach Groupon with an open mind, with the full intent to write this blog. Here’s what I found out.

When I navigated to the deal, there was a giant green button compelling me to “Buy!”, accompanied by a timer that let me know I had one day, 14 hours and 11 minutes left to purchase the deal. So I clicked it.

I was immediately taken to a payment screen showing me what I was about to purchase and asking for my method of payment.

Once I entered my payment information and completed my order, I was greeted by a pop-up screen letting me know that I had purchased the deal, and that I would receive an email notification when it was ready for me to print.

It appears I was number 294 to purchase the deal. At $55 a piece, that’s $16,170 in revenue in less than a day. That doesn’t seem all that bad to me. Of course, I’m not sure how much actual revenue this ski resort will make when all is said and done, after Groupon takes their portion and after you factor in the discount. One thing that I did notice is, this Groupon wasn’t advertised in the Traverse City area. It was targeting Grand Rapids, a large city downstate. So I’m sure the idea was to bring new customers to the ski resort at a discounted price, in the hopes that they will return in the future at full price.

Will it work? That remains to be seen. But I’ll be getting my skis and boots down out of the top of the garage to hit the slopes this weekend. As a consumer, I couldn’t be happier with Groupon. I give it a…

Oneupweb Reviews: Thumbs Up!

What do you think of Groupon? Have you found some great deals? Or are you a business that has used Groupon? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Update: At 11:06am, this deal sold out.

Categories: Tools
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