Best of 2010: We Heart Our Kindles!
Andreas' 3G-Enabled Kindle
First I gifted Amazon’s 3G 6″ Kindle to Andreas then realized that I wanted one myself. So I got myself the 9.7″ Kindle DX a few weeks later. We absolutely love our Kindles. Andreas has taken his to Hawaii and loves the clarity of the text in even the brightest of sunlight. I am bringing mine on my forthcoming trip to the Philippines, and I’m excited to be able to access the Kindle store with its 3G capabilities while I’m there. One aspect of the Kindle DX that is already becoming a life-savior of sorts for me is its ability to read PDFs. As an academic, I have a hard-drive full of PDF articles. And I loathe reading the PDFs on my laptop screen. So now I am slowly transferring all my PDF files onto my Kindle. Amazon, if you are reading this, I would love, love, love to be able to annotate my PDF files! That ability would really be the best thing ever!
We both like the fact that the Kindle is an e-reader first and foremost. It is certainly less distracting than if the Kindle were a tablet. For those trying to compare the Kindle to an iPad – they are two different things! I just love the idea of not having to fill my suitcase with books. Kindle, you had me at “Slide and release the power switch to wake.”
For those wanting a stylish case for their Kindle DX, I suggest the Moleskine case. While there are certainly limitations to the case, I just love it.
New Toy: Panasonic Pocket HD Video Camera HM-TA1
To add to my collection of gadgets, I recently acquired the Panasonic Pocket Video Camera – HM-TA1, with HD capabilities. I had been using my Palm Pre Plus to video clips of my trips, which just wasn’t cutting it for me. I chose this camera not only because it has HD capabilities but also because it doubles as a 8 megapixel point-and-shoot camera. It also triples as a web cam. Fancy all of that! One of the downsides that I’ve immediately noticed is that a memory card isn’t included so I won’t be able to give it a full test run until I get my hands on an SD card. Darn. Though stay tuned!
The Joys of Pandora on the Road
We’re on I-80 right now, heading south towards San Francisco Bay and ultimately to Sausalito. Andreas and I were just talking about the wonders of listening to Pandora via our Palm Pre Plus’es (we’re probably the only queer guys without iPhones yet) on the many road trip we’ve been on so far. The 3G network of Verizon is surprisingly reliable, even in remote areas (a big reason why we didn’t jump onto the iPhone bandwagon – we’ve heard horror stories about the AT&T network). On this roadtrip thus far, Pandora has been knocking out one fantastic tune after another on the Madonna radio channel. Yes, we’re old school, and we love it.
