Jason Vagner

[See UPDATE at bottom]

I got home from my trip to Berlin and opened my Kindle Fire and let it upgrade the software first. Then I spent an hour goofing with it while noshing on a salad. Initial thoughts follow.

I think if you're coming to this with iPad expectations, you'll naturally be disappointed.

But if you wanted a portable Roku, it's far closer to the mark.

There's something magical about Amazon's pre-configured Kindle deliveries. You turn the device on for the first time and your content is already there. Amazon's eco-system is definitely a huge plus here. As a Roku user of many years now, I've got quite a bit of content in my Amazon Video library, plus a ton of books on my Kindle e-reader. They were all there and accessible on the Fire.

I let Little Man have the Fire first. He asked what it was, and I pitched it as a portable Roku. He asked if it was like the iPad, and I said, "Sorta, but probably not as good. But cheaper." He played with it for a while and said, "It kind of doesn't listen to me when I tap on it. But I don't think that means it's bad."

From the mouth of babes...

And so it is, I think. It's $200. I wanted it because it was cheaper and smaller than an iPad. I want to use it mostly on commutes and during international travel. I want to stuff it in my day bag sometimes and not feel like I'm carrying something as big as a 10" tablet. If I break it, it won't be a minor tragedy. I want it there in my bag if the movie selection on my next flight really sucks.

And for that, I think it's quite good.

It's not a daily live-with, work device. People carry around their iPad (2s, mostly) as a substitute for their laptops. I grab my Air when I want to work. I think the iPad 2 can legitimately be called a work machine, and the Fire is an entertainment brick.

I suspect that given the device's source material (the PlayBook) every enhancement Amazon imagined came with a prohibitive upgrade fee. They decided to see if a decent tablet could validate the value of their ecosystem for future tablets.

I think it clearly does.

I doubt this Fire will stay like this for long. I'd expect another software update, some UI and performance improvements.

Until they either back-port the newer Android kernel interface and input code, it'll always have a slightly glitchy response tendency. It's there, but it's not fatal. People who haven't spent time on an iPad, or would never spend $500-700 of their very own cash on an iPad, will be plenty impressed. Or accepting. (Side thought: how many people are walking around with iPad 2s they didn't -- and wouldn't -- pay for with their own money?)

Hulu Plus works very well. Amazon streaming works very well. Netflix seems to have audio tracking issues. That could prove fatal for me. That's not a "oh well" bug. That's a "send it back" bug. I'm willing to wait 2-3 weeks to see if it gets smoothed out with some kind of upgrade.

The browser is fine. It works well. It's not Safari on an iPad. But it's not "slow". I miss double-tapping to zoom, but spreading fingers across the screen gets the job done.

It reminds me of my Google Nexus phone. It's not perfect either.

Android Ice Cream Sandwhich better fix some of these interface/input synchronous timing things, or Android may never give demanding users the kind of experience that Apple got so very right so long ago. And they did it with very little precedent in the marketplace. They truly set the bar radically high with their version 1 releases.

Everyone still has so much to learn from them. For now, $200 buys some forgiveness. Minus the Netflix audio tracking issue, I'd say with 85% probability I'd be keeping it. Right now it's down to 65%. I'll let you know in 2-3 weeks where I come out.

UPDATE: December 6, 2011

The Kindle Fire is going back to Amazon.

I kept it stock -- only installed apps from the Kindle Fire App store, and as few as possible at that. I used Amazon Video and Netflix and Hulu periodically. I never configured the email client, I did install Pulse and gReader.

I really wanted to like the Fire enough to keep it. I pressed gingerly on the screen but its inaccurate gesture tracking didn't completely deter me.

I watched short videos in bed and told myself that the subpar and poorly placed speakers wouldn't matter much when I was on a plane and listening to the audio through Bose noise cancelling headphones.

I wished it had Bluetooth so I could use it at the gym or on the subway with the Bluetooth headphones I carry most places, but reminded myself that I really bought this for extended travel.

My son really wanted me to let him "own" the Fire, but he was pretty happy grabbing for the iPad 1 when he really wanted to play a game or work on his Amazon (Xmas) Wishlist [Amazon: nota bene].

But the reason it really ultimately failed to satisfy me? The battery management sucks. Before I installed gReader, the idle device could sit for a few days without issue and still have a good battery charge. I'm not sure what happene -- and I haven't verified that it's gReader updating in the background, but in the last week both times I went to grab the Fire, it was dead. No charge.

I'm guessing it's not really tuned for long-term sleep/idle life. But between my iPhones and my iPad and my MacBook Air, I'm used to devices sleeping very cooperatively. I use my iPad to listen to audio over AirPlay every day of the week and usually only have to charge it weekly.

I'm willing to take on a little device/life overhead management, but the Fire is compromised in too many ways, and it's obvious that Amazon will have to come out with a true purpose-designed media tablet at some point if they want their ecosystem to be properly monetized at the device point. There are rumors that the next generation Fire is already planned for release... either way, I can wait. They'll have to do a better job with Android power management if the tablet's going to fare well against iPads.

For travelling, I think I'll solve my media supply problem by purchasing an external battery pack for the 4S. I can live with the smaller screen for the time being.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

My childhood coincided perfectly with the dawn of the personal computing era. 

My first computer was an Osborne 1. My first modem ran at 300 baud. My first hard drive came in a Northstar Horizon, and my first social networks were BBSes, FidoNet and Usenet. I can remember riding my BMX bike to local computer stores to drool over and demo early Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST models.

My first Steve Jobs machine was a NeXT cube, with the titanium case. Truth be told, it was neither more beautiful nor better than the Sun Microsystem and Silicon Graphics machines I also worked on.

I came to Apple products late in the game. I knew who Steve Jobs was, followed his story, but didn't buy his products. My first Apple purchase was an iPhone 3G. It replaced the horrid Nokia E61, a machine I had wanted so badly that I wandered the electronic stalls of Singapore in hopes of scoring an early model.

The release of the iPhone coincided with the preschool years of my son. I've never given him any instructions on how to use an iPhone or an iPad, but his facility and command of its features are always surprising. As he's grown older and developed an increasingly voracious brain, the iPhone has become an integral part of my parenting life. When he starts a conversation with, "I have a question!" he will surely test my knowledge until he'll finally suggest, "Dad, let's look it up on your iPhone."

My son is growing up in a world where any question, asked at almost any moment, can be answered instantaneously. This is profoundly different than my childhood. This is very different than even 5 years ago.

Steve Jobs was there at the dawn of personal computing, and he became even more inventive and surprising as he grew older. He left our world at the peak of his powers, long after the other geniuses of his era stopped shaping our world. Without Steve Jobs and his vision of mobile computing, our present Internet life would have been in the hands of Nokia and RIM and Blackberry and the early Android initiative. Think back to what those last models looked like before the first iPhone was released. And even now, in death, Steve Jobs has probably delivered another first in my son's life: the first computer he will speak to regularly. I can't wait to see what questions he asks.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I bought a Wakemate, and you can learn more about it here: http://wakemate.com. I won't explain what it does, or how it does it, so visit that link if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

I used it for the first time last night. During the week, when I'm without child and heading to the gym for a morning workout, I set the alarm for 5:00am to catch the 5:25am BART train from my hometown to SF. I'm invariably out the door at exactly 5:14am, so you could say my morning is exceedingly ritualized and time-bound.

So last night I went to bed at 9:30pm and told the Wakemate I had to be up no later than 5:00am. Setting this in the iPhone app is very easy.

A breakdown of the process, with impressions:

• The product obviously isn't manufactured by a large-scale, consumer product giant. The packaging is modest and simple. No problem though.
• I removed the little electronic piece and plugged the mini-USB cable in to charge it.
• I registered on wakemate.com and downloaded the iPhone app.
• I started some background music, which I often listen to as I'm going to bed.
• I set the iPhone alarm for 5:01am just in case the Wakemate didn't work.
• I poked around the iPhone app, set the "absolute" wake-up time to 5am. The iPhone app killed the background music (boo!) and wished me a good sleep. The app must be running for the alarm to work. So, if you check your email in the middle of the night and forget to restart the Wakemate app (or, per chance, if the Wakemate app dies for some reason), you might be SOL.
• I went to sleep.

At 4:42am, the Wakemate woke me up.

I'll give the Wakemate this: the alarm went off at an exceedingly auspicious moment inside a dream I was having. It seemed to happen exactly at the denouement of the story I was dreaming. This was actually a pretty shocking revelation for me to have precisely on waking up... almost creepy.

I checked the time and decided I'd sleep in a little longer. I set the iPhone timer for 10 minutes and laid back down. I found I was fully awake, though. Not tired at all. After 3 minutes, I got up. I felt fresh.

A promising first experience.

Another feature of the Wakemate is sleep statistics. Here's are two snippets from the first night's report:

I'd attribute the 32 score to lingering jetlag issues from my constant travels. I also woke up around 1am and had a little trouble falling asleep. I suppose I could take this opportunity to "gamify" my sleep habits and work that score higher.

For now, a shitty sleep score with a fresher awakening would be good enough.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I've gathered recommendations from friends and colleagues about good things to do in Berlin with a kid.

Do you have any other recommendations?

Here's the list:

Ice cream parlor in Potsdamer Platz Arcades

Domäne Dahlem

Swimming with penguins and big SPA near Berlin:

http://www.spreewelten-bad.de/index2.php

Huge and great playground with tree house hotel

http://www.kulturinsel.com/

Information about the Baltic Sea (e.g. Usedom, tradition vacation are):

http://www.usedom.de/

Big Sauna and SPA near Munich:

http://www.therme-erding.de/

There are also some really nice hiking places in the Alps near Munich and in Austria that are suitable for kids. One really nice area, that I visited the last two summer holidays:

http://www.wilderkaiser.info/default.asp?Saison=3

If you have time for a day trip, there is Klaistow Erlebnishof (fun park, animals, stuff for kids to play and climb around on, a forest path where you can see deer, they do great food, but are situated south of Berlin, about an hour’s drive away from the city)

http://www.buschmann-winkelmann.de/kinderprogramm.html 

Swimming in Strandbad Wannsee

http://www.strandbadwannsee.de/Strandbad.htm 

Loxx Modellwelt, the world’s largest model railway:

http://loxx-berlin.de/

Naturkundemuseum (huge dinosaur skeleton in the main hall), as well as lots of places for anything ‘technical’:

http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/en.html 

Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin 

http://www.sdtb.de/English.122.0.html 

Berlin Zoo

http://www.zoo-berlin.de/ 

Britzer Garten

http://www.gruen-berlin.de/parks-gardens/en/ 

(huge playground and cute museum railway)

Aquarium

http://www.berlin.de/orte/sehenswuerdigkeiten/zoologischer-garten/index.en.php 

Science Center Spectrum

http://www.sdtb.de/Englisch.179.0.html 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

..and until just now, I had forgotten to look at Twitter. I'm fine, and I'm gonna keep going.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

If you have anything older than an iPhone 3GS, buy it ASAP.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Most people I know predicted I would hate Avatar. And last night, when I went to see Shutter Island and it was sold out, I relented and bought a ticket to Avatar 3D.

• It's brainless to point out that he ripped himself off. Sigourney Weaver, the walker machines... it's all cribbed from Aliens. That by itself may have been fun, but...
• Apocalypse Now and Starship Troopers: The colonel, Michelle Rodriguez, the "soldier dudes", the big single battle.
• Big Mean Beasties: How many movies have we seen this in now? Matrix, the Star Wars prequel, Star F&*#ing Trek. Yawn.
• The big beasties and the Navi dancing around a tree is straight out of Ice Age 2 and the Fire King critters. Seriously, go watch it (Ice Age 2 is pretty fun). When one of the beasties was running off  the screen, his ass jiggled exactly like Manny's.
  
• Navi sex: I admit it. I slept through this scene. Honestly.
• There wasn't a single non-expository moment. The movie didn't feel "lived" in. And the whole thing felt like it really happened over the course of 3-4 days, even though Sam Worthington was given 3 months for his mission.
• I'm pretty sure the Sky People were played mostly by white actors. And the Navi seemed to be played mostly by African American actors. I mean, wtf!? It's 2010.
  
• The tree soul swap thing.. with the glowy roots climbing up the body, is straight out of Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead.
• It's hard to make Giiovani Ribisi boring. But damn, was he ever boring.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »