I have been wanting to get some solar-powered lights for a while now. The ones I find online have reviews that range from them being cheap-looking, to poor quality, to poor receivers of solar power, to just plain bad. Does anyone have any experience with solar lights? Anyone who can lend a recommendation or suggestion.
To get the conversation started, I was looking at these Westinghouse stainless steel lights on Amazon (link).
I just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday, again. I did it once before around Hanukkah. I am an equal opportunity well-wisher.
I am hoping to use this 4-day weekend to get some projects of mine moving. And of course I will let you know when I do anything significant. Off the top of my head is a site for Amazon Kindle news for me, and some design work for other people. I even have a few things cooking for the new year. More details will be coming once things are setup.
Amazon has been working on an eBook reader for the past 3 years and they just unveiled it. The Kindle can be bought for $400 from Amazon.com and it uses e-ink technology with a host of other great features. It was developed by Amazon, along with the accompanying Kindle Store where you can buy books, magazine subscriptions, newspaper subscriptions, and blog subscriptions that get sent to your Kindle over Sprint’s EVDO network. It doesn’t cost anything extra to access Sprint’s network, which is a big plus that helps offset the price of the reader. What follows are some of the details of the reader and store, along with my thoughts.
Electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
Holds over 200 titles. SD card support for more storage capacity.
Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle
Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute. More than 88,000 books available, including 100 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers.
New York Times Best Sellers and all New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise. Other books are less.
Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot. No monthly fee for access to network.
Includes free access to Wikipedia.org and a built-in Oxford English Dictionary.
Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing. They convert it into the right format and can send it to your Kindle for $0.10 or send it to you for free and you can transfer it to the Kindle with the usb connection
You can transfer MP3s or audio books to the Kindle. And you can listen to the MP3s separately or as background music while you read if that’s something you like to do. You can bookmark pages, or annotate them using the QWERTY keyboard. And there is a built in digital cursor that scrolls along the side of the page allowing you to select page lines. It is controlled by a scrollwheel. There are big buttons on the Kindle that let you go to the next page or back a page. It is all very intuitive according to published reviews.
A great feature is the switch on the back to turn the wireless single off. Great for planes and other places you can’t use a cellphone or wireless device.
From reviews by people that actually used the Kindle it seems to work well. The e-ink is easy on the eyes, and the reader was designed with usability in mind. It’s ergonomically designed to feel like a book. It’s the same size as a paperback book and it ways a little bit less at 10.3 ounces. Amazon thought of everything. I’m almost tempted to buy one to check it out. I want one. But I might wait for some more hands-on reviews, and until more of the books I want are available from the Kindle store.
On Black Friday (Nov 23) Amazon.com will have a bunch of great deals to help you get holiday shopping done for less. This year they’ve created a Black Friday page for holiday shoppers at www.amazon.com/blackfriday.
Amazon.com will be offering hourly deals from 6am to 6pm PST (9am to 9pm EST) along with thousands of products on sale for a limited time. Also, customers will get gift wrapping for $.99 per item. I have put Amazon’s special deal widget here so on Black Friday it will pull in the latest deals. Or you can go directly to their Black Friday Deals page here.
Amazon Customers Vote is back for 2007. Each round of Customers Vote lets you vote for the deal you’d most like to have. Voting begins on Thursday, November 15th and continues through Monday, November 26th. There will be six rounds of voting this year with three products in each round. Beginning Thursday, November 22nd, each day the new winning product will be announced, and randomly selected customers will have the opportunity to purchase the item for which they voted at a great discount. Products this year will include:
1,000 Nintendo Wii Game Systems (see prices on Customers Vote page)
500 Panasonic 7.5MP Digital SLR Cameras, $499 (*normally $1,149.95)
1,000 Razor E100 Electric Scooters for $29 (*normally $89.99)
500 TiVo HD Digital Video Recorders, $89 (*normally $253.48)
500 Magellan Maestro 3140 Portable Auto GPS Systems, $99 (*normally $247.00)
200 Samsung 46” 1080p LCD HDTVs, $719 (*normally $1,899.98)
So what are you waiting for? Go vote and then check the Amazon site each day from Nov. 22 until the last day to see if you can buy the item you wanted at the discounted price. The top voted item each day is offered at the price they show, but if you voted on an item that didn’t win you can still get offered it at a lower price.
You can only get offered the item you voted for, so choose wisely.
PriceDrop is a Firefox extension which allows you to track product prices at Amazon shops , and get notifications whenever they drop. It will also help you get a refund from Amazon.com if a product you’ve already bought becomes cheaper.
This is a site that will tell you if the price of an item you bought drops. It’s great for getting that 30 day Amazon refund. Amazon will give you the difference if an item you bought drops in price within 30 days of your purchase.
Amazon recently unveiled Amazon MP3. They have 2 million songs, and popular songs are discounted from $0.99 to $0.89. Unfortunately they do not accept Amazon.com gift certificates to buy those songs. This is a major flaw and one that they will hopefully fix in time. Usually 1-click ordering lets you choose to use a gift certificate, but with Amazon MP3 you can only pay for your songs with a credit card.
But it is beta so they could be holding off on it for a while. It also took iTunes a while to offer gift certificates, so it could be a legal issue. But Randy reminds me that you can’t buy Amazon gift certificates with a gift certificate balance, so it could be a flaw in their system design. I find I have a lot more Amazon certificates than iTunes, so it would be a perfect solution to be able to use them.
I just noticed that Amazon.com has been redesigned. They made it easier to find the shopping department you want with a left-side navigation menu that displays a submenu when you hover over a main category. And they made it so much easier to find someone’s wishlist. Also, when you are in a section you can see the other sections of the department and easily switch to them. It might actually make Amazon.com more usable for many people.
I know I have always had a difficult time in the Account section trying to find the right place for the information I needed (such as gift certificate balance or how to rate one of my recent purchases). Unfortunately the account section now focuses on highlighting purchases recommended for you, and the account options are crammed into a right-side navigation menu. So that still needs some work.
I like a simple and uncluttered design because I know how to handle a site. But the nice submenu display on each page that shows you others sections of the current department adds a lot of height to the top of the page and pushes content lower down (at least with my font display size set to 16pt). The design is being tested and you may or may not see it when you visit Amazon.
Below is an image they posted on their demo site explaining the site design features. What are your thoughts on the new design?
This week sees the unveiling of the most robust but flexible battery ever. It was made by mixing carbon nanotubes (cylindrical, electrically conductive molecules made of carbon atoms) with cellulose, the stuff of paper. The result is an energy store that
Shares of VMware defied market nervousness to soar 76 per cent on their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. I do love their product. Too bad I didn’t get in on the IPO.
A new service from Amazon.com, CreateSpace on Demand Publishing manufactures physical products when customers order so no pre-built inventory is needed. You can make your products available to millions of customers by selling on Amazon.com.
Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. The set of web services APIs allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on to
Amazon.com has opened its payment system to other Web sites. Here is an article explaining a little about it. The program, called Amazon Flexible Payment Service, was launched Friday in an initial testing period, Amazon said Monday. Mmm. Tasty.
Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. They are not endorsed by any party and no party has anything to do with them. But I do love to par-tay!
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