What Hides Behind Amazon Fire's Pricetag

What Hides Behind Amazon Fire's Pricetag

Photo: The Verge

Today I came across some news regarding the launch of two new cheap Kindle eReader versions and an Android tablet (YES!) by Amazon. My interest took a crest when I delved deeper into the tablet- Fire. It was really cheap! $199. That's it. I said- Well, that's a great deal. Moved on with reading the whole specs.

Now I realized something, very interesting. The new Fire tablet HAD to be cheap. Reason- The tablet featured only an 8GB worth of and internal memory and no additional SD card slots for and memory expansion. Further despite being an Android tablet one would not have the facility to access the Android Market.

Why so? Well, let's see the big picture. Amazon has, first, it's own store. Why let Google feast the cookie then. Secondly, Amazon is moving ahead with the next gen cloud services. So in case you run short of the meager 8GB memory on your Fire tomorrow, Amazon's waiting to offer you it's cloud service.

Hence, what I sense here is that hidden behind the catchy price tag were the bars that caged you into solitary confinement. Sorry Amazon, a $100 more and I'd live the rest of my life, a freeman, at least.

Are we looking at the third dimension of the tablet era that leads to the combination of the open source policies of Android for developmental openness and those of Apple for usage terms? What do you have to say about it? Do share your views in your comments.

Twitter- Faster Than Earthquakes [VIDEO]

Twitter- Faster Than Earthquakes [VIDEO]

This week as the earthquakes shook the USA from Washington D.C. to New york, it turned out a top trending tweet on twitter. As the earthquake traveled from Washington D.C. to New York City, a matter of mere 30 seconds, the twittersphere had it. So, just in order to represent it's speed, the twitter advertising team bragged about it in a video titled-"Twitter-Faster Than Earthquakes." Check it out. Cheers. :)

Twitter's Got It's Brand New Photo Uploader

Twitter's Got It's Brand New Photo Uploader

Hey hello friends. And Ah yes! Good to see you guys back after long. Have been busy with designing and blogging at another blog these days- autogranth, an autos website. Well this time I've got some news belonging to twitter.

And the news is- Twitter has finally got it's own photo uploading facility powered by photobucket. I made a brief analysis of the new facility to see how thing work in our new photo world. So here goes.

The first thing I noticed was that photos would still be posted as links just like the YouTube videos we share on Twitter, so that, when we click on the particular tweet, it gives us the preview of the specific photograph.

Though the photo uploading facility has been availed by twitter, for the time being at least it doesn't seem like it would facilitate us with creating photo albums or photo tagging facilities.

Photos are uploaded to pic.twitter.com as you can see in the snapshot to the left (By the way, that's my facebook profile photograph now. Don't spare a comment ;) ). When I tried to access pic.twitter.com directly, I was redirected to the Twitter homepage. Well this clearly shows that twitter won't at least for the time being try to create a photo farm out there.

And finally, I found the facility to be working smoothly. No glitches, no failures, and finally instantaneous upload, no delay. And a +1 to the interface. Has been designed neatly, minimal.

That was my view. What do you think? Share your views below. And don't forget to subscribe to my blog to get the latest updates directly to your mailbox or your feed reader. Cheers! :)

If Harry Potter Were An Anime

If Harry Potter Were An Anime

Ever imagined what Harry Potter characters would have looked like had the series been an anime? Moment of Zen portrays all the character in the anime mode making it much easier for you and me to imagine. Check it out. Cheers! :)

The Empathic Civilization [stop animation]

The Empathic Civilization [stop animation]

The Empathic Civilization is a stop animation illustrated by the RSAnimate team and narrated by Jeremy Rifkin, a bestselling author and political adviser. The video, as the title says, makes us realize about the origin of the existence of our circles, our religions, our beliefs etc. and in the process preaches us about establishing harmony, not just among the humankind but other races as well, say animal beings and further, who're mortals themselves.

What is this video doing on this social media (& design) blog, you might ask. Well, in the process of watching this video, I felt very moved with the fact that even though we tend to develop our social circles across the borders over the internet, its somewhere or the other that grudges still exist among the fellow us (me and you). For example, if we talk of Iraq or the Muslim community for that matter, the first thing that comes to our mind implicitly (at least mine) is a detest plagued by the prominent and active terrorist activities belonging to the region. Isn't that bad?

Though we're descendants of the same race deep back in time, we tend to fight for a thing, a belief, a border that perpetually doesn't exist. Does it make sense to fight for something that is not even permanent? This all sounds very much of a preaching, but needs a thought before we move on with our daily chores.

Sounds unrealistic, but even Galileo was laughed at when he proposed that the Earth moved around the Sun, and we all know today who got it right. Let's take oath that we'll all be a harmonic world now on and aid our fellow mates to make our mother Earth a better place to live in. Cheers! :)

Stout Shouts #2

Stout Shouts #2

I share here one real example of the density of Six Degrees of Separation that I came through today. First of all, the Six Degrees of Separation is a fuzzy theory that says that you're connected to every other person on this planet via a maximum of six people. Conversely, that means you're reachable by every person on this planet via a maximum of six people (Makes you feel popular enough right? :P). Well, I was greeted with one of my acquaintances on facebook today, whom I once met during my train journey from Chennai to Jabalpur (that's somewhere around one and a half days). And the person happens to be my sister's childhood friend's friend. It works! :)

Google Changlings: Minimal is Beautiful

Google Changlings: Minimal is Beautiful

In this past week, I've been able to see more design changes in Google more than I can ever remember to have seen in the past. Google is changing. And the change, is beautiful. This time Google seems very much focused on it's prime design motif- Minimal is beautiful. We've always seen Google's landing search page the minimalest thing ever possible way. Compare it to Yahoo! or any other search engine and you come to realize what makes it so damn successful (though it's not just design).

Stout Shouts #1

Stout Shouts #1

Quite obvious a happening though, but China has blocked yet another social network, Google+, this time at it's inception just a day after it's launch. This doesn't come as a surprise to the Chinese as this one comes only as a successor to the previously blocked social networks, i.e., facebook and twitter. Others include youtube, foursquare, IMDB and Blogger blogs.