Tag: kindle fire

Official Hotmail App for Kindle Fire

by BrothaTech

I am making sure to keep my eyes peeled and ears to the ground on any Kindle Fire apps that help with productivity. For those of you still hanging on to your Hotmail account, Microsoft has adapted the Hotmail app for Android to work on the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Yes, the native Kindle email app can download your email, but the new Hotmail app you can sync all your mail, contacts, folders, and subfolders via the more robust Exchange Active Sync protocol according to the Inside Windows Live Blog. In other words, whatever you’re working on in the Hotmail app (updating contacts, or performing triage on your inbox) gets synced with all your devices attached to your account and online. Read More

SugarSync Lands on Kindle Fire

by BrothaTech

It looks like the Amazon Kindle Fire is getting a serious look from developers, as some of my favorite mobile apps are getting the Fire treatment. Next on list is the SugarSync cloud storage service that lets you choose which laptop/desktop folders you can sync to other devices and vice-versa.

The cool thing about SugarSync is once you’ve selected the files/folders you want to sync and they are in fact uploaded, you can also choose to download those files on any compatible device for access even if you are offline. Read More

TripIt Travel App Lands on Kindle Fire

by BrothaTech

One of my concerns for the new Amazon Kindle Fire is (or was) “will it have enough apps?” Reason being, the Android platform is kind of fragmented across all of the different device manufacturers and carriers who use the platform to add their own spin on a mobile products. Throw in Amazon, who not only completely strips Android down to its nuts and bolts to create its own tablet, but also create another Android app store for consumers (and developers) to scratch their heads at, and you’ve got a recipe for distaster.

From the looks of it, the Amazon Kindle Fire is pretty hot device, and as a result, hasn’t have any problems proving its worth to consumers looking for a more fiscally responsible tablet instead of ponying up a BMW car note for an iPad. Plus they’ve found plenty of mobile app developers looking to been seen on as many devices as possible.

Case in point, I wrote last week about the Documents To Go app being available on the Fire, possibly making you more productive on a tablet that was primarily designed to browse and consume content from the Amazon ecosystem. I just got word that the popular TripIt travel app is landing on the Fire, giving users more control over their travel plans as well. Read More

Documents To Go Offers Version for Kindle Fire

by BrothaTech

I purchased an Amazon Kindle Fire for my wife for her upcoming birthday (be sure to keep that on the low). I thought the Fire would be cool for her because she can consume content from the Amazon ecosystem, the web, and play some games on the few apps that will be available from the Amazon App Store.

While trying to setup her Fire, I stumbled upon the Documents To Go App that lets users create, edit, and share Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) as well as view PDF’s.

Hold the phone! – Does this mean that with Docs To Go installed, the Kindle Fire can also be a productivity tablet? Read More

Better (and cheaper) Than Expected: The Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet is Here

by Nick Muntean

The day has finally come; the tablet market has been upended.  As I argued back in early August, the tablet PC market was due for a shake-up; other manufacturers simply couldn’t hope to move significant quantities of iPad-like tablets at Apple’s price points, and, as I suggested in late July, Amazon was the one company with the resources and will to bring an iPad-killer to market.  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos vindicated my soothsaying at a highly publicized press conference, where he introduced his company’s hotly anticipated Kindle Fire Android-based tablet, which will retail for a door-busting price of just $199.  In addition to the Fire, Bezos also unveiled a new base-model Kindle, which will sell for $79, as well as the touchscreen-enabled e-ink Kindle Touch, which will come in at two price points; $99 for the ad-sponsored model, and $149 for the ad-free, 3G enabled Touch model.

While the $79 Kindle and Kindle Touch models are certainly newsworthy products, the real story here is the Kindle Fire, which eschews 3G data service, onboard cameras and microphones, and copious storage space (the onboard memory is only 8GB) to bring a bare-bones, high-performance tablet within reach of nearly every gainfully employed American consumer.  Technically, the Kindle Fire is powered by Android, but you wouldn’t know it from using the device, as Amazon clearly spent some time and money customizing the UI, and the snappy, sleek interface bears almost no resemblance to its Honeycomb tablet brethren.  As one would expect, the UI foregrounds Amazon’s various digital offerings—e-books, digital music, and streaming film/video—but what’s unexpected is that the Fire will also come pre-loaded with Amazon’s just-announced, bespoke “Silk” web browser, which utilizes Amazon’s extensive “Elastic Compute Cloud” infrastructure to intelligently pre-load browser content to a user’s device, a strategy that should make for some lightning-fast web browsing. Read More