Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on March 25, 2011
Kinstant Makes Kindle Browser Useful, at Last
One thing the otherwise excellent Kindle is not is a great web-browser. Even with a hardware keyboard to type urls, the process of visiting even one site is painful. If you’re like most people, you’ll try once or twice and then give up, forever.
Which is a shame, as the little e-reader has a free, life-long 3G connection, perfect for quickly checking your mail or the news. Which is where Kinstant comes in. Kinstant is a customizable home-page (remember those?) which has just been updated with some fancy new features.
Save Kinstant as your home-page and you have one-click access to Kindle-friendly versions of many sites (Gmail, the New York Times, CNN) plus links to category pages. Click one of these and you’ll see a further list of sites, plus headlines and summaries for that subject.
With the new version, you can also add in your own links, either direct from the Kindle or from a proper web-browser somewhere else. You just add the regular URL and then, when you click the link, you are taken to a vastly simplified version formatted for the e-reader.
And there’s more. A menu gives access to a calculator and Google Maps. Yes, maps. Add your location and destination and you get directions and an embedded map with the route marked.
Users of older Kindle’s with even crappier browsers (Kindle 2 and DX) can access a trimmed down version. It’s not pretty, but it works.
Kinstant is free, and available now. To get it, just follow the link, and be amazed that you have just turned your Kindle into the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Kindle-less can view the page in their computer or cellphone’s browser too, if you want to see how it looks.
Kinstant [Kinstant. Thanks, Sherwood!]
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Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on December 14, 2010
Fong iPhone 4 Tripod Adapter as Ugly as it is Practical
Gary Fong, the company behind those plastic-cup-like attachments you see atop many a photojournalist’s flashguns, has come up with an iPhone 4 tripod mount. The plastic adapter looks like it was given roughly a minute’s thought before a back-of-the-napkin sketch was put into production.
Thanks to the squared-off shape of the iPhone 4, almost no custom-shaping is needed to make a snug-fitting holder. Thus, Fong’s adapter is little more than a C-shaped plastic strip with a metal tripod-bush in the base. That is it, and it’s just the kind of thing that you’d make were you scratching around the junk-drawer for a home-made solution.
But despite its basic design and almost complete lack of fancifying, it could be the most practical iPhone tripod mount we’ve seen. There is no need for suction cups, permanently-attached stick-on adapters or even damage-inviting dock-connectors. You simply slip the iPhone in when you need to take a steady picture. Easy. The adapter should be live on the Fong site on Friday September 3rd for $20.
One final thing: The product pictures raise one really big question. Just where on Earth did Gary Fong get ahold of a white iPhone 4?
Fong website [Gary Fong. Thanks, Zach!]
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Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 27, 2010
