Kindle Fire Review

We bought a Kindle Fire for Thanksgiving.  We compared the Fire to our existing devices: an older Kindle, Android phone, and Apple iPod Touch and iPad.  Our overall assessment of the Fire is that it is a vastly better Kindle book reader with many features superior to our iPod Touch and many of the features we use on the iPad.  Here is an overview of what we like and what could be better:

A vastly better Kindle

The Fire has all the reading features we like about our old Kindle with many new additions. The screen is high resolution with color making the text easy to read and color pictures in books clearer than on our lap top, iPod, and iPad. Fire uses touch screen buttons instead of the physical buttons on the older Kindle, so a finger swipe flips the page.  The power on/off is the only button on the device. When connected to a computer it presents a thumb-drive file interface, like the old Kindle. To buy or add books, the Fire requires a wireless internet connection (3g is not supported) or connection to a computer so that books can be moved onto the device.

A better iPod

The Fire has the music and video player iPod/iPad features without the frustrating iTunes interface.  Movies are stored in a directory or played via the internet and the screen resolution makes HD videos and youtube look great.  You can purchase music online or move songs into the music directory to play while reading or surfing the net.  The web interface is easy to use and, unlike Apple’s Safari, it supports Flash.  Games, movies, and applications are available from the Amazon store.  Finally, the same iPod/iPad interface we use for keeping track of all of our email accounts is replicated on the Fire.

So in addition to the book reading device, the Fire has the applications we use all day on our iPod and iPad: Email, Skype messaging (IM), Facebook, and web surfing. And, all this is available for $200.

There are, however, some limitations:

Limited Applications

The Fire uses Google’s Android OS, so we assumed that everything we have available on our Android phone would be available on the Kindle Fire.   Currently that is not the case.  There are less games and other applications in the Amazon cloud as compared to the iTunes and Android stores. Hopefully this will change and more applications become available as the device gains popularity.

Connectivity limitations

You have to connect the Fire to a computer to move movies and music into the appropriate directories or email them to the device via an email address Amazon provides.  The Fire does not come with the USB cable needed to connect to a computer (fortunately we had one from our previous Kindle).  When you email files to the Fire, they are put into the download directory and must be moved into the appropriate music or movie directory by connecting to a computer.  The Kindle USB cables may be easy to find on the mainland, but they are not readily available on an outer island in Hawaii.

Text to Speech

The text-to-speech capability on the older Kindle is not currently available on the Fire.

Local flash Apps

Our Android phone allows us to move flash games onto the phone via a computer connection and play them locally.  Though the Fire supports Flash applications, there is no way to run a local application yet. This limits the device’s use as a gaming platform for now.

The Fire is a superior replacement for our iPod Touch and our older Kindle.  With more drawing applications and iTunes applications, it could replace our iPad.  Hopefully, Amazon will add more Android capabilities and the Kindle text-to-speech feature.

We look forward to reading lots of book on our Kindle Fire during our Hawaii winter.

Monitoring radiation in Kona Hawaii

As soon as we realized that a half dozen nuclear reactor cores were overheating and melting down in Japan, we turned on our 3 radiation detectors  to see if the radiation was going up here in Kona. We have not given our detectors much attention since moving to Hawaii. Unlike the wide variations in readings we would get on the mainland, the detectors have been consistent here day after day with the same low readings. We knew when we moved to Hawaii that there were no local massive nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons factories. And we knew that wind patterns were favorable for low radiation fallout in case of a disaster elsewhere. However, the extent of damage and ongoing radiation contamination at the Fukoshima nuclear power plant is disturbing.

In Hawaii we are 2200 miles closer to the reactors in Japan than the US mainland and if for some reason the wind blew directly this way (fortunately it rarely does) we might get more concentrated nuclear contamination and a higher dose of radiation.   We are happy that our detectors are showing the normal low levels of background radiation (.016 mREM/hour), so far.

We started monitoring radiation over 20 years ago while living in Los Alamos, New Mexico. When measuring radiation dosage, it’s all about the rate of exposure, in other words, how much radiation and for how long. Fortunately our bodies are capable of and used to repairing the damage from background radiation. The problem occurs when the rate of damage from radiation exceeds our body’s ability to repair itself. OSHA uses REMs (Roentgen Equivalent Man) to quantify radiation exposures. Over the years OSHA has come up with the whole body maximum exposure rate of 1.25 REM over any 3 month period and a total maximum exposure of 5 REM per year.

Dosage is also measured by RAD (Roentgen Absorbed Dose), a measure of the actual amount of radiation absorbed. Sieverts have been promoted by the medical industry because it takes into consideration the volume of the portion of the body exposed and the amount of time of exposure. But in a nuclear disaster like the one in Japan, the distinction is less relevant because every part of the body is getting dosed. Even so, Sieverts are being used to report the dosage to the public. One Sievert (Sv) is equal to 100 REM. To add to the confusion, radiation exposure is also being reported in Grays and nanoGrays, yet another measurement of radiation dose

We created a radiation unit converter Google gadget that allows you to enter in any value and see the values of the other dose units so you can compare them.



Here is what we are finding about the radiation exposure in Japan:

• Reports from an independent radiation monitoring site on the internet is showing 38 microREM per hour in Tokyo.
• The IAEA Radiation team took measurements at distances from 56 to 200 km from the Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 20 and they found contamination levels that ranged from 2 to 160 microSieverts per hour. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on March 23 that the workers at the Fukushima plant had withdrawn after radiation monitoring showed levels of 500 millisieverts per hour.
• Our readings in Kona Hawaii range between .005 and .020 mREM per hour.

Hawaii Island Event Gadgets

We developed some web gadgets to showcase Big Island events that you can add to your web pages or blogs.
Both of the gadgets count down to a big event on Hawaii Island next year.

You can add the gadget that counts down to the 2011 Merrie Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo to your website or blog by executing the script located at "http://hiloliving.com/MMdate.js"

You can add the gadget that counts down to the 2011 Ironman World Championship in Kona by executing the script located at "http://konabeachlife.com/IMdate.js"

Both of these gadgets are also available as google desktop gadgets for your igoogle homepage.