Amazon offers free two-day shipping on all Kindles this Christmas

If you’re running out of ideas on what to purchase for your friends and family for this year’s Christmas, Amazon has got some suggestions for you – namely its popular eBook reader, the Kindle. The company announced today in a press release that it is offering free two-day shipping on all of its Kindles if you make an order today by 8pm PT. This one day promotion will ensure that the Kindle will get to you or your recipient just in time for Christmas, and you won’t have to worry about extra costs either.
Amazon is putting up all of its Kindles on this offer – the $79 Kindle, the $99 Kindle Touch, the $149 Kindle Touch 3G and of course the $199 Kindle Fire tablet. With the Amazon Kindle Fire being one of the hottest tablets around this season, the free two-day shipping is pretty much icing on the cake. After all, who would say no to a tablet for a Christmas present?
To take advantage of this offer, just purchase a Kindle from Amazon, and select two-day shipping when checking out.
Buy Now:-

 [Press Release]

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Nuance, Who Are Responsible for Siri’s Backbone, Buys Vlingo

News has broken today that Vlingo has agreed to sell to Nuance for an undisclosed amount of money. Nuance, as you may know, is the driving force behind many voice recognition applications on mobile and desktop including yours truly – Siri. With their purchase of Vlingo it would appear that Nuance will make a very strong push into this market though we’re not yet sure in which way.

Nuance deals in both direct-to-consumer sales as well as business to business sales, offering their engine for licensing to application developers and OEMs who want to enable natural language dictation features for their users.
We’re not sure if Vlingo will continue to offer their services as-is which include free mobile applications and applications integrated into OEM products (namely Samsung’s Galaxy S II series) or if the brand will eventually be evaporated into the big Nuance cloud.
Either way, we’re excited to see what these two could be working on for the future of voice-enabled actions because let’s face it – everyone wants Siri even if they don’t know it. [via GigaOM]

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TWRP 2.0 Now Available for Download on Select Devices

TWRP – the exciting recovery project that would transformer the way we backup, restore and flash ROMs – is making great progress. In fact, version 2.0 is now available for download! For now, only a few select devices are supported including the Nexus S, the HP Touchpad and the Kindle Fire but we’re sure the team is working to add even more devices over time. Pretty soon your volume rocker will be screaming with joy as it’s freed from its lifelong duties of handling your raging addiction to custom ROMs. [TeamWin via Engadget]

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NFL Pro 2012 Now Available for Free in the Android Market

Following the launch of the third title in Gameloft’s Modern Combat series, they have launched another new game to the Android market: NFL Pro 2012. It’s an NFL football game adapted to the small (or medium, depending on what device you have) screen for football action on the go. It’s going up against a heavy hitter in Madden but considering that they are offering this game for the low cost of free, I can’t see why you wouldn’t download it and give it a shot at your earliest convenience. Hit the Android market up for the download. [via Android Central]

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Google Said to be Suspending Nexus S ICS Update Due to High CPU Usage and Battery Life Bug

Google began rolling out the Nexus S ICS update in several regions a short time ago but it seems they’ve already had to suspend the upgrade for an issue that is affecting battery life.
Alongside abnormal battery drain users are seeing high spikes of CPU usage, two things that could be directly related. If you’ve gotten a notification that the upgrade was available but you have since been unable to apply it, don’t worry – you’re not crazy.
Now is as good a time as any to mention that Galaxy Nexus users have also been experiencing less-than-normal battery drainage for quite some time. Many believe it to be a kernel driver issue and is causing the OS to keep the device awake (this doesn’t necessarily mean the screen has to be on) which causes excessive battery drain.
I personally have been seeing half the awake time as overall up time (for instance, 4 hours on battery gives me 2 hours of awake time even if I’m not using the device more than 10 minutes throughout that period) on my Galaxy Nexus. Compared to other devices this most certainly is an anomaly. We’re not sure what’s going on but Google is apparently aware and working on a fix.
For the time being, if any of you have a Nexus S receiving the official update would you please be kind enough to go into the Battery Usage menu and letting us know what your Android OS usage is showing after using it for some time? It would go a long way toward figuring out if this is an Ice Cream Sandwich issue in general or if the two devices are unrelated. [Google Code (Galaxy Nexus), Google Support, XDA via Droid Dog]

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Myriad Alien Vue brings Android apps to TV, minus Google

So, Google TV hasn’t done very well so far. But that doesn’t mean that big cable providers aren’t sitting up and paying attention. A bevvy of app-enabled set top boxes from Apple, Google, Roku and others are starting to seriously worry the dinosaurs of the TV industry. So why not just add apps to current receivers? Most of them are basically just low-powered computers running a locked-down Linux derivative, after all. Myriad Group, the folks behind the Alien Dalvik software that allows iOS and other platforms to run Android apps natively, have done just that.

The Alien Vue is a small piece of hardware that emulates Android’s various necessary pieces of hardware and software, specifically designed for TV output. At the moment it’s limited to Google TV apps, but it’s already allowing smartphones and tablets to control input. Basically, it’s an independent system that could be easily added to current-generation set top box hardware for a quick and dirty infusion of Android-powered goodness. HTML5 apps, including mobile versions of websites like YouTube and Facebook, are also supported.
Check out their demo below:




Is this an alternative to Google TV? In a word, no. What it could mean is that cable and satellite providers could easily build out smarter platforms, then add their own apps or partner apps by developing to Android standards. It’s a modified version of Barnes & Noble’s approach to its Nook devices, which run Android underneath a UI and app system designed to promote their own content. While the Alien Vue system would not have access to Google TV’s core functions, it would be a quick and relatively cheap way to keep the freebie cable boxes competitive with their Internet-based counterparts.

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Archos unveils the 70b Internet Tablet packing Honeycomb for a dirt cheap £180

Tablets are expensive. Americans know this all too well, as many of them are still saddled with mostly unnecessary carrier contracts – see the recent DROID XYBOARD 10.1 and 8.2. That’s what makes devices like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet so popular. But it could be worse, yankees: over the pond in the UK, most tablets cost at least as much in pounds. Throw in a nasty conversion rate and Value Added Tax, and the £400 Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus becomes a whopping $750 equivalent. Archos, ever ready to strike at the budget-conscious segment, is preparing its latest 7-inch tablet at a price well below the UK median.

The Archos 70b Internet Tablet will sell for just £179.99, about which works out to about $340 after taxes. Considering that tablets are primarily media consumption devices (which is a polite way of saying “toys”), a lower price is always preferable. For that price, you get a WiFi Honeycomb 3.2 tablet with a 7-inch 1024 x 600 screen, a 1.2Ghz processor and access to the Android Market and Google’s other proprietary apps. 512Mb of RAM means that it should perform much better than the older Archos 70, though that’s still a little pokey for Honeycomb. Storage space isn’t mentioned, so it will probably be available in multiple capacities. Archos’ press release did not mention an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade, but industrious modders will probably have a version ready soon enough. The 70b Internet Tablet is not to be confused with the previous Archos 70b eReader.

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Duke Nukem 3D is free for two days, still isn’t really free

When Duke Nukem 3D burst onto the Android Market back in November, fans of classic shoot-em-up gameplay couldn’t be happier. At least until they actually installed the game, and learned that you had to buy parts two and three separately, instantly turning a 99¢ game into a $2.99 one. Three bucks isn’t unreasonable for an Android game, but for a title that’s over fifteen years old, many users found the roundabout payment model a little sketchy. The fact that it also displayed ads (later removed) offended the sensibilities of the Android crowd, who are happy to either pay or deal with ads, but not both.

Today Duke Nukem 3D is free in the Android Market, for today and tomorrow only. That gets you the normally $1 app, but as usual, it’s only the first level (which was free in the original PC shareware version). The other two “episodes” will still cost you another dollar each. Installs have skyrocketed in the last few hours, and it is a great way to try out some classic first person shooter mechanics on your high-end Android device. That said, the app still only has a 3.1 rating; it’s probably still suffering from a flurry of angry early customers and those who are experiencing graphical and gameplay glitches in the port.

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Nook Tablet update breaks 3rd party app installs

The original Nook Color was a veritable toy box for Android modders, and remains a popular platform for custom ROMs and other Android tablet modifications. Barnes & Noble’s newer Nook Tablet has proven a tougher nut to crack, with a locked bootloader and just 1GB of user-accessible space. But Nook Tablet users with an eye for modding could at least take advantage of a loophole in the modified Gingerbread software, which allowed any app downloaded from the Tablet’s browser to be installed via Android’s built-in installer. The eBook Reader reports that with the latest Nook Tablet firmware release, 1.4.1, Barnes & Noble has closed this loophole, making advanced modification much more difficult for any user who updates.

Considering the locked bootloader, this change in the Nook Tablet’s software is not unexpected. Barnes & Noble is certainly aware of how popular the Nook Color was and is as a modder’s cheap tablet, and have not raised any serious objections thus far. But as pieces of consumer electronics, the Nook Color and Nook Tablet are sold on extremely thin margins with the expectation that users will buy books and other media from Barnes & Nobles and its partners, justifying the low profits on the hardware itself. Every user who buys a Nook without the intention of using it primarily as a reader for Barnes & Noble’s ebooks is undermining their business model. Since advanced users aren’t breaking any laws, the best that the company can hope to do is frustrate their aftermarket efforts.
The solution for those who want to keep modding their tablets is simple: don’t upgrade to version 1.4.1 on the Nook Tablet’s software, at least until another work-around is found. Those who have already updated can flash to the original retail image and work forward from there. Strangely, third-party apps that have already been installed on updated tablets are still working, so users who already modified the Nook Tablet and gotten it to their desired level of functionality will probably be able to wait it out until someone finds another weakness in the device’s software armor.

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