Hasta La Gadget!

A teardown of the newly introduced Amazon Kindle DX shows an e-book reader with many replaceable parts that make it service-friendly for its users.

Amazon launched the Kindle DX, a large size e-reader with a 9.7-inch screen and features such as auto rotate from portrait to landscape mode a few weeks ago. Priced at $489, the Kindle DX started shipping June 10. Wired.com’s review of the Kindle DX suggests the larger screen makes it more readable than the Kindle 2 but the device isn’t wallet friendly.

It didn’t take long for the technicians at Rapid Repair to take the Kindle apart. Despite its iPod-like back plate and construction, opening up the Kindle is easy. A few screws and a grey plastic bezel is all that holds it in place.

Kindle DX has a 3.7V Lithium Polymer battery with a 1530mAh rating. A few more steps and the device’s innards lay bare to show off processor chips from Samsung and a wireless card.

The best part about the process is how clearly the text continues to be visible on the display. It proves why bi-stable displays, such as used in e-book readers, score over LCDs. Though they have lower brighness when compared to LCDs, bistable displays can retain the image on the screen until the image is refreshed and even when there is no power.

For a detailed how-to on taking the Kindle DX apart, head over to the Rapid Repair site.

Photo: Kindle DX stripped/Rapid Repair

WIRED senior writer Steven Levy has spent the last few days with the Palm Pre and he is impressed with it. Despite a battery that sucks down as fast as the iPhone 3G and a keypad that forces you to type with your fingernails, the device is fantastic. Especially noteworthy is the WebOS platform that not only provides multitasking goodness for multiple apps, but works incredibly well with the 3.1-inch touchscreen. From Levy’s review:

Shaped like a small bar of shower soap, the dense, ebony Pre matches many (if not all) of the features of its chief competitor, the iPhone. But in one key aspect, the Pre does the iPhone one better. While a lot of the Pre’s features — a bright 3.1-inch touchscreen manipulated by taps, swipes and pinches; apps sold by third parties in an open online bazaar; integration of e-mail, contacts and calendar — are now standard in 3G smartphones, Palm also lets users keep multiple applications running simultaneously.

It’s a huge win. The Palm gets around the inherent difficulty of multitasking with a concept dubbed “cards” which work like windows on a regular computer. When browsing open apps or web pages, you swipe through the cards as if viewing photos. Tap on a card to use the app. The other apps are still active; your inbox still collects mail, web pages still update. Just as with your computer, you can stay constantly connected to Facebook, Twitter, IM and other online activities. Best of all, when you’re using an app and need something from another app, you don’t have to go through a tortuous process of closing, launching and reloading. When you’re navigating with Google Maps you can slide over to check a contact’s address, choose a podcast or answer an e-mail, and then return to Maps without losing a beat.

$200 (with a two year contract), palm.com

There’s a lot more to the review. For a deeper download you can read the rest of the write-up right here.

Photo by Jim Merithew for Wired.com

A loaf of bread, a terrestrial globe, a plastic skeleton and a hamburger. Is there anything you can’t send by mail?

Swedish artist Eric Ericson has for several years been sending the strangest objects to a post office on Rosa-Luxembourg-Strasse in Berlin, addressed to a Mr. Cheng. He didn’t package the items, just sent them the way they were — kind of like Wired’s long-running Return to Sender contest.

“I wanted to see what was possible to send, and what would arrive, “ says Ericson, who has put all the items in a book, To Mr. Cheng, which has been published in Sweden.

Wired.com got curious and called Ericson.

Wired.com: What was the most difficult item to send?
Eric Ericson: Probably a mannequin that I sent in parts, it was kind of tricky. Sending a box of chocolate is much easier than sending a plastic skeleton. Food is easy; you just put it in a mailbox.

Wired.com: How did you get the idea?
Ericson: I’ve always been sending things by mail, just for fun. I sent things that I found, that came to my mind, all kinds of stuff. In the beginning, I had no intention of making a book, but then I felt that I wanted to do something out of it.

Wired.com: You have previously published books of letters, for example one where you sent letters with odd ideas to authorities, like asking a Swedish municipality if it could host a North American Indian tribe. Why are you so fascinated by letters?
Ericson: Sending things is a fun way to communicate, and I love the seriousness in letters. I mean, you would never receive a lawsuit by e-mail. There is something about letters, especially nowadays when they are getting more and more rare, and we’re communicating in other ways instead.

Wired.com: You seem almost obsessed with the postal system.
Ericson: Yes almost, or at least very interested. I’m very excited about logistics, about the fact that most of the stuff actually arrives. That it works. That you can pay 5.50 [Swedish] kronor [about 70 cents], put it in a mailbox, and the next day the letter arrives in Kiruna [the northernmost city in Sweden].

Just as with the postal system, I find it fascinating how the whole society works, that people go to work, pay their bills and go on vacation when they should. We’re like ants in a large anthill and we carry out our tasks, even when we don’t want to. We think we’re free, but we’re not. You can’t escape society.

On a school trip, somebody would always come back from the museum shop with one of these lenticular cards. Back in the 1970s and 1980s they were hot stuff, as high-tech as the iPhone of today, and seeing a dinosaur shift from one action pose to another, simply by turning the card, was magic.

Today, the world is a more cynical place, but at least you can now use the power of the internet to make your own shape-shifting greetings cards which can scarily morph from one person to another or simulate a 3D effect. And as the site, Snapily, abides by the Hallmarkian Laws, there is plenty of schmaltz on offer, too, from heart-shaped frames around your loved ones to, erm, more heart shapes. It’s all done online: You upload your photos, add text and then the site generates a preview. Or at least I think it does. After this message I switched to Firefox:

Sorry we don’t fully support your browser- SafariChrome, on MacIntosh – at the moment.

Then I tried to add some old baby photos but they were apparently in “CMYK format”. I checked in Photoshop. They were RGB. Then the site crashed Firefox. Still, the idea is a good one, and cheap, too, compared to what a real print shop would have charged just to tool up for the job some years ago (hint: many thousands). Cards are $4 and up, and business cards are $8 for a pack of 20. Snapily is also claiming eco-friendliness, on the grounds that these are so neat that they won’t get thrown away. This is wrong-headed. A regular greetings card is the ultimate biodegradable gift.

Product page [Snapily]

E Ink, the company whose displays power almost all the major e-book readers, has released a new line of its broadsheet prototype kits aimed at developers. The AM-300 kit offers a 9.7-inch display and comes on the heels of the launch of Amazon’s larger sized Kindle e-book reader Kindle DX Wednesday .

The latest kit allows companies to experiment around E Ink’s display and build their own prototype readers.”With the success of e-books, there is lot of interest in e-newspapers,” says Sri Peruvemba, vice president of marketing for E Ink. “We have had every major publisher talk to us about our displays and many large equipment manufacturers are getting into the space.”

E Ink’s experiments with similar kits has paid off in the past. Last year it launched the AM300 series kit targeted at product designers and hobbyists who want hands-on access to its e-books reader sized display technology.  The kits offered buyers a production sample of a glass-based display, a display controller and all the hardware and software necessary to produce a fully functional e-reader. Though most of the kits priced at $3000 each were bought by companies looking to create Kindle competitors, a few enthusiasts hacked it to run a browser and some Linux applications.

E Ink’s new Broadsheet AM 300 kit has a resolution of 150 pixels per inch and can display multiple shades of gray giving readers the clarity of newsprint, says the company.  The kit includes a display module, a Linux x86 operating environment, E Ink API software for Broadsheet, various sample images, open source software drivers and applications including support for MMC cards, Bluetooth and USB. The kits will start shipping by the end of the month.

See also:
For $3K, You Can Build Your Own Kindle Killer

Photo: Broadsheet AM 300 Kit/ E Ink