Fired Up

Being a gadget freak, I’m always eager to hear about the latest whiz-bang computing devices. Alas, I’m only limited by the power of money. If only the kids didn’t like living in a house and eating food so much…and those braces? Meh.

C’mon boys, wouldn’t you rather Dad got an iPad?

And if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bust its ass hopping. $700 is a lot of money to play Fruit Ninja. But I can dream, right?

So let’s narrow this down a bit: being a budget-conscious gadget freak, I’m always eager to hear about the latest whiz-bang devices from Amazon. Which means today I’m a very happy boy.

Checking off the latest techie goodness from the Left Coast:

Front-lit Kindle touch? Tick.

Cheaper Kindle Fire with more memory and battery life? Tick-tick.

Kindle Fire HDs with 16GB memory and screen resolution comparable to iPad’s Retina? Tick-tick-tick…

But wait, there’s more! The HDs come in 7″ and 9″ models, priced at $199 and $299 respectively. BOOM!

There’s also a higher-capacity Fire HD with 4G LTE wireless, at a price point that gives Apple the Big Middle Finger.

Lots more from Wired’s live blog of the Amazon event, just follow the link above. There’s also a quick write-up at Gizmodo.

After singing the praises of indie publishing through Kindle Direct, Jeff Bezos also announced a new product from the KDP service: Kindle Serials. For one price, you can buy a serial novel and automatically receive each new chapter as it’s published. As a bonus, you get to interact with the author during the writing process.

I like the sound of this, as the next book I have in mind after the Perigee sequel would be big. As in spanning-generations big. I’d figured on it being a three-volume work but a serial version might be just the ticket.

Finally, it appears that Kindle Singles are now being priced at $1.99. Not sure yet how that might affect the $0.99 price as a promotional tool, but my first guess is that we won’t see many more novels priced that low.