Spaced Out :: 09 2011

NigeriaSat-2, the UK designed and build 2.5m micro-satellite, is now collecting imagery after its successful launch in August. The first image is over Salt Lake City and demonstrates the quality of the new 2.5m sensor. As the article notes, NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X, cost a total of £30M which included training in design and build of their own satellite. A remarkable knowledge transfer partnership.

Amazon did a BIG product launch today attacking the portable media “appliance” market on all fronts with a swathe of announcements. A good roundup over at PCPro where we see the following:

Kindle (4?) ebook reader: e-ink, same size screen, smaller, lighter and no keyboard. The kick in the stomach…. $79 US or £89 UK!! Looks like the third generation with keyboard will remain available.

Kindle Touch: yes, a touchscreen version at $99

Kindle Fire (I blogged about earlier): the mythical beast is out, with a detailed review here and due out in November at $199. This is a killer price…. they are really going big guns for the tablet market and building in the media content (book, magazine, music, film) makes for a compelling product. It’ll be interesting to see how good the hardware is.

The OS blog highlighted that maps are now making their way on to the Kindle. Kindle Map Guides are a nice example and reasonably well put together use OpenSpace data. They are probably the best of the bunch and replicate a paper map on your Kindle. They do the job, but I can’t help feel that they missed a trick in maximising the screen space given over to the map. Useful to have in the pocket though. Kindle Maps are using OpenStreetMap data with their first offering a map of Dublin.

I took this picture last week whilst in Belfast. This is (currently) my IT setup whilst travel. On a day-to-day basis I now only take my San Francisco; however this isn’t sufficient for a longer trip. I need a Windows PC, reasonable size screen/keyboard, internet access and ALL my documents/software. The photo shows my ageing, but trusty, Sony Vaio, portable harddrive (stuff with all my work and portable apps. The San Francisco is then setup as a portable wifi hotspot to give internet access. Very portable.

Well the Kindle library lending scheme is now up and running in the US. Based upon a 2 week lending period… bear in mind this means Kindle the “brand” rather than Kindle the “device”. So if you want to borrow a book (and you need to be a library member) you can sync it to *any* Kindle application, be that iPhone, Android, Windows or Chrome.

Its not a panacea, but it will address those people who don’t want to buy Kindle books because they can borrow them. Quite how this would work for student textbooks I’m not sure, although discussions with academic publishers are meant to be ongoing….