Today Amazon presented their new Amazon Kindle Fire, which is their take on a tablet. The Amazon Kindle Fire is not yet for sale, but it can be pre-ordered now and expect to ship on November 15th.
So why is this interesting you may ask. Well for starters you have the price – The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is only $199, which is really really cheap. This will undoubtedly make it a very popular tablet – especially in the market segment that thought that paying $499 for the smallest iPad2 or $499 for the smallest Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, was too expensive.
Another interesting thing is the way that Amazon has tied their tablet into the Cloud. The Amazon Cloud services are really extensive and alot of this power is directed straight into your device. This also means that the Amazon Kindle Fire only has 8 GB of storage, but since it’s cloud based it shouldn’t be a big issue.
Now you may ask – what does this have to do with Adobe Captivate? Well – The Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet uses a new browser called Amazon Silk and this browser supports Flash ;o) This means that your Adobe Captivate content will play on the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet and that is really great news in my opinion.
Furthermore we can expect to see a general improvement in playback of Flash based content and general internet content on the Amazon Kindle Fire due to their new Amazon Silk Browser. This browser is what Amazon calles a “Split Browser” because it leverages the power of the Amazon Cloud to perform all the heavy tasks and then simply present the content to the device as an optimized user experience. Basically all the DNS, TCP/IP connections, handshakes, loading of assets from multiple domains etc is handled by the Amazon Cloud so that the browser doesn’t have to connect to 10-20 different servers to get the content – the browser simply connects to the Amazon cloud and get the entire webpage from one single location.
If you want to know more about this new browser initiative then take a look at this YouTube video:
I own a regular Kindle3 myself and I have been extremely pleased with it. When it comes to reading the Kindle is really good due to the E-ink technology. This new Amazon Kindle Fire is a whole different ball game and not at all an Ebook reader. It’s a tablet – and a very cheap tablet indeed. I’m pretty certain that I will be getting one myself.
Check out the Amazon Product Page for Amazon Kindle Fire here if you want to know more. Once I have more information about the specific capabilities and perhaps even a test of an Adobe Captivate file playing on an Amazon Kindle Fire I will make an update here on the site.
I would love to see something like this be used as a platform for delivering corporate elearning. I can definitely see companies spending $200 on a mobile device for their staff that basically gave them access to browser-based information and multimedia learning.
I bought two yesterday – one for myself. Another for my daughter. I suspect you’re right about the adoption potential. Seems like this is likely to be a very popular offering. (I’ll let you know how it performs once it arrives Mid November.)
@Rod – Yes indeed. The price makes it a very interesting platform for corporate learning or even as FAQ device to look up procedures or guidelines. I also think it can be a popular alternative for schools for the smaller classes provided that the proper applications will be available.
@Allen – I just ordered one aswell. I actually just ordered a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which should arrive next week, but I just have to try this Kindle Fire aswell.
3 Comments
Now that DOES sound interesting!
I would love to see something like this be used as a platform for delivering corporate elearning. I can definitely see companies spending $200 on a mobile device for their staff that basically gave them access to browser-based information and multimedia learning.
Go Kindle Fire!
I bought two yesterday – one for myself. Another for my daughter. I suspect you’re right about the adoption potential. Seems like this is likely to be a very popular offering. (I’ll let you know how it performs once it arrives Mid November.)
@Rod – Yes indeed. The price makes it a very interesting platform for corporate learning or even as FAQ device to look up procedures or guidelines. I also think it can be a popular alternative for schools for the smaller classes provided that the proper applications will be available.
@Allen – I just ordered one aswell. I actually just ordered a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which should arrive next week, but I just have to try this Kindle Fire aswell.