Amazon Kindle – My Ugly Beautiful Girl

(points to those that get the title reference)

So the Amazon Kindle is official, and it’s pretty amazing. Take a Sony Reader, throw in an EV-DO wireless radio and some text input, then pair it up with the big name in bookselling, ugly it up a bit, and you’ve got the Kindle.

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Amazon’s product page is live now, with videos and plenty of pictures. Being able to subscribe a newpaper and have it wirelessly pushed to your ebook reader, anywhere in the country, is relatively tempting. Did it have to look like it came from 1982 though?

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In all, I think it’s a great entry in the ebook field. It certainly surpasses my Reader in many areas, and it’s damn tempting to order one right now. Here’s hoping Sony kicks the Connect Store into gear – as per usual, Sony has great hardware being let down by terrible software. Perhaps this will motivate them to change that.

Avid AWOL from Annual Association Activity

If all of my titles were alliterative … that’d be awesome.

Avid announced yesterday that they’re not going to show up at NAB 2008. No booth, no shouty presenters, no pretentious representatives …

So what’s this all about? Avid has had a bad year (sizable losses) and may see the expense of NAB as not worth the return. That’s one option. Option two is that this could be a signal that NAB is on the decline. Apple hasn’t officially booked a booth yet either. NAB has been growing so much though, it’s hard to imagine that’s the case. I guess we’ll see come April.

Panasonic gone wacky

Uhh. Panasonic? Dudes? You’re making my eyes bleed.

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Welcome everyone, to the Panasonic AG-HMC70, by far the ugliest camera I have ever seen. Seriously, I hope there’s an aftermarket bodykit for this or something. Maybe with some ground effects and flared wheel arches …

Oh yeah, it’s a three chip, AVCHD camera that records to SD cars with an OIS leica lens. So that’s all pretty neat. You get XLR jacks plus both an LCD and a viewfinder. AVCHD is still a bit of a funny format – I’ve seen very good AVCHD, and very bad AVCHD. Hopefully this tilts towards the former.

No price on this yet, though I’d expect it to come in under the HVX-200. Which really begs the question of why Panasonic, which has thrown all of its weight in the prosumer and professional field behind P2 and DVCProHD/AVC-Intra, would jump into the market with an AVCHD camera recording to SD. So very confusing.