Kindle Fire adds APIs for cloudy gaming features
Amazon has beefed up gaming on its Android-based Kindle Fire platform, in hopes that adding cloudy goodness will help bolster the device in the upcoming fondleslab wars.
The online retailer's new set of services, collectively called GameCircle, allow games to store various kinds of data in Amazon's cloud, where it can be accessed and shared by multiple players and devices. The three services Amazon is offering so far include Achievements, Leaderboards, and Sync.
Achievements allow game players to earn trophies, treasures, awards, and other prizes, and to maintain a list of the prizes they've won and ones they have yet to earn. Leaderboards allow players to track their high scores in games and rank their scores against those of other players. Sync automatically saves game state to Amazon's cloud, allowing players to pick up where they left off when they restore a deleted game or switch to a different device. Read more...
Cyanogenmod 7 port coming to Kindle Fire this weekend
That d
idn’t take long: over two weeks after its release, the Kindle Fire will be running Cyanogenmod 7 this weekend. Official CM7 support will have to wait, but an independent developer, JackpotClavin, has nearly completed a fully functional CM7 ROM for the Kindle Fire. He has been running the (almost) bug-free firmware for several days, and expects a public release by this Sunday.
Cyanogenmod, from Cyanogen and Team Douche, is a popular Android custom firmware. Cyanogenmod ROMs are built straight from Google’s source code; the software lets owners of manufacturer-skinned devices run a more pure version of Android. It is among the most stable of custom Android ROMs, with extra performance-boosting and power-conserving options. Cyanogenmod 7 is the team’s version of Gingerbread. Read more...
After the iPad, the Kindle Fire is the clear second choice
Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablet will leapfrog most tablet offerings to quickly become Number 2 in the market behind Apple's iPad, according to a survey conducted by ChangeWave Research. The November survey of 3,043 consumers in North America found that 65 percent plan to buy an iPad tablet, while 22 percnt said they planned to buy a Kindle Fire media tablet.
Amazon's Kindle Fire is "wreaking a devastating blow" to the second tier of tablet manufacturers, ChangeWave said in a statement. Read more...
Amazon Silk Web browser given green light by EFF
Amazon's Kindle Fire is off the hook with one important group when it comes to privacy worries about Silk, the specially created Web browser for the new e-reader/tablet due out next month.
Representatives from the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation have talked with Amazon officials about the speedy, new cloud-based browser, focusing on what user information will be transmitted via the cloud and shared by the company.
"Our conversation with Amazon allayed many of our major concerns," said the EFF.
As msnbc.com's Wilson Rothman explained when Kindle Fire was announced, Silk "weds the tablet to Amazon's cloud network. The browser gathers user behavior in order to predict where you'll go next, and caching that Web page in advance. If you always jump from msnbc.com to the tech/sci page, it will start loading it on the back end, so that it's quicker to load for you." Read more...