Rumored Kindle Fire With Retina Display?

Oh, the rumor mill keeps churning up phantom new Kindle Fire tablets. The latest and most interesting one is this: Amazon Kindle Fire 2 to launch three models

The larger 8.9-inch Amazon Kindle Fire 2 is said to pack a full HD (1920 x 1200) display – which is unprecedented for a sub 10-inch tablet (the new iPad aside).

That would be a very significant tablet.

The Display PPI (Pixels Per Inch) Calculator tells why:

Kindle Fire 8.9″: 254.4 pixels per inch
New iPad (3): 263.92 pixels per inch
iPhone 4s: 329.65 pixels per inch

So yeah, that screen would put it in Retina Display territory.

At one time, I was impressed by the NookColor screen (the Nook Tablet is the same). That turns out to be only 169.55 pixels per inch.

And that OLED screened Galaxy Tab 7.7? That’s just 196.03 pixels per inch.

A Retina Display Kindle Fire would be a hell of a thing. Rooters would flock to it. Let’s hope Amazon doesn’t lock it down totally with an encrypted bootloader.

Let’s also hope the rumor is true.

Rooted Nook Touch: Updated Kobo And Kindle Apps

Very good developments!

They updated the Kobo app in the Android Market (Google Play whatever) on March 23rd 2012. It now works on the Nook Simple Touch by Barnes and Noble.

Let’s Just Buy The Damn Patents

Patents Threaten To Silence A Little Girl, Literally

But now Speak for Yourself in under fire, and from a surprising (to an AAC outsider) or not-so-surprising (to an AAC insider) source. They’re being sued by Semantic Compaction Systems and Prentke Romich Company, big names in the AAC world. SCS and PRC allege that Speak for Yourself is infringing on their patents. I’m going to be honest: I don’t know about patents and infringement, and I’m not going to get into debates about the legal merits of the case, because that’s a conversation in which I would quickly drown.

Over at Techdirt, there are plenty of hand-wringing and comments of outrage.

The hell with that.

Someone needs to do a Kickstarter or other fund where people can contribute to buy the damn patents. Every company has its price.

We live in a country where charities rake in billions. But we rarely know firsthand that our money has actually done any good.

This is one time where we would know we have done some good.

Someone needs to do this.