Kindle Fire Gets Updated

A minor update to the Kindle Fire, Amazon's color touch-screen multimedia tablet, began rolling out to users today. Version 6.3 adds a few minor features, including a new toolbar for sharing notes and passages from inside a book. Another, more major feature, is called "Book Extras". Book Extras brings extra written content into the book you are currently reading, including glossaries or biographies. Another new feature extends the rental period for movies. The rental period now starts from when you start playing the movie, as opposed to from when it's downloaded. Textbooks will now retain formatting and page numbers, to make it easy for a Kindle-using student to keep up with the class in regard to textbook page numbers. Personal documents added  to the device will now be synced with Amazon Cloud.

Rooters, do not fear. Although the update will revert the rooting process taken, the xda-developer forums already have rooting instructions for the latest update. You should be prompted to install the update on your Fire, but if you are not, you can download it from Amazon's website here.

New iPad available in Stores Friday, March 16th

The new, third-generation iPad, over-viewed in this Gadgetator article, will hit store shelves tomorrow, March 16th.

If you want to get your hands on one as early as possible, waiting in line at an Apple store, as Mashable says, may not be the best choice. Apple stores will start selling the new device at 8:00 AM, local time, while 24-hour Walmarts will begin to hand out the device at 12:01 AM. The Best Buy at Union Square in New York City will also have the iPad at midnight.

It seems interesting that Apple would allow retailers to begin to sell the iPad before they themselves do, but it may just be another noticeable difference in Apple in the post Steve Jobs era.

Will you be waiting at a Walmart or Best Buy at midnight for the newest iPad? Share your thoughts in the comments.  

Instagram coming to Android

Instagram is a popular iOS app that allows you to share photos with friends and followers, as well as add cool retro-looking filters to the photos you share. Click this link to read more about Instagram.

Android users have never been able to use Instagram, as it is an iOS exclusive. Well, was an iOS exclusive. 

At South by Southwest, a geek conference in Austin, Texas, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom announced that Instagram would be coming to Android pretty soon. He says that currently, the Android Version is in a private beta testing stage, and will be "coming soon".

"In some ways, it's better than our iOS app. It's crazy", said Systrom. In addition, he announced that the iOS version of the app, which was featured as Apple's iPhone App of the Year in 2011, had reached over 27 million downloads.

Although we still don't know exactly when Android users will gain access to this great service, as Instagram co-founder says, it's coming soon. So Androiders, hold on, soon you too will be able to take vintage square images.

Instagram on Android

The New iPad

We've all been waiting for the next generation iPad. Rumors about it have been floating around basically since the launch of the iPad 2, and now those rumors are all either confirmed or denied. Mostly confirmed.

With the new iPad, Apple is really focusing on graphics and images. The new iPad sports a Retina display, Apple's proprietary term for a display that, when viewed at a normal distance, the pixels are not discernible. The Retina display is also found in the iPhone 4 and 4S, as well as the iPod touch 4th generation. Although the iPad has less pixels per inch (PPI) than the iPhone and iPod touch, it has a 2048x1536 resolution, making it a higher resolution than even an HDTV.

The A5X Chip

The graphics are also greatly improved, as the new iPad boasts the Apple A5X chip, a dual-core system-on-a-chip with quad-core graphics. This makes high-quality games look much better, and really works well with the new Retina display.

The third feature focusing on images and graphics is the new camera built into the iPad. The new iPad sports the same front-facing Facetime camera as the previous iPad 2, however, the rear-facing camera is greatly improved. The new rear-facing camera, or, as Apple calls it, the iSight camera, features a 5MP sensor, as well as the same 5-lens optics system as the iPhone 4S, to give much-higher quality images than the iPad 2. The  iSight also allows for 1080p HD video-recording, with built-in video stabilization. The interesting thing about the new camera is that Apple is calling it an iSight camera. The iSight name was originally used for the front-facing web-cams on the Macs, and was later replaced with the name "Facetime". Until now it had seemed that the iSight brand was killed.

The three features above all really work together to give users a great visual experience on the new iPad.

The iPad now also supports 4G LTE, on both Verizon and AT&T, giving much faster wireless speeds than before. One will have to buy an iPad specifically for the 4G carrier they want to use, and the 4G iPads also support 3G, if one does not live in a 4G LTE supported area.

The features above are all known to be battery-drainers, but Apple claims the same 10 hour battery life as the previous iPads, while only making the iPad a bit heavier and thicker, at 9.4mm thick, and 1.44 pounds heavy.

Voice Dictation Built into the Keyboard

Another new feature in the iPad is Voice Dictation, powered by Siri technology. Although you won't get the same Siri personal assistant you find in the iPhone 4S, the new iPad does have a voice dictation feature built into the software keyboard, so you'll be able to dictate text instead of typing in any app.

Along with the iPad announcement, Apple announced updates to Garage Band and iMovie for the iPad, as well as a completely new app to complete the iLife suite. iMovie now allows for you to create, as the Apple press release says, "Hollywood-style trailers as you shoot HD video". Garage Band also has a new feature, called Jam Sessions, which allows a group to wirelessly connect and record music together. iPhoto, a new Apple app, allows grouping of photos and a great editing feature. All three of these apps cost $4.99 each.

The new iPad is available for pre-order now, and will be available to buy March 16th. The cost remains the same, starting at $499, so if you want one, pre-order now at Apple.com. The iPad 2 is also still available, at a reduced price of $399.

Interestingly, Apple is veering off from it's naming scheme, as they are calling the latest version of the iPad "The New iPad", instead of iPad 3 or iPad HD, as some thought it would be called. It will be interesting to see whether or not Apple continues this new way of naming devices with the next iPhone.

What do you think? Will you be buying a new iPad? Let us know in the comments.