Portable video

Will the Kindle Fire be worth rooting?

The average consumer probably isn't thinking right now about installing custom firmware on Amazon's Kindle Fire, but I know the first thing a bunch of you wondered was, "Wow, a $199 Android tablet with a dual-core processor; is this thing rootable?"

Well, at least according to one Amazon rep I spoke to at the launch event, it is--and apparently Amazon isn't putting up any measures to stop people from doing it.

Call it confidence (or arrogance), but Amazon seems to feel that it's giving consumers--and even more hard-core Android enthusiasts--enough attractive features to keep … Read more

What to expect from Wednesday's Amazon event

In case you missed it, Amazon.com is having a big press event this Wednesday in New York to roll out something new. OK, maybe it's not Apple kind of big. But it's big enough, especially with the smart money on Jeff Bezos unveiling Amazon's much-anticipated Android tablet (leaks suggest it may be called the Kindle Fire), which a lot of anti-Apple folks hope can slow down the iPad juggernaut.

Will we see two tablets--a 7-incher and a 10-incher--or just one? If it is a tablet, will it really be branded the "Kindle Fire" or something else? Will there be a new e-ink Kindle? After all, it's been over a year since Amazon introduced the Kindle 3--isn't it time for a new model?

Lots of questions remain, so with that in mind, here's a short preview of what we could see on Wednesday and the odds of each option actually coming to fruition. … Read more

Where's the 64GB iPod Touch?

OK, now that CES and Macworld are behind us, it's time to take a moment to ponder just what was missing. For me anyway the biggest letdown was the absence of any word on a higher-capacity iPod Touch. As a non-iPhone guy with a slight bit of iPhone envy, I've had my eye on the 2G Touch for the last three months. But like a lot of people, I've been waiting either for the price of the 32GB version to come down or to pay not much more for a 64GB model, which has been making the … Read more