A while ago I gave my thoughts about the Kindle Fire. Now that I’ve used it for a while it time to talk about where I think Amazon needs to go (in software) to take the Fire to the next level (for more thoughts about how to improve the Fire, check out Jason Snell’s article on Tech Hive).

1. Better integration with Cloud Drive – Amazon does some really good things in terms of integrating the music, books, and magazines that you’ve purchased with your account. However, the piece that is missing is the syncing of documents that you would store on your Amazon Cloud Drive. An example of this is me. I’m now attending the University of Phoenix to get my MBA. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing for school. The reading is mostly from pdf files. I would be really happy if I could store these on my could drive and then get to them when I need. Using the send to Kindle app is nice but it seems to be an extra step that isn’t really needed. Maybe what I would really like is for the Cloud Drive to be more like dropbox.
2. Playing nicely with Google Play – Neither Amazon or Google want to admit it, but the Fire is a device running Android. Amazon does a good job of creating a “walled garden” for apps. However there are times that you need an app that can only be downloaded from Google Play. The app that springs to mind right away is the native Facebook app. You can download it from Google Play but you can’t get it on Amazon’s Android Store. The other half of this equation is that Google Play won’t recognize the Fire as an android device. Amazon already allows you in install apps that aren’t on the Amazon Android Store so why is there an impasse?
3. Folders – Remember how excited we all were when iOS finally had the ability to put apps into folders? Well, it’s about time that Amazon give us this functionality. While their carousel is very handy for getting to recently used apps, books, magazines, or media getting to an application you haven’t used it a while is difficult. Additionally, if you have a lot of applications in your “apps” section, you could be scrolling for a while to get to the app you are looking for.

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought for about a month and I think that I’d like to head back to school to get my MBA. This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time and it will help me with my business and with a job if I want head back to the workforce.

There are three things that are holding me back from going ahead with starting school again. The first question is will I really have enough time to dedicate to studying? Here I am trying to get this business off the ground; add to that helping my daughter do her homework and I don’t know if there is enough time in the day to get the studying/course work done in time.

The second question is the question of cost. This undertaking would cost around $30k. Now I can get this covered with student loans but the loans come due once I finish school and that is a lot of extra debit to be carrying around. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that much extra debit.

The final question that I’m wrestling with is one of writing. I’ve been told (and I tend to agree) that I don’t write very well, especially in a business setting. I’m very worried that my poor writing skills would effect my grades. There is an ironic twist to this but I’ll leave that for another time.

I’ve now been on both sides of the VAR/vendor relationship and although I had my ideas on how to develop and maintain a channel, most of what I thought seems to be true. Here are some of my key ideas:

• Be an advocate for your partners - Yes you work for the vendor, you know that and your partner knows that as well. However that doesn’t mean that you can’t still be an advocate for your partners. It’s really not a fine of a line to walk as you may think. Here is a story to show you how this can work to your benefit. I had a partner that had his business falling down all around him. He was committed to staying in business but he needed some help because one of this licenses was coming due and he couldn’t pay it all and couldn’t go on terms for various finical reasons. I told him that I’d see what I can do for him and and my manager and I decided that we can give him a free NFR license in this case. He was extremely grateful for this and sent me a gift as thank you. Not only that but a year or two later he had his business back on track and was able to become a Preferred Partner.
• Show your partners that you care - Ask your partners about their business, what do they focus on to build their business and how they generate new business. You’d be surprised how these simple questions help in having your partners feel that you care about them and they are not just a vehicle to selling more of your product. If your partners call about a problem try to help them solve it or get down the information that you need and work on helping them out while not on the phone. I can’t tell you how many times I became the partner’s therapist so he could discuss his latest frustration.
• Build the relationship - It’s been said that deal are made on the golf course. I can see why that is the case; not being in an office setting breaks down some of the barriers that would otherwise be there and additionally there is then a common interest. If there is a common interest then it is likely that there will be more willing to work with you to become a better partner. So if you don’t play golf (like me) how can you build the relationship? It all comes down to finding a common point of interest. With one partner it was Jazz music, with another it was baseball and with another it was professional wrestling. I’ve mentioned once or twice that I’m a fan of professional wrestling and as it turns out so is this partner. Then on one of my trips to visit him, we decided to go and see a taping of Smackdown. It was my first time at a live event and it was a good relationship building exercise.
• Show that they can trust you - If you do one of the above things, and especially if you are able to do all of them with a partner then this last thing is already done. They will know that you can be trusted and will be more interested in doing business with you and want to sell your product.

Why We Honor George Washington:

George Washington was the man who established the American republic. He led the revolutionary army against the British Empire, he served as the first president, and most importantly he stepped down from power.

In an era of brilliant men, Washington was not the deepest thinker. He never wrote a book or even a long essay, unlike George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams. But Washington made the ideas of the American founding real. He incarnated liberal and republican ideas in his own person, and he gave them effect through the Revolution, the Constitution, his successful presidency, and his departure from office”

(Via Cato @ Liberty.)

A few years ago I blogged about how I got my mom a MacMini so I would be able to easily do support for her. For the most part that has been the case. Supporting her has been a lot easier than when she had a Windows machine. She’s also been a lot happier with using the MacMini as well. The ease of the Mac OS was one of the reasons I suggested that she get a iPad so she can run her summer business (she’s on the road a lot during the summer) using a spreadsheet in Numbers.

On the mac she’s been using NeoOffice as kind of a left over from when I had her set up on a Windows machine using OpenOffice. Now I’d like to get to moved over to Pages as well. The problem is that she has all of these files in the Open Office format. What I’d like to know is if there is an easy way to move those files over to the Pages file format?

I noticed that the Open Office format can be opened in TextEdit and from there I guess it could be saved as an RTF. However that seems a little too labor intensive. Is there a Automator workflow or an AppleScript out there that would solve this problem?

Tonight is the 8th and final night of Chanukah and I’m sitting on my couch watching the candles burn down. We all know the story of Chanukah where the Maccabes were victorious over the Seleucid Greeks. In essence the Greeks wanted to make sure that Judaism didn’t survive by abolishing certain laws. One could argue that in some ways the Maccabes were the extremists since they didn’t want to have their way of life changed.

Recently in Israel there have been extremists on the offensive. These “ultra-orthodox” Jews are protesting, violently some times, for certain things. What they want is women to dress according to their standards and have a separation between the genders on public transportation.

As someone who is an observant Jew (I guess you can call me “ultra-orthodox” but I hate labels like that) I am disgusted and embarrassed by these protests. Thankfully more people, who have more pull than I do are starting to speak out about these people. I would also like to point out that these people don’t represent what Judaism is about. As I mentioned in a previous post, Judaism is about living with people and being respectful of their differing views.

Reading about stuff like this makes me embarrassed to call myself Jewish.

I wanted to just thank everyone that has bought items through the Amazon ad to the right. I appreciate your support.

I know that I left off my last post with a question. I don’t like to do that often but I really did not know what was going to do with the iPad or the Kindle Fire. I’m happy to say that I’ve made my decision and it may surprise a lot of you.

I decided to sell my iPad and use and keep my Kindle Fire.  After doing a lot of thinking on the subject I figured that I can do everything that I need to with my kindle fire and it was smaller and lighter.  since I was mainly using the iPad as a consumption device it just made sense to switch to something that was later and did the same things. It’s not that I dislike the iPad and anyway the strip it’s just that this is what worked for me of course your mileage may vary like I said in the previous post.

There’ve been some criticisms of the Kindle Fire which I find quite interesting. The first one is the fact that it did not add any of the Google apps although it is in the android device. This complaint was mainly from a lot of the more techie blogs such as Gizmodo and Engadget and The Verge but I have to disagree with their assessment. The Kindle Fire is in Amazon device that just happens to run the Android operating system. It’s not a device that is Google specific; if anything it is Amazon specific. This is something that is really stressed with Amazon because if you look at any of their advertising or even their marketing on the web or elsewhere there is no mention of android anywhere. Not only that but Amazon has its own Android store and Google does not recognize the Kindle as an Android device and you can’t use apps from their Android market place. This is even the case if you go into the candle fire settings and set up that you can install apps from anywhere the android marketplace will not recognize your device.

The Kindle Fire perfect? Of course not. It does suffer from some stuttering and lack a of smoothness in the interface.  I think the most annoying thing for me is the fact that the carousel you really need to be exact when you need to get that otherwise you constantly go back and forth between the app before and the app after it. Even with those problems I still see it as a Android issue and a Kindle Fire issue.

Finally, I wanted to address the question of whether or not the kindle fire is a direct competitor to the iPad.  In a limited way, it is a competitor. However I think that Amazon is more interested in pushing their products although from the website then pushing the Kindle Fire into more people’s hands.  So, even though it can do almost everything that the iPad can do I still don’t think that it is a direct competitor to the iPad.  Then again, I have never subscribed to this theory that there could only be one tablet. I don’t see there being a problem with some people having iPads and other people having Kindle fire or another type of tablet.

First and foremost a Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

When I first heard about Amazon’s Kindle Fire being released I was very interested but I decided not to buy one right away because I wanted to wait for the reviews to come out and make my decision based on those reviews. Sadly there was no real consensus about the Fire so I decided to head over to my local Staples and buy one and if I don’t like it I have two weeks to return it and there is no restocking fee. If I did like it, I would sell my iPad and have some extra money.

Let me say that this isn’t going to be a review of the Fire as much as this is going to be my trying to figure out if can replace my iPad. If you’re looking for some good reviews, I suggest visiting Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Engadget or any of the other places that have written reviews. Remember I’m trying to figure out my needs and so your mileage may vary.

Day to Day activities

I look at what my day to day activities on a tablet and it boils down to reading my RSS feeds, checking twitter, reading (and sometimes composing) email, reading, taking notes and playing some games.

Let’s first talk about email since that is a built in application for the Fire. It’s pretty easy to set up the accounts and it receives my email just fine. However it’s pretty bare bones and but it seems to get the job done. I found free applications that will allow me to read my RSS and twitter feeds. If Tweetcaster supported Tweetmarker that would be even better. I also found an app that I can use for my RSS feeds and have it work just the way I like.

As for games, the main game that I need is Words With Friends and that game is available. There are other games that I play but I can play those on my iPhone.

The Intangibles

So far, it seems that the Fire can replace the iPad so what is holding me back from making the switch? For one thing there is one app there isn’t available for the Fire that the iPad has, and that is the app for Optimum Online. It lets me watch TV from my iPad while I’m at home. It’s a great app and one that my daughter and I use when I can’t use the main TV.

There is also the comfort level that iOS provides me with.  On the other hand the Fire is a lot smaller and lighter, making it a lot easier to take on trips and especially the subway.

Conclusion

I don’t really have a conclusion yet. I can see me deciding either way. I guess I’ll give it some more time.

I saw this article this morning by way of Voz iz Neias (What’s news in Yiddish) and it just turned my stomach.

Senate Republicans appear to be serious about creating a long-rumored “Jewish district” in Brooklyn, according to a well-connected Republican source who saw a copy of their draft redistricting maps. The idea, the source said, would be to put as many Orthodox Jewish voters as possible into indicted State Sen. Carl Kruger‘s Senate district. Nobody is counting on Kruger staying in office for long, and Jewish voters helped propel Republican Congressman Bob Turner to a special election victory this fall. In the prospective Senate race, the Republican candidate could also potentially use same-sex marriage as a wedge issue against Councilman Lew Fidler, who supports it and is presumed to be the Democratic candidate for the seat.

I know that gerrymandering has a long history here in the US but I’ve always felt that it’s wrong. The idea that there should be a “safe” seat at any level of politics is just plain wrong. Representatives on any level should be working to build a large consensus among a diverse population, not having the ability to be (re)elected because of their last name or skin color.

On a more personal level is this something that we as Jews should really want? Yes, I know that there are plenty of districts that have been created for a minority or to protect a majority and how does this benefit anyone? We need to learn how to work with everyone and not just become insular. (For the record the congressional district that I live in CD-9 is an example of this and I think it’s wrong. Here is a map to show you what I’m talking about)

Yes, you want to elect someone that shares your values (or at least most of them) but that is what elections are for – to select who you want to represent you. Here in New York it’s hard enough to get someone who isn’t a Democrat elected (which is why Bob Turner winning the congressional seat was such big news) creating a safe seat(s) will make it just impossible for anyone other then whoever is “anointed” to win an election.